Education

Understanding Developmental Disorders of Auditory Processing, Language and Literacy Across Languages Auditory processing disorders, reading and writing disorders, language disorders, and other related disorders - these disorders seem distinct among one another from historical and professional practice perspectives but more and more research suggests that they in fact overlap in many ways including clinical presentations, suspected underlying causes, diagnostic criteria, and re/habilitation strategies.

On January 4-7, 2012, the conference Global Conference on Disorders in Auditory Processing, Literacy, Language & Related Sciences (APLL 2012) was held in The Hong Kong Institute of Education. This was the world’s first platform for interdisciplinary discussions and collaborations on ways we can better serve children who suffer from the above closely related disorders through future research. Due to the huge success of APLL2012, to promote continuous discussions of the conference theme, the conference organizing committee decided to invite scholars, scientists, and practitioners to contribute their work to the eleventh volume in the Research on Sociocultural Influences on Motivation and Learning research monograph series. This volume is focused on issues in typical and disordered developments in auditory processing, literacy, and language across different cultural and linguistic contexts in Asia, Europe and North America. The contributors of this volume offer insightful theoretical and practical ideas to shape future directions in research, assessment, intervention, and education. This is an intriguing and inspiring volume for students, researchers, and practitioners in the fields of speech-language pathology, audiology, developmental psychology, educational psychology, neuropsychology, and other related disciplines.

By bringing in respective leaders in the fields, we hope that this book will open new windows to promote advancements in related research initiatives, continuing cross disciplinary discussions and collaborations on ways that we can better service individuals suffer from these closely related disorders through future research.

A study of successful reading instruction. The articles cover topics such as the use of computer technology for reading instruction, and engagement and motivation in reading instruction. They are divided into two sections: "Reading Research and Assessment" and "Reading Instruction and Practice".

This is the second book in the series Transformative Pedagogies for Teacher Education. Like the first book in the series it is geared towards practitioners in the field of teacher education. This second book focuses on action, agency and dialogue. It features chapters by a collection of teacher educators, researchers, teacher advocates and practitioners drawing on their research and experiences with teacher candidates to explore critical issues in teacher education.

The book will be useful to teacher educators working with teacher candidates in different contexts, particularly diverse contexts. Given demographic shifts and the need for educators to respond to growing diversity in schools, educators will find valuable strategies in Transformative Pedagogies in Teacher Education: Critical Action, Agency and Dialogue in Teaching and Learning Contexts they can implement in their own practice. In addition to valuable strategies, authors explore different approaches and perspectives in teacher education in the preparation of teacher candidates for a changing world. Critical notions of education are posited from different perspectives and locations.

This book will be useful for schools, school boards and districts engaging in ongoing professional development of teachers. It will also be of value to school leaders and aspiring leaders in principal preparation programs as working with new teachers and teacher educators is an integral part of their role.

Catholic elementary school principals, speaking out in a major nationwide survey, report faithful commitments alongside acute challenges in the operation of their schools, and they identify financial management, marketing, Catholic identity, enrollment management and long-range planning as their schools’ top five areas of need.

The study, completed by the University of Notre Dame’s Alliance for Catholic Education and its Mary Ann Remick Leadership Program, is a rare, comprehensive glimpse of these principals’ views on what they need in order to do their jobs better and how they describe the state of Catholic education today. “It is difficult to read the responses of Catholic school principals in this study and not sense both their commitment to this ministry and the overwhelming responsibilities that are associated with it,” say the authors of “Leadership Speaks: A National Survey of Catholic Primary School Principals.” They paint a picture of many principals as faith-filled individuals confronting unusually challenging expectations, worthy of new forms of support, such as their own national association.

The study provides enormous amounts of data describing today’s Catholic school principals and outlining their views, and the authors conclude with four recommendations:

1.) Develop “new models of governance for Catholic elementary schools” that shift the panoply of principal responsibilities “into a more manageable and realistic position description.”

2.) “Develop a program of ongoing professional development and renewal for principals” that addresses their needs, both professional and personal.

3.) Organize a national association of Catholic school principals as a means “to give voice to their leadership concerns at every level and to promote advocacy for Catholic schools at the national level.”

4.) “Convene multiple groups of national and international stakeholders to advance the understanding of Catholic schools as instruments of the new evangelization.”

The classroom teacher in the 21st century is no longer a solo practitioner. What can school leaders use to facilitate on-going, job-embedded, intentionally focused professional development that is unique to the collective needs of teacher pairs and teams as they work together? What can teacher preparation supervisors provide to support teacher candidates and cooperating teachers as they plan, teach, and assess student learning in a co-teaching context?

Supervision Modules to Support Educators in Collaborative Teaching is a research-based supervisory handbook designed to promote on-going teacher reflection and development in collaborative teaching contexts. It is a tool for school leaders and teacher preparation supervisors to use for in-service and pre-service teacher development at all grade levels PK-12.

The handbook’s many resources provide practical guidance for meaningful teacher development that is field-based, relevant to daily teacher work, and artfully presented to build collaboration among teachers as they reflect and learn together. Unique to this approach is that school leaders and supervisors learn alongside teachers and teacher candidates as relevant topics are explored. The handbook contains a collection of eighteen interactive, activity-based modules that focus on topical content knowledge and productive teaching practices. Embedded in the modules are pair and team activities that address problem-solving, dimensions of collaborative teaching, communication and collaboration skill development, understanding of diversity, cultural responsiveness, and shared understanding of evidence-based practices.

This resource is easy to use. Once school leaders and supervisors select a module topic to address the needs of a particular pair or team, they are supported with foundational knowledge of the most current research on the topic, discussion questions about the topic, suggestions of productive practices, questions to deepen personal and group understanding, reflective professional growth activities, critical analysis of teaching scenarios, and monitoring, follow-up, and goal setting strategies. Modules can be used in any order and include reproducible materials for pairs and teams to use as they collaborate and grow professionally.

In spite of No Child Left Behind and the support provided by Response To Intervention, significant numbers of students continue to struggle with literacy. This text addresses learning-related needs of individual students in addition to interventions for the challenges they face. Struggling readers represent many different ethnicities, socio-economic levels, languages, and dialects in any combination and possess an even wider variety of social, cultural, motivational, literacy, and real world experiences. Through the presentation of case studies, this book considers these factors and their influence on literacy development and suggests ways to adapt research-based instructional strategies and approaches, as well as classroom practices to address them. It also includes related recommended resources. The text appeals to the concerns of classroom teachers, reading specialists, and faculty in teacher education programs, as well as anyone looking for practical, research-based ways to further the literacy development of individuals who struggle to read.

The purpose of Transforming Schooling for Second Language Learners: Theoretical Insights, Policies, Pedagogies, and Practices is to bring together educational researchers and practitioners who have implemented, documented, or examined policies, pedagogies, and practices in and out of classrooms and in real and virtual contexts that are in some way transforming what we know about the extent to which emergent bilinguals (EBs) learn and achieve in educational settings. In the following chapters, scholars and researchers identify both (1) the current state of schooling for EBs, from their perspective, and (2) the particular ways that policies, pedagogies, and/or practices transform schooling as it currently exists for EBs in discernible ways based on their scholarship and research.

Drawing on current and seminal research in fields including second language acquisition, applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, and educational linguistics, contributing authors draw on complementary theoretical, methodological, and philosophical frameworks that attend to the social, cultural, political, and ideological dimensions of being and becoming bi/multilingual and bi/multiliterate in schools and in the United States. In sum, we are deeply committed to asserting hope, possibility, and potential to discussions and discourses about bi/multilingual students. We value the urgency around improving the conditions, experiences, and circumstances in which they are learning languages and academic content. Our aim is to highlight perspectives, conceptualizations, orientations, and ideologies that disrupt and contest legacies of deficit thinking, linguistic purism, language standardization, and racism and the racialization of ethnolinguistic minorities.

Children begin their literacy journeys from the moment of their birth as they begin to read the world around them. They embark on their journeys as they observe and react to the gestures and voices of their family members, and hear and use the language in which they are immersed to communicate with others. Through their interactions with the sign systems surrounding them, they become socialized into the cultural practices of their communities and construct meaning in their lives. Children’s entrance into formal education, where they begin to read the “word”, further connect them with literacies of other communities, both nationally and globally. Thus, the early years become a critical time to build and support current and future learning where children develop into creative problem solvers, thoughtful communicators and productive leaders and citizens of the next generation.

This volume extends current knowledge of children’s learning by exploring the importance of children’s earliest years within the context of their families and communities and connecting those years with their formal education. Development is viewed through a child’s perezhivanie; a concept by Vygotsky (1933–1934/1994) that expresses the unity of the individual’s biological and cultural development. According to Vygotsky, development does not isolate the individual from her/his social context. Children are social beings from birth who acquire and make meanings of their world through their interactions with their families, friends, childcare providers, religious groups, and other community members. These interactions encompass the way children use language within children’s ecosocial (physical and social worlds) where development occurs. How these ecosocial worlds support each other or collide will impact children’s literacy development.

This unique contribution provides the reader with opportunities to: a) Recognize the importance of literacy practices as cultural and social within the context of the multiple worlds of young children, b) promote a continuity of children’s ecosocial worlds into their formal education through concepts of perezhivanie and resource-based pedagogies, and c) envision an alternative framework for recognizing children’s ecosocial worlds outside of the classroom and integrating aspects of those worlds to involve families in their child’s formal education.

The Curriculum and Pedagogy book series is an enactment of the mission and values espoused by the Curriculum and Pedagogy Group, an international educational organization serving those who share a common faith in democracy and a commitment to public moral leadership in schools and society. Accordingly, the mission of this series is to advance scholarship that engages critical dispositions towards curriculum and instruction, educational empowerment, individual and collectivized agency, and social justice. The purpose of the series is to create and nurture democratic spaces in education, an aspect of educational thought that is frequently lacking in the extant literature, often jettisoned via efforts to de-politicize the study of education. Rather than ignore these conversations, this series offers the capacity for educational renewal and social change through scholarly research, arts-based projects, social action, academic enrichment, and community engagement. Authors will evidence their commitment to the principles of democracy, transparency, agency, multicultural inclusion, ethnic diversity, gender and sexuality equity, economic justice, and international cooperation. Furthermore, these authors will contribute to the development of deeper critical insights into the historical, political, aesthetic, cultural, and institutional subtexts and contexts of curriculum that impact educational practices. Believing that curriculum studies and the ethical conduct that is congruent with such studies must become part of the fabric of public life and classroom practices, this book series brings together prose, poetry, and visual artistry from teachers, professors, graduate students, early childhood leaders, school administrators, curriculum workers and planners, museum and agency directors, curators, artists, and various under-represented groups in projects that interrogate curriculum and pedagogical theories.

Trauma in Adult and Higher Education: Conversations and Critical Reflections invites readers to think deeply about the experiences of trauma they witness in and outside of the classroom, because trauma alters adult learners' experience by disrupting identity, and interfering with memory, relationships and creativity. Through essays, narratives, and cultural critiques, the reader is invited to rethink education as more than upskilling and content mastery; education is a space where dialogue has the potential to unlock an individual’s sense of power and self-mastery that enables them to make sense of violence, tragedy and trauma.

Trauma in Adult and Higher Education: Conversations and Critical Reflections reveals the lived experiences of educators struggling to integrate those who have experienced trauma into their classrooms - whether this is in prison, a yoga class, or higher education. As discourses and programming to support diversity intensifies, it is central that educators acknowledge and respond to the realities of the students before them. Advocates of traumasensitive curriculum acknowledge that trauma shows up as a result of the disproportionate amount of violence and persistent insecurity that specific groups face. Race, gender, sexual orientation, ability, and immigration are all factors that expose individuals to higher levels of potential trauma.

Trauma has changed the conversations about what education is, and how it should happen. These conversations are resulting in new approaches to teaching and learning that address the lived experiences of pain and trauma that our adult learners bring into the classroom, and the workforce. This collection includes a discussion of salient implications and practices for adult and higher education administrators and faculty who desire to create an environment that includes individuals who have experienced trauma, and perhaps prevents the cycle of violence.

Assessment for learning is meant to engage, motivate, and enable students to do better in their learning. However, how students themselves perceive assessments (both high-stakes qualifications and low-stakes monitoring) is not well understood. This volume collects research studies from Europe, North and South America, Asia, and New Zealand that have deliberately focused on how students in primary, secondary, and tertiary education conceive of, experience, understand, and evaluate assessments. Assessment for learning has assumed that formative assessments and classroom practices would be an unqualified success in terms of student learning outcomes. Making use of a variety of qualitatively interpreted focus groups, observations, and interviews and factor-analytic survey methods, the studies collected in this volume raise doubts as to the validity of this formulation. We commend this volume to readers hoping to stimulate their own thinking and research in the area of student assessment. We believe the chapters will challenge researchers, policy makers, teacher educators, and instructors as to how assessment for learning can be implemented.

