A thorough overview of elementary education in the United States, spanning its history, foundations, curriculum models, technology, assessment, and special programs. Elementary Education: A Reference Handbook takes readers on an all-inclusive journey through the history and current status of elementary education in America. The handbook first examines the historical, philosophical, social, and cultural foundations of elementary education. It then delves into the fascinating topic of how children learn, including racial identity formation, culturally differing cognitive thinking styles, and language developments. A critical investigation of issues relating to the curriculum reveals its purpose, types, and models, weighing the impact of technology and providing a historical review of key subjects, from language arts to physical education. Are the results of standardized testing and high-stakes testing realistic and fair? This handbook explores these and other key questions in a detailed discussion of assessment and evaluation methods. Covers foundations, key events, contributors to elementary education, theories of learning, curriculum models, instructional practices, best practices, school reform, trends, and issues in elementary education Provides a chronology of elementary and public education from Plessy v. Ferguson through the No Child Left Behind Act

INFANTS AND TODDLERS: CAREGIVING AND RESPONSIVE CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT, Tenth Edition, guides you through the acquisition of skills necessary to provide high-quality care for infants and toddlers in any educational setting. Each chapter incorporates new research results and scholarly articles, and new and extended boxed features provide additional insights and emphasis. The new edition continues to support the author's goal of providing appropriate caregiving and educational techniques, as well as curriculum ideas, for infants and toddlers from birth to age three. The text also provides overviews of key child care philosophies as they relate to the child, the caregiver and parent involvement, along with real-world case studies and relevant lesson plans to help you translate theory into practice.

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.

Although STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) has been diversely defined by various researchers (e.g. Buck Institute, 2003; Capraro & Slough, 2009; Scott, 2009; Wolf, 2008), during the last decade, STEM education has gained an increasing presence on the national agenda through initiatives from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Institute for Educational Sciences (IES). The rate of technological innovation and change has been tremendous over the past ten years, and this rapid increase will only continue. STEM literacy is the power to "identify, apply, and integrate concepts from science, technology, engineering, and mathematics to understand complex problems and to innovate to solve them" (Washington State STEM, 2011, Internet). In order for U.S. students to be on the forefront of this revolution, ALL of our schools need to be part of the STEM vision and guide students in acquiring STEM literacy. Understanding and addressing the challenge of achieving STEM literacy for ALL students begins with an understanding of its element and the connections between them. In order to remain competitive, the Committee on Prospering in the Global Economy has recommended that the US optimize "its knowledge-based resources, particularly in science and technology" (National Academies, 2007, p. 4). Optimizing knowledge-based resources needs to be the goal but is also a challenge for ALL educators (Scheurich & Huggins, 2009). Regardless, there is little disagreement that contemporary society is increasingly dependent on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics and thus comprehensive understandings are essential for those pursuing STEM careers. It is also generally agreed that PK-12 students do not do well in STEM areas, both in terms of national standards and in terms of international comparisons (Kuenzi, Matthews, & Mangan, 2006; Capraro, Capraro, Yetkiner, Corlu, Ozel, Ye, & Kim, 2011). The question then becomes what might PK-12 schools do to improve teachers' and students' STEM knowledge and skills? This book will look at equity and access issues in STEM education from PK-12, university, and administrative and policy lenses.

These cutting-edge international essays challenge dominant narratives of queer youth predicated on oppression and victimization. As school systems address the emergence of Gay-Straight Alliances and calls to provide equal educational access, researchers, educators and youth workers are paying increasing attention to sexuality, gender and schooling. Yet present discourses are limited to liberal understandings of tolerance, safety, and equity that are defined by a separation of "queer" and "normal." This text documents and offers radical interpretations of the creativity of queer youth in challenging existing practices. Interdisciplinary analyses offer multiple vantage points for reconceptualizing adolescent sexual subjectivities and institutional and cultural practices.

Across the United States, schools face the daunting issue of confronting the widespread effects of bullying, which threaten the physical, emotional, and intellectual well?being and development of youth. Creating and Negotiating Collaborative Spaces for Socially?Just Anti?Bullying Interventions for K?12 Schools is a theoretically and empirically grounded edited volume that describes practical ways to address bullying at both systemic and individual levels. Central to the scope of the book is a diversity?focused approach to assessing and conceptualizing discrimination and bullying among marginalized youth, such as LGBTQ, mixed race, gifted and talented, and special needs populations. Interspersed with concrete, real?life examples, each chapter in the volume expands on the multiple dimensions of bullying as well as research?backed anti?bullying interventions. The book advances previous literature by addressing contemporary issues in bullying. Special topics include teacher?to?student bullying, cyberbullying, restorative justice practices, and assessment of attitudes toward addressing bullying.

