Reform in education has focused mainly on development of new programs and procedures to increase the achievement of the student in the classroom. Teacher evaluations are now based on how students perform in their classrooms on yearly standardized tests. The advent of integrating students with special needs into the regular classroom has brought both benefits and concerns for average and above average students. Special education in the United States has evolved from institutional and segregated environments to inclusion in the regular education classrooms. We examine how the practice has affected all students and question whether this change has created equal opportunity for those students without special education needs. This book researches and reports on issues of current practice: e.g., teacher preparation, placement of students with special needs, implications for the average and above in the classroom and the financial costs driving placement decisions in the education system. We examine the lowering of standards so all can pass tests, report on loss of engagement of students by middle school, and mourn the squandering of creativity to appease a mandate. Sir Ken Robinson relates that, "Education is meant to take us into a future we cannot even grasp." Yet we continue on a road that lowers our educational ranking internationally. We recommend to provide services for all students, and take the system from its current state to one that provides a "Free and appropriate education for all!"

This book provides university teachers, leaders and policymakers with evidence on how researchers in several countries are monitoring and improving student engagement-the extent to which students are exposed to and participate in effective educational practices. It captures insights from international implementations of the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE), developed in the United States. In the last half decade NSSE has been adapted and used in several other countries, producing the largest international collaboration yet involving educationally relevant data on students' engagement in higher education.

Leaders of established national collaborations draw on their experiences with hundreds of institutions to contribute their insights. Framed by their cultural and educational contexts, they discuss issues concerning first-year learners, international students, part-time and distance learners, as well as teaching and leadership in support of student learning. Each chapter outlines strategies based on national case studies and presents perspectives supported by concrete examples of how these have played out in diverse settings. The book suggests mechanisms that can be used by institutions, ministries and quality agencies around the world.

Are schools smart enough to detect the cognitive diversity of students? In this book we will discuss a framework that will help teachers identify the talents of their students.

A major premise of the book is that teachers, school leaders, and school support staff are not taught how to create school and classroom environments to support the academic and social success of Black male students. The purpose of this book is to help champion a paradigmatic shift in educating Black males. This books aims to provide an asset and solution-based framework that connects the educational system with community cultural wealth and educational outcomes. The text will be a sourcebook for in-service and pre-service teachers, administrators, district leaders, and school support staff to utilize in their quest to increase academic and social success for their Black male students. Adopting a strengths-based epistemological stance, this book will provide concerned constituencies with a framework from which to engage and produce success.

A major premise of the book is that teachers, school leaders, and school support staff are not taught how to create school and classroom environments to support the academic and social success of Black male students. The purpose of this book is to help champion a paradigmatic shift in educating Black males. This books aims to provide an asset and solution-based framework that connects the educational system with community cultural wealth and educational outcomes. The text will be a sourcebook for in-service and pre-service teachers, administrators, district leaders, and school support staff to utilize in their quest to increase academic and social success for their Black male students. Adopting a strengths-based epistemological stance, this book will provide concerned constituencies with a framework from which to engage and produce success.

How do teachers "read" children's body language, and what are the consequences of these (mis)interpretations? Using Pierre Bourdieu's work in the construction of social class, together with Annette Lareau's work on how social class influences the child-rearing practices of parents, Henry argues that children raised in working-class homes come to elementary school with different, largely underappreciated, corporeal capacities. The middle-class corporeal practices of elementary school (hands to yourself, raise your hand to speak, stay in straight lines) require working-class children to adopt middle-class corporeal performances in order to demonstrate that they have achieved self-control, a significant mechanism by which some bodies are validated in society and vilified in others. Henry argues that curricula aimed at helping teachers teach poor children predisposes them to see poor children's corporeal performance from deeply classed positions that maintain cycles of social reproduction in schools rather than interrupting them.

This book by practitioners, policy analysts, and young people, for practitioners, policy makers, and researchers, captures up-to-the-moment experience and as yet unresolved issues in a newly emerging field: dropout reengagement. Key elements in this field include reaching out to young people who have left school for a myriad of reasons, and providing individualized supports and services all the way through to successful re-enrollment. The development of coordinated citywide efforts to re-engage out-of-school youth on positive educational pathways -- in several dozen cities in recent years -- spurred the effort to document practice and policy. Readers will come away with an understanding of results to date, as well as a sense of the variety and continuous improvement and innovation underway. This book describes the impressive early accomplishments of reengagement efforts in several cities, provides practical advice from a variety of perspectives for those seeking to launch or formalize local reengagement programs, and describes how reengagement at scale could help solve the crisis of unfulfilled potential represented in America's millions of young people without high school credentials.

Understanding the effects of trauma on students, and how teachers can make a real and lasting difference, has never been more crucial. Here, mindfulness expert Patricia A. Jennings explains how resilience can be developed from within the classroom. This Guide offers three keys to compassionate and trauma-sensitive teaching: Helping students build supportive relationships with teachers and peers Supporting student empowerment, voice and choice by creating a safe and equity-centred learning environment Building upon strengths by supporting the development of self-regulation With exercises for staying calm, focused and positive, this Guide helps both students and teachers cultivate resilience-inside and outside the classroom. Each 8.5" x 11" multi-panel guide is laminated for extra durability and 3-hole-punched for binder storage.