This Fist Called My Heart: The Peter McLaren Reader, Volume I. Through these gathered and sequentially presented essays, readers will be able to ‘see’ McLaren in the process of his theory construction, over time, without missing his essence of struggling for a just society that promotes the full humanity and liberation of all people. [Here,] we have curated some of the most exemplary essays along the trajectory of Peter McLaren’s long and impactful career. These pieces track and document Peter’s intellectual grow as one of North America’s most important intellectuals and advocates for critical pedagogy; his theorizing of the discursive and the everyday through postmodernist and poststructural lenses; his contributions to the literature and practice of critical multiculturalism; his stirring work on capitalist empire, and valiant struggles to resist it; through to his foundational, long held connection and cutting edge contribution to the field of humanist Marxism

University has changed dramatically over the last decades. From the spirit of Humboldt, that science in itself is the greatest motivator to study and do research, we experience a shift towards neoliberalism. Studying became part of something one needs to do to compete on a competitive job market. Research gets more and more influenced by interests of those financing research funds. Digitalization changed the way people interact in a university setting.

This book shows different views regarding university: from being a student, becoming an alumnus and then maybe a teacher, challenging views on grading and exams, to problematic patriarchal structures and problems with creating a new study program. Students, alumni, researcher, and lecturers were invited to join this volume and give unique insights into (post-) university life.

This volume represents a serious attempt to understand what it is that structures the pedagogical experience. In that attempt there are two main objectives. One is a theoretical interest that involves examining the issue of the subjectivity of the teacher and exploring how intersubjective negotiations shape the production of classroom practice. A second objective is to apply these understandings to the production of mathematical knowledge and to the construction of identities in actual mathematics classrooms. To that end book contains substantial essays that draw on postmodern philosophies of the social to explore theory's relationship with the practice of mathematics pedagogy.

Unpacking Pedagogy takes new ideas seriously and engages readers in theory development. Groundbreaking in content, the book investigates how our thinking about classroom practice in general, and mathematics teaching (and learning), in particular, might be transformed. As a key resource for interrogating and understanding classroom life, the book's sophisticated analyses allow readers to build new knowledge about mathematics pedagogy. In turn, that new knowledge will provide them with the tools to engage more actively in educational criticism and to play a role in educational change.

Studies in School Improvement is the eighth volume in a series on research and theory in school administration dedicated to advancing our understanding of schools through empirical study and theoretical analysis. This selection of readings highlights a number of important factors in the stimulation and implementation of school improvement, including transformational leadership; change perspectives of teachers, principals, and the community; strategies for instructional change; learning environments and school culture; dropout prevention; professionalism; trust relations between the teachers and the board as well as trust between students and teachers; and admission decisions for educational leadership programs. In addition, a number of new, reliable and valid measures are developed and presented for the first time—instruments to assess: 1) change perspectives of the faculty, 2) professionalism of teachers, and 3) trust relations between students and teachers. These tools are valuable aids for both researchers and practitioners in their quest to understand and implement successful school improvement projects.

In the United States, approximately 2.5 million students are diagnosed as having a learning disability and the majority of those children are placed in special education because of an inability to read as expected. As a result of this diagnosis, these children may be placed in special education classrooms - classrooms that are separate from the ‘mainstream’ population. For children with learning disabilities, there is likely no place, other than in school, where a student’s inability to read as expected leads to this separation from his/her peers. Once school is over, these children play alongside the kids in their neighborhoods, participate in sports teams, and attend community activities. This book looks at the impact of being labeled as learning disabled and separated from peers in school through the eyes of Samson, a middle school student described both as learning disabled and a non-reader. This qualitative case study explores how Samson, his family, his teachers and this researcher make sense of special education and the complexities of learning to read as an adolescent.

Throughout this book, there is a contrasting of the laws and procedures designed to guide special education, with the actual experiences of those impacted by these laws and procedures. Through the three years that Samson was in middle school, this book investigates his perspective on his classes, his interpretation of what it means to ‘be’ a student in special education, and the process by which he learns to read. How disability gets created, contested, and discussed is highlighted through the many contexts that allow disability to be recognized and to fade into the background.

The word fundamentalism usually conjures up images of religions and their most zealous followers. Much less often the word appears in connection with political economy. The phrase “free market” gives the connotation that capitalism is freedom. Neoliberalism is the rise of global free-market fundamentalism. It reaches into nearly every aspect of our daily lives as it seeks to dominate and eliminate the last vestiges of public domains through wanton privatization and deregulation. It degrades all that is public. The good news is that a global community of resistance continues to struggle against neoliberal oppression. Formal and informal education entities contribute to these struggles, offering visions and strategies for creating a better future.

The purpose of this volume is twofold. Several contributors will highlight how the neoliberal agenda is impacting educational policy formation, teaching and learning, and relationships between institutions of higher education and communities. Other contributors will highlight how the global community has gradually become conscious of the ideological doctrine and how it is responsible for human suffering and misery.

The volume is needed because the growing body of educational research linked to exploring the impact of neoliberalism on education and society fails to provide conceptual or historical understanding of this ideology. It is also an important scholarly intervention because it provides insights as to why educators, scholars, and other global citizens have challenged the intrusion of market forces over life inside universities and colleges.

Teaching faculty, research faculty, and anyone who yearns to understand what is behind the debilitating trend of commercial forces subverting humanizing educational projects would benefit from this volume. Activists, educators, youth, and scholars who seek strategies and visions for building democratic higher education and a more democratic society would consider this volume essential reading.

This book tells stories of life in a “failing” school. These are insider stories of the daily lives of children and educators in an urban school during a time when accountability weighs heavy on both teachers and students. Most educators are in favor of accountability. The kind and amount of testing associated with the current accountability movement, however, influence teachers’ and students’ lives in a way not often apparent to parents and politicians.

This edited volume seeks to answer the question, “What does it mean to be a critical multimodal scholar in educational spaces?” Toward Critical Multimodality highlights how choices made throughout multimodal design and research processes are critically-oriented and inextricably linked to power. We show how social semiotics and multimodality inform engagement with criticality in educational spaces through questioning dominant narratives (e.g., white, cisheteropatriarchal, ableist, classist perspectives), exploring relationships between selves and space, problematizing and reimagining educational practices, and dreaming of educational futures that are just, anti-oppressive, and with room for all to thrive while learning.

These chapters demonstrate how studying multiple modalities in interaction (e.g., image, writing, color, spatial layout, gaze, proxemics, gestures) can reveal how power operates, provide students with opportunities to explore themselves and their identities with respect to power, and provide a vehicle for scholars to disrupt and transform oppressive educational practices. Furthermore, multiple chapters show alternative ways to display, construct and share knowledge as transformative pedagogical practice in learning environments. We reframe social semiotics and multimodality as an integral part of decentering dominant ideas of power and what “counts” as purposeful meaning making by highlighting how criticality and multimodality integrate theoretically and methodologically.

This book provides readers with the opportunity to hear what experts in the educational community think about the myriad issues involved in improving the quality of all teachers in our nation’s classrooms.

This edited volume focuses on visual and image-based methodologies that can be used to expand how educators approach, design, and innovate research for the purpose of informing and improving teaching and learning. Exploring how data can be utilized, collected, and rendered useful in the education arena is of utmost importance to those oriented towards utilizing research with the aim of improving educational practice. Innovative methodologies are important for preparing future researchers/scholars and teachers in developing and sustaining professional knowledge. To date, while visual methodologies are explored in various volumes related to general areas of social science, few texts exist where visual methodologies are explained or well-understood in the field of education, specifically.

This work centers on the functions, cultures, and outcomes of teaching and learning using visual data (i.e., participant-generated drawings, photo-elicitation, film, etc.) and the methods that frame this approach. It is intended for teachers, researchers, and teacher-researchers - in higher education as well as at PK-12 levels – who are ready to engage with innovative, and often compelling, research methods that make data collection across data sources both accessible and equitable. This volume illustrates how various scholars have conceptualized, generated, and executed research utilizing visual data in their own schools, classrooms, and/or districts, and what they learned from these investigations.

This edited volume is organized according to four main strands: Conducting research as visual endeavor: Assessing the nature of visual methodology, Conducting research as visual endeavor: Pedagogical innovation, What can visual data in educational research reveal: Student engagement, motivation, selfdetermination, metacognition, and mindfulness, and Conducting research as visual endeavor: Critical perspectives-critical exploration of issues in education and visual data’s engagement with, and impact on, marginalized and/or disenfranchised participants.

The chapters within each section, authored by established scholars in their fields of study, focus on some of today's key educational practices and the ways in which visual methodologies can provide innovation in the design of educational research. Each chapter within the volume reflects the importance of using credible, confirmable, reliable, and triangulated interpretations as a foundation for any claims, findings, or assertions related to pedagogical innovation, student mindfulness, and critical pedagogy. In summary, this edited volume is critically engaged, innovative, and contributes to advances in qualitative inquiry, visual research methodologies, and alternative ways of ‘seeing’ and ‘knowing’.

This book seeks to understand the complexities of talented and high-performing Black girls and women in STEM across the P-20 trajectory. Analogously, this volume aims to understand the intersections between giftedness, its identification, and racial, gender, and academic discipline identities. The dearth of literature on this subject suggests that Black girls and women have unique experiences in gifted programming, in large part because of factors associated with gifted programs in general. Key factors affecting Black students, and Black girls in particular, are identification and underrepresentation. These factors can be shaped by interlocking systems of racism, classism, gender bias, and other forms of oppression.

Teachers in the P-12 educational system are the first identifiers for gifted programming and look for student characteristics, such as natural leadership, inquisitiveness, and students’ desire to be in gifted programs. Because many Black girls are stereotyped and teachers rarely have deep understanding of cultural differences, Black girls are less likely to be identified for gifted programming. More specifically, Black girls’ lack of representation in gifted mathematics or STEM programs contradicts research that finds that girls reach several developmental advantages ahead of boys. For example, research has shown that girls talk and read earlier, receive higher grades in elementary school, and drop-out less often than boys. Other studies have also shown that Black girls have higher mathematics career aspirations than their White and Latina female peers; yet, they are rarely represented in gifted math and Advanced Placement (AP) math programs. Furthermore, the underrepresentation of urban, low-income African-American students in gifted education is related to low test scores, student and family choice, a lack of teacher referral, and a mismatch between home and school cultures.

Some high-performing Black girls and women are participating in programs that nurture and support their racial and gender identities and contribute to them developing into strong and efficacious girls and women who have agency in their lives. This anthology includes studies that illustrate the complexities of intersectionality in various STEM programs, while also demonstrating that increasing access to STEM for Black girls and women is doable.

The Talking Point is all about how people learn within groups. People can be much smarter than crowds if you measure “smart” as decision-making speed. Crowds can be much wiser than individuals if you measure wisdom by depth of understanding. It is possible to understand a great deal of information yet (or maybe because of this) you can also be slow to make decisions. If rushed, crowds will make poor decisions in spite of their wisdom. So... to get good group decisions on a time scale that will keep pace with policy development needs and social necessities, groups have to be supported so that their decision-making process can be accelerated. Much has been said and written about this problem over the years. It is dangerous to have the power of groups without the wisdom of groups, and it is tragic to have the wisdom of groups without the power of groups. The Talking Point presents a meeting point for the wisdom and power of groups through the use of Structured Dialogic Design. With hopeful intentions, as a culture we have poisoned the well just when we need it most. We have touted design charettes and stakeholder processes as engagement vehicles and then ignored, marginalized or corrupted the very input that we swore to hold as sacred. This has created a myth that large scale collaboration is not possible, and the myth has led to considerable disillusionment among would-be participants and could-be sponsors. Structured Dialogic Design seeks to bust the myth about our limited capabilities to sustain boundary spanning collaboration. To bust this myth, Structured Dialogic Design needs to usher in a new wave of collaborative planning. Scholars have identified the Structured Dialogic Design methodology as the cutting edge of “third phase” science - where the reality of a situation embraces interactions between objective findings and subjective intentions. The Talking Point provides a window for observing how Structured Dialogic Design has been put into practice and paints a panorama of the issues that confront complex social system design. This book is itself a bridge between scholarship and practice, written to be accessible yet anchored to major themes in cognitive psychology, information systems, social systems, and models of group learning. The book is an invitation for transformational leaders and those who support transformational leaders to pick up a new tool in the essential quest to put our nation and our world back on track toward sustainable futures. The Talking Point is a fresh source of water in a world that is thirsty for new ways of solving complex problems.

