This book presents a new approach to school leadership - Holistic School Leadership, whereby school leaders lead schools through systems-thinking concepts and procedures. Facing growing complexity, change and diversity, school leaders need to regularly apply the systems view and perform at the systems level. This book proposes a holistic approach, providing school leaders with systemic principles of action for excellence in education. "What a wonderful book - once I started it, I couldn't put it down. The book masterfully makes a systems leadership perspective accessible and grounded in the reality of the daily life of educators. Holistic School Leadership is a "must read" for anyone who has the responsibility for making schools better places, from professors to emerging teacher leaders." Karen Seashore (Louis), Regents Professor of Organizational Leadership, Policy and Development, University of Minnesota "Shaked and Schechter have constructed a much needed bridge to the future of educational leadership, a future of systemic thinking and positivity." Joseph Murphy, Professor of Education and Public Policy, Peabody College of Education, Vanderbilt University "Shaked and Schechter offer a comprehensive yet concise account of the meaning of systems thinking. The authors systematically develop their Holistic School Leadership approach with compelling examples, carefully attending to the perennial challenge of implementation. Important reading for scholars and practitioners of school leadership and management!" James P. Spillane, Olin Professor in Learning and Organizational Change, Northwestern University "This is the most important book on systems thinking since Senge's (1990) seminal work on learning organizations. Shaked and Schechter demonstrate the critical and practical utility of systems thinking for school leaders-a must read for all reflective practitioners." Wayne K. Hoy, Professor Emeritus, The Ohio State University. "Holistic School Leadership provides an innovative and exciting look into a new perspective on educational leadership that holds tremendous potential in reshaping educational research, policy, and practice. The idea of interdependence alone makes this powerful new book required reading for anyone concerned with the future of education and educational leadership in particular. Give yourself, your colleagues, your students, and your system the gift of the wisdom in this book." Alan J. Daly, Chair and Professor, Department of Education Studies, University of California, San Diego "In this informative book, Shaked and Schechter offer a fresh application of systems thinking to schools and to the work of school leaders. This book is a useful addition to the bookshelves of both those who prepare and those who support school leaders." Megan Tschannen-Moran, Professor of Educational Leadership, College of William and Mary

This book offers both a theoretical and empirical examination of elite education, at all stages from the early years to university level. The book explores the various manifestations of internationalisation of education; the implications of these for national education systems; the formation and re-articulation of elite forms of education locally and globally; and how these facilitate the reproduction or disruption of processes of inequality. The collection critically considers these questions by drawing on contributions from around the world, and focuses on how internationalisation processes shape the various stages of the education system - from early years settings to higher education - in oftentimes quite different ways. At the same time, by engaging with the issues through a range of theoretical lenses, the book invites readers to consider in greater depth the various ways we can come to understand how processes of internationalisation are both embedding but also at times destabilising the formation and purpose of elite education provision and potentially the configuration of elite groups themselves. The book will be relevant to academics, researchers, students, policymakers and educators working in or on the field of 'education' across the world.

Have you ever wondered what the Reggio Approach is all about, why it works, and how it can be used to benefit the young children in your setting? The book describes how educators in Reggio Emilia work with young children, and looks at the connections between the Reggio Approach and the revised Early Years Foundation Stage framework. It provides practical examples involving children of different ages in a wide variety of settings, helping the reader to see the connection between practice and theory. This new edition has been fully updated to show the increasingly mirroring connections between the Reggio Approach and the principles and commitments of the recently revised Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) framework. Each chapter focuses on one important aspect of the Reggio Approach and includes: Practical examples involving children of different ages in a wide variety of settings, helping the reader to see the connection between practice and theory Questions to enable the reader to reflect on and develop his or her own practice in accordance with new statutory requirements References to sources of further reading and information. This convenient guide will help early years practitioners, students and parents to really understand what the Reggio Approach can offer their setting and children.

This book offers a theoretical and epistemological-methodological framework as an alternative approach to the instrumental-descriptive methodology that has prevailed in psychology to date. It discusses the differences between the proposed approach and other theoretical and methodological positions, such as discourse analysis, phenomenology and hermeneutics. Further, it puts forward a proposal that allows the demands of studying subjectivity to be addressed from a cultural-historical standpoint. The book mainly highlights case studies that have been conducted in various countries, and which employ or depart from the theoretical, epistemological and methodological proposals that guide this book. The research discussed here introduces readers to new discussions on theoretical and methodological issues in subjectivity that have increasingly attracted interest.

