Mastering Primary Science introduces the primary science curriculum and helps trainees and teachers learn how to plan and teach inspiring lessons that make science learning irresistible. Topics covered include: * Current developments in primary science * Science as an irresistible activity * Science as a practical activity * Skills to develop in science * Promoting curiosity * Assessing children in science * Practical issues This guide includes examples of children's work, case studies, readings to reflect upon and reflective questions that all help to exemplify what is considered to be best and most innovative practice. The book draws on the experience of two leading professionals in primary science, Amanda McCrory and Kenna Worthington, to provide the essential guide to teaching science for all trainee and qualified primary teachers.

When it's time for a game change, you need a guide to the new rules. Helping Students Make Sense of the World Using Next Generation Science and Engineering Practices provides a play-by-play understanding of the practices strand of A Framework for K-12 Science Education (Framework) and the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). Written in clear, nontechnical language, this book provides a wealth of real-world examples to show you what's different about practice-centered teaching and learning at all grade levels. The book addresses three important questions: 1. How will engaging students in science and engineering practices help improve science education? 2. What do the eight practices look like in the classroom? 3. How can educators engage students in practices to bring the NGSS to life? Helping Students Make Sense of the World Using Next Generation Science and Engineering Practices was developed for K-12 science teachers, curriculum developers, teacher educators, and administrators. Many of its authors contributed to the Framework's initial vision and tested their ideas in actual science classrooms. If you want a fresh game plan to help students work together to generate and revise knowledge-not just receive and repeat information-this book is for you.

Curriculum can be defined in a variety of ways. It might be viewed as a body of knowledge, a product, or a process. Curricula can differ as they are conceptualized from various theoretical perspectives to address the needs of teachers, students, and the context of schooling. One reason to study curriculum is "to reveal the expectations, processes and outcomes of students' school learning experiences that are situated in different cultural and system contexts. ... further studies of curriculum practices and changes aremuch needed to help ensure the success of educational reforms in the different cultural and system contexts" (Kulm & Li, 2009, p.709). This volume highlights international perspectives on curriculum and aims to broaden the wider mathematics education community's understandings of mathematics curriculum through viewing a variety of ways that curricula are developed, understood, and implemented in different jurisdictions/countries. Within this volume, we define curriculum broadly as the set of mathematics standards or outcomes, the messages inherent in mathematics curriculum documents and resources, how these standards are understood by a variety of stakeholders, and how they are enacted in classrooms. The focus is on the written, implied, and enacted curriculum in various educational settings throughout the world.

Contents: Emergence of Families, Communities, and Schools in Early Childhood Education: Introduction, Olivia N. Saracho and Bernard Spodek. Challenges and Realities: Family-Community-School Partnership, Olivia N. Saracho and Bernard Spodek. Families and Early Childhood Education Through the Years, Bernard Spodek and Olivia N. Saracho. Young Children Experiencing Divorce and Family Transitions: How Early Childhood Professionals Can Help, Marion F. Ehrenberg, Jacqueline E. Bush, Jennifer D. Pringle, Marei Luedemann, and Jennifer Geisretter. Family context and psychological development in early childhood: Educational implications, Enrique B. Arranz Freijo. Parenting Self-Efficacy and Competence in Relation to Young Children's Social and Academic Outcomes, Priscilla K. Coleman and Katherine H. Karraker. Emotion Regulation: Implications For Children's School Readiness and Achievement, Julia M. Braungart-Rieker and Ashley L. Hill."

Gail R. Benjamin reaches beyond predictable images of authoritarian Japanese educators and automaton schoolchildren to show the advantages and disadvantages of a system remarkably different from the American one... --"The New York Times Book Review"

Americans regard the Japanese educational system and the lives of Japanese children with a mixture of awe and indignance. We respect a system that produces higher literacy rates and superior math skills, but we reject the excesses of a system that leaves children with little free time and few outlets for creativity and self-expression.

In Japanese Lessons, Gail R. Benjamin recounts her experiences as a American parent with two children in a Japanese elementary school. An anthropologist, Benjamin successfully weds the roles of observer and parent, illuminating the strengths of the Japanese system and suggesting ways in which Americans might learn from it.