Higher Education is a vibrant, changing field of study. With roots in multiple disciplines, these degree programs prepare the administrators, faculty, and policy makers who direct the current and future higher education enterprise. At a time when higher education is changing rapidly, these programs are poised to frame the future of an educated society. This book examines all aspects of how Higher Education programs operate - from their marketing, focus on student affairs and community colleges, the emergence of online programs and core curricula. Authors from a broad and diverse spectrum of institutions map the current setting of Higher Education programs with an eye on future directions for their livelihood and survival.

The field of education has been and will continue to be essential to the survival and sustainability of the Black community. Unfortunately, over the past five decades, two major trends have become clearly evident in the Black community: (a) the decline of the academic achievement levels of Black students and (b) the disappearance of Black teachers, particularly Black males. Today, of the 3.5 million teachers in America’s classrooms (AACTE, 2010) only 8% are Black teachers, and approximately 2% of these teachers are Black males (NCES, 2010). Over the past few decades, the Black teaching force in the U.S. has dropped significantly (Lewis, 2006; Lewis, Bonner, Byrd, & James, 2008; Milner & Howard, 2004), and this educational crisis shows no signs of ending in the near future. As the population of Black students in K-12 schools in the U. S. continue to rise—currently over 16% of students in America’s schools are Black (NCES, 2010)—there is an urgent need to increase the presence of Black educators.

The overall purpose of this edited volume is to stimulate thought and discussion among diverse audiences (e.g., policymakers, practitioners, and educational researchers) who are concerned about the performance of Black students in our nation’s schools, and to provide evidence-based strategies to expand our nation’s pool of Black teachers. To this end, it is our hope that this book will contribute to the teacher education literature and will inform the teacher education policy and practice debate.

Transformative Education for the Second Renaissance follows educator John PW Hudson through a personal and professional journey that led him to respond to what he sees as underlying fissures in the bedrock of educational practice. At the height of his career, he was seconded by the Richmond (BC Canada) school district to teach a demonstration class in the Nanashan Xian Middle School in Shenzhen, China, at the request of the school, and philanthropists Joe and Margaret Li, initiators of the project and sponsors. His assignment was to demonstrate and explain Western teaching methods to educators and other interested parties including university students and their professors from various parts of China, local and national education officials, teachers at the Nanshan Xian middle school (where he lived and taught for two years), and civic officials as well. Most days a television camera was in the room, and several adults sitting watching.

Throughout his career, Hudson was intensely interested in how children learn, how and why they thrive or fail, educational philosophy, and how educational infrastructures and practices impact learners and professionals alike. After teaching Music, English and business education for twenty years at the junior high school level, Hudson turned his sights to the elementary level and taught intermediate classroom for the last thirteen years before going to China. All of these experiences left him with lingering questions which came into sharp focus in China, where traditional practices are entrenched.

Primarily, Transformative Education for the Second Renaissance explores history, philosophy, research, politics and real human stories to encapsulate the driving forces of education that need adjustment, particularly assessment. Hudson describes the transition from analog to digital as the Second Renaissance, and how findings in brain research characterize how our understanding of learning has changed in modern practice from transmissive to transformative. Not a traditional academic treatise, Hudson’s book reads more like a coffee shop discussion, but the reasoning and conclusions will resonate with experienced educators. Hudson’s goal is to kick-start discussion about the changes he proposes, and frame a narrative to move education into our rapidly changing educational landscape. This is not a book on methods; it is a foundational work that Hudson hopes will lead to lively discussion and critical debate.

Recent advances in technology have created easy access for classroom teachers and students alike to a vast store of primary sources. This fact accompanied by the growing emphasis on primary documents through education reform movements has created a need for active approaches to learning from such sources. Unpuzzling History with Primary Sources addresses this need. It looks at the role that primary sources can play in a social studies curriculum in the 21st century. Each chapter deals with a different aspect of teaching primary sources.

Each chapter includes a discussion of key issues, model activities, and resources for upper elementary through high school teachers. A model lesson plan also appears at the end of most chapters. Chapter one presents a unique perspective on the nature of history and primary sources. This is followed by chapters on how historical thinking and inquiry relate to primary sources.

Other chapters deal with individual types of primary sources. A glance at the table of contents will certainly draw the teacher’s interest regardless of teaching style. The skills that students gain from working with primary sources prepare them for the many responsibilities and duties of being a citizen in a democracy. Therefore, the book closes with a chapter pointing to the relationship of primary sources to citizenship education. This book will be useful as a resource for teachers and might serve as a text for in-service, college methods courses, and school libraries. All four authors have experience in the K-12 classroom as well as social studies teacher education.

This edited volume explores the progress, challenges, and future prognoses of educator preparation programs (preK-12 and higher education) in the U.S. Using examples drawn from a large, urban-centered college of education, the book provides practical guidance and insights regarding teacher preparation and educational leadership. Edited by former NLU Dean, Robert Muller and authored by NLU National College of Education faculty, the chapters explore how programs that prepare novice teachers, provide advancement opportunities for practicing educators, and develop education leaders have adapted to serve the needs of contemporary school institutions. This work is particularly timely given the myriad challenges facing the nation’s teacher and education leader preparation pipeline, and the critical role colleges of education play in addressing those needs.

Primarily focused on leading institutional change in a large, metropolitan college of education, this work will be of interest to colleges of education leaders and faculty, PK-12 and higher education teachers and leaders, policy makers, and the broader teacher preparation and educator development field. Founded in the 1880s, the Chicago-based National College of Education (NCE) at National Louis University serves approximately 3,000 educators annually in its initial and advanced teacher preparation and educational leadership programs. For its commitments to diversity, inclusion and equity within transformative higher education, National Louis University was recognized as a top 20 school in Washington Monthly’s 2022 National University Rankings.

The book is divided into four major sections: Prepare: The authors explore how a college of education has approached equipping novice teachers for success as they enter the teaching profession. It focuses on the transformation of initial teacher preparation programs to meet the needs of contemporary schools and districts, and profiles the programmatic initiatives to make those changes. Advance: The authors describe programs that support teachers as they advance in their careers, and the role of continuing graduate education in developing exemplary educators. Lead: The authors address the challenges facing education leaders and adapting their professional development to equip them to lead. It explores efforts to develop a cadre of leaders across education systems with the requisite knowledge and habits of mind to lead amidst unprecedented change. Building the Institution: The authors address several key cross cutting processes that support transformation efforts, including strategy development and implementation, partnership development, technology deployment, human capital development and data utilization.

In the book, the author is focusing the importance of play for children from 0 years up to 8-12 years of age, e.g. in ECE centers and elementary schools. In particular, the importance of play for learning, through motivation as related to self-competence, inspiration and engagement. In this second edition, the author is emphasizing more thoroughly the importance of play as a challenge of learning, with implications for children, as well as for teachers. Further, the author is referring to how meaning making in children’s production of multi-module narrative products can contribute to their digital personal formation. The selection of theories presented in the second edition is somewhat expanded, and in the end the author is presenting a few important educational challenges of the field of children’s play.

The Second World War stands as the most devastating and destructive global conflict in human history. More than 60 nations representing 1.7 billion people or three quarters of the world’s population were consumed by its horror. Not surprisingly, therefore, World War II stands as a landmark episode in history education throughout the world and its prominent place in school history textbooks is almost guaranteed. As this book demonstrates, however, the stories that nations choose to tell their young about World War II do not represent a universally accepted “truth” about events during the war. Rather, wartime narratives contained in school textbooks typically are selected to instil in the young a sense of national pride, common identify, and shared collective memory. To understand this process War, Nation, Memory describes and evaluates school history textbooks from many nations deeply affected by World War II including China, France, Germany, Japan, USA, and the United Kingdom. It critically examines the very different and complex perspectives offered in many nations and analyses the ways in which textbooks commonly serve as instruments of socialisation and, in some cases, propaganda. Above all, War, Nation, Memory demonstrates that far from containing “neutral” knowledge, history textbooks prove fascinating cultural artefacts consciously shaped and legitimated by powerful ideological, cultural, and sociopolitical forces dominant in the present.

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.”

In 1978, V. P. Franklin and James D. Anderson co-edited New Perspectives on Black Educational History. For Franklin, Anderson, and their contributors, there were glaring gaps in the historiography of Black education that each of the essays began to fill with new information or fresh perspectives. There have been a number of important studies on the history of African American education in the more than three decades since Franklin and Anderson published their volume that has pushed the field forward. Scholars have redefined the views of Black southern schools as simply inferior, demonstrated the active role Blacks had in creating and sustaining their schools, sharpened our understanding of Black teachers’ and educational leaders’ role in educating Black students and themselves with professional development, provided a better understanding and recognition of the struggles in the North (particularly in urban and metropolitan areas), expanded our thinking about school desegregation and community control, and broadened our understanding of Black experiences and activism in higher education and private schools.

Our volume will highlight and expand upon the changes to the field over the last three and a half decades. In the shadow of 60th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education and the 50th anniversary of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, contributors expand on the way African Americans viewed and experienced a variety of educational policies including segregation and desegregation, and the varied options they chose beyond desegregation. The volume covers both the North and South in the 19th and 20th centuries. Contributors explore how educators, administrators, students, and communities responded to educational policies in various settings including K-12 public and private schooling and higher education. A significant contribution of the book is showcasing the growing and concentrated work in the era immediately following the Brown decision. Finally, scholars consider the historian’s engagement with recent history, contemporary issues, future directions, methodology, and teaching.

The focus of this book is to explore teachers’ evolving personal epistemologies, or the beliefs we hold about the origin and development of knowledge in the context of teaching. The chapters focus on a range of conceptual frameworks about how university and field-based experiences influence the connections between teachers’ personal epistemologies and teaching practice. In an earlier volume we investigated preservice and inservice teachers’ beliefs and teaching practices (Brownlee, Schraw and Berthelsen, 2011). While we addressed the nature of teachers’ personal epistemologies, learning and teaching practices, and approaches for changing beliefs throughout teacher education programs, the volume did not address conceptual frameworks for the development of teacher’s personal epistemologies. To address this gap, the book is focused on teacher educators, teachers and teacher education programmers in universities with an overall aim of highlighting how we might support preservice teachers’ involvement in learning that is challenging and inservice teachers’ engagement in professional experiences that promote changes in teaching practice. We argue that teachers need to be encouraged to question their beliefs and develop increasingly sophisticated beliefs about their knowledge and their students’ knowledge that facilitate learning and intellectual growth.

Modeling student growth has been a federal policy requirement under No Child Left Behind (NCLB). In addition to tracking student growth, the latest Race To The Top (RTTP) federal education policy stipulates the evaluation of teacher effectiveness from the perspective of added value that teachers contribute to student learning and growth. Student growth modeling and teacher value-added modeling are complex. The complexity stems, in part, from issues due to non-random assignment of students into classes and schools, measurement error in students’ achievement scores that are utilized to evaluate the added value of teachers, multidimensionality of the measured construct across multiple grades, and the inclusion of covariates. National experts at the Twelfth Annual Maryland Assessment Research Center’s Conference on “Value Added Modeling and Growth Modeling with Particular Application to Teacher and School Effectiveness” present the latest developments and methods to tackle these issues. This book includes chapters based on these conference presentations. Further, the book provides some answers to questions such as what makes a good growth model? What criteria should be used in evaluating growth models? How should outputs from growth models be utilized? How auxiliary teacher information could be utilized to improve value added? How multiple sources of student information could be accumulated to estimate teacher effectiveness? Whether student-level and school-level covariates should be included? And what are the impacts of the potential heterogeneity of teacher effects across students of different aptitudes or other differing characteristics on growth modeling and teacher evaluation?

Overall, this book addresses reliability and validity issues in growth modeling and value added modeling and presents the latest development in this area. In addition, some persistent issues have been approached from a new perspective. This edited volume provides a very good source of information related to the current explorations in student growth and teacher effectiveness evaluation.

The best way for students to learn to read and to come to love reading is – surprise, surprise – by reading in quantity. Unfortunately, many of today’s students read far too little. This lack of time spent reading is particularly unfortunate, as reading constitutes a bedrock skill, essential in all subject areas. Thus, we teachers need to devote curriculum time to not only teaching students how to read but also to encouraging them to read extensively. This is what Extensive Reading is all about.

Teachers Sourcebook for Extensive Reading provides hundreds of teacher tested ideas on how to do Extensive Reading. The book begins with an introduction to ‘the what’ and ‘the why’ of Extensive Reading. Thereafter, the book consists of three parts. Part 1 discusses finding materials for Extensive Reading. Part 2 offers ideas for motivating students to read and for activities that students might do after they read or while they are reading, including cooperative learning activities. Part 3 looks at how teachers can serve as advocates for Extensive Reading.