As part of the successful and popular Retrieval Practice collection by Kate Jones, this practical resource guide is the go-to guide for a wide range of retrieval practice tasks that teachers can use in their classrooms. There are over fifty evidence-informed and creative, tried and tested, classroom resources and strategies to support retrieval practice. These include starter tasks, tasks to support literacy and revision as well as a range of recommended online quizzing tools. For each resource, there is an explanation with top tips and visuals for easy implementation. All of the resources provided aim to be low effort, high impact. Low effort for the teacher in terms of workload but high impact on student learning. Regardless of the subject or age range taught there are plenty of takeaways for every teacher - a handy retrieval resource guide for every teacher and every classroom.

Teachers are virtually never taught how learners make decisions about studying, concentration and participation, and are not able to find this in educational literature. The Behavioural Learning Classroom breaks new ground, allowing teachers to harness their students' traits and quirks to produce a more effective and compassionate classroom. Important lessons from behavioural science Optimising lesson design Effective (home)work Marking and feedback Rewards and sanctions The physical environment of the classroom Pupil behaviour Designing behavioural experiments and analysing data Supported by fundamental findings in behavioural science, this book provides practical, accessible, tried and tested techniques to improve the mental wellbeing of pupils and teachers alike. It is an enjoyable and accessible read for any teacher or school leader who wants to enhance their pupils' experience of learning.

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.

This book offers a close and detailed account of the emergent and creative pedagogies of children learning together in a small, not-for-profit preschool, and the entangled becomings of their carers as well as the researcher-artist-author. The mutually affecting and inseparable realities of the 'material' and the 'discursive' are made visible through lively and sensual pedagogical invention by a group of five-year olds in the inner-city preschool which is located in Johannesburg, South Africa. These small, local stories are recognized in their emergence with global geopolitical realities. The author makes a valuable contribution to post-qualitative research through the use of visual research methods and non-representational approaches to working with knowledge. The book draws on the constantly evolving practices of Philosophy for Children (P4C) and Reggio Emilia both as pedagogical tools and as research methods. Photographs and stills from video footage provide a sense of the relatively modest material environment of the school. The book celebrates the considerable richness of the involvement of the children and the enormous possibilities offered by the world both inside and outside of the classroom when an enquiry-led art-based pedagogy is followed. Drawings and other products created by the children in the study offer valuable insight into the depth and complexity of their engagement with their worlds, both individual and collaborative.

Teaching Off Trail describes Peter Dargatz's, a national board certified teacher and public school coordinator, transformation from an anxious assessor to a fair and fun facilitator of learning. It shares the his personal professional journey detailing his evolution as an educator while simultaneously offering strategies for readers to implement Peter's unique teaching philosophy to increase opportunities for play, creative expression, and personalization in both the indoor and outdoor classroom. In his own classroom Peter brought learning outside by creating a nature kindergarten program that emphasizes community partnerships, service learning, and meaningful and memorable experiences in the outdoors. Teaching Off Trail aims to inspire educators, administrators, and parents across all levels to turn their outrage for today's educational system into outreach that promotes passionate and purposeful problem-solving.

Demonstrating that public health and prevention program development is as much art as science, this book brings together expert program developers to offer practical guidance and principles in developing effective behavior-change curricula. Feinberg and the team of experienced contributors cover evidence-based programs addressing a range of physical, mental, and behavioral health problems, including ones targeting families, specific populations, and developmental stages. The contributors describe their own professional journeys and decisions in creating, refining, testing, and disseminating a range of programs and strategies. Readers will learn about selecting change-promoting targets based on existing research; developing and creating effective and engaging content; considering implementation and dissemination contexts in the development process; and revising, refining, expanding, abbreviating, and adapting a curriculum across multiple iterations. Designing Evidence-Based Public Health and Prevention Programs is essential reading for prevention scientists, prevention practitioners, and program developers in community agencies. It also provides a unique resource for graduate students and postgraduates in family sciences, developmental psychology, clinical psychology, social work, education, nursing, public health, and counselling.

"The perfect prescription! It's both an assessment tool and an overall educational strategy for developing healthy attitudes toward learning and life." Klaus Issler, Professor, Biola University, La Mirada, California "Gives teachers a sound method of getting the best from all their students." Leo Zuber, High School Superintendent, Ripon Unified School District, California "A solid, reseach-based approach to moral development. Deserves wide exposure." Frederic R. Wilson, Educational Consultant, Wheaton, Illinois "Well written and extremely comprehensive. A great resource." Robert B. Gonzalez, Teacher, Liberty High School, Brentwood, Califonia This book is tailor-made for teachers who are tired of spending all their time on the "bad apple" in their class. It shows how to challenge and then change student attitudes for the better. The key is the Virtue Assessment Questionnaire, which lets you measure - simply and easily - your students' virtue. Just follow the step-by-step instructions on scoring and interpreting results. The author defines virtue in this context as wanting to do what you have to do - good conduct growing out of good character, an expression of being and doing. Now you can unlock the mysteries of classroom problems and restore virtue to students whose lives are broken. Help students assess negative feelings, change perspectives, figure out what's right, develop a desire for virtue, and become people of good character. Loehrer teaches you how your interactions with students and coworkers can help instill virtue and build character in your students. Be their moral leader, and you give them the foundation they need to move toward becoming people of good character. Loehrer offers you these powerful principles you can practice to teach your students virtue: * Do more than is required * Give generously * Forgive freely, without being asked * Offer encouragement when faced with opposition * Help others in secret, without acknowledgment * Handle discipline problems with justice * Suffer in silence - no complaints * Persist, and be patient Make your personal ethics system a regular part of your daily classroom activities and see a marked improvement in your students' attitudes about learning and about life. Includes scoring forms and guidelines.

