This book explores the history of the unschooling movement and the forces shaping the trajectory of the movement in current times. As an increasing number of families choose to unschool, it becomes important to further study this philosophical and educational movement. It is also essential to ascribe theory to the movement, to gain greater understanding of its workings as well as to increase the legitimacy of unschooling itself. In this book, Riley provides a useful overview of the unschooling movement, grounding her study in the choices and challenges facing families as they consider different paths towards educating their children outside of traditional school systems.

This is a book about educational fads, why they arise, and how we might learn to live with them. Those working in schools are subject to perpetual waves of novelty in the name of school improvement. And yet, in the long term very little actually changes. Big ideas come and go, leaving only faint clues as to their existence. The trouble is that the appealing stories that take hold will never solve the fundamental problems of modern schooling. The school system is too complex, too diverse, and too uncertain to be fixed by any Big Idea. Before too long, the Next Big Thing replaces the Last Big Thing. The Next Big Thing in School Improvement brings together the unique perspectives of a policy analyst, a headteacher, and a classroom teacher, to explain why it is that the school system often resists our attempts to improve it. Drawing on the recent history of English education policy, a variety of disciplinary traditions, and the emerging field of complexity science, the authors present a new take on why the school system behaves in ways that defy our attempts to change it. This is a book about finding a better way to improve our schools. It is not the Next Big Thing, but it does explain why there will inevitably be one, and what to do when it arrives.

This book draws together leaders in science, the health sciences, the humanities, and the social sciences to investigate the role of religion, its meaning and relevance, for their area of specialization. It provides a much-needed fresh perspective on the way in which religion operates within the modern, neo-liberal world. The book approaches the topic by way of a critical engagement between religion, broadly defined, and the individual disciplines in which each of the contributors is expert. Rather than simply taking the dogmatic position that religion offers something to every possible discipline, each of the chapters in this collection addresses the question: is there something that religion can offer to the discipline in question? That is the value of the book - it takes a truly critical stance on the place of religion in contemporary society.

In this follow up to Laukaitis' Denominational Higher Education During World War II (Palgrave 2018), this collection investigates connections between religion, student activism, and higher education to reveal the complexity of public reactions to the controversies around the Vietnam War. Historical treatments of how the Vietnam War generated tensions on campuses across the country remain centered on public universities such as University of California-Berkeley, Kent State, and University of Wisconsin-Madison. Missing from the historical analysis is how the Vietnam War affected the campuses of Christian liberal arts colleges. This work centers on how Christian liberal arts colleges across the landscape of the United States encountered the national crisis in relationship to their Christian tenets and how particular religious communities and student bodies responded to the war.

American schools in urban areas have received much attention. This reference offers a comprehensive look at the issues and controversies at the heart of urban American education. The volume is divided into several parts devoted to historical, political, and social dimensions of urban schooling. The chapters in each part are authored by expert contributors, and each offers a fresh perspective on historical and contemporary concerns. The volume considers the place of schools in urban society and analyzes their mission and how they have changed, or failed to change, to meet modern needs. Much of the work is devoted to the problems of particular populations, such as minorities and special-needs students, while other chapters examine broad pedagogical issues and the societal problems that confront students of all backgrounds and abilities. Each chapter closes with a list of works for further reading, and the volume concludes with a bibliography.

This compelling book introduces Nobel laureate, Amartya Sen's, capability approach, and explores its significance for theory, policy and practice in education. The capability approach has attracted attention across disciplinary boundaries in recent years contributing to debates in economics, political philosophy, health and social policy. This book complements these discussions by considering the potential of the approach for work in education, showing how the capability approach challenges some of the key assumptions of human capital theory and how it can provide substance for policy and practice in education concerned with social justice. The book looks particularly at questions concerning the education of children, gender equality, and higher education.Contributors hail from the UK, USA, Australia, Italy and Mexico.

This volume explores the life stories of women who were former members of Mormon fundamentalist polygamous societies, from their own perspectives, to seek insight into their readiness for higher education settings. In order to support all learners in higher education, it is important to understand the unique needs of women students who have non-traditional formal schooling experiences and/or have come from restrictive or patriarchal cultures. This book helps further the discourse by providing recommendations for inclusive programs that consider how to develop elements of self-concept, empowerment, and motivation necessary for higher education success-academically and beyond.

This book examines some of the key elements of Buddhist education theory, in particular about educating for wisdom, the ultimate goal of Buddhist education. The teachings of Gautama Buddha have endured for thousands of years carried into the present era in schools, universities, temples, personal development courses, martial arts academies and an array of Buddhist philosophical societies across the globe. Philosophically, the ideas of the Buddha have held appeal across many cultures, but less is known about the underlying educational theories and practices that shape teaching and learning within Buddhist-inspired educational contexts. The chapters outline the development of the Buddha's teachings, his broad approach to education and their relevance in the 21st century. Subsequently, the book reviews the history of the evolution of the various schools of Buddhist thought, their teaching and learning styles and the dissemination among Asia and later also the Western countries. The book discusses education theories and devices embedded within the Buddhist teachings, examining the works found in the Tipitaka, the Buddhist canon.

