In the World Library of Educationalists series, international experts themselves compile career-long collections of what they judge to be their finest pieces - extracts from books, key articles, salient research findings, major theoretical and/practical contributions - so the world can read them in a single manageable volume.

Michael A. Peters has spent the last 30 years researching, thinking and writing about some of the key and enduring issues in education. He has contributed over 60 books (authored, co-authored and edited) and 500 articles to the field.

In Education, Philosophy and Politics, Michael A. Peters brings together 15 of his key writings in one place, including chapters from his best-selling books and articles from leading journals. Starting with a specially written Introduction, which gives an overview of Michael's career and contextualises his selection, the essays are then arranged thematically to create a pathway of a way of thinking in philosophy of education which is forward looking but takes account of tradition and the past. The subjects of the chapters include;

• Wittgenstein Studies
• Philosophical Critique of Modernity
• French Poststructuralism
• Jean-Francois Lyotard
• Foucault & Deleuze
• Derrida
• American Pragmatism
• Rorty
• Cavell
• Philosophy and racism

Through this book, readers can follow the themes and strands that Michael A. Peters has written about for over three decades and clearly see his important contribution to the field of education.

While student agency is considered an important aspect of classroom learning, opportunities to support and promote agency can be easily missed. This book addresses the inner dimensions of student agency to show what it is, why it is needed, and how it can be translated into instructional practices. In Part I, Locating Student Agency, Vaughn offers a model of agency that can become a core remedy for educators looking for new and better ways to support the learning of historically marginalized students. Part II, Growing Student Agency, illuminates opportunities during instruction where teachers can build upon student contributions. The book includes the voices of teachers who have transformed their classrooms, as well as compelling case stories rich with ideas that teachers can adopt in their own instruction. Student Agency in the Classroom will provide educators at every level, and across all disciplines, with the underlying research and theoretical rationale for this key educational force, along with the practical means to incorporate it into instruction and curriculum.Book Features: A comprehensive framework that outlines three core dimensions needed to cultivate student agency: dispositional, motivational, and positional. Detailed strategies and ideas for creating a culture of agency in the classroom and schoolwide. A collaborative way of thinking about how teachers, teacher educators, and school leaders can promote and cultivate agency. The author's experience as a classroom teacher, professional developer, and researcher. Classroom vignettes, teacher interviews, and conversations with students. Extension sections and discussion questions at the end of chapters.

Religion, Education, Dialogue and Conflict analyses the European Commission-funded REDCo project, which addressed the question of how religions might contribute to dialogue or conflict in Europe. Researchers in education from eight countries ? the UK, Estonia, France, Germany, the Netherlands, the Russian Federation, Norway and Spain ? studied how young Europeans of different religious, cultural and political backgrounds could engage in dialogue in the context of the school.

Empirical studies conducted with 14-16 year old students included them offering their own perspectives and analyses of teaching and learning in both dialogue and conflict situations. Although there were some different national patterns and trends, most students wished for peaceful coexistence across differences, andbelieved this to be possible. The majority agreed that peaceful coexistence depended on knowledge about each other's religions and worldviews, sharing common interests and doing things together. The project found that students who learn about religious diversity in school are more willing to discuss religions and beliefs with students of other backgrounds than those who do not.

The international range of expert contributors to this book evaluate the results of the REDCo project, providing examples of its qualitative and quantitative studies and reflecting on the methods and theory used in the project as a whole.

This book was originally published as a special issue of the British Journal of Religious Education.

Everyday Ethics: Reflections on Practice looks at the moments that demand moral consideration and ethical choice that arise as part of a researcher's daily practice. Drawing on principles of systematic inquiry as transparent and grounded in conceptual reasoning, it describes research as praxis and the researcher as practitioner. The researcher is a decision-maker for both procedural and ethical matters that attend the conduct of research, especially when the research is focused on human wellbeing. Every decision about data collection, analysis, interpretation, and presentation has moral dimensions. Morally compelling moments demand a reflexivity ('research praxis') - that is, informed action, the back-and-forth between reasoning and action. Methodological wisdom emerges during the cyclical process of inquiry that is doing, thinking about the doing through a moral lens, and doing again. This book invites us to deepen our understanding of everyday ethics, and contributes to the ongoing discourse about research as moral practice, conducted by such reflexive practitioners. This book was originally published as a special issue of the International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education.

Distance education (DE) offers ways to reach the many people around the world who lack access to education and training by other means. International DE methods, however, are fragmented, and distance educators have often abandoned new technologies before giving them a chance to develop. As a result, many current DE tools and techniques are incompatible with the needs and cultures of different global regions. With the goal of designing efficient, relevant DE for worldwide audiences, Harmonizing Global Education invites scholars and practitioners to consider the historic development of technology-based education and communication studies, going back further in the literature than is often assumed necessary.

