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.

"Professor, mentor, author, disability advocate, seminar leader around the world-Dr. David Anderson corralled his many talents and worldwide experiences to author this important book. The volume should prove invaluable to Christians concerned about disabilities, especially teachers. Without flinching, Dr. Anderson tackles the tough issues: How could a good and benevolent God permit disabled children? Are disabilities the result of sin? How does a Christian teacher of the disabled differ from secular counterparts? Especially helpful is his emphasis on the reflective teacher integrating faith and learning. Certainly this is a volume that belongs on the bookshelves of anyone concerned with disabilities." -Steven A. Kaatz PhD, Graduate Programs in Special Education, Bethel University, St. Paul, Minnesota "I have had the privilege of traveling with Dr. Anderson as he has taught the concepts addressed in this book to educators, pastors, and parents in a variety of countries. I've seen the material come alive as leaders discover the importance of thinking Christianly about disability. This book has the potential of impacting all readers in similar ways. Dr. Anderson challenges all of us to come to grips with a biblical worldview and then to live it out within our spheres of influence. Toward a Theology of Special Education thus encourages all readers to think Christianly about disability. Such thinking will then motivate us to care with God's care and to serve with God's concern for justice and compassion." -Dr. Richard Schoenert, pastor emeritus, Calvary Church, Roseville, Minnesota

This book is designed to augment current educational administration preparation programs. It provides information absent from the textbooks most widely used in the preparation of general education administrators. It addresses both the knowledge base and the attitudinal perspective needed by school administrators to serve students with special education needs. Topics covered include: legal issues, the nature of diverse students, curriculum considerations, resource utilization, administration of programs and services, collaboration-based leadership, and a parental perspective on teaming. Case studies related to issues raised in chapters provide opportunity for problem solving and reflective thinking.

The book may be used as a resource throughout the educational administration preparation program. Faculty using this book need not be special education experts. This work provides an initial level of knowledge and awareness of special education issues and includes references for more in-depth investigations. Educational administration faculty who align the various chapters and case studies with course objectives and topics covered in their educational administration preparation program will be able to maximize the book's utility. The book will stimulate reasoned discussion among prospective school administrators in graduate level preparation programs.

Teacher effectiveness and licensure in the United States continue to be scrutinized at the state and national levels. At present, 40 states plus the District of Columbia have adopted edTPA to inform initial teacher licensure and/or certification decisions (American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, n.d.). edTPA is designed to measure novice teachers' readiness to teach their content area, with a focus on student learning and principles from research and theory (SCALE, 2015). Composed of planning, instruction, and assessment tasks, edTPA portfolios seek to provide evidence of teacher candidate readiness in three areas: (1) intended teaching, (2) enacted teaching, and (3) the impact of teaching on student learning. Specifically, edTPA measures teacher candidates' ability to: develop knowledge of subject matter, content standards, and subject-specific pedagogy develop and apply knowledge of varied students' needs consider research and theory about how students learn reflect on and analyze evidence of the effects of instruction on student learning (p. 1) Teacher candidates create extensive portfolios that include written commentaries explaining each task and video excerpts of a recorded teaching event. Teacher candidates must submit evidence to show their teaching prowess and pay $300, at present, to Pearson Education for their portfolio to be evaluated by external reviewers. In this volume, researchers share their experiences working with edTPA in three areas of language learning: English Language Arts, English to Speakers of Other Languages, and World Languages. The volume provides empirical research in the areas of multicultural perspectives, pedagogical practices, and edTPA (in)compatibility. Findings are of interest to multiple stakeholders such as teacher candidates, mentor teachers, teacher preparation faculty members and program coordinators, and administrators.

Labeled A Nation at Risk, Americans are urgently seeking reform in their public school systems. While many promising programs are being developed, they have not yet been validated. The national conference Making Schools Work for Underachieving Minority Students shared the best of what is presently known and deliberated on the implications for research, policy, and practice. Sponsored by CRESST (Center for Research on Evaluation Standards and Student Testing), The National Urban League, and the National Council of LaRaza, the conference was financed by the U.S. Department of Education. Closely following the structure of the conference, this volume's contributors examine education's current status. They then investigate potentially promising approaches to specific problem areas. Contributors treat issues of evaluation and testing, and conclude by addressing the potential of collaborative efforts. Responding to a major challenge, community groups and organizations throughout the country are seeking answers to the problem of underachieving minority students. This volume builds on these shared interests and is a first step toward an intervention process. Topics covered include: creating effective instructional programs; reducing the dropout rate; preparing students for secondary and postsecondary success; helping limited English proficient students; and improving teacher quality. The volume's contributors hope to promote dialogue on promising practices, foster collaboration, identify critical R & D needs and collaborative arrangements, and identify testing and evaluation issues for subsequent inquiry.

The monograph Promising Practices for Teachers to Engage Families of English Language Learners provides practical activities, communication skills, events, resources, and policies to work with families who are English language learners. This book is primarily targeted toward preservice and novice teachers who are searching for ways to connect with families from diverse cultures and varying proficiency levels in English. However, the contents contain an array of practices that are useful for teachers at all levels, parents, other educator groups, and administrators.