The heart of this study is a detailed narrative account of a teacher in an inner-city school. For two years, the author collaborated with an immigrant teacher from the Caribbean, studying her practice from three perspectives: place--the community and school landscape; temporality--the history of the school and current programs; and interaction--the teacher's relationship with the school, parents, and students. Current ways of examining multicultural issues focus on the analysis of broad factors affecting large groups of people. In the process, the individual is subsumed within catagories and the subtle nuances of experiences are lost. The narrative approach outlined in the book offers a new perspective on multiculturalism and research into multicultural education, one the author terms narrative multiculturalism.

Narrative multiculturalism begins with experience as it is shaped by the contexts in which people live and work. It is also shaped by broader societal and global forces. In this approach, multiculturalism is viewed as a fluid process, continually evolving, changing, and transforming. Narrative multiculturalism develops an in-depth understanding of individual experiences and thereby creates an alternate perspective on multiculturalism.

This book explores heutagogy (self-determined learning) - a new approach to teaching and learning in higher education - and proposes a paradigm shift in teaching, learning, and the educational enterprise and ecosystem. The first part of the book presents the philosophical, psychological and sociological foundations of heutagogy, and describes lessons learned from prior experiences of its implementation. The second part presents a collaborative self-study of five heutagogy courses in higher education. The third discusses how the academic community can enhance the paradigm change, and compares heutagogy to similar academic approaches. The concluding chapter of the book explores the question of "what next"? and suggests some possible elaborations of heutagogy. "At the beginning, it was very difficult for me to appreciate the course's mode of learning. All my life I had learned in a traditional manner. Occasionally I felt that I was being thrown into deep water without a lifeguard. ... But as the course progressed, I succeeded in letting go of my deeply rooted habits and discovered a new learning approach, through which I found in myself a new learner..." (Student's reflection) "...this book suggests a novel approach to learning and education and will become a widely read one." Dr. Lisa Marie Blaschke, Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg

This edited book explores the under-analyzed significance and function of paranoia as a psychological habitus of the contemporary educational and social moment. The editors and contributors argue that the desire for epistemological truth beyond uncertainty characteristic of paranoia continues to profoundly shape the aesthetic texture and imaginaries of educational thought and practice. Attending to the psychoanalytic, post-psychoanalytic, and critical significance of paranoia as a mode of engaging with the world, this book further inquires into the ways in which paranoia functions to shape the social order and the material desire of subjects operating within it. Furthermore, the book aims to understand how the paranoiac imaginary endemic to contemporary educational thought manifests itself throughout the social field and what issues it makes manifest for teachers, teacher educators, and academics working toward social transformation.

This book examines the European discussion about alternative schooling in the 20th century. It refers to a stream of concepts that are often described as New Education, Progressive Education, Education Nouvelle or Reformpadagogik, and discusses a range of different models of alternative schooling. Exploring the works of a range of continental educational philosophers, including Lietz, Blonsky, Kerschensteiner, Freinet, Decroly and Petersen, the book offers a unique insight into texts not yet translated into English. These educational models are presented with regards to the biographical background of the authors; the crucial elements of their construction; the historical interconnections between schooling, society and culture; and finally their connection to today's discussions in educational sciences. The book will be highly relevant for researchers and advanced students working on the theory, history and practice of schooling, particularly those with a focus on alternative schooling and the philosophy of education.

This is a pioneering work, timely, scholarly, and grounded in critical-sociological, anthropological, and philosophical traditions. It offers an empathic analysis of pluralist, Afrocentric, and postmodernist advocacies of multicultural education and multiculturalism, but reveals formidable flaws in their conceptions of gender, race, culture, knowledge, learning, and social change. It is required reading for those desiring a synopsis of the literature on multicultural education and multiculturalism, and an understanding of the disputes among the various schools of thought. The author claims that multiculturalism is DEGREESInot DEGREESR a remedy for problems of sexism, racism, and educational underachievement among ethnic minorities. Rather, so questionable is multiculturalisM's endorsement of biological classifications, so relativistic and moralistic are its arguments on cultural differences, and so negligent its analysis of human reasoning that it has become a political pawn. Read "Against the Multicultural Agenda" to discover what is wrong with the multicultural agenda and what is powerfully persuasive about the alternative--critical thinking.