The book examines a wide range of historical ideas capable of shaping modern DE, including the Luddite Revolt among British textiles workers in 1811-12, the evolution of cubist art and musical aesthetics, and the visionary advances of early nineteenth-century Soviet multimedia specialists. The author urges an awareness of previous generations of communications studies, and shows how audience research relating to traditional media can be relevant in the design of current internet-based and social media approaches. Today's open universities have grown from these earlier historical efforts, and the future success of open and distance education depends on learning from the successes and the failures of the past.

The nature of higher education is by no means fixed: it has evolved over time; different models of higher education co-exist alongside each other at present; and, worldwide, there are demands for higher education to change to better help support economic growth and to better fit chagning social and economic circumstances. This book examines, from an Asian perspective, the debates about how higher education should change. It considers questions of funding, and of who will attend universities, and the fundamental question of what universities are for, especially as the three key funcations of universities - knowledge creation through research, knowledge dissemination through teaching and service, and knowledge conservation through libraries, the disciplinary structuring of knowledge and in other ways - are increasingly being carried out much more widely outside universities in the new "knowledge society." Throughout, the book discusses the extent to which the countries of East Asia are developing new models of higher education, thereby better preparing themselves for the "new "knowledge society," rather than simply following old Western models.

First published in 1975, Donald Akenson's book was at the forefront of a radically new approach to the study of Irish educational history. Instead of investigating the evolution of the schools as an isolated process, he explores the complex interrelations of Irish education, institutions and society, treating the schools as cultural litmus paper. By presenting Ireland's schools as a reflection of the society that produced them, Professor Akenson demonstrates that they are, in truth, "a mirror to the face of Kathleen ni Houlihan".

Rethinking Gendered Regulations and Resistances in Education highlights key debates on the theme of 'regulation and resistance', focusing on some of the most pressing contemporary issues in the field of gender and education today. It underlines the need for educational research to attend to historical and psychosocial specificity, chart local complexity and global disparity, de-colonise our Euro-western-centered gender analysis, and consistently engage with the economic and policy domains of education as researchers and practitioners, if we are to effectively tackle the diversity and complexity of gender equality issues in education. Chapters in this collection showcase some of the varied and wide-ranging theoretical approaches at play in current gender and education scholarship, and raise questions about the types of research methods that can open up new ways of documenting processes of social and subjective struggle and transformation in education. It stimulates important thinking about what has been, what is and what can be, as we face the future of gender and educational engagement, struggle and debate. This book was originally published as a special issue of Gender and Education.

Survival as a school teacher depends on an ability to achieve classroom control. In the years since this book was first published little has changed in this respect. Classroom control continues to lie at the heart of competent teaching. Teachers know it, pupils know it. They know it implicitly because they experience it as a normal part of their daily lives in schools. But, in this book, the author stands back from our everyday knowledge about how things work in classrooms to ask what control actually consists of. What is it? How is it recognized? How is it challenged by pupils? How is done by teachers? How is it negotiated? Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork in three large secondary schools in England Martyn Denscombe explores the meaning of classroom control. He looks at the influence of teacher training and the role of school organization in establishing expectations about control, and then shows how control is played out through the interaction of teachers and pupils in class. His analysis travels well across the many contexts in which teaching occurs and provides an illuminating insight into the work of teaching and the nature of classroom life. His evidence is drawn from ethnographic fieldwork in three schools in England, and secondary sources covering the phenomenon of classroom control in the UK, USA and Australia.

The subject matter of this book - what happens in schools, the effects of curriculum change, the reasons why some children are successful and others are not - explains just why the sociology of education is one of the most important areas to achieve political importance. There are five sections to the book covering: Educational Achievement; Educational Provision; The Organization of the School; Roles in the School and Values and Learning. The editor discusses the implications of the material presented (much of which was available for the first time when this book was originally published).

This book examines the concepts of equality, class, culture, work and leisure and explores their interrelationship through the discussion of some current problems, especially the problems posed for schools for the 'culturally deprived.' The debate about differential provision of schooling for different social groups is taken up through examination of the assumption that schools are middle-class institutions, and the claims and counter claims about the possibility of there being a common culture as the basis for a common curriculum in comprehensive schools. The concept of culture and, especially the meaning of working-class culture receives examination in this context as well as the thesis that any sub-culture constitutes an adequate or valid way of life.

The sociology of education has been at the forefront of new developments in sociological theory. This book examines and criticizes a number of these new developments and discusses some empirical work on issues of current concern. One of the few books that integrates radical and critical sociology into the field of education, it deals with the resultant difficulties. The topics covered include cultural deprivation, ideologies in education, classrooms, the teaching profession and the history of women's education.

Aimed at the layperson, this book discusses education for the man or woman in the street and the advantages to society of having an educated population, with the aim of not just convincing people of the importance of education but persuading them to take participate actively in education.

Inevitably a product of the time in which it was published this book discusses important questions of neuro-psychology as well as setting out the early 'nature versus nurture' debate. The author also argues for changes in the care and education of those with learning difficulties to enable them to lead fulfilling lives, rather than being incarcerated in institutions (as was routinely the case in 1928).

