For over 70 years, the United Nations has worked to advance human conditions globally through its historic agenda for a more peaceful, prosperous, and just world. Through the work of the General Assembly and other programs like the UNESCO World Conferences on Adult Education, the organization has taken a leading role in bringing world leaders together to dialogue on world issues and to set agendas for advancing social and economic justice among and within the regions of the world. The underlying themes of the United Nations' agenda over the years have been world peace, economic justice, addressing the needs of the world's most vulnerable populations, and protecting the environment. We draw from the two last two declarations from which the Millennium Development Goals (September 2000) and the Sustainable Development Goals (September 2015) were adopted by world leaders with a focus on addressing the needs of the most vulnerable populations. In this declaration, world leaders committed to uphold the long-standing principles of the organization and to combat extreme poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy, environmental degradation and discrimination and violence against women. The overall objective of the book is to highlight the conditions of vulnerable populations from various contexts globally, and the role adult and higher education can play (and is playing) in advancing the United Nations agenda of social and economic justice and environmental sustainability. Adult education, through research, teaching, and service engagements is contributing to this ongoing effort but as many scholars have noted, our work remains invisible and undocumented. Therefore, this book highlights adult education's critical partnership in addressing these global issues. It will also begin to fill the void that exists in adult education literature on internationalization of the field.

With the evolving technologies available to educators and the increased importance of including technologies in the classroom, it is critical for instructors to understand how to successfully utilize these emerging technologies within their curriculum. To ensure they are prepared, further study on the best practices and challenges of implementation is required. Preparing Pre-Service Teachers to Integrate Technology in K-12 Classrooms: Standards and Best Practices focuses on preparing future teachers to integrate technology into their everyday teaching by providing a compilation of current research surrounding the inclusion and utilization of technology as an educational tool. Covering key topics such as digital assessment, flipped classrooms, technology integration, and artificial intelligence, this reference work is ideal for teacher educators, administrators, stakeholders, researchers, academicians, scholars, practitioners, instructors, and students.

Navigating Complexities in Leadership: Moving Towards Critical Hope emerged in response to the confluence of complexities experienced by leadership educators and practitioners amidst global pandemics. It is a guide for those seeking to learn through critical perspectives, and seek more agile, responsive tools for navigating complexity, change, and disruption. The audience for the book ranges from new and entry-level leadership educators to senior scholars in higher education. This book frames leadership learning and development as a process of adaptive action in complex systems. It brings to light patterns of complexity in current times through the lens of educators and practitioners in higher education. Readers are invited to actively engage with the text from an inquiry stance. Through curiosity, shared exploration, self-reflection we hope readers will discover patterns and insight that resonate and challenge their own experiences, find energy to engage the complexities being faced, and build adaptive capacity to live, work, teach, and lead in critical hope and possibility. The book concludes with questions and considerations that allow educators and practitioners to reflect on their own roles and contexts and move towards critical hope in navigating the complexities we will continue to face.