Racially mixed children make up the fastest growing youth demographic in the U.S., and teachers of diverse populations need to be mindful in selecting literature that their students can identify with. This volume explores how books for elementary school students depict and reflect multiracial experiences through text and images. Chaudhri examines contemporary children's literature to demonstrate the role these books play in perpetuating and resisting stereotypes and the ways in which they might influence their readers. Through critical analysis of contemporary children's fiction, Chaudhri highlights the connections between context, literature, and personal experience to deepen our understanding of how children's books treat multiracial identity.

If you were to peer into a primary school classroom somewhere across Australia and New Zealand, you would be forgiven for thinking that science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education is synonymous with coding and digital technologies. However, while these aspects are important, technology alone does not reflect the broad learning opportunities afforded by STEM. In countering this narrow approach, STEM Education in Primary Classrooms offers a platform for research that innovates, excites and challenges the status quo. It provides educators with innovative and up-to-date research into how to meaningfully and authentically embed STEM into existing classroom practices. It incorporates accurate explanations of STEM as an integrated approach to solving real-world problems, including social issues, along with case studies and stories to bring practice to life in evidence-informed ways. This book showcases the impact of a broader approach to STEM in the primary classroom through Australian-based and New Zealand-based research that will challenge current teaching practices. Thus, this book will be of interest to pre- and in-service primary school teachers, along with researchers and postgraduate students in the STEM education field.

Middle leading refers to those teachers that both teach and have leadership roles, and thus can bridge the gap between the practices of learning and the managemant of schooling. Focusing on the practices of middle leaders, this book addresses the current lack of support and professional development for middle leaders in educational settings. Middle Leadership in Schools positions middle leaders as professional leaders, and an integral part of educational and professional development in schools and other educational institutions. Drawing on empirical research spanning four countries, this book provides readers with a conceptual framework to understand middle leading and shows how middle leading practices unfold in real educational contexts. This is a valuable resource that goes beyond a theoretical conversation about middle leaders to provide readers with practical applications based on extensive research undertaken by the authors. The book is divided into seven chapters, each of which include reflective discussion questions and recommended readings to promote collaborative engagement with the text. Chapters cover topics such as how middle leading is shaped in practice, its role in professional development and its impact on schools. Illustrating to middle leaders how they can develop their leadership skills, the book will also be of interest to school principals and other senior leaders as a guide to supporting their middle leaders.

Learning to read and the teaching of reading have long been surrounded with controversy. Originally published in 1969, this book takes the view that the subject is best approached via linguistic theory. The relationship between reading and spoken language is clearly brought out in the author's attempt to define more closely the area in which the teacher has to operate when teaching children to read. His analysis of reading problems in children up to the age of 11 will encourage experienced teachers to question constructively their own beliefs and practices, while the book as a whole provides a valuable introduction to the psychology of reading for the student of education.

This textbook provides a framework for teaching children's language and literacy and introduces research-based tactics for teachers to use in designing their literacy programs for children. Exploring how sense-making occurs in contemporary literacy practice, Murphy comprehensively covers major topics in literacy, including contemporary multimodal literacy practices, classroom discourse, literacy assessment, language and culture, and teacher knowledge. Organized around themes-talk, reading and composing representation-this book comprehensively invites educators to make sense of their own teaching practices while demonstrating the complexities of how children make sense of and represent meaning in today's world. Grounded in research, this text features a wealth of real-world, multimodal examples, effective strategies and teaching tactics to apply to any classroom context. Ideal for literacy courses, preservice teachers, teacher educators and literacy scholars, this book illustrates how children become literate in contemporary society and how teachers can create the conditions for children to broaden and deepen their sense-making and expressive efforts.

The Toxic Classroom offers a wide-ranging look at education today and explores in detail the pressures children experience as a result of constant change, digital technology and political interference. Beginning with what it is like to be a child in the classroom, the book goes on to provide a detailed analysis of the curriculum, assessment and accountability, school structures, educating for global citizenship and the plethora of social issues schools are now expected to solve. Written from the perspective of a successful headteacher with over 30 years' teaching experience, the book considers what needs to be done to put things right and outlines a more equitable and effective school system. Each chapter outlines the steps schools can implement immediately and the longer-term policy changes that are needed de-toxify the classroom and facilitate a genuine love of learning. Offering a challenging yet compelling argument for putting education back into the hands of teachers, this book will be of great interest both to the general reader and to those working within education such as teachers and professionals who wish to improve the ways in which children learn and develop.