Among the book’s distinctive features are breaks for reflection, first person accounts from teachers, and ideas for doing Action Research and other forms of teacher investigation and research on Extensive Reading. We hope that you will find the Teachers Sourcebook for Extensive Reading to be a practical book, but also informed by theory and researh. We also hope this book will make a difference for your students in their test scores and, even more, in their attitude toward reading, now and in the future.

In response to No Child Let Behind, states have developed mathematics curriculum frameworks that outline their intended curriculum for grades K–8. While some have indicated that districts or individual schools may use their framework as a model for specific curricular programs, others have taken a more prescriptive or even mandatory stance. Collectively, these frameworks present a sense of the national mathematics program and what we expect students learn.

This volume follows The Intended Curriculum as Represented in State Mathematics Curriculum Standards: Consensus or Confusion? (Reys). While the Reys volume focused on number and operations, algebra and reasoning strands, the Smith volume analyzes geometry, measurement, probability, and statistics strands. It also presents an analysis what verbs used tell us about the cognitive demand of grade level expectations. This volume, even more than the Reys volume, emphasizes the theme of variability in the content, expression, and clarity of grade level expectations across the states.

As the nation moves toward implementation of the Common Core Standards, this volume highlights some of the challenges teachers and other school personnel face in interpreting mathematics grade-level standards as goals for classroom teaching. The shift from 50 state standards to one document does not resolve this basic challenge.

Students continue to be bombarded with technology, social media and demands on their attention, this book represents fifteen years of data collection presented within two case studies. Demonstrated is the value of identifying student patterns of attentiveness integrated within the theoretical frameworks of initial and sustained attention to identify theme patterns of attentiveness. Introduced is the LIBRE Model, a strength based problem-solving approach with the ability to assess patterns in attention and manage attention.

This book addresses strategic thinking and engagement style attentiveness within a problem-solving exchange. The importance of examining the cues, self-reported identities, context, and cultural content that are observable in the language problem-solvers share is established. Attention is also revisited to explore what it looks like when examined within a problem-solving context. Building upon theoretical concepts in application to problem solving to provide insight to student attention to self and others. Providing opportunity for educators and professional insight to better connect with students.

Urban violence, poverty, and racial injustice are ongoing sources of traumatic stress that affect the physical, emotional and cognitive development and well-being of millions of children each year. Growing attention is therefore directed toward the study of child trauma and incorporation of trauma-sensitive practices within schools. Currently such practices focus on social and emotional learning for all children, with some in-school therapeutic approaches, and outside referrals for serious trauma. There is inadequate attention to racial injustice as an adverse childhood experience (ACE) confronting Black males among other youth of color. Although there are guidelines for trauma-sensitive approaches, few are culturally responsive. And it is now critical that educators consider the traumatic impacts of a dual pandemic (covid-19 and racism) on children and their education.

This timely book thus serves to inform and inspire transformative healing and empowerment among traumatized children and youth in pandemic/post-pandemic school and after-school settings. The reader will learn about trauma through actual experiences. Researchers and practitioners present approaches to healing that can be adapted to local situations and settings. The book consists of four parts: Youth Voices on Traumatic Experience; Trauma-focused Research; Culturally Responsive and Trauma Sensitive Practices; and Where do we go from Here? Suggestions for Next Steps. Each part contains a set of themed chapters and closes with a youth- authored poetic expression. The book is especially designed for those working in urban education. However, anyone whose work is related to traumatized children and youth will find the book informative, especially in a post-pandemic educational environment.

Includes discussion on the rationale of teaching about genocide; the history of genocide; and 10 cases studies of genocide perpetrated in the 20th century.

Many experts in education, psychology, science, philosophy, politics, and across the social sciences and humanities believe that a plethora of people in the world have lost their way and lack a moral compass. In a world in which youth often lack guidance from parents, countless individuals are hurting from broken relationships, and many people lack a sense of purpose, direction, and a sense of who they are, there is a growing awareness around much of world that people should revisit the teachings of Jesus Christ for answers. The Bible is the most published book in the history of the world for a reason. At the heart of Christ’s teachings is love, which sadly in many academic, political, and business circles has become the most feared four-letter word of all. In this context, the need to revisit the personal significance of the most quoted verse in the Bible, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only son…” and “God is love,” is axiomatic.

In a world filled with divisiveness, a dearth of civility, a lack of love, a dismissive attitude toward any sense of truth and absolute values, and the inability for people to get along, it would seem that there is no timelier action one can take than to ask the pertinent question, “What would Christ do?” It is a vital question to ask not only as it applies to one’s personal life, but also to the world situation at large. For example, one can argue that the economic crisis of 2008-2009 in the West and the Asian economic crisis of 1997-1998 were largely the result of lack of character and the love of money and power than pervaded the government, business, and the general population. One can argue that had the nations of the world been guided by the example of love, self-sacrifice, humility, and integrity that Christ set, those crises would not have happened. Life is filled with enough challenges without a lack of virtue creating more trials. Addressing the question of, “What would Christ do?” can help the reader engage in better decision making that can literally change one’s life and help establish a reputation of love, character, and compassion that will open doors into a better life.

This book is a step-by-step guide for correctly applying Fishbein and Ajzen’s theories which together form “ . . the dominant conceptual framework for predicting, explaining, and changing human social behavior” (Ajzen, 2012). Evaluators and educational researchers, however, have often made less than optimal use of the theory of reasoned action, and the later theory of planned behavior, to understand, measure, and influence beliefs, attitudes, and behavior.

This book is written expressly for investigators who are not trained in attitude theory and measurement. It provides examples from the fields of evaluation and educational research at each step, including many from the author’s applications. This book offers clear conceptual and operational definitions of belief, attitude, behavior, and other variables that are components of the theories. Figures illustrate relations among the variables. One chapter critically reviews efforts to apply the theories in evaluation and educational research, using positive and negative examples.

The author has 30 years’ experience in evaluation and research, a doctorate in education, and training in attitude theory and measurement with Martin Fishbein. The author’s dissertation study was the first successful application of the theory of reasoned action to the issue of participation in adult education, and prompted others in that field to apply the theory.

In recent years, virtual teams have become a feature of most corporate workplaces, yet few academic programs prepare students to work in virtual teams, and few textbooks support the development of key skills for virtual teamwork. The primary purpose of this book is to enable higher education students to participate in virtual teams with students from other institutions, who potentially operate in different countries, time zones, and/or cultures. The book guides students through the process of working in virtual team projects for their classes, and helps them to engage with the learning experiences, and to respond to potential challenges.

The book is directed towards students within any of the following disciplines: Business; Information Technology; Communication Studies; and Engineering. One section of the book also guides teachers through the process of organizing virtual team projects, and explores the teacher/teacher collaboration that is an inevitable consequence of organizing inter-institutional student virtual team projects. It provides advice for teachers on how to manage administrative challenges such as conflicting institutional schedules and grading mechanisms. In addition, it discusses research themes and data gathering and analysis techniques for teachers who wish to publish findings about the virtual team process and outcomes.

As well as students and teachers, the book is also useful for researchers exploring any of the following themes: Technology use in virtual teams; Communication strategies and international communication in virtual teams; Communities of learning, e-learning, and virtual teams; Challenges of virtual teamwork; Planning a virtual team collaboration project; and Gathering and analyzing data about virtual collaboration.

Our highly interconnected global education environment provides unprecedented opportunities for teaching professionals and educational researchers to share best practice in teaching and learning across international borders and sociocultural frontiers. This volume presents a diverse range of innovative educational best practices from around the world – particularly those practices that directly strengthen and enhance student motivation and achievement in a broad range of sociocultural contexts. These practices include: enhancing teaching and learning environments, particularly in relation to provision of high quality infrastructure for 21st Century (digital) learning; designing and managing after-school homework support; recruiting, developing and retaining high-quality teaching staff; promoting international and multicultural awareness through deliberate exposure to varied cultural experiences and perspectives; optimizing the benefit of project work for student academic and social outcomes; designing educational interventions based on self-concept research; and developing an international service learning course for tertiary students. The editors of the present volume have gathered over thirty renowned educators and researchers from Asia, Australia, Europe, and the United States, to share their experiences in developing best practices in teaching and learning in socioculturally and educationally diverse contexts. These practices, guided and underpinned by cutting edge educational/psychological theories and research, are believed to be adaptable to many diverse educational and sociocultural contexts. The editors invite researchers, professionals, educators, teachers, lecturers, policy-makers, and curriculum developers to think, reflect, and take action on how to utilize the underlying principles of the best practices in the present Volume to their own settings.

This book is for anyone interested in how to build a teacher education program utilizing the arts as one central modality for teaching and learning or for those interested in building some of their program along these lines. Throughout the book you will find reference to the intersection of ethics, aesthetics, and teaching. We provide an integrated program devoted to good learning and the good society.

In the book we discuss how the program came to be and the underlying educational thinking that informs the whole program. This section of the book is invaluable for understanding how the reader can build her/his own arts approach to teacher education. The central section of the book is devoted to the specific coursework of the program. Each author describes in detail how she/he leverages aesthetics and art to expand the possibilities of learning and teaching (including a chapter focused on the core competency course, Teaching, Imagination, Creativity) in language and literacy, psychology of education, science education, mathematics education, social studies education, and classroom management including many examples from our teaching. The book ends with a focus group discussion about the program by former students.

Take a journey to 2030 where Visionary Evaluatives abound and link with one another in actively bringing about a sustainable, equitable future. Utilizing a creative storytelling approach, Visionary Evaluation for a Sustainable, Equitable Future brings forward the centrality of values in conjunction with the role of evaluation in building a future of well-being for people, nature, and planet.

Visionary Evaluatives are guided by six principles. Those principles highlight a commitment to equity and the sustainability of nature as core values. They emphasize an orientation of humility, compassion, and transparency as Visionary Evaluatives engage with others in a world of living, entangled systems with both obvious and hidden intersectionalities. They require Visionary Evaluatives to engage in deep praxis—mindful and challenging reflection on what is being learned through the intersection of values, iterative action and inquiry, theory, outcomes, and vision. A diverse group of chapter authors share their wisdom through envisioning 2030 and what it might mean to move in the world applying aspects of the Visionary Evaluative Principles.

Through Visionary Evaluation for a Sustainable, Equitable Future, you will learn about how you can contribute to a sustainable, equitable future not only in evaluations, as either users or practitioners, but also in your daily actions and lives.

The need for continued research at the middle level is clear and urgent. The previous volumes in this Handbook series testify to this urgency. While quantitative studies continue to be essential, there is a critical need to understand the complexities of the middle level community. One way to capture the rich, diverse mosaic of the voices and experiences of middle level participants and stakeholders is to use narrative inquiry methodology. The intent of this volume in The Handbook is to give voice to and broaden our understanding of the wide variety of participants and stakeholders who weave through the middle level. Such participants and stakeholders may include middle level teachers, school psychologists and counselors, students, parents, administrators, middle level researchers, research foundations, and community groups. In addition to hearing directly from these groups, this volume will focus on the intricate webs, connections and questions that these narratives hold and frame them within current middle level research, theory, and practice. Ultimately this volume will highlight the nuance, diversity and future directions that research may need to explore.

Through the chapters in this volume we learn about the questions that capture the attention of teachers, the methodologies they use to gather data, and the ways in which they make sense of what they find. Some of the research findings could be considered preliminary, others confirmatory, and some may be groundbreaking. In all cases, they provide fodder for further thinking and discussion about critical aspects of mathematics education.

School districts today face increasing calls for accountability during a time when budgets are stretched and students’ needs have become increasingly complex. The teacher’s responsibility is to educate younger people, but now more than ever, teachers face demands on a variety of fronts. In addition to teaching academic content, schools are responsible for students’ performance on state-wide tests. They are also asked to play an increasingly larger role in children’s well-being, including their nutritional needs and social and emotional welfare. Teachers have shown themselves to be more than capable of taking up such challenges, but what price is paid for the increasing demands we are placing on our schools? Understanding Teacher Stress in an Age of Accountability is about the nature of teachers stress and the resources they can employ to cope with it.

Accountability is a two-way street and the authors in this volume suggest remedies for reducing teacher stress and in all likelihood increasing student learning—greater administrative support, more and better instructional materials, specialized resources targeted at demanding children, parental support, and professional recognition. Readers will discover that lack of funding, low pay, concerns about academic performance and student misbehavior, and increased public and governmental scrutiny are not exclusive to the United States. In this volume, the third in a series on Research on Stress and Coping in Education, authors from Australia, Turkey, Malaysia, and the Netherlands sound the same alarms, post the same warnings, and draw similarly disturbing conclusions.

