Education

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.

Over the last decade, the field of distance education (and e-learning) has substantially strengthened and assumed a more international scope. There has been an impressive growth in the conceptual, empirical and experiential foundations of the field. Trends and Issues in Distance Education: International Perspectives (2nd Ed) captures a representative snapshot of the breadth of current global trends and issues in distance education theory, research, and practice. Through 21 chapters (from over 30 international authors), the book documents new developments in distance education scholarship and practice, presenting a diverse set of viewpoints on the trends and issues affecting this increasingly central discipline.

The book is for researchers, practitioners, and students. Chapters speak to the many creative ways in which distance education addresses learning and human development needs around the world. They focus on distance education in dissimilar settings that extend beyond the limitations of the dominating paradigms of the highly developed economies. Contributing authors touch upon conceptual as well as practical issues. They critically reflect on both large- and small-scale distance education initiatives, discussing the use of everything from the most advanced technologies (e.g., 3-D computing) to the most rudimentary technologies (e.g., wind-up radios).

The book, Talking About Structural Inequalities in Everyday Life: New Politics of Race in Groups, Organizations, and Social Systems, provides critical attention to contemporary, innovative, and cutting-edge issues in group, organizational, and social systems that address the complexities of racialized structural inequalities in everyday life. This book provides a comprehensive focus on systemic, societal, and organizational functioning in a variety of contexts in advancing the interdisciplinary fields of human development, counseling, social work, education, public health, multiculturalism/cultural studies, and organizational consultation. One of the most fundamental aspects of this book engages readers in the connection between theory and praxis that incorporates a critical analytic approach to learning and the practicality of knowledge. A critical emphasis examines how inequalities and power relations manifest in groups, organizations, communities, and social systems within societal contexts. In particular, suppressing talk about racialized structural inequalities in the dominant culture has traditionally worked to marginalize communities of color. The subtle, barely visible, and sometimes unspeakable behavioral practices involving these racialized dynamics are explored. This scholarly book provides a valuable collection of chapters for researchers, prevention experts, clinicians, and policy makers, as well as research organizations, not-for-profit organizations, clinical agencies, and advanced level undergraduate and graduate courses focused on counseling, social work, education, public health, organizational consultation and advocacy.

As Western educational practices have become global, the cultural aspects and the problems associated with them have become more apparent as they are contrasted with local ways of learning and knowing in the widely diverse societies around the world. The Western world has tended to assume that its concepts of progress and development should be universally welcomed, especially in countries that are struggling economically. Most cultures tend to feel a similar preference for their own world views. However, the West has had a history of not only ethnocentrism, but colonialism, in which it has forcibly attempted to reshape the cultures, societies, politics, and economics of conquered territories in its own likeness. Though some of the more overt, political colonialist practices have been abandoned, colonial ways of thinking, thinking about thinking, and training in how to think, are still practiced, and these in turn, through the education of each nation-state’s children, affect every aspect of economics, politics, and social development in the global village that our world has become. It is critical to examine the basic assumptions of Western education in order to trace their effects on local ways of knowing in many areas which may not share these assumptions, and which may be threatened and destroyed by them as global interaction in politics, economics, and education increases.

The argument that education is primarily a moral endeavor may have been forced into the background for a time by rationalism and secularism, but it is reappearing as an important consideration in education once again. The question remains, however; whose morality should be institutionalized by compulsory educational programs—that of the individual, the family, the professional, the elite, the state, or the nation? And if the rules of science are no longer the single authority in identifying truth and reality, who decides the authorities we should rely on?

What Do Principals Do? provides a comprehensive and expansive look into a high school principal’s job. Rather than a survey asking principals how much time they spend on various tasks, this work provides empirical evidence of exactly what a principal does every day of the year and how much time he spends doing it. Based on the results of a three-year longitudinal study conducted by a California High School Principal of the Year (Association of California School Administrators, 2012), this book reveals precisely what a principal does, when he does it, and how much time he spends doing it. The study identifies 72 discrete tasks performed by principals and examines how much time (disaggregated by day, week, month, and year) they spend on each of those 72 tasks.

The results of the data collection are the foundation of the book. The findings are supplemented with explanations and analyses that reveal the workings of K-12 education and give readers a glimpse of life in a comprehensive high school. This is a must read for everyone considering a life in public school administration. The author, Dr. Jonathan Hurst, the longest running principal in Elsinore High School’s 130-year history, provides insightful commentary and relevant anecdotes from a rich and rewarding career served in a large comprehensive high school in Southern California.

This book provides detailed, quantitative evidence and an explanation for just what a principal does and how much time he spends doing it. In the process, it demonstrates the requisite skills for effective school governance, administrative multi-tasking, and productive principal behavior. Data collected covers three years and encompasses over 20,500 tasks and 7,500 hours of work. This is a useful augmentation to existing administrative credential course readings as it provides evidence for what the research and authors are saying and demonstrates those skills, procedures, and operations that are an everyday part of a school administrator’s job. But the appeal for What Do Principal’s Do? goes beyond those seeking knowledge about educational administration. Besides the facts and figures about how a principal spends his time, Dr. Hurst offers explanations for why and how the time is spent, and he provides insight into the educational scene. This book has appeal for students in teacher education programs, because it explains school communities and life in a school system, and that also makes it appealing to the lay person or parent who wants to understand how schools work.

Teacher burn out contributes to the epidemic of early career exit. At least half of all new K-12 teachers leave the profession by the time they reach their fifth year of teaching. Conversely, there are urban teachers who survive burn out and thrive as career- long educators. This book results from an in-depth qualitative study that explored one 40-year veteran teacher’s career narrative, analyzing how she not only survived the burn out epidemic, but also thrived as a highly effective career-long urban teacher.

Part 1 of this book uses a critical socio-political lens is used to guide readers through the complexities of career thrival. Framed within the story of one new urban teacher’s typical morning, the book begins with an overview of the socio-political forces that lead to urban teacher burn out. In spite of the obstacles, the more hopeful idea of urban teacher thrival is uncovered through narrative methodology. Part 2 is dedicated to the dynamic narrative of a veteran urban teacher career journey. This inspiring story is related to frameworks established in Part 1, as well as painting a picture of how public education has evolved over the last 40 years, and it’s impact on the lives of teachers.

Part 3 takes a deeper dive into three salient themes that permeated throughout the participant’s story. First hope springs eternal is the idea that sustaining hope supported the teacher’s career thrival. Next, the extended education family is the notion that familial-like relationships at school nourished her longevity. The third theme, creative autonomy, reveals that by being empowered with opportunities for curriculum development and instructional decision-making the teacher maintained her passion. This book concludes with recommendations for teachers, educational leaders and teacher educators to develop and maintain thriving teachers.

The volume 3 of this series is designed to present educators with current research and emerging issues in teaching, learning and motivation in a multicultural context. The book is separated into four sections. In the introduction section we have outlined some of the current issues and recent thoughts about the nature of learning, teaching, and school reforms from a multicultural perspective.