With an anthropologist's keen eye, Benjamin takes us through a full year in a Japanese public elementary school, bringing us into the classroom with its comforting structure, lively participation, varied teaching styles, and non-authoritarian teachers. We follow the children on class trips and Sports Days and through the rigors of summer vacation homework. We share the experiences of her young son and daughter as they react to Japanese schools, friends, and teachers. Through Benjamin we learn what it means to be a mother in Japan--how minute details, such as the way mothers prepare lunches for children, reflect cultural understandings of family and education.

Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
1. Getting Started
2. Why Study Japanese Education?
3. Day-to-Day Routines
4. Together at School, Together in Life
5. A Working Vacation and Special Events
6. The Three R's, Japanese Style
7. The Rest of the Day
8. Nagging, Preaching, and Discussions
9. Enlisting Mothers' Efforts
10. Education in Japanese Society
11. Themes and Suggestions
12. Sayonara
Appendix. Reading and Writing in Japanese
References
Index

From the 1950s to the digital age, Americans have pushed their childrento live science-minded lives, cementing scientific discovery and youthfulcuriosity as inseparable ideals. In this multifaceted work, historian RebeccaOnion examines the rise of informal children's science education in thetwentieth century, from the proliferation of home chemistry sets after WorldWar I to the century-long boom in child-centred science museums. Onionlooks at how the United States has increasingly focused its energies over thelast century into producing young scientists outside of the classroom. Sheshows that although Americans profess to believe that success in the sciencesis synonymous with good citizenship, this idea is deeply complicated inan era when scientific data is hotly contested and many Americans have aconflicted view of science itself. These contradictions, Onion explains, can be understood by examiningconnections between the histories of popular science and the developmentof ideas about American childhood. She shows how the idealised concept of"science" has moved through the public consciousness and how the drive tomake child scientists has deeply influenced American culture.

From the 1950s to the digital age, Americans have pushed their childrento live science-minded lives, cementing scientific discovery and youthfulcuriosity as inseparable ideals. In this multifaceted work, historian RebeccaOnion examines the rise of informal children's science education in thetwentieth century, from the proliferation of home chemistry sets after WorldWar I to the century-long boom in child-centred science museums. Onionlooks at how the United States has increasingly focused its energies over thelast century into producing young scientists outside of the classroom. Sheshows that although Americans profess to believe that success in the sciencesis synonymous with good citizenship, this idea is deeply complicated inan era when scientific data is hotly contested and many Americans have aconflicted view of science itself. These contradictions, Onion explains, can be understood by examiningconnections between the histories of popular science and the developmentof ideas about American childhood. She shows how the idealised concept of"science" has moved through the public consciousness and how the drive tomake child scientists has deeply influenced American culture.

Telementoring, the practice of online mentoring, is a powerful tool to engage students in meaningful learning. Research has demonstrated the benefits for students and telementors who engage in inquiry and project-based learning with telementoring. Telementoring in the K-12 Classroom: Online Communication Technologies for Learning provides the latest research and the best practices in the field of telementoring. Theoretical and pragmatic viewpoints on telementoring provide guidance to professionals wanting to inform their practice. A solid base of telementoring information and an expansive vision of this practice combine to promote the understanding and successful implementation of telementoring.

This handbook explores the curriculum, instruction and assessment used in middle schools. The essays cover: curriculum integration - history and research; the relationship between middle grades teacher certification and teaching practices; and cohorts in middle level teacher preparation.

New Perspectives on Young Children's Moral Education explores how to approach young children's moral education in a world of uncertainty and change. What is moral education? How do young children learn to act and interact appropriately? How do we enable children to recognise that how they act and interact matters? How can character, virtues and value help young children internalise qualities associated with living 'a good life'? Challenging many current assumptions about ethics and education, Tony Eaude suggests that a moral dimension runs through every aspect of life and that ethics involves learning to act and interact appropriately, based on an 'ethic of care' and enduring qualities and attributes, to equip children to resist strong external pressures. Drawing accessibly on research in neuroscience and psychology, he discusses how young children learn, highlighting the role of emotion, culture, example, habituation and feedback. Small actions can help to develop agency, empathy and thoughtfulness and a sense of moral identity, with an increasing emphasis on self-regulation, a vocabulary of ethics and intrinsic motivation. Eaude explores how character, virtues and values can help young children and adults to recognize and internalize qualities associated with living 'a good life'. He identifies how adults and learning environments can support these processes and shows why an inclusive approach is needed, rather than focusing on these topics only in particular settings, programmes or lessons. Recognising pitfalls and dilemmas, Eaude argues that an approach based on virtue ethics and an apprenticeship model is suitable in school and other settings, both religious and otherwise, internationally.