In today's society where most students own MP3 players, engage in constant instant messaging and downloading from the Internet, more than ever school administrators and staff should be aware of issues in administration, policy, and applications. This book provides a comprehensive presentation of current policies and practices of technology in K12 schools. The first part of the book lays out the foundation of what schools should be concerned about involving various aspects of technology and its impact on school administration and teaching.

The second part of the book introduces technology, policy and philosophical discussions on the use of technology in schools.

The third section of the book provides an examination of technology of practical applications of technology currently used in schools.

Sharon Tettegah holds faculty appointments in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction and Educational Psychology. She also has appointments with the National Center for Supercomputing Applications and the Beckman Institute at the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign.

Richard C. Hunter is a faculty member, and former chair in the Department of Educational Organization and Leadership in the College of Education at the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign.

- This key book provides fresh strategies for school leaders to thrive, build resilience and reflect upon and manage their stress and wellbeing. - It provides both a big picture perspective of school leader stress around the world and a practical guide to addressing it. - It provides solutions at government, institutional and individual levels, including fresh approaches for school leaders to reflect upon and address their own wellbeing.

This book presents a study in educational sociology, exploring the function of rural schools, which are a symbol of the state in rural society, in a time characterized by local cultural transition. The book begins with an investigation of the status quo, background and history of a representative rural school, Fengning Hope Elementary School, and gives a definition of "the 'states' in villages." Subsequently, on the basis of research on the teachers, an analysis of the courses taught, and comparison to other rural elementary schools of the same type, it reveals the dual status of rural schools and their relation with social development in rural areas. Based on thorough fieldwork and empirical research, the book provides a new vision of the interactive relation between the state and rural society, particularly focusing on the role of rural education in that relation. In addition, it explores the reshaping of Chinese culture and the part that intellectuals play in the process of today's cultural transition. For English-language readers and Western professionals, this translated version will offer an essential window into Chinese studies from a local point of view.

A volume in Contemporary Perspectives in Early Childhood Education Series Editors Olivia N. Saracho and Bernard Spodek This volume provides a comprehensive critical analysis of the research in mathematics education for young children. The researchers who conducted the critical analysis focused on the relationship between (1) mathematics learning in the early years and domain specific approaches to cognitive development, (2) the children's social learning and their developing understanding of math, and (3) the children's learning in a natural context and their understanding of mathematics concepts. The work of these scholars can help guide those researchers who are interested in pursuing studies in early childhood mathematics in a specific area of study. This volume will facilitate the research conducted by both novice and expert researchers. The volume has accomplished its major goals, which consists of critically analyzing important research in a specific area that would be most useful in advancing the field and provide recommendations for both researchers and educators.

* Parent engagement is a hugely powerful tool in maximising children's outcomes in the primary school. * This book will enable you to evaluate your current practice in this crucial area of school life and suggest ways in which you can plan and deliver improvements successfully. * Provides five key drivers for leaders, teachers, support staff, volunteers and governors * Includes recommendations from a wide range of international sources, including John Hattie, Bill Lucas and Janet Goodall * Case studies exemplify some of the most successful techniques and programmes currently in use to encourage and facilitate * Includes easy-to-use tools to support their strategic thinking and school improvement activity.

Tackle underlying issues to get to the root of bullying By reframing bullying prevention, you can make significant progress in addressing the underlying issues causing bullying and aggression in your school. In this resource, James Dillon digs into the work that busy educators often have little time for: translating rich and insightful research on the dynamics of change into practical terms. He probes deeply into the issues and why they persist in our schools to promote meaningful conversation among school staff and parents. Inside you'll find Vignettes, analogies, and real-life examples along with tools that illustrate the benefits of using alternative methods to prevent bullying Discussion on transforming the role of discipline to reframe bullying among teachers, administrators, and students Key ideas and concepts summarized in easy-to-understand bullet points and charts Guidance on how to establish a school climate that promotes empathy and compassion instead of fear Reframing bullying prevention will allow competent and caring educators, students, and parents to not just stop bullying, but to improve the learning environment for all students.

A practical guide for subject leaders in secondary schools to help them run their departments effectively and efficiently. It is increasingly being acknowledged that subject leaders hold the key to school improvement and professional development. However, there is little information available for subject leaders to help them with the day-to-day practicalities of running a department on top of existing teaching commitments. This uniquely practical book deals specifically with current issues faced by subject heads of department (HoDs). Engagingly and entertainingly written, this book covers the major areas of concern to subject leaders, including leadership styles, managing staff, managing pupil performance, strategic planning, curriculum development and coping with problems.