This book examines, from a sociological perspective, teacher-student power relations in classroom learning and teaching. The case study consists of four Hong Kong primary schools-and sixteen classrooms therein-that were selected as research sites to explore the concept of teacher-student power relations. Observations, individual interviews, and document analysis were the main data collection methods employed. Wong provides the historical context for the issue of teacher-student power relationship by reviewing the traditional Chinese cultures and values, in particular the values of respect for authority and for teachers, and demonstrates the intermingling of Chinese and Western cultures in contemporary Hong Kong Chinese society. She reviews the major educational initiatives carried out in Hong Kong since the 1970s, showing how Western educational policies promoting student-centric teaching modes have encouraged changes in classroom culture. With reference to the observed seventy-three lessons, the study identified three patterns of teacher-student power relations-Teacher Domination, Relatively Balanced Opportunity for Power Sharing, and Student Self-Empowerment-each involving different degrees of power being exercised by teacher and students. The coexistence of these three power patterns and the two corresponding power situations (student empowerment and disempowerment) can be explained as the result of multileveled, intertwined interactions among six factors related to social culture, education policy, school and classroom contexts, and to the individual players concerned. The book thus contributes to the understanding of teacher-student power relations in the context of Hong Kong by proposing a theoretical framework that reflects local socio-cultural, educational, and school contexts.

Measuring the Impact of Dyslexia shows the considerable benefits of recognising and celebrating the skills of those with information processing differences, explains their unique brain organisation and shows how they can excel as contributing members of society with proper support and guidance. It offers a balanced and research-based perspective to living with this condition, highlighting the huge number of children leaving school with low literacy levels, as a result of undiagnosed information processing differences. Full of critically reflective questions, case studies and interviews with those affected by dyslexia, this text encourages educators of children and young people with dyslexia to challenge their own perceptions by understanding the links between low literacy and anti-social behaviour, poor health, unemployment and limited educational attainment, and includes helpful pointers for improving practice and outcomes. This accessible and readable text is aimed at students, practitioners, researchers and experienced professionals in a range of disciplines to enhance CPD. It is particularly relevant for students working on both taught and research based masters degrees, especially programmes related to specific learning difficulties.

This book explores the negotiation of the ways that teachers are involved in the process of changing curriculum and pedagogies and also the realities of implimenting those changes in the classroom. How do teachers negotiate their place within changes in pedagogy and curriculum and how is that negotiation enacted in the space of a teacher's own classroom? This question is explored by telling stories about the process of change and the ways that teachers were involved with science curricular and pedagogical reform efforts imposed in their particular school district.

Enacting History is a practical guide for educators that provides methodologies and resources for teaching the Holocaust through a variety of theatrical means, including scripted texts, verbatim testimony, devised theater techniques and process-oriented creative exercises. A close collaboration with the USC Shoah Foundation I Witness program and the National Jewish Theater Foundation Holocaust Theater International Initiative at the University of Miami Miller Center for Contemporary Judaic Studies resulted in the ground-breaking work within this volume. The material facilitates teaching the Holocaust in a way that directly connects students to individual people and historical events through the art of theater. Each section is designed to help middle and high school educators meet curricular goals, objectives and standards and to integrate other educational disciplines based upon best practices. Students will gain both intellectual and emotional understanding by speaking the words of survivors, as well as young characters in scripted scenes, and developing their own performances based on historical primary sources. This book is an innovative and invaluable resource for teachers and students of the Holocaust; it is an exemplary account of how the power of theater can be harnessed within the classroom setting to encourage a deeper understanding of this defining event in history.