Education, East and West, is today mostly Western in orientation. Asian perspectives remain relatively unrepresented in curricula, pedagogy and administrative structures. This volume has brought together authors researching in Asia who redress this imbalance and describe what the West can learn from the East. Topics covered include conceptions of and approaches to effective learning and teaching, self-regulated learning, perceived causes of success and failure, valuing of education, peer influences and classroom behavior, creativity, teacher commitment, class size, motivation, future goals, and other influences on effective learning. Shared insights from the research and theorizing presented should provide a fascinating perspectives for educators and administrators charged with providing cutting-edge, research-based educational best practices in diverse cultural and social environments internationally.

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.

The purpose of this volume is two-fold. First, the book attempts to initiate a research-based dialogue from a variety of perspectives specifically about teacher training and teaching in the context of student linguistic and cultural diversity; and, second, to cast a wide net over three major areas of professional development that have the potential to impact on teacher quality and on the educational services provided to ELLs at all levels of instruction. This book represents a first attempt to a quiet revolution going on in teacher education (Johnson, 2000). It allows the reader to uncover research activities and experiences that constitute individual teacher education program initiatives. A revolution, because it is stirring the very essence of what stands at the core of teacher education, a core that has long been based more on training to teach monolingual English speaking students and less on teaching ELLs, their first and second language development, using their bilingualism to teach academics, and on the process of becoming an effective teacher of ELLs.

This state-of-the-art review brings together research on effective pedagogy and teacher training. The nine feature chapters are directly concerned with effective new structures and practices for professional development and are presented in a framework that considers a wide spectrum of topics to address issues such as: what teachers need to understand about English language learners, what kind of professional experiences are likely to facilitate those understandings, and what kinds of teacher education programs and school settings are able to support their ongoing learning. The authors also discuss the implications of their work for helping English language learners connect and benefit from school from the points of view of (1) school reform, (2) teachers’ bilingual proficiencies, (3) teachers’ knowledge and beliefs, and (4) teacher training programming and sustainability.

Teaching and Learning at a Distance is written for introductory distance education courses for preservice or in-service teachers, and for training programs that discuss teaching distant learners or managing distance education systems. This text provides readers with the basic information needed to be knowledgeable distance educators and leaders of distance education programs. The teacher or trainer who uses this book will be able to design courses, evaluate programs, and identify issues and trends affecting the field.

In this text we take the following themes:

The first theme is the definition of distance education. Before we started writing the first edition of Teaching and Learning at a Distance we carefully reviewed the literature to determine the definition that would be at the foundation of our writing. This definition is based on the work of Desmond Keegan, but is unique to this book and has been adopted by the Association for Educational Communications and Technology and by the Encyclopedia Britannica.

The second theme of the book is the importance of research to the development of effective courses and programs offered at a distance. The best practices presented in Teaching and Learning at a Distance are validated by scientific evidence. Certainly there are “rules of thumb,” but we have always attempted to only include recommendations that can be supported by research.

The third theme of Teaching and Learning at a Distance is derived from Richard Clark’s famous quote published in the Review of Educational Research asserting that media are mere vehicles that do not directly influence achievement. Clark’s controversial work is discussed in the book, but is also fundamental to the book’s advocacy for distance education—in other words, we authors do not make the claim that education delivered at a distance is inherently better than other ways people learn. Distance delivered instruction is not a magical approach that makes learners achieve more.

Equivalency theory is the fourth theme of the book. Here we present the concept that instruction should be provided to learners that is equivalent rather than identical to what might be delivered in a traditional environment. Equivalency theory helps the instructional designer approach the development of instruction for each learner without attempting to duplicate what happens in a face-to-face classroom.

The final theme for Teaching and Learning at a Distance is the idea that the book should be comprehensive—that it should cover as much of the various ways instruction is made available to distant learners as is possible. It can serve as a stand-alone source of information.

"Web 2.0" is a term used to describe an apparent second generation of the World Wide Web that emphasizes collaboration and sharing of knowledge and content among users. With the growing popularity of Web 2.0, there has been a burgeoning interest in education. Tools such as blogs, wikis, RSS, social networking sites, tag-based folksonomies, and peer-to-peer (P2P) media sharing applications have gained a prominence in teaching and learning. With Wired for Learning: An Educators Guide to Web 2.0 there is tremendous potential for addressing the needs student, teachers, researchers, and practitioners to enhance the teaching and learning experiences through customization, personalization, and rich opportunities for networking and collaboration.

The purpose of this text is to clarify and present applications and practices of Web 2.0 for teaching and learning to meet the educational challenges of students in diverse learning setting. This text will bring teachers and university education into a bold new reality and cause them to move to think differently about technology’s potential for strengthening students' critical thinking, writing, reflection, and interactive learning.

For at least the last 100 years, more than 40% of all students who enrolled in American colleges and universities have not persisted to graduation at four-year institutions. Their stories are varied, but in every case, something got in the way of that pursuit. Life happened. They became one of the nearly 36 million Americans who have some college but no degree.

For many, the stigma of not finishing college is a closely held secret that weighs heavily as they discuss, engage, and compete to meet the challenges of the workforce in the 21st century. Some weren’t ready at age 18 for the focus and commitment that academic studies require. Others found opportunities to create income and meet immediate familial needs or requirements. Many have excelled despite their lack of a college credential. Contrary to the deficit mindset that often permeates the retention and persistence discourse, this book highlights the stories of those who successfully returned to what was left unfinished.

The stories here may challenge your assumptions. These are high-quality students who demonstrated a compelling and inspiring commitment to their education, begun long ago and now completed—in some cases decades later. As you read, don’t miss the role that engaged advisors, supportive family members, and well-designed programs such as prior learning assessment played in helping students to the finish line. These narratives also demonstrate that it is time for institutions of higher education to imagine and embrace new ways of serving these students well.

Immense challenges now face the global community. How can educators train the next generation of students to deal with the vast array of issues awaiting them in every sector of society? Written as a testimony to three decades of experimentation with these challenges in mind, Hong Kong International School humanities teacher Dr. Marty Schmidt draws upon the universal Wisdom tradition to propose pedagogical frameworks that combine what he calls the yang of social conscience with the yin of inner awakening. This yin-yang approach forms the basis of the The Wisdom Way of Teaching, which describes in curricular detail how to cultivate the whole person development of students.

Walking away is both refusal and production (Tuck & Yang, 2014), a seeming paradox taken up in work on fugitivity and marronage (Diouf, 2021; Grant, Woodson, & Dumas, 2021; Harney & Moten, 2013; Hartman, 2007), survivance (Powell, 2002; Sabzalian, 2019; Vizenor, 2008), testimonios (Calderon-Berumen, 2021; Delgado Bernal, Burciaga, & Flores Carmona, 2012; Latina Feminist Group, 2001), and other forms of critical pedagogy and curriculum. In other words, walking away presumes both the rejection of a form of status quo (walking away from something) and a new direction taken (a walking toward something else). In the context of education, many teachers and researchers have reached that breaking point where/when no more curricular/pedagogic violence can be survived, and it is in that moment that those researchers and teachers actively remove themselves from those systems and assert new courses with new possibilities.