A volume in Critical Constructions: Studies on Education and Society Series Editor: Curry Stephenson Malott, Queens College/CUNY Who should read this book? Anyone who is touched by public education - teachers, administrators, teacher-educators, students, parents, politicians, pundits, and citizens - ought to read this book. It will speak to educators, policymakers and citizens who are concerned about the future of education and its relation to a robust, participatory democracy. The perspectives offered by a wonderfully diverse collection of contributors provide a glimpse into the complex, multilayered factors that shape, and are shaped by, institutions of schooling today. The analyses presented in this text are critical of how globalization and neoliberalism exert increasing levels of control over the public institutions meant to support the common good. Readers of this book will be well prepared to participate in the dialogue that will influence the future of public education in this nation - a dialogue that must seek the kind of change that represents hope for all students. As for the question contained in the title of the book--Can hope audaciously trump neoliberalism?--, Carr and Porfilio develop a framework that integrates the work of the contributors, including Christine Sleeter and Dennis Carlson, who wrote the forward and afterword respectively, that problematizes how the Obama administration has presented an extremely constrained, conservative notion of change in and through education. The rhetoric has not been matched by meaningful, tangible, transformative proposals, policies and programs aimed at transformative change. There are many reasons for this, and, according to the contributors to this book, it is clear that neoliberalism is a major obstacle to stimulating the hope that so many have been hoping for. Addressing systemic inequities embedded within neoliberalism, Carr and Porfilio argue, is key to achieving the hope so brilliantly presented by Obama during the campaign that brought him to the presidency.

This very first comprehensive book-length reference guide dealing with older adult education synthesizes current information about theoretical developments with specific practical details about the latest programs, policies, and research in the field. It is unique in placing the subject of lifelong learning into historical perspectives, discussing ways in which programs have been transformed over the last 15 to 20 years, and in considering the impact of institutional policies on older adult education. This guide points to demographic trends relating to aging and older learners; discusses older learner motives in relation to program missions and rationales; describes new opportunities for retirement-age people and the special role of education today; reviews the history of 12 different types of programs; compares five community-based model programs in college and universities, senior centers, shopping centers, and churches and synagogues; considers computer and electronic learning programs; reviews research and programs dealing with intergenerational education; and assesses future prospects in the field. Appendices describe important organizations, programs, sources of information, state tuition waiver policies, and other guidelines and data. Relevant statistics, research findings, numerous tables, original documents, and anecdotes about the experiences of older learners further enrich this state-of-the discipline reference guide for academic, professional, and public libraries and broad audiences of teachers, students, professionls, and general readers concerned with older Americans.

The author adopts a holistic approach in exploring the ontological, epistemological, ethical, and pedagogical dimensions of Paulo Freire's thought. The book discusses Freire's approach to adult literacy education and investigates the political, dialogical, and critical aspects to the multidimensional word in Freirean theory.

The author outlines and assesses a number of key critiques of Freire's modernism, concentrating in particular on questions pertaining to the problem of pedagogical intervention. He responds at some length to C.A. Bowers, one of Freire's most important and persistent critics, and finds fault with behaviorist, stage-based accounts of consciousness raising. The Freirean concept of conscientization is reinterpreted in light of the postmodern notion of multiple subjectivities. From this book, Freire emerges as a complex educational figure: a thinker and teacher deeply committed to the universalist ideal of humanization, yet also wary of some of the exaggerated certainties of modernism. His work, for all its flaws and contradictions, remains highly influential and stands opposed to technicist and neoliberal tendencies in recent educational reform initiatives.

This stimulating new work is based on a highly-successful--and extremely popular--course which Professor De Nicolas has taught at the State University of New York at Stony Brook for over 15 years. In "Habits of Mind," De Nicolas reveals that the most important achievement of education is to develop in students those skills that enable them to participate fully in the life of humankind. He calls these skills the "inner technologies," and intends by the phrase something very different from congnitive skills. Education, he claims, must nurture the capacity for fantasy and imagination. In "Habits of Mind," he traces the relative importance of these capacities through the history and philosophy of education from Plato onward. The habits of intellectual discourse are treated as an organic thread from the ancient past to the present.