Computational technologies have been impacting human life for years. Teaching methods must adapt accordingly to provide the next generation with the necessary knowledge to further advance these human-assistive technologies. Teaching Computational Thinking in Primary Education is a crucial resource that examines the impact that instructing with a computational focus can have on future learners. Highlighting relevant topics that include multifaceted skillsets, coding, programming methods, and digital games, this scholarly publication is ideal for educators, academicians, students, and researchers who are interested in discovering how the future of education is being shaped.

Like many languages across the globe, the Celtic languages today are experiencing varying degrees of minoritisation and revitalisation. The experience of the Celtic languages in the twenty-first century is characterised by language shift to English and French, but they have also been the focus of official and grassroots initiatives aimed at reinvigorating the minoritised languages. This modern reality is evident in the profile of contemporary users of the Celtic languages, in the type of variation that they practise, and in their views on Celtic language and society in the twenty-first century. In turn, this reality provides a challenge to preconceived ideas about what the Celtic languages are like and how they should be regarded and managed at local and global levels. This book aims to shed light on some of the main issues facing the Celtic languages into the future and to showcase different approaches to studying such contexts. It presents contributions interested in explicating the modern condition of the Celtic languages. It engages with attitudinal support for the Celtic languages, modes of language transmission, choosing educational models in minority settings, pedagogical approaches for language learners and perceptions of linguistic practices. These issues are considered within the context of language shift and revitalisation in the Celtic languages. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Language, Culture and Curriculum.

In a time of pressures, challenges, and threats to public education, teacher preparation, and funding for educational research, the fifth volume of the Handbook of Reading Research takes a hard look at why we undertake reading research, how school structures, contexts and policies shape students' learning, and, most importantly, how we can realize greater impact from the research conducted. A comprehensive volume, with a "gaps and game changers" frame, this handbook not only synthesizes current reading research literature, but also informs promising directions for research, pushing readers to address problems and challenges in research design or method. Bringing the field authoritatively and comprehensively up-to-date since the publication of the Handbook of Reading Research, Volume IV, this volume presents multiple perspectives that will facilitate new research development, tackling topics including: Diverse student populations and sociocultural perspectives on reading development Digital innovation, literacies, and platforms Conceptions of teachers, reading, readers, and texts, and the role of affect, cognition, and social-emotional learning in the reading process New methods for researching reading instruction, with attention to equity, inclusion, and education policies Language development and reading comprehension Instructional practices to promote reading development and comprehension for diverse groups of readers Each volume of this handbook has come to define the field for the period of time it covers, and this volume is no exception, providing a definitive compilation of current reading research. This is a must-have resource for all students, teachers, reading specialists, and researchers focused on and interested in reading and literacy research, and improving both instruction and programs to cultivate strong readers and teachers.

This book illustrates approaches for implementing ICT in primary education. Through different initiatives and case studies, the book shows different approaches for successful implementation of ICT. While it gives details of theoretical concepts related to ICT, it also provides live examples from different initiatives as to how literacy can be achieved through customized implementation strategy. The book illustrates different ICT policies that have been implemented with varying degree of success. It also demonstrates different approaches that would be of interest to practitioners.

What are the purposes of education and what is the relationship between educational research and policy? Using the twin lenses of Visible Learning and educational philosophy, these are among the many fascinating topics discussed in extended conversations between John Hattie and Steen Nepper Larsen. This wide-ranging and informative book offers fundamental propositions about the nature of education. It maps out in fascinating detail a coming together of Hattie's empirical data and world-famous Visible Learning paradigm with the rich heritage of educational philosophy. Additionally, it explores the inevitable questions of the purpose of education and the development of students in a learning society. Part clash of cultures, part meeting of minds, always fascinating and illuminating, this intriguing book will inspire teachers, students, and parents at all levels of the educational system - from kindergarten through school to university. Conversations include: What are the purposes of education? Does educational data speak for itself? What is the role of the teacher? Is learning a visible phenomenon? Is it important to teach and learn specific subjects? What is the role of neuroscience research? What is the relationship between educational research and educational politics? What is the role of the state in education?

Originally published in 1993, this book addresses the issue of the place of the expressive arts in primary schools in the years around and beyond the implementation of the National Curriculum. It comprises a set of case studies on the language arts, painting and drawing, dance, drama and music, that suggest ways forward in teaching these arts to children aged between four and eleven.