This edited volume is a collection of works chronicling acts of refusal that manifest as walking away. In some cases what is walked away from is the erasure of experience in curriculum while in others it is a fundamentalist religious experience. In still other cases what is walked away from is the carceral nature of school discipline policies. In each case walking away is resistance, refusal, and re/co-producing new possibilities and agencies. What is walked toward is a new curriculum/pedagogy of resistance sometimes within and sometimes without that place

(Originally Published in 2000 by Allyn & Bacon)

Teaching and Studying the Holocaust is comprised of thirteen chapters by some of the most noted Holocaust educators in the United States. In addition to chapters on establishing clear rationales for teaching this history and Holocaust historiography, the book includes individual chapters on incorporating primary documents, first person accounts, film, literature, art, drama, music, and technology into a study of the Holocaust. It concludes with an extensive and valuable annotated bibliography especially designed for educators. Chapter Ten instructs how to make effective use of technology in teaching and learning about the Holocaust. The final section of the book includes a bibliography especially developed for teachers that lists invaluable resources.

This book draws on ideas about the nature of teaching and teacher knowledge, teacher development and school reform, and narrative as methodology for understanding the lives and work of teachers. These ideas have been elaborated over the past 20 years or so by many researchers who see storytelling as the interactive process, which constitutes the site of the production of teachers’ knowledge. Narrative research makes it possible to pay attention to the wider concerns that shape the work of teaching, looking at the whole lives of teachers and other educational practitioners, and exploring those lives as embedded in multiple contexts. Listening to teachers speak about whatever most concerns them in their work, it is not surprising that we hear a wide range of different voices not only from different teachers but within the speech of any one teacher. The purpose of this book is to reflect back to the field a multidimensional, multivoiced portrayal of teaching as it is, bringing our attention to both the complexity and the possibility inherent in the work of teachers. Approaching teaching in this way, as multivoiced, allows us to hear possibilities for change and development in the stories of teachers and classrooms.

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.

Women and Leadership in Higher Education is the first volume in a new series of books (Women and Leadership: Research, Theory, and Practice) that will be published in upcoming years to inform leadership scholars and practitioners. This book links theory, research, and practice of women’s leadership in various higher education contexts and offers suggestions for future leadership development strategies. This volume focuses on the field of higher education, particularly within the context of the United States—a sector that serves a majority of students at all degree levels who are women, yet lacks parity by women in senior leadership roles.

The book’s fifteen chapters present both hard facts regarding the current demographic realities within higher education and fresh thinking about how progress can and must be made in order for U.S. higher education to benefit from the perspectives of women at the senior leadership table. The book’s opening section provides data and analysis in addressing “The State of Women and Leadership in Higher Education”; the second section offers descriptions of three effective models for women’s leadership development at the national and institutional levels; the third section draws from recent research to present “Women’s Experiences and Contributions in Higher Education Leadership.” The book concludes with five shorter chapters written by current and former college and university presidents who offer “Lessons from the Trenches” for the benefit of those who follow. In short, the thesis of the book is that our world is changing; higher education collectively, as well as institutions of all types, must change. Bringing more women into leadership is critical to the goal of moving our society and world forward in healthier ways.

The need for strengthening the connections between university-based teacher education programs and schools has never been greater in an era where standards and accountability systems often play centric roles in practically all aspects of the education field. Within this context, university educators and school practitioners have increasingly focused their attention on how professional development schools produce the multiplicity of outcomes that address the exigencies of quality programs for educating teachers and improving school achievement. In keeping with the mission of producing a collection of papers that inform, enlighten, and motivate readers, Volume 3 of the Professional Development Schools book series provides practitioners and researchers with articles on a substantial variety of themes on the most recent developments of the field. Among the thematic threads that organize Volume 3 are 1) using the national standards to examine and evaluate PDSs; 2) implementation, development and leadership issues relevant to beginning and experienced PDSs; 3) using innovative means for student assessments and mentoring in preservice education within a PDS context; 4) the impact of PDSs on teacher education and student achievement; and 5) cases of PDSs and the value of lessons learned. Volume 3 is similar to the previous two volumes in that it includes both practitioner and researcher strands, however, the authors in the current volume carry a sense of maturity and exudes a tone of confidence in their voice. Professional development schools research is an important aspect of teacher education. The collection of articles in Volume 3 contribute to our understanding of their essential qualities and offer assurance that innovation, change, and quality are building blocks in professional development schools.

For thousands of years, religion has been a key element of human societies. Whenever we, as educators, exclude or minimize religion’s vast role in society, we leave out a large part of our world’s shared history. This is a serious act of educational omission, even neglect, on the part of our nation’s public middle and secondary schools, particularly when adolescents are so ready to engage in meaningful conversation about the world that surrounds them. Our book’s central purpose is to provide middle-level and high school teachers with the necessary background knowledge and pedagogical skills necessary to help adolescents become religiously literate learners and citizens. Currently, there is no text like ours on the market that both covers a number of world religions, and presents concrete recommendations for teaching and learning this material. Our book is meant to educate the following audiences: teacher educators, middle-level and high school teachers in all content areas, administrators, school boards, and parents.

For us, educating for religious literacy is all about bringing adolescents into the 21st century of teeming religious and spiritual diversity—a long-neglected component of the multicultural curriculum in public schools. In a post-9/11 world, religious literacy requires that students understand the whats and whys of differing religious beliefs, both in their own country and elsewhere. It means looking for commonalities, as well as differences, between and among the great wisdom traditions—both nationally and internationally. It is about understanding how all of us might live peacefully in a religiously diverse world. Our book accomplishes these goals by being informative, practical, experiential, case-based, and, above all, accessible to beginners.

(Orginally published in 2004)

A major focus of teacher education is the development of preservice teachers. However, it should not be the only focus of those who work in teacher education. Educating inservice teachers in equally important, and the conversation among those involved in mathematics teacher education needs to include discussion of this group as well. This conversation also highlights a need for professional development for teacher educators and research on the development of teacher educators. This monograph discusses issues in educating all of these groups of individuals in an effort to continue the conversation among those involved in mathematics teacher education.

Education has long been viewed as a vehicle for building community. However, the critical role of education and schools for constructing community resistance is undermined by recent trends toward the centralization of educational policy-making (e.g. racial profiling new laws in the US—Arizona and Texas; No Child Left Behind and global racism), the normalization of “globalization” as a vehicle for the advancement of economic neo-liberalism and social hegemony, and the commodification of schooling in the service of corporate capitalism. Alternative visions of schooling are urgently needed to transform these dangerous trends so as to reconstruct public education as an emancipatory social project.