This is the first volume in the re-imagined series Research and Theory in Educational Administration. The volume includes a variety of perspectives written by university professors in the field of educational administration, which moves our thinking beyond the traditional scope of organizational theory and institutional analysis. It is this combination of theory, of new directions in leadership preparation and new narratives of participation that we hope will contribute to a more engaging volume for its readers—graduate students, researchers, and practitioners. The volume will provide evidence of and explanation for changing patterns of institution production explored through academic and epistemic drift. It also provides a deeper understanding of how state regulation is related to the school administrator pipeline or pathways. The concepts explained and illustrated in the volume hopes to provide a better framework for understanding how administrator preparation is unfolding across the U.S. and internationally, as well as the direction of the field of educational administration in the future.

The book is linked to the annual theme of the 2008 CAERDA International Conference with contributing authors serving as keynote speakers, invited panelists, paper presenters, as well as specialists and educators in the field. The book provides a most comprehensive description of and a theoretically well-informed and a scholarly cogent account of teaching and learning Chinese in general and in the United States in particular. It examines a wide range of important issues in Chinese teaching and learning: current state in teaching Chinese as a Second Language (TCSL) in the United States, US national standards for learning foreign languages K-12, policy making about how to meet the growing demand for Chinese language and cultural education with regard to a national coordination of efforts, professional teacher training in terms of the quantity and quality of Chinese language teachers at all levels, promotion of early language learning, characteristics of Chinese pedagogy, aspects of Chinese linguistics, methods and methodology in teaching TCSL, techniques and technology in Chinese language education, curriculum and instruction in TCSL, cultural aspects of teaching Chinese as a Second Language, issues in Chinese pedagogy, development of Chinese as a Heritage Language (HL) and the issue of cultural identity for bilingual/multilingual learners (particularly bilingual/multilingual children), testing and evaluation in TCSL, Chinese literacy and reading, approaches to instruction and program design, etc.

This book provides examples of the ways in which 9-12 grade mathematics teachers from across North America are engaging in research. It offers a glimpse of the questions that capture the attention of teachers, the methodologies that they use to gather data, and the ways in which they make sense of what they find. The focus of these teachers’ investigations into mathematics classrooms ranges from students’ understanding of content to pedagogical changes to social issues. Underlying the chapters is the common goal of enabling students to develop a deep understanding of the mathematics they learn in their classrooms.

In Understanding the World Language edTPA: Research-Based Policy and Practice, two researchers in the forefront of world language edTPA discuss the new beginning teacher portfolio, including its required elements, federal and state policies concerning teacher evaluation, and research from their own programs. Higher education faculty members and language teacher preparation program coordinators who would like to better understand edTPA requirements and gain suggestions for necessary programmatic changes will find this book of interest.

The book is composed of eight chapters. The authors begin by describing edTPA and how it became a national trend to assess beginning teacher ability. In Chapter 2, the authors present ideas about curricular changes that may need to occur in traditional world language teacher education programs, as well as suggestions to assist teacher candidates as they begin to develop their portfolios. Afterward, the authors discuss the context for learning (Chapter 3) and they begin with assessment, moving to planning, and then to instruction (Chapters 4, 5, 6). In each chapter, the authors discuss the work sample that teacher candidates must create, an analysis of a high-scoring portfolio, and steps to stimulate teacher candidates’ professional thinking. In Chapter 7, the authors present activities for the methods classroom. In the final chapter, the authors provide a critical analysis of edTPA, in general, and the world language edTPA, in particular.

Understanding the World Language edTPA: Research-Based Policy and Practice provides readers with a much-needed guide to inducting teacher candidates into the new portfolio requirements, while helping higher education faculty make appropriate curricular changes to accommodate edTPA.

Vouch for This! Defunding Private Interests, Defending Public Schools (A Call to Action) is an effort by doctoral students in Educational Leadership and their professor to understand and challenge the voucher and charter school movements in Ohio and beyond. Using a curriculum studies approach focusing on autobiographical analysis and a policy advocacy framework, students in a course on the topic shared a common reading list, storied their connections to the current movements in the field, and developed treatments of key aspects of current policy and practice in the areas of voucher and other privatizing efforts in education today as they are embodied in charter schools, homeschooling, and private school settings.

Using the tools of currere and policy advocacy as a scholarly community, the authors tackle the multi-faceted challenges and dangers posed by the neoliberal, privatizing movements taking rapid shape across our public school system, as private schools, charters, and homeschooling continue to receive significantly more and more public taxpayer funds to operate and build. The authors share what they learned about the continued demise of public education at the hands of politicians and privateers in Ohio and beyond, and what they think citizens can do to resist. Together in teams, the authors engage topics related to education and public schooling as key aspects of democratic life; the actions taken by capital interests that seize on tragedy and perceived community weakness to privatize education and villainize public schools; the greed that creates fervor and interest in “choice”; and suggest ways to take action to stem the tide.

Science is unique among the disciplines since it is inherently hands-on. However, the hands-on nature of science instruction also makes it uniquely challenging when teaching in virtual environments. How do we, as science teachers, deliver high-quality experiences in an online environment that leads to age/grade-level appropriate science content knowledge and literacy, but also collaborative experiences in the inquiry process and the nature of science?

The expansion of online environments for education poses logistical and pedagogical challenges for early childhood and elementary science teachers and early learners. Despite digital media becoming more available and ubiquitous and increases in online spaces for teaching and learning (Killham et al., 2014; Wong et al., 2018), PreK-12 teachers consistently report feeling underprepared or overwhelmed by online learning environments (Molnar et al., 2021; Seaman et al., 2018). This is coupled with persistent challenges related to elementary teachers’ lack of confidence and low science teaching self-efficacy (Brigido, Borrachero, Bermejo, & Mellado, 2013; Gunning & Mensah, 2011).

Teaching and Learning Online: Science for Elementary Grade Levels comprises three distinct sections: Frameworks, Teacher’s Journeys, and Lesson Plans. Each section explores the current trends and the unique challenges facing elementary teachers and students when teaching and learning science in online environments. All three sections include alignment with Next Generation Science Standards, tips and advice from the authors, online resources, and discussion questions to foster individual reflection as well as small group/classwide discussion. Teacher’s Journeys and Lesson Plan sections use the 5E model (Bybee et al., 2006; Duran & Duran, 2004). Ideal for undergraduate teacher candidates, graduate students, teacher educators, classroom teachers, parents, and administrators, this book addresses why and how teachers use online environments to teach science content and work with elementary students through a research-based foundation.

This is Book V in the series, Research on Education in Africa, the Caribbean and the Middle East. The series strives to encourage the presentation of evidence based investigations using data collected on site from the three world regions it considers. A strong focus is on data specific to a nation or to a region within a nation, as we recognize that nations are diverse, often encompassing regions with unique cultural and geographic characteristics. The data are rooted in the voices of individuals and communities. Such evidential data are analyzed and interpreted within the context of the complex human and natural environments from which they are derived. Chapters in the books within the series describe investigations that are part of an effort to continue the publication of an annual compilation of research studies in the three world regions upon which the series focuses. The series, therefore, indicates that the need to develop modern, self-sufficient, independent, and post-colonial societies is being balanced with the need to strengthen cultural values and identities within these three world regions. Book V in the series focuses on how the educational challenges found in these three world regions are addressed. The chapters specifically examine related recent research, identify useful investigative methodologies, identify accomplishments in meeting challenges, and consider unresolved challenges. The overarching questions presented below were derived from an analysis of the questions, methods, and conclusions presented in the studies appearing in this book. These overarching questions described here reflect the connections between educational issues that emerged in the 20thcentury and issues identified in the 21st century.

The idea for this book was born from discussions at several recent academic events including the Women Leading Education (WLE) International Conference in Volos, Greece (2012) and the University Council for Educational Administration (UCEA) Conference in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (2011) as well as from informal dialogue amongst ourselves and various colleagues, both new and veteran to the field of educational leadership and, in particular, dedicated to the study of women in leadership. At both the WLE Conference and the UCEA Conference, we heard frustration from veteran women in the field that the study of women in leadership is stagnant and has not moved forward in several years; with scholars new to the field continuing to write and publish work about barriers to aspiring and practicing women leaders (the same types of reports that began the "formal" inquiry into women's lives as leaders back in the 1980s) without being able to push forward with "new" information or ideas for change. In essence, the concerns and questions that were posed from some veteran women were: Why are we continuing to report the same things that we reported 30 years ago?; Why are we still talking about barriers to women in leadership?; and Why haven't we moved past gender binaries in regard to leadership ideas and practice? Considering these questions, some women new to the field countered with their own set of responses and questions that included: Is it not significant to report that some women are still experiencing the same types of barriers in leadership that were highlighted 30 years ago?; Is it accurate to report that all women's voices have now been heard/represented?; and How can we report something different if it hasn't happened?

The discussions that have ensued between veteran women and those new to the field inspired us to develop a book that situates women in leadership exactly where we are today (and reports the status of girls who are positioned to continue the "good fight" that began many years ago) and that both highlights the changes that have occurred and reports any stagnancy that continues to threaten women's positionality in educational leadership literature, practice, and policy. It forefronts the voices of women educational scholars who have (and are) interrupting, disrupting, and revolutionizing educational policy and practice. Our book reports women's leadership activities and knowledge in both the k-12 and university settings and concludes with chapters ripe with ideas for pushing for change through policy, advocacy, and activism. The final chapter presents themes that emerged from the individual chapters and sets forth an agenda to move forward with the study of women in leadership.

Topics covered in this volume include: research on web-based learning; ways to reduce cognitive load in multimedia learning; gathering and organizing web-based information; the risks in cyberspace; engineering perspectives; and the pedagogical impact of course management systems.

Over the past three decades, the standards-based reform movement has transformed K-12 education in the United States, culminating with passage of the No Child Left Behind Act in 2002. Beyond making reasonable accommodations for special needs students, standards-based education pays little attention to other areas of student difference, relying instead on a "rational actor" model of student experience, and ignoring how differences in students' backgrounds and orientations impact their particular experiences of schooling.

This book examines the development of standards-based education, with particular scrutiny of the roles of the National Governors' Association and its National Education Summit events. Examination of important documents emerging from those events provides an illustration of the conceptually impoverished understanding of student subjectivity, motivation, and agency inherent in standards-based education. In order to understand both problems with and alternatives to standards-based education, the author examines the roles of ideology, rhetoric, and audience in school policy.

In three case studies, the author analyzes several non-school models of education, including Marine Corps bootcamp, Ving Tsun kung fu training, and an online, school resistance community. Johnson argues that examination of these learning contexts provides a better understanding of the shortcomings and dangers of the standards-based model of student subjectivity, and suggests a set of fourteen principles to inform the development of more student-centered alternatives.

Recently, with the number of students from higher education and K-12 settings committing suicide, it is apparent that homophobia and homophobic bullying are tremendous problems in our schools and universities. However, educators are unclear about an appropriate process for addressing these challenges. In this book, Jones postulates that we must begin exploring the culture of educational environments as they relate to sexual difference, in order to begin conceptualizing ways in which we may begin to address homophobia and heteronormativity. To that end, this book addresses how educators (at all levels) must begin examining how their concepts about different sexual identities are "normalized" through socializing processes and schooling. In doing so, this book examines how individuals construct meanings about homophobia and hate language through "contextual oppositions, " how educational environments maintain a ''false tolerance" when claiming to be tolerant of different sexual identities, how a hierarchy of hate language exists in educational environments, among other issues related to creating safe places for all students. In essence, the book attempts to "un"normalize society's constructions of sexual identity by deconstructing the social norms.

The significant change in public schools over the last two decades warrants a response in how we prepare teachers. This volume is an effort to share the contributors’ knowledge, experience and ideas with colleagues, particularly with novice language teacher educators. The suggestions in the chapters are primarily provided for the teaching methods course, but many can be adapted to other education courses or for professional development programs. The first section of the introduction provides a review of issues identified in teacher education including debates, accountability, and government influence over education. The second section explores teacher educators in the literature such as issues in their practice, and a focus on foreign language teacher educator practice. The third section provides a brief overview of the chapters in the book.

This book explores why Black men continue to be severely underrepresented in the STEM disciplines. It provides chapters that explore factors that lead to underrepresentation of Black males in STEM (e.g., societal traditions of what type of work is appropriate; the ruptured pipeline that leads to higher rates of attrition at every level of career development; barriers in science fields such as subtle and overt discrimination; and inequitable resources and opportunities). The premise of this volume is if Black males are to compete in an emerging global economy fueled by rapid innovation and marked by an astonishing pace of technological breakthroughs, they must be present.

