"Evolution and Religion in American Education" shines a light into one of America's dark educational corners, exposing the regressive pedagogy that can invade science classrooms when school boards and state overseers take their eyes off the ball. It sets out to examine the development of college students' attitudes towards biological evolution through their lives. The fascinating insights provided by interviewing students about their world views adds up to a compelling case for additional scrutiny of the way young people's educational experiences unfold as they consider-and indeed in some cases reject-one of science's strongest and most cogent theoretical constructs. Inevitably, open discussion and consideration of the theory of evolution can chip away at the mental framework constructed by Creationists, eroding the foundations of their faith. The conceptual battleground is so fraught with logical challenges to Creationist dogma that in a number of cases students' exposure to such dangerous ideas is actively prevented. This book provides a detailed map of this astonishing struggle in today's America-a struggle many had thought was done and dusted with the onset of the Enlightenment.

Kids encounter problems at school that run the gamut from school violence, to complex systemic problems rooted in poverty or racism, to daily struggles with homework or making friends.Therapists who work with kids typically do not receive training about when and how to contact schools, or about how to work with them collaboratively. The School-Savvy Therapist by Dr. Mary Eno provides a framework, tools, and guidelines for doing just that. Drawing on research, illustrative case examples, and interviews, this practical resource describes what therapists need to know about schools and how they can effectively foster a supportive child-family-school dynamic. From reviewing test results, conducting school observations and attending family-school meetings, to helping parents advocate for their kids and more, this book will help therapists understand the critical role they play in supporting kids who struggle at school.Checklists, questions, and specific guidelines are provided so that both novice and experienced therapists can engage in this work with skill and confidence.

School choice is the most talked about reform of American public education, yet writings about choice remain highly speculative because no state has adopted a free market approach to education--until now. The charter school is fast becoming one of the most significant attempts at public education reform in this country. Over 1100 charter schools operate in twenty-seven states, with several hundred more to be added in the next two years. "School Choice in the Real World" looks at the charter school movement through a highly focused lens: it examines charter schools in Arizona, which currently account for nearly one-quarter of all charter schools.Since 1994, Arizona has implemented a charter school law with the lowest barriers to entry in the nation. As a result, Arizona has more than 200 charter school campuses. Some districts have even lost more than 10% of their students to charter schools. Using the state of Arizona as a case study, the editors examine the experiences of actual charter school operators, social scientific analysis, policy discussions, and criticism and forecasting for the future. The editors bring together academics, policy-makers, and practicioners, and they explain and evaluate how school choice works in the real world.

BRINGING TOGETHER thirteen topics related to homosexuality and education, Understanding Homosexuality, Changing Schools provides a foundation in gay/lesbian studies and offers models for equity, inclusion, and school reform. It is designed to help educators, policymakers, and the public understand the significance of gay and lesbian issues in education; aid communication between gay/lesbian students and their families and schools; facilitate the integration of gay and lesbian families into the school community; and promote the inclusion of gay and lesbian curricula in a range of disciplines. It also seeks to promote the healthy development of all students through reducing bigotry, self-hatred, and violence. This volume makes the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender experience part of a democratic multicultural vision.

Middle-class School Choice in Urban Spaces examines government-funded public schools from a range of perspectives and scholarship in order to examine the historical, political and economic conditions of public schooling within a globalized, post-welfare context. In this book, Rowe argues that post-welfare policy conditions are detrimental to government-funded public schools, as they engender consistent pressure in rearticulating the public school in alignment with the market, produce tensions in serving the more historical conceptualizations of public schooling, and are preoccupied by contemporary profit-driven concerns. Chapters focus on public schooling from different global perspectives, with examples from Chile and the US, to examine how various social movements encapsulate ideologies around public schooling. Rowe also draws upon a rich, five-year ethnographic study of campaigns lobbying the Victorian State Government in Australia for a brand-new, local-specific public school. Critical attention is paid to the public school as a means to achieve empowerment and overcome discrimination, and both a local and global lens are used to identify how parents choose the public school, the values they attach to it, and the strategies they use to obtain it. Also considered, however, are how quality gaps, distances and differences between public schools threaten to undermine the democracy of education as a means for individuals to be socially mobile and escape poverty. This book makes an important contribution to our understanding of global social movements and activism around public education. As such, it will be of key interest to researchers, academics and postgraduate students in the field of education, specifically those working on school choice, class and identity, as well as educational geography.