Teaching for Global Community: Overcoming the Divide and Conquer Strategies of the Oppressor examines these issues among related others as a way to honor and re-examine Freirean principles and aim to take critical pedagogy in new directions for a new generation. The goal is to build upon past accomplishments of Paulo Freire’s work and critical pedagogy while moving beyond its historical limitations. This includes efforts that revisit and re-evaluate established topics in the field or take on new areas of contestation. Issues related to education, labor, and emancipation, broadly defined and from diverse geographical context, are addressed. The theoretical perspectives used to look at these emerge from critical pedagogy, critical race theory, critiques of globalization and neoliberalism, marxist and neo-marxist perspectives, social constructivism, comparative/international education, postmodernism indigenous perspectives, feminist theory, queer theory, poststructuralism, critical environmental studies, postcolonial studies, liberation theology, with a deep commitment to social justice.

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.

Working While Black: The Untold Stories of Student Affairs Practitioners will examine the narratives of student affairs professionals and how they navigate their professional experiences. While student affairs can be a high pressure and high stress environment for all professionals, Black professionals are often overworked, underheard, and made to feel devalued. Therefore, it is important to consider how student affairs professionals are managing the profession, colleagues, and students while Black.

I approach this book from an asset-based approach where chapter authors are approaching both the challenges and opportunities they have experienced due to being a Black while working as a student affairs practitioner. Chapter authors also provide poignant advice on how current and potential student affairs professionals can successfully navigate the field. One especially important contribution of this book is that our authors are from a variety of student affairs areas including: residence life, student engagement, career services, counseling, student conduct, athletics, student activities, diversity, equity, and inclusion, and academic advising. Additionally, chapter authors are student affairs professionals at predominantly White institutions, historically Black colleges and universities, and online universities. Given the breadth of experiences each chapter will provide poignant suggestions for student affairs practitioners across the nation as well as for institutions who are looking to better understand these experiences to better support their own employees.

Popular education press and scholarly conversations have focused on the experiences of student affairs professionals (Renn & Hodges, 2007). There has also been scholarship around the Black student affairs professional experience (West, 2015; Husband. 2016). This book will add to the current press and scholarly conversations by allowing Black student affairs professionals to tell their own stories, providing additional insight into what it is like to work while Black. Institutions of higher education can learn much from the stories shared in this book that can inform the recruitment and retention of Black professionals. Thus, Working While Black: The Untold Stories of Student Affairs Practitioners is positioned to be a must read for all higher education professionals and institutions who are looking for strategies to support Black student affairs professionals.

In an age where the quality of teacher education programs has never been more important, educators need a fundamental understanding of human growth, development, and change at different ages and stages across the life span. The present volume draws upon the latest research to help teacher preparation instructors select and convey essential content on human development. Such efforts serve to prepare education professionals to work with infants, children, adolescents, and adults across diverse educational settings.

The chapters included in this volume summarize empirical research that supports the teaching of human development as it applies to PreK-12 and postsecondary settings, describe instructional practices used in college courses that are effective for teaching teachers-in-training about human development, and provide a systematic discussion of issues that influence the teaching of human development theories, research, and classroom applications.

The contributing authors are accomplished educational and developmental psychologists that have years of experience in teacher preparation. Their respective chapters provide insights into the challenges that teachers-in-training confront in learning about human growth and development and how novice teachers can apply knowledge of human development in their professional practice.

This volume explores issues involved with teaching social theory to preservice teachers pursuing degrees through teacher education programs and experienced teachers and administrators pursuing graduate degrees. The contributors detail their experiences teaching theoretical perspectives regarding race, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, power, and the construction of schools as an institution of the state. The editors and contributors hope to offer the beginning of a colleagial dialogue within the field of education (both inside and outside the academy) about the relevance and pedagogical issues associated with such material. Additionally, the contributors offer advice on missteps to avoid and provide success stories that give hope to those who also wish to engage in the practice of teaching theory to teachers.

The pages of this book illustrate that as instruments of socialization and sites of ideological discourse textbooks are powerful artefacts in introducing young people to a specific historical, cultural and socioeconomic order. Crucially, exploring the social construction of school textbooks and the messages they impart provides an important context from within which to critically investigate the dynamics underlying the cultural politics of education and the social movements that form it and which are formed by it.

The school curriculum is essentially the knowledge system of a society incorporating its values and its dominant ideology. The curriculum is not “our knowledge” born of a broad hegemonic consensus, rather it is a battleground in which cultural authority and the right to define what is labelled legitimate knowledge is fought over. As each chapter in this book illustrates curriculum as theory and practice has never been, and can never be, divorced from the ethical, economic, political, and cultural conflicts of society which impact so deeply upon it. We cannot escape the clear implication that questions about what knowledge is of most worth and about how it should be organized and taught are problematic, contentious and very serious.

This book is designed for higher education instructors. The focus of the book is to assist all faculty instructors in higher education to better meet the needs of their student populations. It addresses the major issue of higher education teaching today: the need to reach all higher education students using active learning strategies. Higher education today is rapidly changing and faculty members are being presented with new types of students: ones who often have clear goals for bettering themselves, but at the same time lack what might have been considered to be basic skills necessary for success in a college or university setting. Instructors today must reach and bring all students into the college or university setting in an inclusive manner. The emphasis of this book is on student-focused strategies for teaching inclusively. This book will provide valuable strategies and practical techniques for instructors to develop inclusive college classrooms that promote the learning of all students.

The audience targeted will be all instructors who work with higher education students, including students in community colleges and vocational institutions. The book is designed to be mainly practical instructional strategies with limited theoretical text and references. At the same time, major theories will be included to demonstrate why specific approaches are recommended. Although the authors and editors are from the field of education, the book is particularly valuable for all college instructors without a background in the discipline of education.

American science education is in trouble. As the United States continues to lag behind other nations in science achievement, the question is asked: how can we better get our students excited and inspired by science? This is the science teacher’s duty. The irony of the education profession is that some of the most important aspects of it are the hardest to measure and replicate. The things that matter most can be the hardest to quantify. Some teachers can know the different learning styles, intelligences, and brain preferences of their students. They can know best practices of how to deliver instruction. They can do all these things and more, but still not convey imagination and passion for science to their students.

But some science teachers do inspire. These special teachers seem to possess something the others don’t, but what is it? Exceptional science teachers make us feel better about ourselves through their teaching of science, and bring us to a higher quality of life as a result, while some science teachers can be the leading researchers in their fields, yet leave us flat. What is the recipe for this unique, special teacher? And why is it so hard to explain and describe?

The objective of this book is to uncover these aspects of teaching that are so hard to measure and quantify. This is achieved through interviewing people who are either current or retired teachers, or who were positively affected by a teacher, and also through case studies of exceptional teachers in order to quantify and explain the exact traits and personality quirks of these exceptional people. The contribution to the field of education this book hopes to achieve is the examination of the question; why do some teachers have that “X” factor, what, exactly is it, and how can we all have it?

The book, Teaching and Learning for Adult Skill Acquisition: Applying the Dreyfus and Dreyfus Model in Different Fields, will fill a unique niche in the field of adult, higher, and workforce education. It offers a current volume for scholars and practitioners based on both empirical studies and practice-based research on adult skill acquisition and development. Dreyfus and Dreyfus (1980, 1988, 2004, 2008) developed the novice to expert model of skill acquisition that illustrates growth over the course of a person’s career in a particular domain. The skill model highlights a learner’s movement across six levels of skill development: novice, advanced beginner, competent, proficient, expert, and mastery.