While the past 40 years have seen significant declines in adult smoking, this is not the case among young adults, who have the highest prevalence of smoking of all other age groups. At a time when just about everyone knows that smoking is bad for you, why do so many college students smoke? Is it a short lived phase or do they continue throughout the college years? And what happens after college, when they enter the "real world"? Drawing on interviews and focus groups with hundreds of young adults, Lighting Up takes the reader into their everyday lives to explore social smoking. Mimi Nichter argues that we must understand more about the meaning of social and low level smoking to youth, the social contexts that cause them to take up (or not take up) the habit, and the way that smoking plays a large role in students' social lives. Nichter examines how smoking facilitates social interaction, helps young people express and explore their identity, and serves as a means for communicating emotional states. Most college students who smoked socially were confident that "this was no big deal." After all, they were "not really smokers" and they would only be smoking for a short time. But, as graduation neared, they expressed ambivalence or reluctance to quit. As many grads today step into an uncertain future, where the prospect of finding a good job in a timely manner is unlikely, their 20s may be a time of great stress and instability. For those who have come to depend on the comfort of cigarettes during college, this array of life stressors may make cutting back or quitting more difficult, despite one's intentions and understandings of the harms of tobacco. And emerging products on the market, like e-cigarettes, offer an opportunity to move from smoking to vaping. Lighting Up considers how smoking fits into the lives of young adults and how uncertain times may lead to uncertain smoking trajectories that reach into adulthood.

Inquiry-Based Learning: Designing Instruction to Promote Higher Level Thinking focuses on learning and pedagogy around inquiry using technology as a cognitive tool. Specific inferences and applications of learning through an inquiry approach are explored and illustrations are drawn from educational settings. This third edition text explores realistic approaches and encourages reflective practice through the creation of instruction around a variety of curricular topics, to include digital citizenship, information literacy, social media, telecollaborative activities, problem-based learning, blended learning, and authentic assessments. Emphasis is placed on developing 21st century skills within a thinking curriculum. Readers consider a scenario that continues throughout each chapter in the design and development of inquiry lessons. Chapter reflections and skill building exercises assist readers in developing competencies around the inquiry process as well as the pedagogy required in using this approach with authentic tools.

One hundred years ago, the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet founded a college designed to unite women's intellectual and spiritual development: The College of St. Catherine, now St. Catherine's University. Is such an institution, a women-built and women-led Catholic college, an anachronism today? How has a century of changes in the Catholic Church and women's roles affected St. Catherine's? Addressing these and other questions in a scholarly and engaging manner, Liberating Sanctuary: 100 Years of Women's Education at the College of St. Catherine challenges prevailing assumptions about the history of women's education. The essays in this book, edited by Jane Lamm Carroll, Joanne Cavallaro, and Sharon Doherty, examine key figures, decisions, and ideas over the College's 100 year history, linking the story through a central theme: the paradox of institutional goals that seek both to liberate and constrain women. Since its founding, St. Catherine's has promoted women's leadership and autonomy, sometimes by design, sometimes by accident, sometimes despite stated aims.

Racial and gender inequities persist among college students, despite ongoing efforts to combat them. Students of color face alienation, stereotyping, low expectations, and lingering racism even as they actively engage in the academic and social worlds of college life. "The Unchosen Me" examines the experiences of African American collegiate women and the identity-related pressures they encounter both on and off campus.

Rachelle Winkle-Wagner finds that the predominantly white college environment often denies African American students the chance to determine their own sense of self. Even the very programs and policies developed to promote racial equality may effectively impose "unchosen" identities on underrepresented students. She offers clear evidence of this interactive process, showing how race, gender, and identity are created through interactions among one's self, others, and society.

At the heart of this book are the voices of women who struggle to define and maintain their identities during college. In a unique series of focus groups called "sister circles," these women could speak freely and openly about the pressures and tensions they faced in school. "The Unchosen Me" is a rich examination of the underrepresented student experience, offering a new approach to studying identity, race, and gender in higher education.

What does it mean to be a civic actor who is Black + Young + Female in the United States? Do African American girls take up the civic mantle in the same way that their male or non-Black peers do? What media, educational, or social platforms do Black girls leverage to gain access to the political arena, and why? How do Black girls negotiate civic identity within the context of their racialized, gendered, and age specific identities? There are scholars doing powerful work on Black youth and civics; scholars focused on girls and civics; and scholars focused on Black girls in education. But the intersections of African American girlhood and civics have not received adequate attention. This book begins the journey of understanding and communicating the varied forms of civics in the Black Girl experience. Black Girl Civics: Expanding and Navigating the Boundaries of Civic Engagement brings together a range of works that grapple with the question of what it means for African American girls to engage in civic identity development and expression. The chapters collected within this volume openly grapple with, and disclose the ways in which Black girls engage with and navigate the spectrum of civics. This collection of 11 chapters features a range of research from empirical to theoretical and is forwarded by Black Girlhood scholar Dr. Venus Evans-Winters. The intended audience for this volume includes Black girlhood scholars, scholars of race and gender, teachers, civic advocacy organizations, civic engagement researchers, and youth development providers.