The book makes new contributions to the field. The collective of higher education professionals and change agents whom are tied to STEM bring cutting-edge thinking in how best to address the leaky STEM pipeline which has left the industry/workforce void of talented Black men. The volume promises timely, relevant and emergent scholarship and perspectives for STEM leadership, scholars and supporters. It provides promising practices (best practices) and recommendations in recruiting and retaining Black males in STEM disciplines and the competitive market place.

This book documents progress to date in what works in distance learning (DL). An overriding goal of this effort was to create a robust and clear set of design guidelines to support the next generation of DL training. The book is targeted mainly toward the research and program management communities. A companion book contains a set of lessons organized by guideline area. The lessons depict specific guideline areas in terms of how a particular guideline would look instantiated in a lesson.

Most of the 12 articles are from a 1992 double issue of Linguistics and Education devoted to intertextuality--the notion that texts influence each other. Two are from other sources, and five are new. Together they look at classroom, community practices, and meaning construction; the construction of voice in textual practices; and more.

What's Worth Learning? addresses the central question of general education. For learners facing a complex, unpredictable, and dangerous future, it asks and answers the question: What knowledge is absolutely essential for every learner? In simple, jargon-free language, the book explains why the "core curriculum" in near-universal use in America's classrooms was poor when it was adopted in 1893 and why it grows more dysfunctional with each passing year. It then shows how, without changes in staffing, budgets, or bureaucratic boundaries, knowledge can be organized to both radically improve learner intellectual performance and significantly decrease the cost of a general education. Recognizing the difficulty of translating a new idea into classroom instruction, an appendix offers a comprehensive, classroom-tested course of study suitable for adolescents and older students.

Yes We Can: Improving Urban Schools through Innovative Educational Reform is a empirically-based book on urban education reform to not only proclaim that hope is alive for urban schools, but to also produce a body of literature that examines current practices and then offer practical implications for all involved in this arduous task. This book is filled with real-world strategies to implement in your quest to inspire and bring about reform. Additionally, we hope that you garner hope from the school personnel, school campuses, and school resources used as examples within the body of this work.

We offer this book to all stakeholders who find themselves associated with urban schools: teachers, administrators, parents and even students. Consider this book an empirically based roadmap as you consider being a part of this transformation. We hope that it not only inspire you to adopt the“Yes We Can” spirit, but also empower you to be the beacon of light for urban students whose very future relies on people like you to keep the torch alive.

As the demand for online learning grows, designing and managing large classes in online and blended learning environments can be challenging for faculty. This book aims to provide practical assistance to higher education faculty who teach large online or blended classes. The authors who contributed to the book include higher education faculty, instructional designers, facilitators in providing faculty development and researchers with years of experience and understanding as well as interest in improving the effectiveness of large online classes. They share their experiences in designing and delivering active, engaging, collaborative teaching and learning by using innovative technology tools and instructional strategies.

We hope that this book adds to the relevant literature by continuing conversations started before the COVID-19 pandemic but brought to the fore by it. Moving forward, it is our intent to provide readers with examples of how instructors around the world adapted to the new reality of teaching online since early 2020. Distilling what has worked and why from areas that require further analysis would benefit us all by identifying strategies, structures, support services, and policies that could augment online education, with a particular focus on large virtual classes.

Social media and digital tools permeate the everyday lives of young people. In the early stages of commentary about the impact of the digital age on civic life, debates revolved around whether the Internet enhanced or discouraged civic and political action. Since then we have seen new media move to center stage in politics and activism--from the 2008 US election to the 2011 Arab Spring to the Occupy movement. We have also seen new patterns in how different sub-groups make use of digital media. These developments have pushed people to move beyond questions about whether new media are good or bad for civic life, to ask instead: how, under what conditions, and for whom, do new digital tools become resources for political critique and action by the young?

This book will provide a platform for a new wave of scholarship about young people’s political participation in the digital age. We define “youth” or “young people” as roughly between the ages of 12 and 25. We include perspectives from political science, education, cultural studies, learning sciences, and youth development. We draw on the framework developed by the MacArthur Research Network on Youth and Participatory Politics (Cohen, Kahne, Bowyer, Middaugh, & Rogowski, 2012), which defines participatory politics as, “interactive, peer-based acts through which individuals and groups seek to exert both voice and influence on issues of public concern.”

Over the last quarter century, educational leadership as a field has developed a broad strand of research that engages issues of social justice, equity and diversity. This effort includes the work of many scholars who advocate for a variety of equity-oriented leadership preparation approaches. Critical scholarship in Education Administration and Educational Politics is concerned with questions of power and in various ways asks questions around who gets to decide. In this volume, we ask who decides how to organize schools around criteria of ability and/or disability and what these decisions imply for leadership in schools. In line with this broader critical tradition of inquiry, this volume seeks to interrogate policies, research and personnel preparation practices which constitute interactions, discourses, and institutions that construct and enact ability and disability within the disciplinary field of education leadership. To do so, we present contributions from multidisciplinary perspectives.

The volume is organized around four themes: 1. Leadership and Dis/Ability: Ontology, Epistemology, and Intersectionalities; 2. Educational Leaders and Dis/ability: Policies in Practice; 3. Experience and Power in Schools; 4. Advocacy, Leverage, and the Preparation of School Leaders. Intertwined within each theme are chapters, which explore theoretical and conceptual themes along with chapters that focus on empirical data and narratives that bring personal experiences to the discussion of disabilities and to the multiple ways in which disability shapes experiences in schools. Taken as a whole, the volume covers new territory in the study of educational leadership and dis/abilities at home, school, and work.

This is a book for teachers, especially new and soon-to-be teachers. It’s a book from one teacher to other teachers who care deeply about what goes on in schools, who see teaching as a calling, who want to make their time in classrooms life changing for the students they are lucky enough to teach. This book is meant to inspire as much as instruct.

The lessons that make up the body of this book are organized around five questions that every teacher needs to consider: (1) What can I do to be sure I realize my dream of making a positive difference in the lives of my students? (2) How can I make my teaching effective by building on vital human connections with my students? (3) How can I make my classroom management effective, while encouraging my students to become self-regulating agents of their own behavior? (4) What are instructional approaches that will engage my students in shaping their own development and learning? (5) What can I do to ensure my successful initiation into the teaching profession and avoid burnout in the future? Four lessons are included in each of the five parts defined by these questions.

This book celebrates the passion, commitment and intelligence that teachers bring to their profession. Bright, caring individuals are called to teaching because they feel a powerful drive to touch the lives of young people and to make a difference in the world. The approaches advocated in these pages seek to take advantage of the commitment, drive, and brainpower teachers bring to their avocation. The lessons explored foreground the humanity of teaching and highlight ways teachers can experience the satisfaction of sharing meaningful, learning-filled connections with their students.

Historically, white women have had a tremendous influence on establishing the ideological, political, and cultural scaffold of American public schools. Pedagogical orientations, school policies, and classroom practices are underwritten by white, cisgender, feminine, and middle to upper class social and cultural norms. Labor trends suggest that students of color are likely to sit in front of many more white women teachers than males or non-white teachers, thus making it imperative to better understand the nature of white women’s work in culturally diverse settings and the factors that most profoundly impact their effectiveness. This book examines how white women teacher dispositions (i.e. knowledge, beliefs, and skills) intersect (and/or interact) with their racial identity development, the concept of whiteness, institutional racism, and cultural perspectives of racial difference. All of which, as the authors in this volume argue, matter for nurturing a teaching practice that leads to more equitable schooling outcomes for youth of color.

While it is imperative that the field of education recruits and retains more nonwhite teachers, it is equally important to identify research-supported professional development resources for a white woman-dominated profession. To that end, the book’s contributors present critical insight for creating cultural contexts for learning conducive to effective cross-cultural and cross-racial teaching. Chapters in the first section explore white women’s role in establishing and maintaining school environments that cater to Eurocentric sensibilities and white racial preferences for learning and social interaction. Authors in the second section discern the implications of white images, whiteness, and white racial identity formation for preparing and professionally developing white women teachers to be effective educators. Chapters in the third section of the book emphasize the centrality of race in negotiating academic interactions that demonstrate culturally responsive teaching. Each chapter in this book is written to investigate the intersectionality of race, cultural responsive pedagogies, and teaching identities as it relate to teaching in multiethnic environments. In addition, the book offers solution-oriented practices to equip white women (and any other reader) to respond appropriately and adequately to the needs of racially diverse students in American schools.

This book brings together an international group of researchers reporting on their work about play and early childhood education across 13 countries – Norway, Sweden, Denmark, England, Germany, Hong Kong, United States of America, India, The Maldives, Sri Lanka, Singapore, China and Australia. It contributes to growing international conversations about play and the role of play in early childhood education.

Each of the chapters in this anthology reflects different directions in research as well as a range of approaches to reconceptualising play. Each researcher questions assumptions underpinning young children’s play and early childhood education and explores the implications of these questions for further research, practice and policy. Chapters report a wide range of innovative and transformative research, focusing on areas such as the play of infants and toddlers, the role of values in play, the complexity of connections between play and learning, motivation, the role and understandings of early childhood educators in promoting children’s play, risky play and the impact of Westernised approaches to play in different contexts.

This book argues for the importance of children’s play at a time when there is a great deal of pressure to increase the academic focus of early education and to eliminate play that could be deemed risky. Several authors note moves towards pedagogies of play and explore the potential links between play and learning in early education settings. The research reported in this book is a timely reminder of the value of play, for and of itself, as well as the learning potential of play. It provides a pathway into the debates about the role and value of play in early years education for students, researchers and policy-makers.

The goal of this fourth volume of RISE was to provide a research foundation that demonstrates an agenda to strengthen the preparation and enhancement of teachers of science for regions and states experiencing extensive initial growth of Hispanic ELLs in schools. The goal was carried out through a series of events that led to the planning and subsequent dissemination of research being conducted by various stakeholders throughout the United States. Researchers were first invited from regions of the country that have had a long history of with Hispanic ELLs in classrooms as well as those regions where initial and now extensive growth has occurred only in the past few years. A national conference Science Teacher Education for Hispanic English Language Learners in the Southeast (SHELLS) funded through the National Science Foundation was used as one of the dissemination methods to establish and secure commitments from researchers to a conduct and report research to strengthen teacher preparation for science. The national call for manuscripts requested the inclusion of major priorities and critical research areas, methodological concerns, and concerns and results of implementation of teacher preparation and development programs.

The chapters in this volume illustrate how teachers are bringing creativity, higher-order thinking, and meaningful learning activities into particular school settings despite pressures of standards and testing. We chose the word wise for the title of this book, and we use it frequently to describe the pedagogical practices we have identified. The words powerful and ambitious are used as well. The larger point, as Keith C. Barton makes in his chapter, is that there is no necessary connection between content standards and high-stakes tests on the one hand, and lowlevel, rote instruction on the other. He reminds us, as Thornton (1991) and Wiggins (1987) previously have argued, that "teachers play a crucial role in mediating educational policy, and their intentions and interpretations have at least as much influence on classroom practice as does the content of standards and highstakes tests." Barton also asserts that “this makes it all the more crucial to identify the wisdom of practice that enables teachers . . . to engage students in powerful educational experiences.”

This book contains an argument supported by education philosophers as well as composite stories, data, and personal experiences. The author mentions a number of scholars (e.g., Benjamin, 1988; Buber, 1970; Noddings, 2005, 2013; Palmer, 1983; van Manen, 1986, 1991, 2000) who address important human issues in the field of education, and she ties their work and hers to show common themes within the issues of care, responsivity, and relational ethics.

The first part of the book (Introduction and Chapters 1-3) is primarily philosophical, and the author shares the thoughts of the aforementioned scholars and others on topics relating to the very human work teachers do. The next section of the book (Chapters 4-6) combines theoretical works and empirical data to address the complexity and humanity of teaching.

While the work described in the aforementioned chapters may appear to present an idea of ethical teacher perfection, this is not the case. Teachers are not supposed to be, nor are they logistically able to be, all things to all children. The final chapter instead addresses how stakeholders (e.g., educators, administrators, parents) can gently move our traditional education system toward this ideal. This conclusion shares the ways teachers and teacher educators can conceptualize the work on teaching-as-human-interaction and use it to improve the teaching perception.

Women as Global Leaders is the second volume in the new Women and Leadership: Research, Theory, and Practice book series published for the International Leadership Association by IAP. Global leadership is an emerging area of research, with only a small but growing published literature base. More specifically, the topic of women’s advances and adventures in leading within the global context is barely covered in the existing leadership literature. Although few women are serving in global leadership roles in corporate and non-profit arenas, and as heads of nations, that number is growing (e.g., Indira Nooyi at PepsiCo, Sheryl Sandberg at Facebook, Marissa Mayer at Yahoo, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf as president of Liberia, Angela Merkel as chancellor of Germany).