What unites the contributors to this book is an opposition to Thatcherite policies on education and an agreement upon the need for the development of democracy in education. This volume highlights the importance of an area of neglected theoretical and practical concern: the development of a critique of the philosophy and policies of the new Right, and of credible alternative policies.

The editors have compiled this critical and comparative study of changes which took place in the New Zealand education system in the second half of the twentieth century. For other Western societies who have felt the impact of New Right policies the New Zealand case is interesting because it provides some indication of how policies of decentralization in education might be used to develop egalitarian and democratic educational policies. In recent years there have been major changes to educational systems in the Western world. Often these changes have been justified by reference to successful educational practices in other countries. However, it is not always possible simply to abstract educational practices from one context and apply them in another successfully. Moreover claims that policies in one country are more successful than those in another have to be treated cautiously: there are always problems in making valid comparisons between the educational performances of different countries. It is important, therefore, that critical and comparative studies are made of educational systems which take full account of the contexts in which they are embedded.

The role of language is central in education - but there is much debate about the exact relation between children's language and their educational success. The author provides a clear guide to the basic issues in the debates over language deficit, standard English and classroom language, and in this edition he shows how work in sociolinguistics can give a better understanding of the place of language in education and society.

This volume discusses how the lay-person responds to written appeals to his intelligence and feelings with particular emphasis on education and culture. The author indicates a possible approach to the task of investigation rather than all that can be done with the method employed. The second part deals with educational questions relevant to the evidence and examines the social implications of this evidence.

One problem which continues to absorb social scientists is the way in which so much social deprivation stems from racial or class status. The discussion in this book is developed in two ways: firstly, careful attention is given to an examination of the way minority groups create and maintain collective identities and action. Secondly, the relationship between this movement and such topics as racism in schools, schooling, unemployment and West Indian involvement in sporting rather than academic activities is analysed, together with the nature of the educational experience of different class and gender groups.

Although the different contributions to this book range over a wide spectrum of substantive issues, they share a common interest. This is a concern to explore the ways in which notions of the relations between theory and practice, between belief and action, can be used to develop three kinds of sensitivity in the sociology of education. A sensitivity towards how school systems are created, maintained and made to function; towards developing a more refined, critical and constructive awareness of the reliability and validity of descriptions, analyses and explanations offered in this field of study; and a sensitivity towards the ways in which changes take place within the education system and how the insights and realisations generated in the discipline might be used to control such occurrences.

Originally written at a time of crisis in the education system of Britain - occasioned by cuts, contradictions and change - many of the issues discussed in this book are still relevant today. Debate in the book focuses upon an examination of the nature of the crisis, an exploration of the impact of the crisis upon school processes and upon the relationship between life in school and in the wider community, an investigation of the responses being made by pupils, teachers and educationalists to the day-to-day manifestations of the crisis and a consideration of how the current crisis is giving a particular poignancy to issues to do with the theories and methods employed in our study and interpretation of contemporary educational processes.

This book presents an analysis of the 'essentialist ideology', which is inherent to class-based societies. The author argues that essentialist ideology is efficient through its unconscious component and is imposed on everyone. It guides school selection and imposes on each class a language specific in its reference to concrete domination relations. It even unbalances the scientific objectivity of researchers in the social sciences, not only among those who abide by the theory of natural aptitudes, but also among its sharpest critics, such as Basil Bernstein, Pierre Bourdieu and J C Passeron, whose work is considered in this book.

The manner in which we variously come to an understanding of our world presents problems for us all, but the unified method by which we ought best to acquire such knowledge represents the particular problem of contemporary education. This important book seeks to explore some of the underlying practises and assumptions that go to produce and sustain both such sets of activities. As a result of its concerns with the social organization of knowledge at all levels, the sociology of education has become a central form of much contemporary sociological theory. All the papers in this collection are formulations of a 'reflexive' method of theorizing within sociology of education. This is a mode of address, deriving partly from social phenomenology, which seeks to display the grounds of the theorists' speech as itself an essential feature of any informative dialogue. Major themes in education and in sociology are considered in this way, including the social form of rationality, the constitution of curricula, normative beliefs about Learning, the nature of literary study as liberal education and the character of scientific knowledge in the social world.

This volume presents a short survey of education at the beginning of the twentieth century. It considered the main educational agencies of that time, the home, the Church, the school and the university and the role to be played by each in preparing the citizens of the future. The author maintains that religion and education are intimately connected and therefore he discusses education in its broadest sense: preparation for being not just a citizen in the United Kingdom but in human existence as a whole.

In this volume a streamed school is studied in detail and parents' responses are recorded. Eleven plus is (and has been) under criticism, but many children are selected by a 'seven plus' because they are streamed into A, B or C classes. Few children escape the label once it is pinned on them - less than six in one hundred change their stream. The study shows that on a national sample the date on which a child is born - irrespective of his ability - affects his or her stream at the age of 7 and his results at eleven plus. Finally ten streamed schools are compared, academically and socially, with ten unstreamed schools. In the final chapters the author makes practical proposals by which primary schools could recognise and increase the flow of gifted children.