In the summer of 1970, the members of the New Orleans Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals understood clearly the realities of race in the South. Houston, Texas, like other Southern cities, had made haste toward racial school desegregation as slowly as the White Southern Federal courts would allow. When the High School of Performing and Visual Arts opened its doors in Houston a year later, a new superintendent and liberal-dominated Board of Education wished to demonstrate the positive potential of a voluntarily desegregated student body. HSPVA was the first United States public school for the arts specifically used for racial desegregation purposes, the prototype for the first public urban magnet program of desegregation used to replace a standing court order, and a continuing prototype for other public magnet schools for the arts across the United States. Talent Knows No Color is a 35-year history of HSPVA, exemplary in both arts and academics, which chronicles multi-perspective participant experiences within the context of ever-changing district education policies and demographics. Ten years of school system and HSPVA archival research, examination of local newspapers, and oral history interviews allow a rich narrative unusual among the already limited number of scholarly histories of individual public schools. It is the description and analysis of everyday occurrences that assist the reader in understanding what Series Editor O. L. Davis, Jr. refers to as "the continuing, likely never ending, practical development of one particular high school and its curriculum."

Pupils who survive multiple traumatic experiences of loss, trauma, abuse and neglect can easily be misunderstood in our schools, despite our good intentions. Such children often underachieve, at worst becoming excluded from the very place that could offer them an opportunity for "second chance learning" and for reaching their potential. These children do not respond well or consistently to behavioural modification techniques, nor are they able to thrive in a system largely created for those from a "good-enough" background. Louise Bomber's innovative and easy to use strategies provide teachers and teaching assistants with new perspectives, practical tools and the confidence for supporting these children. Her work is based on the latest research from child development and Attachment theory (Bowlby), as well as many years of solid practical experience as a teacher-therapist working within education and social services with children, families and schools. Contents include: providing an additional attachment figure in schools, transitions during the school day, permanency and constancy, regulating arousal levels, wondering aloud, lowering the effects of shame, creating home/school partnerships, working with the transition from primary to secondary phase, and more.

In "Teaching Equality," Adam Fairclough provides an overview of the enormous contributions made by African American teachers to the black freedom movement in the United States. Beginning with the close of the Civil War, when "the efforts of the slave regime to prevent black literacy meant that blacks . . . associated education with liberation," Fairclough explores the development of educational ideals in the black community up through the years of the civil rights movement. He traces black educators' connection to the white community and examines the difficult compromises they had to make in order to secure schools and funding. Teachers did not, he argues, sell out the black community but instead instilled hope and commitment to equality in the minds of their pupils. Defining the term teacher broadly to include any person who taught students, whether in a backwoods cabin or the brick halls of a university, Fairclough illustrates the multifaceted responsibilities of individuals who were community leaders and frontline activists as well as conveyors of knowledge. He reveals the complicated lives of these educators who, in the face of a prejudice-based social order and a history of oppression, sustained and inspired the minds and hearts of generations of black Americans.

This book presents a unique exploration of common myths about autism by examining these myths through the perspectives of autistic individuals. Examining the history of attitudes and beliefs about autism and autistic people, this book highlights the ways that these beliefs are continuing to impact autistic individuals and their families, and offers insights as to how viewing these myths from an autistic perspective can facilitate the transformation of these myths into a more positive direction. From 'savant syndrome' to the conception that people with autism lack empathy, each chapter examines a different social myth - tracing its origins, highlighting the implications it has had for autistic individuals and their families, debunking misconceptions and reconstructing the myth with recommendations for current and future practice. By offering an alternative view of autistic individuals as competent and capable of constructing their own futures, this book offers researchers, practitioners, individuals and families a deeper, more accurate, more comprehensive understanding of prevalent views about the abilities of autistic individuals as well as practical ways to re-shape these into more proactive and supportive practices.

This collected volume examines the multifaceted contexts and experiences of Chinese students, teachers and scholars in Australia, Denmark, France, Japan, the UK and the US. It can serve both as an introduction to Chinese people's mobility and migration in Higher Education and as a thorough review for more knowledgeable readers.

The heart of this study is a detailed narrative account of a teacher in an inner-city school. For two years, the author collaborated with an immigrant teacher from the Caribbean, studying her practice from three perspectives: place--the community and school landscape; temporality--the history of the school and current programs; and interaction--the teacher's relationship with the school, parents, and students. Current ways of examining multicultural issues focus on the analysis of broad factors affecting large groups of people. In the process, the individual is subsumed within catagories and the subtle nuances of experiences are lost. The narrative approach outlined in the book offers a new perspective on multiculturalism and research into multicultural education, one the author terms narrative multiculturalism.

Narrative multiculturalism begins with experience as it is shaped by the contexts in which people live and work. It is also shaped by broader societal and global forces. In this approach, multiculturalism is viewed as a fluid process, continually evolving, changing, and transforming. Narrative multiculturalism develops an in-depth understanding of individual experiences and thereby creates an alternate perspective on multiculturalism.

