The Routledge Encyclopedia of Language Teaching and Learning is an authoritative handbook dealing with all aspects of this increasingly important field of study. It has been produced specifically for language teaching professionals, but can also be used as a reference work for academic studies at postgraduate level. It offers a comprehensive range of articles on contemporary language teaching and its history. Themes covered include: methods and materials assessment and testing contexts and concepts influential figures related disciplines, such as psychology, anthropology and sociolinguistics. It covers the teaching of languages, in particular Japanese, Chinese and Arabic, as well as English, French, German and Spanish. There are thirty-five overview articles dealing with issues such as communicative language teaching, early language learning, teacher education and syllabus and curriculum design. A further 160 entries focus on topics such as bilingualism, language laboratories and study abroad. Numerous shorter items look at language and cultural institutions, professional associations and acronyms. Multiple cross-references enable the user to browse from one entry to another, and there are suggestions for further reading. Written by an international team of specialists, the Routledge Encyclopedia of Language Teaching and Learning is an invaluable resource and reference manual for anyone with a professional or academic interest in the subject.

In a changing world that demands new skills, a vital concern of public education is the gap in academic performance between low- and high-achieving students. There is no excuse for the achievement gaps that persist among poor and minority students in schools today. All students can succeed at high levels, regardless of race, ethnicity and economic background. Several countries have successfully confronted inequities in achievement, demonstrating that any school can close achievement gaps regardless of the community they serve, and that all students can achieve at high levels when they are provided with the right opportunities. This book is about understanding what factors selected countries have applied to promote progress and what factors contribute to progress in the closing of achievement gaps. It is about creating opportunities for all students.
"Closing the Achievement Gap from an International Perspective: Transforming STEM for Effective Education" is written in response to rising concern for the improvement of quality education - especially in mathematics and science - provided to all students. The contributors take a systematic view of the subject, beginning with a cross-national analysis of teacher qualifications and the achievement gap that spans 50 countries. The content of the book is organized in sections describing education around the globe: North and South America, Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia. Individual chapters offer close-up analysis of efforts to close achievement gaps in the U.S. and Canada, Mexico, England, Turkey, China, South Africa and Australia among many others.The contributors provide information on the achievement gap in mathematics and science, review current research, and present strategies for fostering improvement and raising performance with a focus on school-related variables that adversely affect educational outcomes among poor and minority students. The authors of the various chapters looked at how students' data correlated with classroom practices, teacher instruction and academic programming, as part of their efforts to measure student growth. Qualitative and quantitative data are provided to provide evidence not only of the problem, but also for the solution. The book concludes with a chapter on promoting equality and equity to shrink the achievement gap worldwide."

This book explores art practice and learning as processes that break new ground, through which new perceptions of self and world emerge. Examining art practice in educational settings where emphasis is placed upon a pragmatics of the 'suddenly possible', Atkinson looks at the issues of ethics, aesthetics, and politics of learning and teaching. These learning encounters drive students beyond the security of established patterns of learning into new and modified modes of thinking, feeling, seeing, and making.

The best way to teach democracy has been the subject of an ongoing debate for 2,500 years. Unlike most books about teaching democracy, this one spends more time on how to teach democracy than the what and why of teaching democracy. It punctures the irony of teaching democracy by lectures and superior teachers. In its place, this book provides a variety of illustrations for the teaching of democracy in an experiential and egalitarian fashion. The introduction presents a theoretical and analytical framework of democracy and democratic pedagogy. The six chapters cover topics such as structuring a democratic classroom; democratic practices that empower students; problem solving and community service that make the classroom a laboratory for democracy; and university-based programs of democratic alternatives that serve the community. The volume's treatment of community organization, students as collaborators, personal empowerment, the community of need and response, and the democratic organization expresses its preference for direct democratic participation.

Chapters in this book recognize the more than forty years of sustained and distinguished lifetime achievement in mathematics education research and development of Jeremy Kilpatrick. Including contributions from a variety of skilled mathematics educators, this text honors Jeremy Kilpatrick, reflecting on his groundbreaking papers, book chapters, and books - many of which are now standard references in the literature - on mathematical problem solving, the history of mathematics education, mathematical ability and proficiency, curriculum change and its history, global perspectives on mathematics education, and mathematics assessment. Many chapters also offer substantial contributions of their own on important themes, including mathematical problem solving, mathematics curriculum, the role of theory in mathematics education, the democratization of mathematics, and international perspectives on the professional field of mathematics education.

Teach fifth grade students close reading strategies that strengthen their fluency and comprehension skills! Students will read and analyze various types of texts to get the most out of the rich content. Their reading skills will improve as they answer text-dependent questions, compare and contrast texts, and learn to use close reading strategies on their own! The lessons are designed to make close reading strategies accessible, interactive, grade appropriate, and fun. The lesson plans are easy to follow, and offer a practical model built on research-based comprehension and fluency strategies.