This book will present examples of the application of the Dreyfus and Dreyfus model in different fields (i.e., health care, education, law enforcement, business, serious gaming, military, ethics training, etc.) providing insight into how practitioners can develop their skills in their particular domains and how educators can promote this development. This collection will be appropriate for a wide variety of professors, researchers, practitioners, and students in the field of adult, higher, and workforce education.

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 to secondary students 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 Secondary Grade Levels comprises three distinct sections: Frameworks, Teacher’s Journeys, and Lesson Plans. Each section explores the current trends and the unique challenges facing secondary 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.

Given the complexity of learning, an increasingly diverse student population, and growing demands on today’s teachers, educational psychology has never been more relevant for informing instructional practice. Notably, an understanding of learning, both what it is and how it occurs, is essential for teachers to design and implement effective instruction that is responsive to the needs of their learners. As part of the six-part series Theory to Practice: Educational Psychology for Teachers and Teaching, this volume highlights what and how teacher educators should teach about learning so that developing teachers will be more effective in their instructional practice.

Preservice teachers represent a group of unique learners; in that they are learning about learning in order to support others’ learning. Similarly, teacher educators represent a unique group of educators in that they are guiding others in not just content knowledge but also in how to teach content across a variety of domains. As a means to highlight the ideas and constructs most essential for preservice teachers to learn, this volume was crafted for teacher educators, whether teaching educational psychology content incorporated into domain-specific courses or in a dedicated educational psychology course. Each chapter offers insight into what teachers need to know about learning as well as practical applications for how to teach the content. Chapters draw from a variety of theoretical perspectives about learning and identify common misconceptions that educational psychology instructors and teacher educators need to address in their work with preservice teachers.

John Dewey’s sojourn to China created a historical moment between the United States and China. Therefore, some of the recent scholarship on the topic aims to uncover the social and historical implications behind Dewey’s Chinese trip, centering on how intercultural conversations occurred between “Confucius” and “John Dewey” during the period of May Fourth/New Culture Movement. Much research also reflects an attempt to synthesize and unify Western and Eastern education.

This book spotlights a cross-cultural “encounter” between Confucius and John Dewey by studying the four well-known Chinese scholars Hu Shih, Liang Shuming, Tao Xingzhi, and Jiang Menglin, who exerted a profound impact on many aspects of Chinese society during the May Fourth/New Culture Movement period. The study explores answers to a crucial question: What motivated Dewey’s Chinese disciples to forge a synthesis of Confucian traditions and Deweyan ideas to purse of the goals of Chinese educational and cultural reformation? Simultaneously, based on an in-depth historical, philosophical, and cultural analysis of Dewey’s visit to China, this study aims to disclose how our education has evolved in the context of cultural pluralism

The book seeks to contribute provocative ideas to today’s educators: any school of thought can renew and update itself if it maintains an open dialogue with a different civilization. Dynamic and transparent intercultural communication enables us to develop a sense of understanding and respect for cultural diversity, all of which are of great benefit to the construction of a stable and healthy international order.

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.

Helping teachers understand and apply theory and research is one of the most challenging tasks of teacher preparation and professional development. As they learn about motivation and engagement, teachers need conceptually rich, yet easy-to-use, frameworks. At the same time, teachers must understand that student engagement is not separate from development, instructional decision-making, classroom management, student relationships, and assessment. This volume on teaching teachers about motivation addresses these challenges. The authors share multiple approaches and frameworks to cut through the growing complexity and variety of motivational theories, and tie theory and research to real-world experiences that teachers are likely to encounter in their courses and classroom experiences. Additionally, each chapter is summarized with key “take away” practices.

A shared perspective across all the chapters in this volume on teaching teachers about motivation is “walking the talk.” In every chapter, readers will be provided with rich examples of how research on and principles of classroom motivation can be re-conceptualized through a variety of college teaching strategies. Teachers and future teachers learning about motivation need to experience explicit modeling, practice, and constructive feedback in their college courses and professional development in order to incorporate those into their own practice. In addition, a core assumption throughout this volume is the importance of understanding the situated nature of motivation, and avoiding a “one-size-fits” all approach in the classroom. Teachers need to fully interrogate their instructional practices not only in terms of motivational principles, but also for their cultural relevance, equity, and developmental appropriateness.

Just like P-12 students, college students bring their histories as learners and beliefs about motivation to their formal study of motivation. That is why college instructors teaching motivation must begin by helping students evaluate their personal beliefs and experiences. Relatedly, college instructors need to know their students and model differentiating their interactions to support each of them. The authors in this volume have, collectively, decades of experience teaching at the college level and conducting research in motivation, and provide readers with a variety of strategies to help teachers and future teachers explore how motivation is supported and undermined. In each chapter in this volume, readers will learn how college instructors can demonstrate what effective, motivationally supportive classrooms look, sound, and feel like.

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).

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.

In its totality, this book explores subjects that are rarely available in primary literature publications and brings diverging fields together that are generally addressed separately in specialty journals. The book argues that past school failures are instructive. The author identifies the structural and emotional triggers that make it difficult for educators’ to overcome the social constructs that control the progress of Black students, reproduce inequities, subvert the socio-economic progress of the nation, and threaten the legitimacy of the U.S. public school system.

One failure is informative; successive school failures are chock-full of must avoid school policies and instructional practices. The book analyzes the lessons learned from a list of school-imposed policies that have molded and determined the academic progress of Black students. The author argues that much can be discerned from that which undermined the performance of schoolteachers’ and public school systems. The quantifiable outcomes of past school practices can better inform educators and future teachers and school leaders. The book carefully analyzes the organic evolution of educators’ social constructs that regenerated inequities to reveal the road map for rebuilding genuinely inclusive and equitable public school systems that serve the interests of students and society.

The book also provides in-depth analysis of various disciplines that identify the best methodologies to improve the teaching and learning of Black students, homeless students, and all other students. The book aims to offer a unique perspective by carefully unfolding the built in school structures that obstruct the abilities of school administrators and teachers to bridge the student achievement gaps and meet the objectives of consecutive school reform initiatives.

The author’s distinctive approach stimulates the thinking of the entire field of education, and challenges accepted propositions commonly assumed about African American students. In short, this book offers a perspective that is rarely shared or understood by educators and practitioners in the field of education.

The field of educational psychology is experiencing profound transformations, driven by the rapid integration of technology into teaching and learning. Our latest volume, Teaching in Online, Distance, and Non-Traditional Contexts, explores this evolving landscape, emphasizing the rise of online, hybrid, and blended learning. With enrollment in online courses steadily increasing, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic, this book addresses the urgent need for effective online course design, informed by two decades of research on best practices. This volume is an essential resource for university faculty who teach educational psychology but could also be of interest to anyone who teaches online in higher education, particularly those in teacher preparation programs, providing comprehensive guidance on adapting to and excelling in digital learning environments. Building on the foundational principles of educational psychology, this book offers a deep dive into the specific challenges and opportunities presented by online education. Organized into five sections—Course Design, Instructor Development, Student Engagement, Cultural Responsiveness and Inclusion, and Assessment—it presents case studies and research-backed strategies to help educators create engaging, effective, and inclusive online courses. By emphasizing the importance of thoughtful planning, technological integration, and cultural inclusivity, this book equips educators with the tools they need to navigate the digital age while maintaining a student-centered and constructivist approach. Join us in redefining educational psychology for the 21st century and beyond.

