Despite the fact that publishers and policy-makers have had increasing influence over classrooms, it is the teacher who must make decisions on a minute-by-minute basis about what will help specific students learn. Similarly, local administrators must make key decisions at the school and district level that will best serve particular communities of teachers, students, and parents. Action research offers educators and other stakeholders a systematic way to research and reflect on specific students, classrooms, schools, and communities in order to solve local problems and improve local conditions. This book offers an overview of various definitions and perspectives on action research without prescribing any single approach. Instead, key questions are explored: Who conducts action research? Why? How? Possible answers sketch the many types of possible projects, ranging from an individual teacher trying to improve the experience of a particular student to a group of educators and community members striving to improve local socioeconomic conditions. The Action Research Primer presents an accessible but comprehensive introduction to the field, providing a basic compass and map for the interested practitioner. Chapters include a brief historical overview, an introduction to competing research paradigms, discussion of key issues that inform project design, a serviceable guide to process, and an extensive list of resources pointing to more detail on the many categories, communities, and publication outlets of action research.

For teachers and teacher educators striving to address a growing number of state mandates relating to the education of English language learners (ELLs), Educating English Language Learners in an Inclusive Environment, Second Edition provides a reader-friendly survey of key topics, including: legal and professional imperatives, cultural concerns, linguistics, literacy instruction, assessment, policy, and politics. This overview will be useful to in-service teachers with little or no preparation for working with ELLs but who nevertheless face legislative demands to teach both academic content and English. It will also be useful to teacher educators trying to squeeze preparation for working with ELLs into already overflowing teacher preparation programs. Though many try, no one text can provide exhaustive information; there is simply too much to learn. This second edition instead provides readers with a road map to critical topics and to specific resources they can use independently to learn more, as they will surely need to do.

A survey of the evolution of student rights, from children as property to free speech, prayer in the classroom, compulsory flag salutes, school searches, drug testing, and the right to equal education. This fascinating survey provides a comprehensive introduction to student rights, tracing the legal status of children as their father's property to their current status as citizens entitled to constitutional rights. Written by Patricia Hinchey, Student Rights: A Reference Handbook chronicles the landmark legislation and court decisions that have enabled the gradual transformation of students' rights. This book explains issues surrounding mandatory education and education as a property right, examines various inequities such as the segregation of minority students, and discusses bilingualism (notably the Ebonics, or Black English, controversy in Oakland, California). It describes the persistent tension regarding religion and education, and explores current controversies such as the widespread use of strip searches in schools by nonuniformed officials. Provides a chronology of selected legislation and Supreme Court cases from the Bill of Rights in 1791 to the 2000 ruling in Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe, which struck down a Texas high school policy allowing student-led prayers at football games Includes a diverse directory of organizations and Internet resources from the ACLU and Christian Coalition of America to the Internet Free Expression Alliance and the official Teen Rights home page

Many American educators are all too familiar with disengaged students, disenfranchised teachers, sanitized and irrelevant curricula, inadequate support for the neediest schools and students, and the tyranny of standardizing testing. This text invites teachers and would-be teachers unhappy with such conditions to consider becoming critical educators - professionals dedicated to creating schools that genuinely provide equal opportunity for all children. Assuming little or no background in critical theory, chapters address several essential questions to help readers develop the understanding and resolve necessary to become change agents. Why do critical theorists say that education is always political? How do traditional and critical agendas for schools differ? Which agenda benefits whose children? What classroom and policy changes does critical practice require? What risks must change agents accept? Resources point readers toward opportunities to deepen their understanding beyond the limits of these pages.

Since its introduction in 1998, Finding Freedom in the Classroom has impacted countless educators and preservice teachers by providing provocative questions about taken-for-granted educational routines as well as an alternative, imaginative view of what classrooms might become. This revised edition brings the conversation to the present day with contemporary examples and references to the best current thinking and writing on relevant issues. By defining terms in everyday language and demonstrating their relevance to everyday life in and out of the classroom, the book demystifies such formidable concepts as hegemony, epistemology, and praxis for readers with little or no background in educational philosophy. Each chapter in this edition ends with several thought-provoking discussion questions and an annotated list of suggestions for further reading, which together provide a sturdy bridge between the theoretical and the practical. Finding Freedom in the Classroom can help teachers both imagine and build new classroom worlds, empowering students and teachers alike to actively shape - rather than passively accept - their fates.

Some hundred years after John Dewey worked to illuminate what it means to educate and how public education serves as the bedrock of democracy, his seminal Democracy and Education speaks urgently not only to critical contemporary educational issues but to contemporary political issues as well. As mania for testing forces a steadily narrowing curriculum, Dewey explains why democracy cannot “flourish” if “the chief influences in selecting subject matter of instruction are utilitarian ends narrowly conceived for the masses.” As such utilitarian subject matter is increasingly placed online, isolating individual students and their electronic screens, he insists that education happens not through direct instruction but “indirectly by means of the environment” where members of a community engage in meaningful tasks. As the American population appears increasingly subject to rhetorical manipulation and ideological extremism, Dewey imagines the possibility of education cultivating “habits of mind which secure social changes without introducing disorder.” Insightful and inspiring, Dewey’s classic reintroduces readers to educational and political possibilities hard to remember as political and corporate forces to work reshape American public schools in the service of global profit rather than democratic life. Through Myers Education Press’s Timely Classics in Education, readers are offered the opportunity to return to the original works of giants whose influence on education have persisted through the years. Critical introductions to each work offer information on the context of the original work as well as insights into current relevance. For readers unfamiliar with each text, the introductions provide entrée to the work; for experienced readers, the series offers an opportunity to return to original works untainted by the distortions of decades of interpretation. Unlike poorly produced facsimile editions, Timely Classics are high-quality products. They can be adopted for use in many types of education classes.