All over the world, governments, policymakers, and educators are advocating the need to educate students for the 21st first century. This book provides insights into what this means and the ways 21st century education is theorized and implemented in practice. The first part, "Perspectives: Mapping our futures-in-the-making," uncovers the contradictions, tensions and processes that shape 21st century education discourses. The second part, "Policies: Constructing the future through policymaking," discusses how 21st century education is translated into policies and the resulting tensions that emerge from top-down, state sanctioned policies and bottom-up initiatives. The third part, "Practices: Enacting the Future in Local Contexts," discusses on-the-ground initiatives that schools in various countries around the world enact to educate their students for the 21st century. This volume includes contributions from leading scholars in the field as well as educators from schools and those working with schools.

This book presents a number of fundamentally challenging perspectives that have been brought to the fore by the national tests on religious education (RE) in Sweden. It particularly focuses on the content under the heading Ethics. It is common knowledge that many teachers find these parts difficult to handle within RE. Further, ethics is a field that addresses a range of moral and existential issues that are not easily treated. Many of these issues may be said to belong to the philosophical context, in which "eternal questions" are gathered and reflected upon. The first chapters highlight the concepts of ethical competence and critical thinking. In the following chapters the concept of ethical competence is analyzed with regard to teachers' objectives and to students' texts, respectively. These chapters pursue a more practice-related approach and highlight specific challenges identified from both teacher and student perspectives. Next, the book raises the issue of global responsibility. What kind of critical issues arise when handling such matters at school? Further, can contemporary moral philosophers contribute to such a discussion? In turn, the book discusses the role of statistical analyses with regard to national tests, while the closing chapters present international perspectives on the book's main themes and concluding remarks. The book's critical yet constructive approach to issues regarding assessment in ethics education makes a valuable contribution to an ongoing debate among researchers as well as to the everyday communication on testing in schools and classrooms. As such, it will appeal to scholars in ethics education and researchers in the field of assessment, as well as educators and teachers interested and engaged in the task of testing ethics in school contexts where curricular demands for valid and authoritative evaluation may provide important guidelines, but may also pose challenges of their own.

Mainstream educational leadership has lost much of its footing as a progressive practice. More managers than wisdom?keepers, educational leaders no longer have authority to critique the toxicities of the present and imagine alternative futures. In public schools and higher education, the neoliberal emphasis on measurable outcomes shrinks the radius of concern for what educational leaders are leading toward. There's a planet missing in mainstream discourses of sustainability in educational leadership, and this book aims to resituate the work of teaching/leading in the place where we stand. In a period of overlapping social/environmental crises, this book takes inspiration from Robert Jensen's call for teachers and intellectual leaders to "go apocalyptic", i.e., to face head?on the calamities that threaten our shared future on Earth. When leadership is situated within an apocalyptic context, we are called to reflect on educational injustice and unsustainability, while envisioning more hopeful futures. The work of apocalyptic leadership, though, isn't all about future vision; it's also about attending to what hurts and what heals in the present moment. Intended for aspiring and practicing educational leaders in both K?12 and higher education settings, as well as scholars in the fields of social justice and sustainability, this book begins mapping and traversing the affective, spiritual, pragmatic, and organizational geography of apocalyptic leadership. Such leadership holds dear the radical belief in our shared capacity to work gracefully with the painful awareness that tremendous challenges are inevitable, and yet, we have every opportunity for inching toward a more habitable future.

Breaking the Cycle tells the inspiring story of young people whom many would write off as a lost cause but who, thanks to a remarkable school, are headed for success. We learn about their world from teens like Shawna, the daughter of a crack-addicted mother. Or Andre, the only one in his family not on drugs. Or Daron, kicked out of his home by an abusive father. Challenged by the pernicious factors of their environment-drugs, violence, fatherless homes, and poor educational backgrounds-students at the Dayton Early College Academy are nevertheless beating the odds. All are headed for college, from which the vast majority will graduate. The book reveals how this school is succeeding when so many fail. It conveys the hopeful message that others can replicate much of what "DECA" does and save a generation mired in despair. America's failure to educate its urban children is evidenced by our woeful statistics. If it is possible to turn around this bleak picture-and it is-this is a story well worth telling. And this is what Breaking the Cycle aims to do. For more information on the book, including interviews with the author please check out www.nancybdiggs.com.