The nation is abuzz with consideration of prekindergarten programs for all children. To better understand the issues involved, funding and staffing considerations as well as policy option, this book is a must read. In this timely book, Matia Finn-Stevenson and Edward Zigler argue that the federal government alone cannot address the need for child care and family support services that, like education, should be addressed locally. The authors use their Schools of the 21st Century (21C) program as an example of how schools can provide child care, outreach services, home visitations, and health and nutrition services--in addition to reading, writing, and arithmetic.Conceptualized in 1987 in response to the child care crisis in this country, 21C has been implemented in over 600 schools in seventeen states. However, schools' involvement with increasingly younger children is not without controversy. The authors also address questions regarding evaluation and effective implementation and scale-up strategies, and consider what changes in teacher training programs should occur to prepare teachers for working in schools of the twenty-first century; what provisions should be made to accommodate for the need to staff schools with personnel trained in early child development; and what changes need to be made in the financial structures of schools to accommodate child care and support services.Whereas Part Two of the book discusses the authors' Schools of the 21st Century program in considerable detail, Parts One and Three address a broader range of issues concerning the effects that prekindergarten education has on later school success and the various policy and conceptual approaches that have been tried, both nationally and internationally. Finn-Stevenson and Zigler also critically review the research on the effects of child care on children and other school reform initiatives that have been implemented in schools."Schools of the 21st Century" is an engaging discussion about the new roles schools are taking and how they are expanding their traditional mission.

This new edition of Special Educational Needs in Schools provides a concise but comprehensive overview of key issues in provision for children with special needs in schools, emphasising the role of the mainstream classroom teacher. This second edition looks at the numerous changes in special educational policy and practice that have taken place in the past five years. Topics covered include:
* concepts of SEN
* the legislative framework
* the range of special educational need and provision
* teaching approaches and organisational strategies
* frameworks of support.

Related link: http://www.routledgefalmer.com/textbooks< /a>

Conflicts often arise between regulations, making it difficult for school management teams and teachers to resolve situations with appropriate dignity and respect for all concerned. This book discusses provocative actual case studies to help teachers to reflect on their own ethics, guiding them to make more reasonable decisions in their schools, and thereby gradually transforming schools into more cohesive and caring communities. A model of consequences, consistency and caring, each aspect based on traditional ethical theories provides a scientific base - a rational and a responsive base for ethical decision-making. This work covers such everyday problems as censorship, inclusivity, school uniform, punishment, personal gain and confidentiality, and argues that care and respect for others, equity, rational autonomy and concern for long-term benefits are more important for a school community than short-term power and control.

eBook available with sample pages: EB:0203010469

Based on two years of ethnographic fieldwork in an urban elementary school, this volume is an examination of how school division politics, regional economic policies, parental concerns, urban development efforts, popular cultures, gender ideologies, racial politics, and university and corporate agendas come together to produce educational effects. Unlike conventional school ethnographies, the focus of this work is less on classrooms than on the webs of social relations that embed schools in neighborhoods, cities, states, and regions. Utilizing a variety of narratives and analytical styles, this volume:
* explores how curriculum innovations are simultaneously made possible by and undermined by school district politics, neighborhood histories, and the spatial and temporal organizations of teachers' and parents' lives;
* situates the educational discourse of administrators and teachers in the changing economic and political climates of the city;
* analyzes the motivations behind an effort by school and business proponents to refashion classrooms within the school into business enterprises, and of children's efforts to make sense of the scheme;
* examines the role of the school as a neighborhood institution, situating it at the intersections of city planners' efforts to regulate city space and children's efforts to carve out live spaces through out-of-school routines;
* contemplates the meaning of school as a site for bodily experience, and looks at how patterns of space and control in the school shaped children's bodies, and at how they continued to use body-based languages to construct maturity, gender, and race; and
* investigates the school as a space for the deployment of symbolic resources where children learned and constructed identities through their engagements with television, comic books, movies, and sports.
"Tangled Up In School" raises questions about how we draw the boundaries of the school, about how schools fit into the lives of children and cities, and about what we mean when we talk about "school."

In the World Library of Educationalists, international experts compile career-long collections of what they judge to be their finest pieces - extracts from books, key article, salient research findings, major theoretical and practical contributions - so the world can read them in a single manageable volume. Readers will be able to follow the themes and strands and see how their work contributes to the development of the field. Gerald Grace is renowned internationally for his research and teaching in the areas of Catholic education, spirituality, leadership and effectiveness in faith schooling, and educational policy. In Faith, Mission and Challenge in Catholic Education, Gerald Grace brings together 15 of his key writings in one place. Starting with a specially written Introduction, which gives an overview of his career and contextualises his selection within the development of the field, the chapters cover: - the interactions of faith, mission and spirituality in the development of Catholic education - how to replace ideology, polemic and prejudice in discussions about faith-based schooling with evidence-based argument - understanding the distinctive nature of concepts such as 'leadership' and 'effectiveness' in faith-based education - using 'mission integrity' as a key concept for the evaluation of contemporary Catholic schooling - examining the interactions of Catholic values, Catholic curriculum and educational policy developments. This book not only shows how Gerald Grace's thinking developed during his career, it also gives an insight into the development of the fields to which he contributed.