This book examines emergent literacy as the foundations for language instruction and seeks to relate the work of those doing research on literacy acquisition and those designing programs to facilitate children's literacy development. It bridges theory and practice, looking at both cognitive processes and settings in which children first experience literacy.

With contributions by leading researchers in the field, the book examines emergent literacy in nonliterate homes; oral language supports; parent-child reading; literacy and working class families; literacy from a developmental perspective; parental involvement; and collaborative efforts of teachers and parents. An essential collection for all research and education in the language arts methods area. Will also appeal to educators involved in reading instruction and parent-education.

As one of the few books on the history and philosophy of American elementary school education, Cavanaugh's work examines the pioneering careers of Francis Wayland Parker, John Dewey, Rudolph Steiner, Hughes Mearns, and Laura Zirbes. Finding the basic framework for current fashionable trends in education like the Whole Language and Process Writing Movement, Cavanaugh shows how educators came to these ideas over 100 years ago. After presenting the five biographies, Cavanaugh goes on to explain how children learn to read and write; what kinds of schools foster this learning; the roles of teachers, students, and parents; and the important tools of grading, evaluation, and assessment. In all these areas there are important lessons to learn from the past.

This book examines the complexities of these negotiations in a particularly complicated and volatile context (Palestine) and a particularly ""hot"" development field (early childhood development). The international community's efforts to support early childhood programming in the developing world fall more broadly within the empowerment camp than other development sectors, and, through their greater-than-average integration of civil society institutions, local communities, and governments, may serve as a source of important lessons about ""fishing expeditions"" in development more generally. This case, in particular, speaks to the conflux of interests, priorities, and dreams that shape local initiatives for early childhood development, and examines the ways in which the supposed students of fishing may, sometimes, teach their instructors a thing or two.

The authors of this practical, timely work maintain that the public schools can, and should, play a role in delivering both a good educational start and high-quality care to young children. Addressed to a wide readership including federal and state legislators, state commissioners of social services and education, policy planners, education and advocacy organizations, and public school administrators, this book focuses on the major contemporary child care issues in a readable, understandable format. It will, by virtue of its breadth and authority, change the way those in the field perceive and respond to the critical and sensitive problems of early care.

21st Century Literacy for Middle & Secondary Students introduces readers to instructional ideas and approaches that have shown to be effective in supporting literacy development of students in grades 5 through 12. The opening chapter reviews the methods used by publishers to assign a grade level to a text. Additional chapters discuss supplementing textbooks with fiction, nonfiction, magazine articles, poetry, and other genres of literature; factors that motivate tweens and adolescents to read; close reading and study skills; and the use of learning cycles to enhance students' text interactions. Readers learn about strategies for developing students' vocabulary, the importance of background knowledge for reading comprehension, and curriculum design to support adolescent literacy development. Closing chapters address the incorporation of writing activities within content areas and how to support students with literacy challenges in middle and secondary school classrooms. Each chapter features pertinent readings by experts in the field, pre- and post-reading questions, and activities to help future and in-service teachers apply newfound information in their classrooms. 21st Century Literacy for Middle & Secondary Students is an ideal text for courses and programs in education, especially those with focus in literacy development.

This book presents a pioneering longitudinal study on English language instruction at the elementary school (ELES) level in the Japanese public school system. It attempts to identify those domains most sensitive to early English instruction by employing a state-of-the-art quantitative research methodology. English education was formally introduced in Japan for fifth and sixth graders in 2011 and is still in its infancy as a program. This study compares two groups (Grade 7 and 8) of students, one with ELES and one without, in order to shed light on their experiences. Comparisons are carried out not only quantitatively, measuring changes in English skills (listening, speaking, reading, and vocabulary / grammar) and the ELES students' affective aspects, but also qualitatively through in-depth interviews. Thus, this study attempts to capture the ELES students' experiences from a multi-dimensional perspective. The comprehensive literature review provided offers a valuable resource not only for researchers looking for a quick digest of the literature in this field before undertaking their own research, but also for policy-makers seeking to assess how to best implement ELES.