This book explores the advantages of and challenges concerning Special Religious Education (SRE) in multicultural Australia and argues for the need for General Religious Education (GRE) as well. Through the lens of the most recent scholarship, and drawing on an in-depth qualitative study and specific case studies, the book examines the current debate on the role of religious education within government schools. It addresses key concepts of values education, spirituality, health and wellbeing, and cultural and religious identity. It analyses why it is important to retain SRE, together with GRE, as government policy. It explores highly relevant, controversial and contested issues regarding SRE, including the 30% of Australia's population who declare themselves as having "no religion", and brings fresh insights to the table. While secularization has increased in both the national and international spheres, there has also been an increase in fundamentalism within religious beliefs. Events such as the September 11 terror attacks and the more recent mass shootings by white supremacists and eco-fascists in Christchurch, New Zealand, and Pittsburgh and San Diego in the USA are reminders that religion is still a major actor in the twenty-first century. This poses new challenges for the relationship between church and state, and demonstrates the need to revisit the role of religious education within government schools. While the importance of GRE is generally acknowledged, SRE has increasingly come under attack by some researchers and teacher and parent bodies as being inappropriate and contradictory to the values of the postmodern world. On the other hand, the key stakeholders from all the faith traditions in Australia wish to retain the SRE classes in government schools. The book addresses this burning issue, and shows that it is relevant not only for Australia but also globally.

Breakbeat Pedagogy provides a groundbreaking framework for the inclusion of hip-hop culture in schools. Looking beyond the previous model of hip-hop-based education, Brian Mooney argues for school-wide hip-hop events, such as poetry slams, as the ideal site for students to engage in the elements of hip-hop culture. Working from the perspective of a classroom teacher, the author reflects on the story of Word Up!, a hip-hop and spoken word poetry event that began with students in a New Jersey high school. He makes the case for a pedagogy with the potential to transform urban schools and the way we think about them. This is essential reading for any teacher committed to social justice and culturally relevant education.

This book explores the impact of neoliberalism on education in the UK. Drawing on policies across the sector in England as a case study, the author illuminates and analyses the development of neoliberal policy on models of practice. The author explores the theory and philosophy that have come to define neoliberalism, and offers an explanation as to how this has been applied to the education sector in England at various different stages. Informed and scaffolded by years of empirical research in educational contexts, this book interrogates the impact of neoliberalism on educational practice. It will be of interest and value to scholars of neoliberalism and education, as well as practitioners.

This book explores how, and if, formal education affects peacebuilding in post-conflict societies. As schooling is often negatively implicated in violent conflict, the author highlights the widely expressed need to 'build back better' and 'transform' schooling by changing both its structures and processes, and its curriculum. Drawing upon research from a wide range of post-conflict developing societies including Cambodia, Colombia and Kenya, the author examines whether there is any empirical support for the idea that schooling can be transformed so it can contribute to more peaceful and democratic societies. In doing so, the author reveals how the 'myth' of building back better is perpetuated by academics and international organisations, and explains why formal education in post-conflict developing societies is so impervious to radical change. This important volume will appeal to students and scholars of education in post-conflict societies.

This book examines the benefits of applying the Identity Structure Analysis (ISA) to teacher professional development. At present no government, local authority or school is actively applying Identity Structure Analysis to monitor school improvement: in a profession where turnover is extremely high, ISA is framed as a way for professional development to meet the needs of the specific teacher. Examining idiographic ISA analyses as well as practical advice for implementing professional development programs, the authors scrutinise how ISA can be used in conjunction with mentoring to offset teacher turnover. This practical volume will be of interest and value to scholars and researchers of teacher identity and professional development, as well as researchers and policymakers interested in reducing teacher turnover.

The musical, social and political history of the renowned St Thomas School and Church In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the cantors of the St. Thomas School and Church in Leipzig could be counted among the most significant German composers of their times. But what attracted these artists - from Seth Calvisius to J.S. Bach to Johann Adam Hiller - to the music school and choir and inspired them to explore new repertoire of the highest standing? And how did the cantors influence the musical profile of the school - a profile that often became a bone of contention between school and city hall? The success of the St. Thomas School was not a foregone conclusion; its history is replete with challenges and setbacks as well as triumphs. The school was caughtbetween the conflicting interests of enthusiastic mayors and townspeople, who wanted to showcase the city's musical culture, and opposing parties, including jealous rectors and elitist sponsors, who argued for the traditional subordination of the cantorate to the school system. Drawing on many new, recently discovered sources, Michael Maul explores the phenomenon of the St Thomas School. He shows how cantors, local luminaries and municipal politicians overcame the School's detractors to make it a remarkable success, with a world-famous choir. Illuminating the social and political history of the cantorate and the musical life of an important German city, the book will be ofinterest to scholars of Baroque music and J.S. Bach, cultural historians, choral directors, and musicologists and performers studying historical performance practice. MICHAEL MAUL is Senior Scholar at the Bach-Archiv Leipzig and lecturer in musicology at the universities of Leipzig/Halle. He is also the artistic director of the annual Leipzig Bach Festival.