The effectiveness of Education for Sustainable Development depends on the ability of schools and teachers to embrace pedagogies that reduce the gap between the rhetoric of education for the environment and the reality of classroom practices. This book responds to the need to better understand the nature of the relationships between agency and structure that contribute to the development of educational rhetoric-reality gaps in order to inform processes that most effectively facilitate pedagogical change. This book explores the issues of pedagogical change through the experiences of Australian primary school teachers faced with the challenge of implementing an environmental education program in which young students were positioned as active participants in the social processes from which environmentally sustainable practices could be developed. These teachers were required to adopt pedagogies that often represented the antithesis of their well-established teacher-directed approaches. Through the use of Anthony Giddens' Theory of Structuration this book provides unique perspectives of the teacher mediated manner in which certain elements of structure and agency interrelate to enable and constrain classroom practices-essential understandings for school principals and educational policy developers who aim to effectively implement pedagogical change. This book also demonstrates that the Theory of Structuration provides a valuable ontological research framework, and provides social researchers with practical guidance for how to relate this theory to specific research issues.

In the case studies that make up the bulk of this book, middle and high school history teachers describe the decisions and plans and the problems and possibilities they encountered as they ratcheted up their instruction through the use of big ideas. Framing a teaching unit around a question such as "Why don't we know anything about Africa?" offers both teacher and students opportunities to explore historical actors, ideas, and events in ways both rich and engaging. Such an approach exemplifies the construct of ambitious teaching, whereby teachers demonstrate their ability to marry their deep knowledge of subject matter, students, and the school context in ways that fundamentally challenge the claim that history is "boring."

How can teachers develop best practice in art teaching? This fully updated third edition of Rob Barnes' classic text blends practical ideas with sound principles of art education. Teachers and student teachers will find a range of ideas and tried and tested classroom examples; whilst for those looking for firm principles of art teaching and 'best practice' this book presents many important issues in art education with clarity and insight. Based on first-hand experience of teaching children, this text uses many examples from early years and primary school contexts, and tackles essential topics with realism and imagination such as: developing skills through using media how children draw encouraging artistic confidence in children producing original artwork and making use of digital imagery Rob Barnes' unique approach encourages teachers to develop and think about art as part of a rich curriculum of learning, highlighting how it shouldn't be taught in isolation but with purposeful links to other areas of the curriculum.

The 20th anniversary edition of this groundbreaking and bestselling volume offers powerful examples of the mathematics that can develop the thinking of elementary school children. Studies of teachers in the U.S. often document insufficient subject matter knowledge in mathematics. Yet, these studies give few examples of the knowledge teachers need to support teaching, particularly the kind of teaching demanded by reforms in mathematics education. Knowing and Teaching Elementary Mathematics describes the nature and development of the knowledge that elementary teachers need to become accomplished mathematics teachers, and suggests why such knowledge seems more common in China than in the United States, despite the fact that Chinese teachers have less formal education than their U.S. counterparts. Along with the original studies of U.S. and Chinese teachers' mathematical understanding, this 20th anniversary edition includes a new preface and a 2013 journal article by Ma, "A Critique of the Structure of U.S. Elementary School Mathematics" that describe differences in U.S. and Chinese elementary mathematics. These are augmented by a new series editor's introduction and two key journal articles that frame and contextualize this seminal work.

Whitmore and Meyer bring together top literacy scholars from around the world to introduce the concept of manifestations: evidence of meaning making in literacy events, practices, processes, products, and thinking. Manifestation are windows into literacy identities, and serve as affective and sociocultural signifiers of learners' understanding at a point in time and in a specific context. The volume reclaims progressive spaces for understanding reading, writing, drawing, speaking, playing, and other literacies. It grounds manifestations of literacies in the discourse of meaning making and demonstrates how literacy learners and educators are active agents in this complex, social, political, emotional, and multimodal process. Ideal for preservice teachers, graduate students, and researchers in literacy education, this book shifts the conversation away from treating literacies as acquired commodities and illustrates how educators engage with learners to deepen understanding of literacy learners' experiences. Organized by five pillars of literacy-teaching, learning, language, curriculum, and sociocultural contexts-each section covers critical and cutting-edge topics and offers examples, tools, and strategies for research and practical applications in diverse classroom settings. Each chapter includes a range of examples and is followed by a short, complementary reading extension to engage the reader.