The purpose of this volume is to provide the reader with current conceptualizations and theory related to women as global leaders, recent empirical investigations of the phenomenon, analysis of effective global leadership development programs, and portraits of women who lead, or have led, in a global role. The volume is divided into four sections. The first section covers the state of women as global leaders, containing chapters by Joyce Osland and Nancy Adler, pioneers in the field of global and/or women’s leadership. The second section describes approaches to women’s global leadership. The third section offers an analysis of programs that are useful in developing women as global leaders, with the final section profiling women as global leaders, including Margaret Thatcher, Nobel Laureate Malala Yousfazai, and Golda Meir. As Barbara Kellerman noted in the Foreword, "this book... should be understood as a collection whose time has come, precisely because women now have opportunities to lead that are far more expansive than they were even in the recent past. Though their numbers remain low, they are able in some cases to exercise leadership not only as outsiders, but also as insiders, from the very positions of power and authority to which men forever have had access."

Women Leaders: Advancing Careers recognizes that while the majority of students enrolled in educational leadership preparation programs continue to be women; women’s advancement to top school executive roles is still not comparable to that of men. Despite significant gains in the past decade, the biased treatment of women continues to be a barrier to their advancement to key administrative positions.

The authors in Women Leaders: Advancing Careers have contributed significantly to the growing body of literature aimed at assisting the career advancement of women. Their research indicates that the concepts presented herein are critical to women’s leadership preparations, advancement, and success. Women Leaders: Advancing Careers melds history, theory, research, and practice to provide guidance to aspiring women administrators in developing a career path and in attaining and successfully performing in executive roles.

In an age where the quality of teacher education programs has been called into question, it is more important than ever that teachers have a fundamental understanding of the principles of human learning, motivation, and development. Theory to Practice: Educational Psychology for Teachers and Teaching is a series for those who teach educational psychology in teacher education programs. At a time when educational psychology is at risk of becoming marginalized, it is imperative that we, as educators, “walk our talk” in serving as models of what effective instruction looks like. Each volume in the series draws upon the latest research to help instructors model fundamental principles of learning, motivation, and development to best prepare their students for the diverse, multidimensional, uncertain, and socially-embedded environments in which these future educators will teach.

The inaugural volume, Teaching on Assessment, is centered on the role of assessment in teaching and learning. Each chapter translates current research on critical topics in assessment for educational psychology instructors and teacher educators to consider in their teaching of future teachers. Written for practitioners, the aim is to present contemporary issues and ideas that would help teachers engage in meaningful assessment practice. This volume is important not only because of the dwindling presence of assessment-related instructional content in teacher preparation programs, but also because the policy changes in the last two decades have transformed the meaning and use of assessment in K-12 classrooms.

Visual Data in Science Education builds upon previous work done by the editors to bring some definition to the meaning of visual data as it relates to education, and highlighted the breadth of types and uses of visual data across the major academic disciplines. In this book, the editors have brought this focus specifically to science education through the contributions of colleagues in the field who actively research about and engage in teaching with visual data. The book begins by examining how the brain functions with respect to processing visual data, then explores models of conceptual frameworks, which then leads into how related ideas are actuated in education settings ranging from elementary science classrooms to college environments. As a whole, this book fosters a more coherent image of the multifaceted process of science teaching and learning that is informed by current understandings of science knowledge construction, the scientific enterprise, and the millennium student as they relate to visual data.

Drawing from many disciplinary areas, this edited volume illustrates the many ways that popular culture can be used to teach peace and justice. Chapters address such topics as teaching about racism, domestic violence, structural violence, conflict analysis, decolonization, critiques of capitalism, and peacebuilding, showing how different forms of popular culture can be utilized to enhance student learning. Contributors provide both theoretical backgrounds and concrete lessons using TV, film, music, graphic novels, and more.

Working with Mixed Heritage Students offers a collection of writings that bridges the social science and educational literature related to mixed heritage identity development and schooling in diverse contexts. As such, it is the first book of its kind to provide a direct focus on multiracial/ethnic identity and formal education in the United States based on the scholarship of educational researchers. The two common threads linking the chapters are: the flexible, yet situated nature of ethnic and racial identities among mixed heritage students; and the importance of theorizing social contexts when interpreting and representing identity, community, and belonging. In addition to exploring general themes of identity development, Working with Mixed Heritage Students addresses theoretical and methodological issues in conducting research on topics related to mixed heritage students, as well as implications for teacher preparation and educational practice. Ultimately, the authors brought together in this volume share a focus on recently mixed heritage students of first, or second, or third generation multiracial and multiethnic descent. This diversity of perspectives on such a complex topic creates a tension within the book, one that naturally emerges through interdisciplinary collaboration. But it is hoped that this tension is just one of many that will lead to further reflection, dialogue, and action by researchers and educators working with like populations.

There is only one place where social education can occur and flourish: through the voices that create a pedagogy of change. And it is these voices where the most exciting and provocative moments can occur for those of us who are passionate about education, teaching, social justice, equity, and love. As such, social education is a journey—an endeavor that makes us savor the experience of the journey more than the destination. And social education is a journey that ins enhanced through educator and student voices because it occurs in the most important spaces of our personal and professional lives. It occurs in the hallways of the schools we teach, in the staff meetings we attend, in the mountain villages we venture to visit, in the places we work, and in the spaces we occupy. Moreover, social education is a unique kind of journey because it is a human experience that seldom occurs alone. It happens with our colleagues and our loved ones. It happens with our students, administrators, and other professionals who are fighting for the same things that we so fervently believe. In the end, social education occurs and flourishes in the trenches because it is the active pursuit of getting our hands dirty in our endless pursuit for a better and more just world.

Social education is also a narrative, which takes on a different meaning for each one of us. This is because sooner or later each person that embarks into the journey of social education develops its own personal definition of what social education entails through his or her own personal landscape and knowledge. This personal landscape has been evolving since we were very young with some of the best examples of human courage and tenacity in the fight for social justice.

Voices of Social Education: A Pedagogy of Change is a collection of personal stories. In this volume, academics, teachers, students, activists, and artists share their personal stories of triumph, tribulations, and courage in their daily fight for social justice and equality. The term social education is not defined as a set number of guidelines or a specific definition; we give the term an organic fluency to stress that social education is a point of encounter--a common space-- where we can share with each other our experiences, values, and culture to form a more genuine and just social experience.

This book is for new faculty, graduate students, teachers, administrators, and other academics who want to write more clearly and have their work published. The essays focus on writing journal articles, dissertations, grants, edited books, and other writing in educational settings. The authors are educators who share their own first-hand experiences that provide novice writers with important knowledge and support in the quest for success in professional scholarly writing. A variety of authors discuss the writer’s craft, including issues of voice, audience, planning, drafting, revision, conventions, style, submitting to journals, editorial review, and editing.

This book serves as a platform for educators and researchers to unite educational technology and social justice. While educational technology is a rapidly changing and progressive field of research and practice, it remains largely separate from education for social justice. Current literature about educational technology is often approached from a technical, how-to perspective that emphasizes ways to implement technology into the classroom. Technology is often viewed as inevitable, yet neutral and value-free. Educational technology, however, is anything but neutral. The contributors collectively advance a hopeful discourse by exploring the potential of technology as a vehicle to transform and emancipate, while not forgoing a critically reflective measure of self-conscious critique of our own role as educators, students, or scholars in oppressive silences, constraints and conditions. This edited collection makes an important and unique contribution to the field, as it will be the first published volume to detail research, theory, and practice regarding student use of technology in achieving liberatory aims since IAP’s 2009 publication, ICT for Education, Development and Social Justice.

The fields of educational technology and social justice are vast and applicable in many domains, including teacher education, graduate programs, and K-12 education. This work is intended to appeal to a diverse academic and professional audience of K-12 teachers, teacher educators, educational technology and social justice scholars, and policy makers. Scholars and academics instructing graduate-level educational technology courses can reference this edited collection as the most current text on socially just educational technology. Educational practitioners from teacher education programs and the K-12 sector may use this book as a source of ideas and inspiration to incorporate student use of technology toward emancipatory aims. This title could be adopted as a course text for both undergraduate and graduate education courses in: media literacy, digital literacy, distance education, education for social justice, and teacher preparation, and educational technology courses. Readers will also be able to use the book as a guide when critically analyzing their own professional practice, whether it is in research, working with K-12 students, or preparing future educators or scholars.

This book is the fourth volume in the six-part series Theory to Practice: Educational Psychology for Teachers and Teaching. The objective of most other volumes in this series is to help instructors apply and model fundamental principles of learning, assessment, motivation, and development in preparing their students for the diverse, multidimensional, uncertain, and socially-embedded classrooms in which these future educators will teach.

This volume is a strong compliment to others in the series as it prepares readers to be better positioned to advocate for principles of psychology in their programs and departments, and to prepare preservice teachers to do likewise in the K-12 classrooms they will soon guide. Even more, this volume will help instructors in shaping pre-service teachers to be stronger advocates for their own students. This volume is organized around two themes: (1) Advocating for principles and practices of educational psychology, and (2) advocating for students. These themes go hand-in-hand. While advocating for educational psychology principles and evidence- based practices in their schools, teachers also are called upon to advocate for and empower historically marginalized groups of students. Topics in Part I include development of intercultural competency, implementation of professional learning communities, culturalizing the curriculum, journalistic learning, incorporation of inquiry learning, and universal design. Topics in Part II include supporting student self-advocacy, creating an allyship with LGBTQ+ students, advocating for victims of bullying, and supporting students with mental health needs.

Creative problem solving, collaboration, and technology fluency are core skills requisite of any nation’s workforce that strives to be competitive in the 21st Century. Teaching these types of skills is an economic imperative, and assessment is a fundamental component of any pedagogical program. Yet, measurement of these skills is complex due to the interacting factors associated with higher order thinking and multifaceted communication. Advances in assessment theory, educational psychology, and technology create an opportunity to innovate new methods of measuring students’ 21st Century Skills with validity, reliability, and scalability.

In this book, leading scholars from multiple disciplines present their latest research on how to best measure complex knowledge, skills, and abilities using technology-based assessments. All authors discuss theoretical and practical implications from their research and outline their visions for the future of technology-based assessments.

This book on bilingual education policy represents a multidimensional and longitudinal study of “policy processes” as they play out on the ground (a single school in Los Angeles), and over time (both within the same school, and also within the state of Georgia). In order to reconstruct this complex policy process, Anderson impressively marshals a great variety of forms of “discourse.” Most of this discourse, of course, comes from overheard discussions and spontaneous interviews conducted at a particular school—the voices of teachers and administrators. Such discourse forms the heart of her ethnographic findings. Yet Anderson also brings an ethnographer’s eye to national and regional debates as they are conducted and represented in different forms of media, especially newspapers and magazines. She then uses the key theoretical concept of “articulation” to conceptually link these media representations with local school discourse. The result is an illuminating account of how everyday debates at a particular school and media debates occurring more broadly mutually inform one another.

This volume showcases the efforts of real teachers using the teaching events from real middle school classrooms. Included is the work of eight hard-working middle school teachers who are convinced that the form and function of genre is a way to teach writing across the middle school curriculum. Each chapter contains sample lessons, protocols, classroom instructional materials, and assessment tools to provide middle school teachers with an approach to explore rigorous expository writing instruction in their own classrooms.

Faced with the problem of how to measure the magnitude of economic disadvantage in the populations served by schools or districts, researchers addressing school finance topics have invariably turned to the fraction of students eligible for free- or reduced-lunches (FRPL). But the facile dependence on FRPL may be problematic. A large and growing literature in learning sciences and in the field of education itself has pivoted towards studies that explore the relationship between social/emotional health and the learning of children. The growing body of research on social/emotional health and learning (e.g. Gershoff, Aber, Raver, and Lennon, 2007) suggests that more refined measures of wealth, income and hardship more fully account for the effects of economic disadvantage than does FRPL. Historically, research in school finance has not utilized these refined measures but instead has depended on FRPL.

The Community Eligibility Provision (CEP), a recent change in how student eligibility for free lunch is determined, may have the unintended, and yet fortuitous, consequence that it will force school finance researchers to use more sophisticated measures of student hardship. The CEP makes it possible for schools serving low-income populations to classify all students as eligible for free- or reduced-price lunch. Koedel and Parsons (2021) argue that, while FRPL might have been a workable measure of student disadvantage prior to CEP, post-CEP the extent of a school’s or a district’s population that is disadvantaged is no longer measured accurately by FRPL. The CEP made accurate FRPL counts less critical for many schools and districts; post-pandemic legislation (Vock, 2023) in a number of states to make school meals free for all students in those states has increased the number of districts for which accurate counts are unimportant. Fazlul, Koedel, and Parsons (2023) go on to argue that, even prior to CEP, FRPL failed to provide an accurate measure of a school or district’s poverty. This new policy environment makes it imperative to explore alternatives to FRPL and the implications for school finance.

