Many teachers in public schools find themselves increasingly unsure of what the law expects of them in the classroom. The general public and government regulators are holding them to higher and stricter standards of conduct, yet their educational preparation has not kept up with the changing environment. Knowing Where to Draw the Line: Ethical and Legal Standards for Best Classroom Practice is an ideal guide for teacher education programs, offering a comprehensive account of the legal information that will arm teachers for legal survival in the classroom. Organized for both easy reference and thorough examination, this book instructs teachers on how to deal with students, parents, administrators, and local communities, covering an exhaustive list of legal issues, including sexual harassment, discipline, contract negotiations, liability, and medical concerns. It also highlights a number of court cases and uses hypothetical cases to further aid teachers in understanding these vital concerns.

Albert Bandura's introduction of social cognitive theory moved the field of social psychology from viewing people as primarily reacting to events to viewing people as being active agents who interpret events and plan their future behaviours. Educators and psychologists have become so familiar with this view that we often lose sight of the ground-breaking nature of his contributions. Since his introduction of social cognitive theory, self-efficacy has become a central construct in research on human learning, motivation, and accomplishment in many domains. In this book, the authors present self-efficacy research in a wide range of domains, including high school mathematics and science, an undergraduate neuroscience research program, cultural intelligence education, computer self-efficacy, courtroom self-efficacy, and smoking cessation self-efficacy.