Rarely do we find books in educational research that are both thick in context and rich in theory. Usually books emphasize one over the other. Authors that engage in thick descriptions tend to fall short of explaining what larger theoretical issue their case stands for. Vice versa, authors who make a case for a particular theory do not always describe their case in sufficient detail. From Sites to Occupation to Symbols of Multiculturalism is a remarkable exception. The book is a major break-through in case study methodology, multiculturalism and policy borrowing/lending research. The book investigates a puzzle: how is it that one and the same system, the system of separate schooling for Latvian and Russian speakers, is seen as a site of occupation during one period (1987-1990) and as a symbol of multiculturalism in the next (1991-1999)? The system has stayed in place, but the meaning attached to it has been completely inverted. Is cultural change without structural change possible? Does it mean that the dual school system has become anachronistic, and will eventually disappear in light of the cultural changes of the past decade? The book is the story of a great metamorphosis of one and the same system of separate schooling that, at first unbelievable, gradually makes sense.

The editors and their contributors explore the world from a pluralistic perspective. There are several models proposed and used by authors that could serve as a framework for multicultural and diversity programs in both education and the workplace. The implementation of programs which target the workplace and specific strategies for success are identified. The international implications of globalization and the need for international as well as "at home" experiences are addressed by several authors. Regional research-based programs and strategies, in particular academic disciplines to promote pluralism, are explored from the university perspective. These models, strategies, and research findings should prove to be most useful for individuals seeking to implement programs to promote pluralism.

In education, there is an aim to construct an authentic framework of educational paradigms in order to provide a sharing knowledge system as a result of re-examining contemporary trends, educational currents, case studies from the classrooms, and educational psychology directions. It is an intellectual need of meta-comprehension and new educational approaches based on educational psychology outcomes. Analyzing Paradigms Used in Education and Educational Psychology is a critical scholarly book that discusses sophisticated paradigms from academic narratives and educational realities. Featuring a range of topics such as classroom management, lifelong education, and theology, this book is essential for researchers, teachers, educational psychologists, education professionals, administrators, academicians, practitioners, and students.

An Adventure with Autism and Social Communication Difficulties is an exciting storybook and guidebook pair, designed to help readers understand the impact of social communication challenges on everyday life for children and young people. The Man-Eating Sofa: People often say that 'school is the best time of your life', but for Lara, school is loud and confusing. She much prefers watching James Bond films or building furniture in her dad's workshop. When the teachers in Lara's new school realise that she is autistic, they are able to help with strategies to make school more tolerable for her. An exciting and engaging story for children aged 8-12. This book explores some of the challenges faced by students who find social communication, sensory processing and regulation difficult. Supporting Autism and Social Communication Difficulties in Mainstream Schools: Created to help parents, teachers and practitioners support young people who find social communication challenging, this guidebook explores the educational, social and psychological impact of autism and social communication and interaction difficulties, as well as offering strategies to help educators recognise and support these issues in the school environment.

This timely and relevant book focuses on the societal impact of the pandemic on children and the educational, social and psychological services that function to support them. It acknowledges the constant change and adaptation required in real time and provides the basis for a start to the discussion about the effects of COVID-19 on families and everyone involved with 'school life'. Essays include reflections on the impact of lockdown on children and the lessons to be learned, with contributions from children, parents, teachers, educational psychologists and social workers in the UK and worldwide.

The State of Developmental Education is the first book to provide a thorough, comparative picture of how developmental education is carried out at higher education institutions and investigate how different state-level policies and priorities change the availability, types, and quality of developmental education available.

The first reference book written for the sight-impaired student and those who serve their needs, "A Field Guide for the Sight-Impaired Reader" explains how to locate, obtain, and integrate all forms of aid to construct a world of reading equal to that of the fully sighted reader. It profiles the major blind service organizations; explores specialized formats such as Braille, large print, and electronic texts; and shows what technology readers require and where to find it. It provides comprehensive lists of audio and large print publishers, a state-by-state listing of resource agencies for the blind, and valuable internet resources to assist students and their teachers and librarians in obtaining the texts they need to succeed in both academic and pleasure reading.

Beginning with thorough coverage of the national organizations in place for visually handicapped readers and how they can assist both students and librarians, "A Field Guide for the Sight-Impaired Reader" outlines the types of technology available to readers and the companies that manufacture it. Available software, braille resources, large print resources, and internet web sites are all discussed in detail, with contact information. Also included are reading strategies for a variety of academic subject areas, a detailed listing of state resources with addresses, phone numbers, and web sites, an exhaustive list of audio publishers, and a list of books compiled from recommended reading lists such as the American Library Association's Outstanding Books for the College Bound. A discussion of the Americans with Disabilities Act and its impact on libraries is provided, as well as funding sources for librarians who want to provide more materials and technology for their sight-impaired patrons than their budgets might allow. With the encouragement and resources provided here, sight-impaired students who felt the world of reading was closed off to them can now create a reading life as rich as that of any fully sighted student.