This book examines the beliefs, attitudes, values and emotions of students in Years 5 to 8 (aged 10 to 14 years) about mathematics and mathematics education. Fundamentally, this book focuses on the development of affective views and responses towards mathematics and mathematics learning. Furthermore, it seems that students develop their more negative views of mathematics during the middle school years (Years 5 to 8), and so here we concentrate on students in this critical period. The book is based on a number of empirical studies, including an enquiry undertaken with 45 children in Years 5 and 6 in one school; a large-scale quantitative study undertaken with students from a range of schools across diverse communities in New Zealand; and two related small-scale studies with junior secondary students in Australia. This book brings substantial, empirically-based evidence to the widely held perception that many students have negative views of mathematics, and these affective responses develop during the middle years of school. The data for this book were collected with school students, and students who were actually engaged in learning mathematics in their crucial middle school years. The findings reported and discussed here are relevant for researchers and mathematics educators, policy makers and curriculum developers, and teachers and school principals engaged in the teaching of mathematics.

Most statements today about higher education begin with the assumption that it should be relevant. That it should be relevant, however, does not settle the matter. The significance of relevance depends on the power of something else that is more fundamental. Relevance may be a true standard of judgment, but it does not stand by itself. Assuming higher education should be relevant, the question emerges, relevant to what? Why? How? At what costs? And, relevant in what sense? These are some of the central questions animating this study. The Relevance of Higher Education: Exploring a Contested Notion, edited by Timothy L. Simpson examines the relevance of higher education by bringing together the work of historians, political scientists, and educational philosophers. The contributors probe the meaning of relevance in its many guises, providing an historical and philosophical account of the roots of this concept and its impact on the institution of higher education. Furthermore, The Relevance of Higher Education provides a critical evaluation of the impact of relevance on our understanding of the political and economic relationship between higher education and society. This study suggests views of relevance that could guide the future of higher education. By providing penetrating analysis, this text thoroughly explores relevance and its underlying assumptions, potential implications and long-lasting effects on higher education and society. The Relevance of Higher Education provides the tools necessary to develop a rich framework for understanding relevance and its impact on higher education and society.

This book explores the unique experiences of a sister school network in Canada and China contextualized through the lens of the Reciprocal Learning Project, which supports the relationship between a school network and teacher education exchange program of two countries. Huang uses theoretical viewpoints from teacher learning and comparative education research to analyse and interpret what has happened in the emerging cross-cultural school network. The book juxtaposes teacher learning and comparative education research from Shanghai and Ontario as teachers in the two places interact and provides detailed descriptions of teacher collaboration to show how these collaborations were initiated, developed, and sustained, as well as the impact brought about from these collaborations. The book offers a unique opportunity to examine how Canadian and Chinese teachers receive and react to opportunities of cross-cultural collaboration and learning.

This book presents educators with research-based strategies to promote civic education in their classrooms. Going beyond theory and measures of achievement, these methods focus on information location, evaluation and activation, dialogue in the classroom, understandings of discourse in popular culture and policymaking, and understanding the role of STEM disciplines in democracy. The author also furthers considerations of how the political process can provide meaning and new visions of justice in a globalized world, and advance student leadership and academic writing in the information age. As the world faces unprecedented levels of poverty, wealth disparity, environmental destruction, and ethical questions regarding biotechnology, the United States needs knowledgeable citizens to effectively deal with these issues. Letizia provides teachers and teacher educators with the needed methods to foster these types of democratic considerations.

The stories of six veteran U.S. teachers who have studied about, taught, and lived in Japan and China show that intensive international experience can profoundly affect a teacher's life and work. Reflections about culture shock, friendships across borders, fundamental transformation and school reform recommendations are integrated with wonderfully creative pedagogies.

Six U.S. teachers who lived and taught in Japan and China tell their stories with introspection and enthusiasm. Their experiences improved their teaching and contributed to their cultural awareness and empathy. How these teachers contribute to classroom practice abroad, how they develop personal friendships with their Chinese and Japanese hosts and colleagues, and how they begin to change their school environments upon returning to the U.S. clearly demonstrates the tremendous effects of their international experience.

Frank portrayals of some of their difficult living conditions and reactions to culture shock caution those who would try this life and teaching adventure without adequate preparation. The book concludes with specific recommendations on preparation for such an experience.