Descriptive and evaluative annotations of more than 1,000 books and articles in religious education and related fields are featured in this guide. Since religious education draws necessary guidance from other disciplines, pertinent literature is canvassed from theology, philosophy, and history of education; behavioral studies of religion and education; and multidisciplinary treatments. Special care has been taken to include materials that represent the interfaith and international aspects of the field. A bibliographical essay that interprets and evaluates positions and trends is included in each category. A resource for scholars, students, historians, and researchers.

Educational theory is explored as it has influenced and provided insights for religious education. The vast literature in the theory and practice of religious education is dealt with in several categories. The section on theory explores basic issues, important positions, and major figures. The section on administration deals with planning, organization, management, and supervision. Program, curriculum, and method are considered together because they so often overlap in the literature. Since religion is a persistent concern in schools and in institutions of higher education, special sections are devoted to the issues involved and the proposals put forward. A final section covers reference works.

Diversity in Information Technology Education: Issues and Controversies sheds light on the status of diversity in the field of IT education. It identifies a wide range of problems that educators face on a daily basis, and gives practical, applicable solutions, mainly by showcasing successful and replicable examples. The chapters in ""Diversity in Information Technology Education: Issues and Controversies"" present research and introspection on race, gender, national origin, disability and other diversity categories. The examples, success stories from retention efforts, and strategies in assessment that account for diversity, and all supplement the topics with practical examples. If an instructor is planning on infusing diversity topics into the curriculum, this book contains pertinent information on how to identify problems and face issues.

American science education is in trouble. As the United States continues to lag behind other nations in science achievement, the question is asked: how can we better get our students excited and inspired by science? This is the science teacher's duty. The irony of the education profession is that some of the most important aspects of it are the hardest to measure and replicate. The things that matter most can be the hardest to quantify. Some teachers can know the different learning styles, intelligences, and brain preferences of their students. They can know best practices of how to deliver instruction. They can do all these things and more, but still not convey imagination and passion for science to their students. But some science teachers do inspire. These special teachers seem to possess something the others don't, but what is it? Exceptional science teachers make us feel better about ourselves through their teaching of science, and bring us to a higher quality of life as a result, while some science teachers can be the leading researchers in their fields, yet leave us flat. What is the recipe for this unique, special teacher? And why is it so hard to explain and describe? The objective of this book is to uncover these aspects of teaching that are so hard to measure and quantify. This is achieved through interviewing people who are either current or retired teachers, or who were positively affected by a teacher, and also through case studies of exceptional teachers in order to quantify and explain the exact traits and personality quirks of these exceptional people. The contribution to the field of education this book hopes to achieve is the examination of the question; why do some teachers have that "X" factor, what, exactly is it, and how can we all have it?

Teaching with primary sources can be overwhelming to teachers who have minimal time to teach social studies. Turn your classroom into a primary source learning environment with this easy-to-use resource that has everything you need to incorporate primary sources into today s classrooms. Primary sources provide firsthand accounts of history that will capture students curiosity about the past. Students who observe, reflect on, and question primary sources understand history at a deeper level than students who only learn about social studies through textbooks. With more than 100 digital primary sources, this book by Kathleen Vest delves deeply into a wide variety of primary sources and details how they can be used in any K 12 classroom. Model lessons for three grade ranges (K 3, 4 8, 9 12) reduce teacher prep time. With fun and engaging activities and a chapter devoted to strategies for using social media posts as primary sources in the classroom, this resource is essential for today s social studies classrooms.

180 Days of Social Studies is a fun and effective daily practice workbook designed to help students build social studies content knowledge. This easy-to-use fourth grade workbook is great for at-home learning or in the classroom. The engaging standards-based activities cover grade-level skills with easy to follow instructions and an answer key to quickly assess student understanding. Each week students explore a new topic focusing on one of the four social studies disciplines: history, civics, geography, and economics. Watch student s confidence soar as they build analytic skills with these quick independent learning activities.Parents appreciate the teacher-approved activity books that keep their child engaged and learning. Great for homeschooling, to reinforce learning at school, or prevent learning loss over summer.Teachers rely on the daily practice workbooks to save them valuable time. The ready to implement activities are perfect for daily morning review or homework. The activities can also be used for intervention skill building to address learning gaps. Supports the C3 Framework and aligns to the NCSS curriculum standards.

This edited volume of papers from the twenty first International Conference on Chemical Education attests to our rapidly changing understanding of the chemistry itself as well as to the potentially enormous material changes in how it might be taught in the future. Covering the full range of appropriate topics, the book features work exploring themes as various as e-learning and innovations in instruction, and micro-scale lab chemistry. In sum, the 29 articles published in these pages focus the reader's attention on ways to raise the quality of chemistry teaching and learning, promoting the public understanding of chemistry, deploying innovative technology in pedagogy practice and research, and the value of chemistry as a tool for highlighting sustainability issues in the global community. Thus the ambitious dual aim achieved in these pages is on the one hand to foster improvements in the leaching and communication of chemistry-whether to students or the public, and secondly to promote advances in our broader understanding of the subject that will have positive knock-on effects on the world's citizens and environment. In doing so, the book addresses (as did the conference) the neglect suffered in the chemistry classroom by issues connected to globalization, even as it outlines ways to bring the subject alive in the classroom through the use of innovative technologies.