Whitmore and Meyer bring together top literacy scholars from around the world to introduce the concept of manifestations: evidence of meaning making in literacy events, practices, processes, products, and thinking. Manifestation are windows into literacy identities, and serve as affective and sociocultural signifiers of learners' understanding at a point in time and in a specific context. The volume reclaims progressive spaces for understanding reading, writing, drawing, speaking, playing, and other literacies. It grounds manifestations of literacies in the discourse of meaning making and demonstrates how literacy learners and educators are active agents in this complex, social, political, emotional, and multimodal process. Ideal for preservice teachers, graduate students, and researchers in literacy education, this book shifts the conversation away from treating literacies as acquired commodities and illustrates how educators engage with learners to deepen understanding of literacy learners' experiences. Organized by five pillars of literacy-teaching, learning, language, curriculum, and sociocultural contexts-each section covers critical and cutting-edge topics and offers examples, tools, and strategies for research and practical applications in diverse classroom settings. Each chapter includes a range of examples and is followed by a short, complementary reading extension to engage the reader.

Putting Storytelling at the Heart of Early Childhood Practice is a brilliantly engaging and practical book that highlights the essential nature of storytelling in all walks of life, and how to best cultivate this in the early years classroom. The authors use a compelling Froebelian approach to explore the role of storytelling not just in the development of literacy but also in the development of communication and language and for maintaining good mental health and wellbeing. Drawing on primary and contemporary research, and presented by a range of experienced authors, this book covers important topics such as: The benefits of regularly practising storytelling Storytelling during play activities Group dynamics in constructing narratives The roles of props and fantasy concepts in storytelling This accessible guide is ideal for all early years practitioners looking to encourage literacy, communication and well-being in a supportive and creative environment, and for policymakers looking to develop best practice in the early years classroom.

How can teaching across the curriculum improve children's learning? How can you plan meaningful, imaginative topic work? Cross-Curricular Teaching in the Primary School helps teachers plan a more imaginative, integrated curriculum by presenting in accessible language a rationale and framework for teaching across the subjects. This second edition has been fully updated in light of the new curriculum, and shows how cross-curricular work can contribute to deeper subject knowledge. Illustrated throughout with examples of effective topic work in successful schools, this book provides guidance on the underpinning theory and strategies to facilitate cross-curricular work with young children. With a new structure to emphasise the importance of careful planning and preparation, issues covered include: How children learn The theory and rationale behind the cross-curricular approach Developing the curriculum and lesson planning Teaching and learning in an integrated way at KS1 and KS2 Cross-curricular approaches for maths Whole school approaches and team teaching for cross-curricular teaching The role of support staff in cross-curricular teaching Improving children's thinking skills Supporting children with special needs Using new media and drama to facilitate cross-curricular learning Assessing cross-curricular learning. Cross-Curricular Teaching in the Primary School provides much needed support for busy student and practising teachers. Packed with practical ideas, it offers an accessible guide to all aspects of introducing an integrated curriculum.

This new and updated second edition of Debates in Physical Education explores issues physical education teachers encounter in their daily lives. By engaging with both established and contemporary debates, this volume challenges readers to think about and reflect on the relative validity of positions presented in order to develop their own reasoned and personal view in relation to the topics explored. Divided into four accessible sections, this book investigates and offers fresh insight into topics of central importance in physical education. Chapters include, for example: Physical education as a means or as an end in itself; Knowledge for physical education; The physical education curriculum; Assessment in physical education; Technology, pedagogy and physical education. Physical education beyond schools and teachers. Designed to stimulate discussion and support readers in their own research, writing and practice, Debates in Physical Education will be a valuable resource for any student or practising teacher engaged in initial teacher education, continuing professional development or Master's level study.