Education

In response to changes in the workforce, scholars are calling for mentoring that is more fluid, flexible, and responsive to the needs of diverse groups of individuals, whether culturally (Kochan & Pascarelli, 2012; Kochan, Searby, George, & Mitchell Edge, 2015) or intergenerationally (Thorpe, 2012) diverse. With these changes, there are greater demands for intergenerational and intercultural collaboration and mentoring. One response to these changes is to take a more collaborative, interactive, and transformational approach to mentoring. In response, this book provides a model for collaborative mentoring, based on best-practice, grounded in theory and research, and framed by the Dynamic Model of Collaborative Mentorship. Each chapter provides a description of one of the five components of the mentoring model which are grounded in theory and include: agency, values, engagement, patterns, and roles. Individual chapters provide resources, prompts and questions to guide reflection, and suggested readings.

This book is authored by four individuals who work, research, and write as a team. The book itself is the product of their mentoring research as well as their mentoring practice in action. It is current and timely, focusing on team processes which are collaborative, dynamic, reflective, and continuously developing and evolving.

Validity is widely held to be the most important criterion for an assessment. Nevertheless, assessment professionals have disagreed about the meaning of validity almost from the introduction of the term as applied to testing about 100 years ago. Over the years, the best and brightest people in assessment have contributed their thinking to this problem and the fact that they have not agreed is testimony to the complexity and importance of validity. Even today, ways to define validity are being debated in the published literature in the assessment profession. How can such a fundamental concept be so controversial?

This book brings focus to diverse perspectives about validity. Its chapter authors were chosen because of their expertise and because they differ from each other in the ways they think about the validity construct. Its introduction and ten chapters bridge both the theoretical and the practical. Contributors include most prominent names in the field of validity and their perspectives are at once cogent and controversial. From these diverse and well-informed discussions, the reader will gain a deep understanding of the core issues in validity along with directions toward possible resolutions. The debate that exists among these authors is a rich one that will stimulate the reader’s own understanding and opinion.

Several chapters are oriented more practically. Ways to study validity are presented by professionals who blend current assessment practice with new suggestions for what sort of evidence to develop and how to generate the needed information. In addition they provide examples of some of the options on how to present the validity argument in the most effective ways.

The initial chapter by the Editor is an effort to orient the reader as well as providing an overview of the book. Bob Lissitz has provided a brief perspective on each of the subsequent chapters as well as presenting a series of questions regarding validation that the reader will want to try to answer for themselves, as he or she reads through this book.

This book’s topic is fundamental to assessment, its authors are distinguished, and its scope is broad. It deserves to become established as a fundamental reference on validity for years to come.

Researchers, educators, professional organizations, administrators, parents, and policy makers have increased their involvement in the assessment and evaluation of early childhood education programs. This interest has developed swiftly during the last decades. The National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) and the National Association of Early Childhood Specialists in State Departments of Education (NAECS/SDE) developed a position statement titled, “Early childhood curriculum, assessment, and program evaluation: Building an effective, accountable system in programs for children birth through age 8,” to address related trends, issues, guiding principles, and values. Appropriate and well-designed evaluations need to address several audiences including researchers, educators, policy makers, children, and parents. They need to encourage the implementation of a strong foundation that improves the quality of the children’s education. Child assessment and program evaluation can lead to effective results and better accountability for preschool, kindergarten, and primary school programs. The purpose of this volume is to share a collection of research strands on contemporary perspectives on research in assessment and evaluation in early childhood education. It provides a review and critical analysis of the literature on assessment and evaluation of programs, children, teachers, and settings. The volume begins with a brief introductory chapter that presents the reader with a map of the area, laying out the issues and alternatives, and linking these to the chapters that follow. It addresses several areas including (1) understanding assessment and evaluation with young children, (2) schools and assessment implications, (3) teacher evaluation and professional development, (4) social relationships and assessment, (5) content areas in early education assessment, (6) technology and assessment, and (7) conclusion with future research directions in assessment and evaluation in early childhood education. The volume is of interest to researchers, educators, policy makers, university faculty, graduate students, and general readers who are interested in research on assessment and evaluation in early childhood education. The chapters are authored by established scholars in the field.

Creating New Possibilities for the Future of HBCUs brings together over 20 higher education scholars with more than 150 years of combined professional experience to critically examine the current contributions of and future directions for our nation’s 101 historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs). The book breaks new ground on Black colleges and offers hope and optimism for charting their future despite shrinking investments in higher education, declining enrollments, and eroding public confidence in the value of a college degree. The book was written to tell the truth, to right (or '[re]write') past wrongs about HBCUs, and to shift our collective gaze from the uncertain, shaky past of a select few to a far more promising future for all based on insights from contemporary empirical research.