Reaching all the way back to the classical and medieval past, Teaching the Commons chronicles ideas and resulting policies that have shaped contemporary rural life and living in much of the industrial West. The book examines philosophical assumptions and charts their evolution into conventional wisdom about how human beings should meet their needs, govern themselves, and educate their children. Further, this book examines how policies emanating from these assumptions have slowly eroded the vitality of rural communities, finding that if there is sufficient interest in saving what is left of rural America, an educational agenda at the local level needs to be embraced by America's rural schools. Using concrete ideas generated in rural schools across the country, Teaching the Commons demonstrates that it is possible to simultaneously revitalize rural schools and communities. Through concerted curricular and pedagogical attention to place-the immediate locality-schools can contribute to rebuilding community in rural America on an educational foundation. Arguing that vital, self-governing communities rather than self-interested individuals represent the greatest hope for American democracy, Teaching the Commons lays out an institutional foundation that would turn the cultivation of civic virtue into an educational goal every bit as important and attainable as education for success in the economic market.

First Published in 1997. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Are students coming to your class lacking focus, having difficulty connecting with you and their peers, falling behind, or acting out when you instinctively feel they could do better? Do you sometimes feel like you don't have the capacity as a teacher or school leader to give students the support they need to learn and thrive? This book makes the case that societal realities-such as poverty, racism, and social marginalization--result in depleted cognitive resources for students and for those who are trying to help them succeed. Each of us has a finite amount of mental bandwidth, the cognitive resources that are available for learning, development, work, taking care of ourselves and our families, and everything else we have to do. These "attentional resources" are not about how smart we are but about how much of our brain power is available to us for the task at hand. When bandwidth is taken up by the stress of persistent economic insecurity or the negative experiences of racism, classism, homophobia, religious intolerance, sexism, ableism, etc., there is less available for learning and growth. This is as true for young children and youth as for their parents and teachers. The first half of the book makes the case that poverty and these "differentisms" deplete the bandwidth of students, parents, and teachers. The second sets out concepts and strategies that help people recover the bandwidth they need to learn and thrive. Cia Verschelden describes strategies that can help students recover bandwidth, including acknowledging the "funds of knowledge" of students and their families, promoting growth mindsets, using reflective practices to build a sense of belonging for all students, fostering peer collaboration, and implementing restorative practices in lieu of punitive measures to deal with problematic behavior, as well as a rich selection of Ideas in Practice contributed by experienced teachers and school leaders. Cia recognizes that many teachers are working in schools with inadequate support systems and facilities and with scarce materials, and may be spending their often inadequate pay on school supplies for their classrooms and food for their hungry students. She offers practical ideas for creating more teacher-supportive systems and addresses how principals and administrators can harness teachers' ideas and energies to create inclusive and successful learning environments for all students. The book includes a case study of Rochester, New York - where the economy has been decimated with the closure of major employers - and how its financially strapped school system worked with colleagues at the University of Rochester to use the distributed leadership of its teachers, with the active support of principals and superintendents, to revitalize its schools to better serve its diverse and low-income student population. This book is for teachers, parents, school leaders, and members of communities who are interested in the well-being of children and youth and the education of all our children. All of us have a stake in a public school system from which students emerge as fully-formed learners and thinkers and who believe in their ability to affect what happens to them and their communities.

In the increasingly global economy, commentators often cite education as a key source of competitive advantage for nations locked in economic contention on the world stage. Byron Marshall examines the evolution of Japanese schools over the past 120 years. Emphasizing the political discourse and conflict that have surrounded Japanese education, the author focuses on the three main issues of central versus local control, elitism versus equality, and nationalism versus universalism. The prewar education system in Japan was formulated in the 1870s and modeled after the Western system of public education. After World War II, the American Occupation authorities attempted to reform this system further, but how much discontinuity with the past was produced by the postwar reforms is still an open question.Of course, the dilemmas facing Japanese schools are endemic to all modern school systems, and Marshall's broad historical survey provides a valuable case study of Japanese attempts to strike a balance between equality and excellence, individual creativity and team cooperation, standardization and innovation, and internationalism and cultural identity. The book thus provides a valuable historical perspective on contemporary American issues of "political correctness" such as gender and ethnicity.As we head toward the "Pacific Century," this book gives readers the background and insight necessary to make informed judgments about the relative strength of Japanese education and the merits of various school reforms.

The first edition of The Making of Curriculum was published in 1988 and reviewers hailed it as a seminal work in the field. In that work Goodson explored a number of aspects of the so-called traditional subjects and described the way they develop over time to a point where they can be promoted as 'academic' disciplines. He showed that the claim to be academic was in fact the result of a substantial political contest covering a century or more. The traditional subject was, in short, invented. The first edition of this book provided a series of challenging insights for those desiring to make sense of the current debate over schooling. In this new and extended second edition, Bill Pinar adds an illuminating introduction and Goodson brings his argument up-to-date with a discussion of the National Curriculum - 'a contemporary initiative in the making of curriculum.'