The book aims to provide a timely collection of new research on a measurement issue that is central to much research on K-12 education finance. The book is meant to serve scholars in education finance and policy who need a refined perspective on the context of schooling. The book is also meant to serve students and faculty from programs in public administration, public policy, community development and applied economics, education administration, educational leadership and policy studies who are studying content related to education policy, the economics of education, state and local public finance, and taxation. Some upper-level undergraduate students may also benefit from this resource.

The topic of bilingualism has aroused considerable interest in research on language acquisition in recent decades. Researchers in various fields, such as developmental psychology and psycholinguistics, have investigated bilingual populations from different perspectives in order to understand better how bilingualism affects cognitive abilities like memory, perception, and metalinguistic awareness. Telling Stories in Two Languages contributes to the general upsurge in linguistically related studies of bilingual children. The book’s particular and unique focus is narrative development in a bilingual and multicultural context.

The book is particularly important in an increasingly pluralistic and multicultural United States, where there are large numbers of children from increasingly diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds. Telling stories is important in the context of language and communication development because it is often by means of this activity that children develop the skill of presenting a series of events both in speech and writing. However, varying concepts of literacy exist in different societies, and literacy has different social and personal implications in different social and cultural contexts. In our schools, teachers are expected to teach what is relevant for students in the dominant cultural framework, but it would benefit those teachers greatly to have an understanding of important differences in, for example, narrative styles of different cultures.

Bilingualism or even multilingualism is all around us. Even in the United States, where a single language is clearly predominant, there are hundreds of languages spoken. Speaking more than one language may not be typical, but is so common in modern times that it would be senseless to ignore its many implications. The study of narratives told by children in both English and Japanese that are presented in this book will provide an important point of reference for research aimed at teasing apart the relative contributions of linguistic abilities and cultural conceptions to bilingual children’s narrative development.

This volume is intended for researchers, curriculum developers, policy makers, and classroom teachers who want comprehensive information on what students at grades 4, 8, and 12 (the grades assessed by NAEP) can and cannot do in mathematics. After two introductory chapters on the design of NAEP, the volume contains a chapter on the challenges in analyzing NAEP data at the item level followed by five chapters that report 2005 through 2013 student performance on specific assessment items. These chapters are organized by content area and then by topic (e.g., understanding of place value, knowledge of transformations, ability to use metric and U.S. systems of measurement) and thus provide baseline data on the proportion of students who are able to complete the mathematics tasks currently used in the upper elementary, middle, and high-school mathematics curriculum. Additional chapters focus on student reasoning, U.S. performance on international assessments, and using construct analysis rather than percent correct on clusters of items to understand student knowledge on specific mathematics topics.

Several themes emerge from the volume. One is that while the rate of improvement in mathematics learning in grades 4 and 8 has slowed in recent years, it has slowed more on some topics than others. Another is that relatively minor changes in wording can have significant effects on student performance and thus it is difficult to be specific about what students can do without knowing exactly what questions they were asked. A third theme is that changes in performance over time can sometimes but not always be understood in terms of what students are taught. For example, there were substantial gains on several grade 4 items requiring understanding of fractions and that is probably because the amount of instruction on fractions in grades 3 and 4 has been increasing. In contrast, while relatively few twelfth-grade students have ever been good at factoring trinomials, performance on this skill seems to be decreasing. This suggests that while more students are completing advanced mathematics courses in high school, these courses are not helping in the area of factoring trinomials. Finally, there are limitations to using NAEP as a measure of student performance on the Common Core State Standards. To the extent that NAEP can be used, however, the NAEP data show a substantial gap between expectations and performance.

Schools and colleges of teacher education are called upon to prepare teachers to use technology. The ability to use technology has been established as a requirement for teacher licensing, certification, and sometimes employment. This book offers a comprehensive picture of the prominent perspectives on technology literacy for teachers and current practices in preparing teachers to become technologically literate. Articles included in this volume address such pressing issues as the theoretical foundations of teacher technology knowledge, the role of technology in teaching, technology standards for teachers, and effective approaches to prepare technologically competent teachers.

The objective of this book is to advance our understanding of the design, implementation and evaluation of test-driven external accountability policies for improving both academic excellence and equity. This book provides new insights into debates about the efficacy of highstakes testing through critical synthesis of previous studies and through systematic analysis of the achievement gap trends over the past 15 years. The core findings have implications for contemporary national and state policy efforts, as mandated by NCLB, to close the achievement gap. The book alerts readers to scientific, institutional and technical threats to the current test-driven school accountability system, and possible consequences if we fail to counteract those threats and continue the current policy course with underfunded mandates and an over-reliance on testing and sanctions.

What is the purpose of public education? What is the value of taxpayer supported public schools? Who is invited to answer these questions? Except among policymakers, few publicly answer or debate these questions. Instead, the neoliberal forces of competition and deregulation seem to be driving education decision-making. The formal education system is seen as a tool for personal and national economic growth. Much of the education policy debate is centered on how to attain academic success as measured by standardized high stakes tests and evaluations. But, how to educate children and youth is a second order question. The first question must be ‘what is the purpose of schooling, and is it limited to the presumed answer that it is to prepare workers so our nations can sustain economic superiority?’ Students, parents, teachers, business people, artists, retirees, First Nations people, military veterans, and religious professionals are not typically invited to answer these questions – despite their stake in educational outcomes. Twenty-four such people, including professional educational policy makers and scholars, offer their thoughts in these essays from the US and Canada. The intended audience for this volume includes all who are concerned with the future of public schools in both nations.

In an era of constant connection, it can be challenging to prioritize time for reflection. Taking time to think can feel like a luxury or even a waste time. People facilitating complex leadership processes may feel the least able to pause and reflect. However, it is through intentional reflection that we make meaning of experiences, connect ideas, question assumptions, and generate innovative possibilities. By taking time to reflect, individually and with others, learners can see the full picture of an experience, understand their thought processes, and enhance their capacity for leadership. Beyond individual reflection, by engaging in reflection on social issues with others, leaders can be empowered and enabled to create positive changes. This book is a clarion call for educators and learners to make reflection a central priority.

Reflection, the process of making meaning of experience, and leadership, a relational process for affecting change, are enhanced by one another. Together, they strengthen the potential for leadership learning through experience. This book addresses challenges for reflection in leadership learning while also connecting it to timely topics. It begins with connections between reflection and leadership and then introduces a framework for reflection in leadership learning. Reflection is a powerful strategy curricular and co-curricular learning; for instruction and assessment, reflection in leadership learning can benefit from both intentional framing and feedback. As socially constructed concepts, both reflection and leadership have historically lacked clarity; to add to the confusion, critical reflection is often interchanged with reflection. This book introduces a continuum of critical reflection in leadership learning. In order to facilitate reflection in leadership learning, educators must engage in the inner work of becoming reflective educators. Finally, in the face of complex social challenges, reflection, leadership, mindfulness, and resilience are juxtaposed in order to highlight how these concepts are reliant upon one another.

Reflection in leadership learning is essential for anyone who wants to develop their capacity for leadership. When faced with complex social issues and challenges at a global scale, the only way to make progress is through collective action that results from critical reflection. To develop more resilient and mindful learners who can adapt to changing circumstances, educators must center reflection in leadership learning as a philosophy, pedagogy, outcome, and strategy. This book provides a balance of theory and practice to empower and enable educators to engage in reflective leadership learning.

During the 2020 and 2021 phases of the global COVID-19 pandemic, there was significant prognostication regarding what internationalization in higher education would look like in its aftermath. Within the field of international education, many stated the need to reimagine internationalization in and of higher education in the face of severe budget cuts, restrictions on travel, and increased government protectionism in the face of growing nationalistic populism globally to name a few challenges. Absent from many of those discussions, however, were the voices of many leader-practitioners who have had to think flexibly about internationalization in higher education in order to sustain and grow programs throughout the last 20 years despite numerous exogenous factors, e.g., earlier economic recessions and viral outbreaks, along with endogenous factors like internal leadership transitions and institutional reorganizations.

Wisconsin in the World explores how internationalization at the University of Wisconsin–Madison (UW) has been a decades-long, ongoing endeavor. Against that backdrop, the various chapters also provide a snapshot of how people across the UW campus were reflecting on their work amidst the COVID-19 pandemic and on the implications of the pandemic regarding the future of campus internationalization. The book is organized into four overarching sections—internationalization of the curriculum (general and language); experiential learning (co-curricular engagement and education away); establishing linkages (institutional and outreach); and administration. To highlight the expansive way campus units have been engaging in internationalization, a wide-ranging set of chapter case studies have been included. Although not exhaustive, this volume does provide a robust cross-sectional view into internationalization at UW. For international education scholars and practitioners then, a number of the chapters also highlight areas that may warrant further engagement and exploration moving forward. Finally, by examining how internationalization at UW has been informed by the Wisconsin Idea, this book explores how institutional internationalization strategies can align with and be tailored to institutional values for long-term sustainability.

In addition to the 34 chapters focusing on different units and programs at UW, Wisconsin in the World also includes a number of contributions from colleagues at other institutions. Each section has a lead-in chapter which provides an overview of the scholarship in that particular area and/or a concluding chapter from a scholar-practitioner situating the UW “cases” in relation to their own work. The intention of structuring the book this way was to facilitate a dialogue among UW colleagues, across institutions, and with the scholarship in the field.

The target audience for Wisconsin in the World includes practitioners or scholar practitioners in the field of international education (study abroad, education away, internships, partnerships, program development), as well as faculty and students in global higher education or comparative and international education graduate programs. Additionally, this volume may be of general interest for any higher education administrator who may not have a background in international education but may become responsible for programs and support within a school or college context (e.g., a dean or department chair).

This series is dedicated to advancing our understanding of schools through empirical study and theoretical analysis. Scholars, both young and established, are invited to publish original analyses, but we especially encourage young scholars to contribute to Theory and Research in Educational Administration. This first issue provides a mix of beginning and established scholars and a range of theoretical perspectives. Eight separate but related studies were selected for this first issue.

Three of the research pieces deal with the intended and unintended consequences of policy and political initiatives in schools. Do high-stakes accountability environments threaten the potential of learning organizations? Marks and Printy grapple with that question. Not surprisingly, they anticipate the latent dysfunctional consequences of high-stakes accountability as they provide a careful analysis of urban school district responses to state policies. Well-intended initiatives produced unintended consequences that threatened the capacity for organizational learning in these schools. In a similar fashion, Jones and Malen’s findings suggest that political strategies that use insider dynamics can foster successful enactment of reforms but often at a cost of undermining efforts to implement the policy. Song and Miskel focus their analysis on national reading policy. An examination of national interests groups and policymakers suggests that an assessment of various groups’ influence is necessary if policy actors are to make sensible judgments in choosing allies and building coalitions for effective actions.

Two of the papers are informed by contingency theory. Ogawa and Studer are concerned with the relationship between the school and its community. They propose that both buffering and bridging strategies enable schools to deal with parents effectively. Because schools depend on parents for resources, they bridge to parents in cooperative fashion, but because parents often pose uncertainty, schools also buffer parent influence by limiting their access. Yet, there is divergence from contingency theory because schools depend primarily on parents to provide socio-cultural rather than material resources; hence, schools often use strategies that shape rather than diminish dependence on parents. Rowan, also draws ideas from contingency theory to examine the extent to which the nature of teachers’ instructional work affects patterns of instructional management in schools. His data support the explanation that teachers who face increased task variety actively work to construct "organic" patterns of instructional management to reduce task uncertainty and to increase workplace motivation and commitment.

Three papers examine teachers in schools. Rowan is intrigued by the variation in the nature of teachers’ work both in terms of task variety and task uncertainty. He finds that teachers do not see their work as many organizational theorists do, that is, as a non-routine form of work; in fact, teachers view teaching as either as a routine task or "expert task." In spite of the fact that many teachers endorsed a constructivist view of teaching, few concluded it was a non-routine task. Moreover, teachers in different disciplines have different views about both the nature of academic knowledge and desirable teaching practices. Both Goddard and Hoy and his colleagues use social cognitive theory to develop an argument of the importance of collective efficacy in positively influencing student achievement. Hoy, Smith, and Sweetland build on their earlier work to demonstrate that collective efficacy of schools is pivotal in explaining student achievement in a sample of rural schools. Goddard shows that that collective efficacy is also an important predictor of the practice of involving teachers in important school decisions. He concludes that the more we learn how school practices are related to collective efficacy, the more we will know about what school leaders