This book explores poetry and pedagogy in practice across the lifespan. Poetry is directly linked to improved literacy, creativity, personal development, emotional intelligence, complex analytical thinking and social interaction: all skills that are crucial in contemporary educational systems. However, a narrow focus on STEM subjects at the expense of the humanities has led educators to deprioritize poetry and to overlook its interdisciplinary, multi-modal potential. The editors and contributors argue that poetry is not a luxury, but a way to stimulate linguistic experiences that are formally rich and cognitively challenging. To learn through poetry is not just to access information differently, but also to forge new and different connections that can serve as reflective tools for lifelong learning. This interdisciplinary book will be of value to teachers and students of poetry, as well as scholars interested in literacy across the disciplines.

John Dewey wrote in multiple places that education should be an experience of the content and processes of life itself. Too often, social studies is taught in a way that tells students about real-life, but fails to engage them in the process of life for which Dewey advocated. The core purpose of simulations is to reflect the processes, events, and phenomena expressed in a variety of real-life domains. They engage students in these reflections of real life meaningfully, as active agents who have the power to make decisions that impact the direction of events and that lead to both intended and unintended consequences. Because of the nature of simulations, students who participate in them are able to build their capacities to think in complex and critical ways. Today, despite the growing evidence that simulations have an important role to play in the teaching of social studies, they remain an underutilized and undervalued approach to the discipline. One of the key obstacles to their widespread adoption is the limited availability of training resources available to social studies teachers. Teachers need support to develop a new vision of social studies teaching and learning coupled with practical guidance necessary to implement simulations effectively. This volume provides teachers with both. When teachers are able to weave simulations effectively into the fabric of social studies teaching and learning, they help to promote social studies experiences that are both powerful and purposeful. They offer students an experience of the discipline that is, indeed, More Like Life Itself.

This edited collection explores the use of Exploratory Practice (EP) by language teachers in classrooms. Written by practitioners, the chapters showcase unique examples of each principle of EP, with topics ranging from mentoring practitioner researchers, to teaching and learning in EAP, and investigating curriculum development in language teaching programs. The book provides example EP studies and gives voice to practitioners' experiences of the challenges they experienced as well as the benefits. Examples include tackling intercultural communication in linguistically and culturally diverse classrooms; pedagogy and curriculum design in language teaching; explorations of continuing professional development in language education. In doing so, it offers tools that can be transferred to other classroom contexts and used to aid teacher development. The concluding chapter highlights critical aspects of Exploratory Practice which emerge in the studies and examines how practitioners advanced their understandings. This book will appeal to those working in Applied Linguistics, TESOL research, as well as language teachers and teacher educators.

Dialogue as a Means of Collective Communication offers a cross-disciplinary approach to examining dialogue as a communicative medium. Presented in five parts, the book takes the reader on a journey of exploring the power and potential of dialogue as a means for communication. In particular, this volume comes at a time when the global society's attention has been directed to creating more productive conversations in the name of world peace and harmony. It provides a unique new work on dialogue that brings the reader into a "dialogue with dialogue," offering an opportunity to understand the communicative potential of dialogue.
In the book, readers are introduced to five sections: Section I examines the historical and cultural perspectives of conversation. This examination helps to create a foundation for a deeper study of the emergent and salient aspects of conversation as it relates to cultural creativity and human systems design. Sections II offers the reader an examination of dialogue through different philosophical and theoretical perspectives as well as methodological ideas related to conversation. Section III explores different modalities of conversation and the application of design conversation within and across various types of design settings and human experiences. Section IV examines the field of practice as related to use of different forms of conversation. Here various authors will share their different approaches to conversation and their reflections and insights in using conversation in a variety of settings. Concluding the book, Section V reflectively examines the authors' contributions to the book and provides the reader with a focus on the future.

180 Days of Social Studies is a fun and effective daily practice workbook designed to help students build social studies content knowledge. This easy-to-use fifth grade workbook is great for at-home learning or in the classroom. The engaging standards-based activities cover grade-level skills with easy to follow instructions and an answer key to quickly assess student understanding. Each week students explore a new topic focusing on one of the four social studies disciplines: history, civics, geography, and economics. Watch student s confidence soar as they build analytic skills with these quick independent learning activities.Parents appreciate the teacher-approved activity books that keep their child engaged and learning. Great for homeschooling, to reinforce learning at school, or prevent learning loss over summer.Teachers rely on the daily practice workbooks to save them valuable time. The ready to implement activities are perfect for daily morning review or homework. The activities can also be used for intervention skill building to address learning gaps. Supports the C3 Framework and aligns to the NCSS curriculum standards.

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.