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.

We are in the midst of yet another global crisis in capitalism. In the UK, we have the most right wing and ideologically driven government since Thatcher; a ruthless cabal of millionaires intent on destroying the welfare state. In the US, President Obama, whose initial record did not live up to the expectations of many on the Left, is increasingly driven by right-wing republicanism and other corporate interests. At the same time, there are developments in Latin America, in particular Venezuela, which are heralding the dawn of a new politics, and recovering the voice of Marx, but with a twenty-first century socialist focus, thus giving hope to the lives of millions of working people throughout the world. This is why the world media is intent on discrediting President Hugo Chávez; and insisting that ordinary people have to pay the cost of the crisis in capitalism. The Arab Spring and the Occupy movement also show signs of an anti-capitalist movement in embryo. In Greece, perhaps more than anywhere else in Europe (even France), the austerity-stricken working-classes are pushing for real existing socialism. It is therefore not surprising that the ruling class of Greece is increasingly supporting the neo-Nazi, fascist Golden Dawn party threatening civil war should they lose power as a class. Now is a prescient time to bring twenty-first century socialism to the educational institutions of the world, to teach Marx across the curriculum and across the globe.

Through this volume our goal was to contribute to the literature by concretely demonstrating the practical implications of Marx’s theory to curriculum. However, while this book provides concrete examples of how Marx can and has informed a revolutionary critical education, it is not intended to be prescriptive. That is, the chapters should not be read as a how to guide, but they should be taken as inspiration for new, creative approaches to Teaching Marx and interpreting and posing The Socialist Challenge.

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.

Together, the words technology and assess-ment have different meaning for different people. Those who work with educational or instructional technology take these words to mean assessing the impacts of technology on teaching and learning. Test developers and psychometricians, however, consider ways in which computer-based technologies can be used to enhance current approaches to student assessment. This book examines technology and assessment from both perspectives by examining past, current and promising methodol-ogies and applications in both fields. The influences instructional uses of technology and the increasing reliance on testing to gauge student and school performance have on one another are also explored. The book concludes by describing an organizational structure that could bring instructional applications of technology and assessment practices into closer alignment.

Although Shakespeare is one of the world's most widely taught authors, he is also one of the world's most demanding. Because of the popularity and sophistication of his works, numerous film and television adaptations of his plays have been made--some decades ago and others very recently. Shakespeare films are coming out at an unprecedented rate, as audiences continue to respond to the richness of his works. These productions are a valuable means of introducing students to Shakespeare's plays, for the film and television versions reflect different interpretations of his works. Although some productions are generally considered better than others, and all have various faults and virtues, each of them teaches us something about the play and the medium.

This reference book is a convenient guide for helping teachers and students master the techniques of discussing productions of the plays on film and television. It makes important distinctions between the two media, particularly about the conceptual and physical space available in each and the choices that space, or lack of it, impose on production. Central to the book is the concept of script, the words from which productions are generated. Because even weak productions are nonetheless interpretations of Shakespeare's scripts, they can be used effectively to explore the complex issues in his plays. The volume includes many suggestions about how to help students write well by comparing in very specific terms small segments from different productions. It lists the resources available in this rapidly growing field, both on cassette and in print, and gives many examples of critical commentary, looking at genre, editing, allusion, setting, and the script in historical context. Productions discussed include the Edzard As You Like It, the Branagh A Midwinter's Tale, the Parker Othello, the Loncraine Richard III, and seventy years of Hamlet. Students and teachers of Shakespeare at all levels will find this book to be an invaluable guide to his plays.

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.

Do you ever feel like more and more of your students come to your classroom not knowing how to study or what to do in order to be successful in your class? Some students come to college knowing the ropes, knowing what it takes to be successful as STEM students. But many do not. Research shows that students who are the first-generation in their family to attend or complete college are likely to arrive at your classroom not knowing what it takes to be successful. And data shows that more first-generation students are likely to be arriving on your doorstep in the near future. What can you do to help these students be successful?

This book can provide you with some research based methods that are quick, easy, and effortless. These are steps that you can take to help first-generation college students succeed without having to change the way you teach.

Why put in this effort in the first place? The payoff is truly worth it. First-generation college students are frequently low-income students and from ethnic groups underrepresented in STEM. With a little effort, you can enhance the retention of underrepresented groups in your discipline, at your institution and play a role in national efforts to enhance diversity in STEM.

(Sponsored by the Middle Level Education Research SIG and the National Middle School Association)

The Young Adolescent and the Middle School focuses on issues related to the nature of young adolescence and the intersection of young adolescence with middle level schooling.

This volume of the Handbook of Research in Middle Level Education marks the sixth installment in the series. The Handbook series, begun in 2001 by Vince Anfara, the series editor, has addressed varying thematic issues important to middle level education research. This volume, The Young Adolescent and the Middle School, focuses on the unique developmental needs of young adolescents and the role of the middle school in attending to these needs. The contributing authors in this volume address one of three developmental areas critical to young adolescents—physical development, intellectual/cognitive development, or social and personal development—and how these developmental characteristics affect the educational environment and the organization of middle schools.

Teacher unions and their members have long stood as polarizing figures in a vast educational landscape. As in the Western films of the 1920s, policymakers, education reformers, and onlookers often assign union leaders and the teachers they represent either the white hats of heroes or the black hats of villains. Politicized efforts to reductively classify teacher unions as beneficial or dangerous have only served to obscure the extent to which labor militancy and teacher activism have become part and parcel of the American public school system and the primary mechanisms by which teachers’ voices are heard – and heeded – in the policy arena. Teacher unions have grown in tandem with and in response to the expansion of the school bureaucracy and the acceleration of accountability reforms, and teachers’ calls for recognition and reform are inseparable from broader movements for social change. Far more than either good or bad, teacher unions are the inevitable outgrowth of American public education as it stands today.

This book offers an interdisciplinary exploration of the state of modern teacher unions, the complex spaces they operate in, and the connections between militancy, activism, and school reform. Breaking free from the white hat/black hat dyad that has for so long colored the lenses we use to understand unions, the chapters of this book engage a set of fundamental questions: Where did the modern moment of militancy come from, and in what ways is it a continuation or a departure from the approaches of previous organized teachers?; What is at stake in modern expressions of militancy for teachers, communities, and schools?; Beyond the flashpoint of the walkout, what is the effect of teacher activism?

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.

In this volume, R. Heinich discusses Technology and Management of Instruction

Current international development wisdom promotes the inclusion of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in national-level policy making, in the interest of strengthening state-civil society relationships; supporting locally driven, culturally-sensitive development; and contributing to program and policy innovation. However, critics of increased state-NGO-donor collaboration argue that it actually dilutes the power of NGOs to act in the interest of the local populations they were established to serve.