The Four Question Method identifies the questions that drive the thinking that real people do when they take the human world seriously. The authors, Jonathan Bassett and Gary Shiffman, have figured out how to describe and teach what it takes to answer those questions well. This inquiry method gives educators a way to integrate content 'coverage' - through storytelling! - with practice in thinking skills that are central to history and its affiliated academic disciplines, together called social studies. The Four Question Method helps teachers to plan more effectively and students to learn more effectively. It provides guidance for writing research essays. And it transfers: the skills our students practice will work for them when they encounter and make their own history.

This book provides tools to help pre-service teachers and teacher-preparation programs identify, evaluate, and respond to misaligned expectations early in the teacher-preparation sequence. Plato tells the story of prisoners who mistake the shadows on the wall of their cave for flesh-and-blood reality. These "shadow narratives" dominated their expectations, and when confronted with a three-dimensional reality that bore little resemblance to the shadows, the prisoners were blinded by the light. Surrounded by images and rhetoric that reduce the fullness of teaching to flat, two-dimensional representations, today's pre-service teachers tend to develop expectations of teaching that resemble the shadows more than they resemble reality. These misaligned expectations often lead to practice shock: the painful and disillusioning cognitive dissonance that comes about when unsustainable expectations collide with real-world practice. Intended as a proactive manual for mitigating practice shock, this book shines a light on the shadows by giving pre-service teachers the tools to examine, confront, and revise their own misaligned expectations of teaching before they reach the point of crisis.

The Behaviour Manual - An Educator's Guidebook offers over 100 strategies, approaches and teaching methods that will help any school, leader, middle leader, teacher, ECT or ITT to pro-actively lead on behaviour. It has been designed to help the entire profession and anyone at any level and all ranges of experience. The book is divided into three broad sections. Section one examines the role of the Mothership (the school) and the role that leaders at any level can play. Section two looks at the role of the Satellites (the key areas that make up the school) and the integral role that middle leaders play. The final section looks at the micro level, focusing on the role that teachers play and offers a plethora of approaches teachers can employ. Each of the 100+ strategies is unpacked over a one or two-page spread. Within each spread is an outline of what the approach is, it is then unpacked to detail how it works or can be applied and each spread finishes with a cautionary warning and an advice tip. This book is deliberately written to help, to offer support, to offer advice and there is, bluntly, no waffle, no padding and no fluff. If you want a book that you can pick up, easily read and digest a key approach or strategy in less than 5-10 minutes then this is for you. It is grounded in expertise, experience, research and deliberately written in a clear, straightforward and open style that leaves you in no doubt regarding how any of the given approaches works and could be employed in your school setting.

This book, framed through the notion of double consciousness, brings postcolonial constructs to sociopolitical and pedagogical studies of youth that have yet to find serious traction in education. Significantly, this book contributes to a growing interest among educational and curriculum scholars in engaging the pedagogical role of literature in the theorization of an inclusive curriculum. Therefore, this study not only recognizes the potential of immigrant literature in provoking critical conversation on changes young people undergo in diaspora, but also explores how the curriculum is informed by the diasporic condition itself as demonstrated by this negotiation of foreignness between the student and selected texts.

Train Up a Child explores how private schools in Old Order Amish communities reflect and perpetuate church-community values and identity. Here, Karen M. Johnson-Weiner asserts that the reinforcement of those values among children is imperative to the survival of these communities in the modern world.

Surveying settlements in Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York, Johnson-Weiner finds that, although Old Order communities have certain similarities in their codes of conduct, there is no standard Old Order school. She examines the choices each community makes -- about pedagogy, curriculum, textbooks, even school design -- to strengthen religious ideology, preserve the social and linguistic markers of Old Order identity, and protect their own community's beliefs and values from the influence of the dominant society.

In the most comprehensive study of Old Order schools to date, Johnson-Weiner provides valuable insight into how variables such as community size and relationship with other Old Order groups affect the role of these schools in maintaining behavioral norms and in shaping the Old Order's response to modernity.