This work analyses the struggle of African Americans to gain access and equity in higher education in the United States. It chronicles some of the history prior to court ordered segregation and traces the mandate to desegregate by following the Adams v. Richardson (1973) case, which ordered the dismantling of dual systems of higher education.

Measure, Use, Improve! Data Use in Out-of-School Time shares the experience and wisdom from a broad cross-section of out-of-school time professionals, ranging from internal evaluators, to funders, to researchers, to policy advocates. Key themes of the volume include building support for learning and evaluation within out-of-school time programs, creating and sustaining continuous quality improvement efforts, authentically engaging young people and caregivers in evaluation, and securing funder support for learning and evaluation. This volume will be particularly useful to leadership-level staff in out-of-school time organizations that are thinking about deepening their own learning and evaluation systems, yet aren't sure where to start. Authors share conceptual frameworks that have helped inform their thinking, walk through practical examples of how they use data in out-of-school time, and offer advice to colleagues.

The year 2011 marked the first time in U.S. history where more nonwhite babies were born than white babies. Academic year 2014-15 marked the first year that K-12 public school enrollment became predominantly nonwhite. Among the five largest school districts, Latinos represent the predominant group. It's all about a stemming population shift, not immigration, as more Anglo-Americans are dying than those replaced by births. Meanwhile, our public schools are in trouble, where "normalized failure" has become the new norm and international achievement has reached new lows. In this mix, Latinos are 1-in-3 newborns. As the future of America is now "inextricably linked" to the fate of these children, our educational system must be more responsive or the nation is imperiled. For this book, Abdin Noboa-Rios interviewed 112 prominent educators nationwide, including some of the best Hispanic educators and thought leaders to search for answers to America's educational challenges. What do they say? What do these leaders see? What can we learn? Their many suggestions and concerns are well highlighted. For these leading scholars and practitioners, their views are more about basic renewal, not piecemeal reform. Such action requires fundamental shifts in both mindset and attitude. Appeasement misses the point. We cannot undermine the severity of the problem.

What does it mean to be a civic actor who is Black + Young + Female in the United States? Do African American girls take up the civic mantle in the same way that their male or non-Black peers do? What media, educational, or social platforms do Black girls leverage to gain access to the political arena, and why? How do Black girls negotiate civic identity within the context of their racialized, gendered, and age specific identities? There are scholars doing powerful work on Black youth and civics; scholars focused on girls and civics; and scholars focused on Black girls in education. But the intersections of African American girlhood and civics have not received adequate attention. This book begins the journey of understanding and communicating the varied forms of civics in the Black Girl experience. Black Girl Civics: Expanding and Navigating the Boundaries of Civic Engagement brings together a range of works that grapple with the question of what it means for African American girls to engage in civic identity development and expression. The chapters collected within this volume openly grapple with, and disclose the ways in which Black girls engage with and navigate the spectrum of civics. This collection of 11 chapters features a range of research from empirical to theoretical and is forwarded by Black Girlhood scholar Dr. Venus Evans-Winters. The intended audience for this volume includes Black girlhood scholars, scholars of race and gender, teachers, civic advocacy organizations, civic engagement researchers, and youth development providers.

The year 2011 marked the first time in U.S. history where more nonwhite babies were born than white babies. Academic year 2014-15 marked the first year that K-12 public school enrollment became predominantly nonwhite. Among the five largest school districts, Latinos represent the predominant group. It's all about a stemming population shift, not immigration, as more Anglo-Americans are dying than those replaced by births. Meanwhile, our public schools are in trouble, where "normalized failure" has become the new norm and international achievement has reached new lows. In this mix, Latinos are 1-in-3 newborns. As the future of America is now "inextricably linked" to the fate of these children, our educational system must be more responsive or the nation is imperiled. For this book, Abdin Noboa-Rios interviewed 112 prominent educators nationwide, including some of the best Hispanic educators and thought leaders to search for answers to America's educational challenges. What do they say? What do these leaders see? What can we learn? Their many suggestions and concerns are well highlighted. For these leading scholars and practitioners, their views are more about basic renewal, not piecemeal reform. Such action requires fundamental shifts in both mindset and attitude. Appeasement misses the point. We cannot undermine the severity of the problem.

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.

This book was written to demonstrate as a society, how self-absorbed we have become. How this self-absorption has affected our relationships at home and in life. How high school students have become consumed with instant gratification and have lost sight of selfless deeds. Social media is here to stay, and we must address the negative effects and lead our youth in a direction of selfless service. Thousands of children in schools across the country suffer from low self-esteem and this book will explain how we can improve a child's opinion of themselves. This book will provide a plan and the path to seeing this accomplished.