This tension between the local and the global is connected to broader debates about the nature and role of contemporary educational development. Should education aim primarily at preparing citizens for participation in the global economy, thereby encouraging the integration of nation-states into a world economic system driven by the industrialized North? Or/and should it endeavor to develop in students and in communities, North and South, the ability to critique, resist and transform that world system? Ultimately, this is a question of who “owns” development – international agencies and institutions, or the communities being “developed.”

This book examines the complexities of these negotiations in a particularly complicated and volatile context (Palestine) and a particularly “hot” development field (early childhood development). The international community’s efforts to support early childhood programming in the developing world fall more broadly within the empowerment camp than do other development efforts, and -- in this case in particular -- serve as a source of important lessons about the dynamics of donor-state-NGO relationships, suggestions for improved development policy, and insights into forms of education which promote justice and equity in an increasingly interdependent world.

January 2009 marked the 25th anniversary of one of the most famous three minutes of television history. It was during half-time of the 1984 Super Bowl that APPLE show cased its new Macintosh Computer in an avant-guard commercial. In the following three weeks sales of the new computer, in both the public and private sectors, took off leading some to note this occasion as the "true" start of the information age. At the same time schools joined this so-called information revolution and began to use the new technology, in various forms, in a much more serious manner.

Given both the changing nature of technology, as well as its classroom applications, over the past quarter century this work's goal is to capture the historical trends of both use and application of information technology in the social studies during this era. This is done by providing a retrospective view , from 1984 through 2009 , of where we've been, where we are, and a view of new tools and strategies and possible studies that are emerging that can enhance our understanding of the effects that technology has and will have on the social studies.

The new generation of tests is faced with new challenges. In the K-12 setting, the new learning targets are intended to assess higher-order thinking skills and prepare students to be ready for college and career and to keep American students competitive with their international peers. In addition, the new generation of state tests requires the use of technology in item delivery and embedding assessment in real-world, authentic, situations. It further requires accurate assessment of students at all ability levels. One of the most important questions is how to maintain test fairness in the new assessments with technology innovative items and technology delivered tests. In the traditional testing programs such as licensure and certification tests and college admission tests, test fairness has constantly been a key psychometric issue in test development and this continues to be the case with the national testing programs.

As test fairness needs to be addressed throughout the whole process of test development, experts from state, admission, and licensure tests will address test fairness challenges in the new generation assessment. The book chapters clarify misconceptions of test fairness including the use of admission test results in cohort comparison, the use of international assessment results in trend evaluation, whether standardization and fairness necessarily mean uniformity when test-takers have different cultural backgrounds, and whether standardization can insure fairness. More technically, chapters also address issues related to how compromised items and test fairness are related to classification decisions, how accessibility in item development and accommodation could be mingled with technology, how to assess special populations with dyslexia, using Blinder-Oaxaca Decomposition for differential item functioning detection, and differential feature functioning in automated scoring.

Overall, this book addresses test fairness issues in state assessment, college admission testing, international assessment, and licensure tests. Fairness is discussed in the context of culture and special populations. Further, fairness related to performance assessment and automated scoring is a focus as well. This book provides a very good source of information related to test fairness issues in test development in the new generation of assessment where technology is highly involved.

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.

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.

This volume will highlight papers presented at the second Nebraska Symposium on Information Technology in Education. With chapters focusing on the latest research findings and theoretical principles for using technology in education, the volume will extend findings from current research on technology-mediated instruction into a set of practical principles for designers, teachers, and managers of educational technology. Contributors will identify technical and design features required for sharing of content and assessment tools and will target promising areas for future research and development in technology-based learning, instruction, and assessment.

Reflective journals have been used by post-secondary educators in a wide variety of teacher-training courses to encourage students to better understand the topics that they are studying. Reflective journals are often used in courses in which pre-service and in-service teachers are studying both the theoretical and practical aspects of the subject matter such as secondary teaching methods, language and literacy, teacher education, and outdoor education. While there are books on the market that address some facets of reflective journaling, there are no integrative books such as Reflective Journaling: Unlocking the Power and the Potential that are targeted specifically to pre-service and in-service teachers. There are few resources currently available to teachers wishing to use reflective journals that include: the theoretical underpinnings of reflection, the integration and impacts of research on the praxis of journaling in each chapter, and practical strategies for successful, fun journal writing for students. This book addresses this need by providing “full coverage” of using reflective journals as a pedagogical tool. Reflective Journaling: Unlocking the Power and the Potential includes four figures, 15 tables, 25 works of art, four cartoons, and 10 photos that enhance each chapter.

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.

Women and Leadership around the World is the third volume in a new series of books (Women and Leadership: Research, Theory, and Practice) that will is now being published to inform leadership scholars and practitioners. The purpose of this volume is to explore areas of women’s leadership in four regions around the world: the Middle East, Europe, North America, and Asia Pacific. Hence, we have included 14 chapters that cover a wide range of important topics relevant to women and leadership within specific contexts around the world. Our goal for this volume is to provide readers with explorations of women’s experiences as leaders, including recent research studies, analysis and interpretation of statistics unpacking the status of women in various sectors and countries, stories of influential women leaders with national or local spheres of influence, and including recommendations for positive change to increase women’s access to positions of authority. The volume contributors use various theories and conceptualizations to problematize, historicize, and analyze women’s limited access to power, and their agency as leaders from the grassroots to the national scene, from education to non-profits and business organizations.

Overall, the book contributes interpretations of the status of women in various countries, presenting the stories behind the numbers and statistics and uncovering not only challenges but also opportunities for resiliency and effectiveness as leaders. The authors offer recommendations for change that cross national boundaries, such as structural changes in organizations that would open the door for more women to access positions of authority and be effective as leaders. It is rare to find a book with such a diverse array of topics and countries, making this a timely contribution to the literature on women and leadership. The authors remind us to continue to expand the literature base on women and leadership, drawing from both qualitative and quantitative studies as well as conceptual explorations of women as leaders in different countries, regions, indigenous communities, and across different sectors. The more we know, the better informed will be our efforts to create appropriate leadership development activities and experiences for emerging women leaders and girls around the world. This book contributes significantly to that very effort.

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

Schools are increasingly being called upon to aid in the development of resilience in young people in order to be proactive and prevent the consequences of poor social-emotional health and well-being. In this collection of 13 essays, 19 scholars from Australia, the UK, Israel, and the U.S. offer current theory and research on coping by young people, and its application to the educational setting. Coverage includes an overview of coping and coping strategies; resources and coping with prevalent problems, such as anxiety and aggression; teaching coping skills; coping strategies for parents; and teacher training for low-burnout teaching.

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."

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.

Drawing from over 20 years of teaching experience in the U.S., ranging from pre-kindergarten to post-graduate, Affolter illustrates personal, practical, and theoretical ways for teachers to grapple with the complexities of race and racism within their own schools and communities and develop as inclusive anti-racist teachers. The work aims to take into account the deeply human dimensions of inclusive anti- racist teaching, while drawing attention to the threat of burnout, inviting closer inspection of curricula development, and exploring tangible ways to sustain this important work for teaching.