This book explores diverse relationships at play in integrating Indigenous knowledges and Western Science in curricula. The readers will unravel ways in which history, policy, and relationships with local Indigenous communities play a role in developing and implementing 'cross-cultural' science curricula in schools. Incorporating stories from multiple individuals involved in curriculum development and implementation - university professors, a ministry consultant, a First Nations and Metis Education coordinator, and most importantly, classroom teachers - this book offers suggestions for education stakeholders at different levels. Focusing on the importance of understanding 'relationships at play', this book also shows the author's journey in re/search, wherein she grapples with both Indigenous and Western research frameworks. Featuring a candid account of this journey from research preparation to writing, this book also offers insights on the relationships at play in doing re/search that respects Indigenous ways of coming to know.

This thoughtful and engaging memoir opens up a previously hidden side to what many consider the most important Supreme Court decision of the twentieth century. With quiet candor Paul Wilson reflects upon his role as the Kansas assistant attorney general assigned "to defend the indefensible"--the policy of "separate but equal" that was overturned on May 17, 1954, by Linda Brown's precedent-shattering suit.

The "Brown" decision ended legally sanctioned racial segregation in our nation's public schools, expanded the constitutional concepts of equal protection and due process of law, and in many ways launched the modern civil rights movement. Since that time, it has been cited by appellate courts in thousands of federal and state cases, analyzed in thousands of books and articles, and remains a cornerstone of law school education.

Wilson reminds us that Brown was not one case but four-including similar cases in South Carolina, Virginia, and Delaware-and that it was only a quirk of fate that brought this young lawyer to center stage at the Supreme Court. But the Kansas case and his own role, he argues, were different from the others in significant ways. His recollections reveal why.

Recalling many events known only to Brown insiders, Wilson re-creates the world of 1950s Kansas, places the case in the context of those times and politics, provides important new information about the state's ambivalent defense, and then steps back to suggest some fundamental lessons about his experience, the evolution of race relations, and the lawyer's role in the judicial resolution of social conflict.

Throughout these reflections Wilson's voice shines through with sincerity, warmth, and genuine humility. Far from a self-serving apology by one of history's losers, his memoir reminds us once again that there are good people on every side of the issues that divide us and that truth and meaning are not the special preserve of history's winners.

This book examines how religion operates as an institution of governance and discipline in society. The authors unravel the ways in which adolescents are socialized into adhering to the dictates of their religious identities, which often translates into practices of micro-aggression enacted in and through their interaction with the 'religious other' in schools and classrooms. Through ethnographic immersion in villages in the Gujarat, the authors identify media as a powerful source through which the dominant ideology of religious discrimination is perpetuated among adolescents. Subsequently, a critical media education framework was developed in order to equip these young people with the critical skills needed to challenge power relations, with the goal being to identify resources for resistance within themselves and their immediate media environments. Using pedagogic techniques such as spatial and cultural mapping, content creation and applied theatre practices to create a reflective yet practical guide, the findings of this book can be applied to a wide range of socio-cultural contexts.

This book explores the significance of silence within and beyond pedagogical contexts. Silence is a complex and multidimensional phenomenon for everyday life: since schools mirror society, it is also significant in education. While silence can be experienced in a multitude of different ways, the author reflects on whether silence itself can bear a message: is there an aspect of dialogue in silence, or is it a language all of its own? This book examines a variety of silences essential for education, examining such topics as silence and aspects of power, silent students, and the relationship between listening and silence. Drawing on a range of empirical data, the author elucidates the significance of silence in pedagogical contexts.

This book explores the impact of the Lesson Books of the National Board of Education in Ireland in the nineteenth century. The author contextualizes the books used in national schools as well as across the wider British Empire: in doing so, he highlights the influence of the religious, social, political and cultural realms of the time. Firmly grounding the volume in its historical context, the author goes on to explore the contemporary moral climate and social influences, including imperialism, morality, rote-learning and socialization. Through meticulous analysis of each Lesson Book, the author traces the evolution of education in Ireland as a reflection of contemporary society, as it changes and transforms in line with cultural, religious and social changes. This pioneering and comprehensive volume will be of interest and value to students and scholars of education in Ireland as well as education in the British Empire more widely.

This open access book reviews evidence and case studies on the effects of outdoor learning on teachers and learners. It shows how real-world learning outside the classroom contributes to unlocking the full potential of learners, demonstrating its benefits for academic learning, social competencies, personal and emotional development, psychological well-being, and physical activity and health. In addition, the book highlights how outdoor learning nurtures environmental awareness and helps learners to tackle current sustainability challenges. Its focus on high-quality learning makes it a unique contribution to the implementation of SDG 4. Aimed at lecturers at teacher training universities, teachers, professional educators, coaches, and multipliers who train staff of educational NGOs, as well as decision makers on all levels of education systems, this book is of interest to all those who seek a more in-depth understanding of the future of education.