Resisting racism, agitating for change, and walking an inclusive anti-racist path requires commitment to unflinchingly look at one's failures and examine silences. It is work that must be done in all settings: rural, urban, suburban. This book offers all pre-teachers and in-service teachers some perspectives and reflections on engaging anti-racist inclusive practice. The questions raised here ask each of us to consider our own positioning and interrogate the stories we tell ourselves about "the other." The book seeks to call in white teachers in particular to carefully examine our own biases and the ways we may replicate white supremacist ideology within our pedagogy and curricula. The questions posed here and the work ahead is not easy. This is work best taken on with those that can challenge with love and help support one other as we imagine and work towards a more just world.

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.

This series of Works on stress and coping is centered on understanding the sources, experiences, and consequences of stress and coping in the educational arena. In formal organizations to informal experiences, those engaged in educational endeavors shape and are shaped by events and interactions that invoke salient to subtle stress and coping responses. We invite authors to submit manuscripts that present studies focused on stress and/or coping in any of the contexts, positions, peoples, and activities encompassed under the umbrella of education. Research using either qualitative or quantitative methodologies will be acceptable. The series is expected to appeal to a broad readership of scholars in the fields of education, psychology, sociology, and business who are interested in understanding the nature of stress and coping in education.

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.

Currently, peace education remains marginalized in our education system, however, a united front can be formed and powerful paradigms can empower educators to play a critical role in peace building through scholarship, practice and activism. Indeed, educators around the world are developing effective strategies to transform education as a powerful force for global peace. The diverse array of contributors in the book demonstrate that educators as peace makers can be and have been instrumental in transforming social forces, the self and others for the construction of global peace.

The book aims to broaden the educational discourse in order to make room for new visions to educate future generations for peace. Local and global efforts to build a long-lasting peace are presented through the lens of education.

The timeliness of peace education surely renders this book relevant to educators and the general public alike as individuals, communities, and organizations struggle to find pathways to peace in a global world. In other words, this book will interest scholars and the general public concerned about the building of global peace. The book can be source book for educators at elementary, secondary, and postsecondary institutions to explore multiple ways to conduct effective peace education at all levels of education. The book may also be used as a textbook by instructors of multicultural education, of comparative & international education, and of undergraduate and graduate peace education courses.

Public education has expanded to serve large populations across the regions of Africa, the Caribbean, and the Middle East. Many nations in these regions are moving into a phase of public education in which a variety of factors are being identified as influencing the quality of public education and its ability to serve all children and adolescents. It has become evident that ethnic background, gender, religious affiliation, and ability/disability are important factors in who is served and how well the individual is served. The chapters in this volume, Book 8, of Research on Education in Africa, the Caribbean, and the Middle East document and describe the status, success, and limitations of public education’s efforts at transformation. They provide points from which further research and practice might occur.

Truth and Knowledge in Curriculum Making, addresses issues in curriculum and instruction, such as the lack of Black teachers, minority representation, and mentorship.

The book arose from a serial interpretation of five published narrative inquiries that pinpointed complexities lived in a teacher knowledge community at T.P. Yaeger Middle School, a campus located in the fourth largest urban center in America. The inquiry initially resulted in a documentary-style presentation at an educational conference using performance narrative inquiry as an arts-based method to recount the research. In Truth and Knowledge in Curriculum Making, the process of researchers turned actors is unraveled by looking at the lived experiences and identifying the embodied knowledge of teachers in different content areas including Physical Education, Music, Teaching English as a Second Language, Mathematics, and Reading. The authors use parallel stories, counter stories, story constellations, musical narrative inquiry, performance narrative inquiry and other narrative means of sense-making as they examine how they may relate to those stories. Ethical research dilemmas, including the how and why behind each author’s choice to burrow into difficult topics such as race, gender and conflict resolution are revealed. By unpacking the hidden curriculum, examining value creation and by revealing isolated relational experiences of participants and researchers, Truth and Knowledge in Curriculum Making instantiates and outlines how truth and knowledge may be formed in educational settings through intertwining narrative inquiry, teacher knowledge and aesthetic ways of knowing.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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’.

A key factor in successful learning at all ages is a learner's motivation. The ability to facilitate student motivation is central to successful teaching, particularly when students aren't intrinsically interested in learning. This book is a practical guide to motivating younger and older learners. It looks at why some students are easier to motivate than others, and why students may lose motivation as they become older. The authors outline strategies that teachers and other educators can use to enhance student motivation. The book is richly illustrated with vignettes and case studies, and includes questions and exercises to help teachers apply the suggested approach in their own situations.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 puts forward practical tools and applicable theories for enhancing the listening skills and pedagogical approaches of teachers and educators in the context of language-minoritized and multilingual learners. What does it mean for us to really hear them? How can we more fully facilitate inviting, celebratory, and sustaining learning spaces? What listening skills should the faculty who prepare pre-service teachers for linguistically diverse classrooms impart? By asking these questions, we seek to upend deficit models of language learning and usage in order to attune practitioner-scholars to the powerful voices of language-diverse students in our classrooms, schools, and communities. This book is organized into three parts to help practitioner-scholars explore the space where theory meets practice to amplify the voices of languageminoritized learners.

The purpose of this book is to document sample lessons based on our What Works in Distance Learning: Guidelines (O'Neil, 2005). The intent is to provide an instantiation of our various distance learning guidelines. An overarching goal of our research was to create a robust and clear set of design guidelines and example lessons to support the next generation of distance learning systems.

Each lesson in this book constitutes a case (Mayer, 2005) or partially worked example (Kalyuga, Chandler, Touvinen, & Sweller, 2001). A case is a description of a realistic problem scenario that is relevant to a particular profession or field of study (e.g., a case may be a distance learning lesson showing various instructors trying to design a lesson on a particular topic). A common topic could be, for example, how car brakes work, a surgery procedure, or electronics troubleshooting procedures (Mayer, 2003, 2005). In this book, the case format was useful for the guidelines developed for multimedia strategies, instructional strategies, and assessment strategies. A different format was used for the learning strategies, self-regulation strategies, and management strategies guidelines.

The basic methodology in developing the guidelines for distance learning consisted of a research synthesis, conducted by experts, using analytical methods, on what is known about what works in distance learning. Research in the literature was reviewed for design flaws, and only studies with robust designs were included. Also, we included only those entries for which research evidence and expert opinion were stable and consistent. Furthermore, we decided that this information would be provided to researchers, instructors, program managers, and instructional or assessment designers in a "What Works" format, that is, What Works in Distance Learning. We adopted many of the conventions of What Works: Research About Teaching and Learning (U.S. Department of Education, 1986, 1987). Our goal for non-researchers was to translate the research findings into clear and comprehensible statements that we think can help users to guide their practice. For both researchers and non-researchers, the references cited for each finding provide an avenue to seek additional information. The guidelines are documented in O'Neil (2005).

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 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 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.”