Each chapter addresses a particular aspect of higher education as it relates to HBCUs, documenting the undeniable legacy of Black colleges, their current challenges and untold successes, blended with findings from recent empirical studies—both quantitative and qualitative—that clearly create new possibilities for the future of HBCUs. This volume was developed to break new ground on often overlooked and understudied terrain in higher education scholarship.

Organized into three major sections, the book includes chapters focusing on HBCUs as institutions and a small, but consequential, segment of the higher education enterprise. Section Two consists of 6 chapters addressing the experiences of HBCU students, paying close attention to issues of intersectionality, heterogeneity, and race/ethnicity, to name a few. A third, and final, section turns much-needed attention to HBCU personnel, including campus administrators, college presidents, and faculty. Rich in its coverage of culture, facts, and past history, this new book offers much to those interested in charting new possibilities for the future of HBCUs.

Conflict and Resolution: Progressive Educators and the Question of Religion investigates the impact of religion in shaping the progressive education movement. Historians of progressivism have described the progressive movement as a secularized version of fundamentally religious impulses, a kind of ‘secularized evangelicalism.’ Many progressive political and social reformers were subject to powerful religious influences, but were unable to adhere to the theological tenets held by their parents or grandparents. Instead, they secularized their religious impulses and devoted themselves to social and political reform. Conflict and Resolution extends this analysis to progressive educators through biographical sketches of five leaders in the progressive education movement and an examination of the role of religion in their work.

This investigation models three distinct ways in which progressive educators mediated their youthful religious experiences and their adult lives and careers. Schoolmasters Jerry Voorhis of California and Felix Adler of New York City were Integrators, those who actively incorporated firmly held religious beliefs into their educational thought and practice. Educational philosophers William Heard Kilpatrick and John Lawrence Childs were Deniers, those who rejected religious experience in their educational pursuits, but not necessarily in their personal lives. Finally, preeminent progressive educator John Dewey was a Reinterpreter, one who recast religious concepts and terminology to fit his newly emerging educational approaches. The religious experiences of each of these men left their mark on the progressive education movement.

The richly textured biographical sketches found in Conflict and Resolution: Progressive Educators and the Question of Religion portray the interior lives of these figures and explain how their religious experiences impacted their work. The book will be of interest to educational historians, biographers, and others interested in the development of American education whether they come from a religious or secular mindset.

In this volume in the IAP series on Advances in Service-Learning Research, top researchers present recent work studying aspects of program development, student and community outcomes, and future research directions in the field of service-learning and community engagement. These chapters, selected through a rigorous peer review process, are based on presentations made at the annual meeting of the International Research Conference on Service-Learning and Community Engagement, held in October, 2008, in New Orleans.

This volume features efforts in research and practice to support and expand service-learning and engaged scholarship in both K-12 and higher education. Models of effective partnerships between institutions of higher education and their community partners are developed in chapters looking at relationships between campus and community in terms of partnership identity or in terms of shared understanding by campus and community partners. Outcomes for K-12 and college students engaged in service learning are the focus of several studies. The impact of high-quality service-learning on K-12 student achievement and school-related behaviors is described. Racial identity theory provides a useful frame for understanding developing student conceptualizations, while another chapter emphasizes aspects of self-exploration and relationship building as bases for gains in student attitudes and skills. In a final section, chapters deal with service-learning and community engagement as a coherent research field with a distinct identity, reviewing current work and proposing directions for future research.

Most students struggle with learning how to find references, use them effectively, and cite them appropriately in a required format. One of the most common formats is that of APA. The authors all teach at the same university, where their current offthe-shelf reference book, while helpful, is filled with a lot of extra information that they do not use and contains missing or incorrect information. The cost of this book also continues to rise. In a search for something else to meet their needs, they discovered that there are no concise guides that deal with APA only that are cost effective or user-friendly for students who are not familiar with using references and formatting an essay in the APA format. In order to offer student writers a source of information that is concise and cost-effective, the authors have written this handbook to provide students with important information in clear, concise, user-friendly language, as well as to offer practical examples that will help them grasp the concept of secondary research writing.

Much of the published materials present the nitpicky details of APA in very technical terms that are not easy to understand. This handbook presents the same information in simplified terms with images and step-by-step instructions in ways that will make sense to both undergraduate and graduate student writers. Additionally, student writers often struggle with understanding the concept of plagiarism, as well as how to find sources, evaluate the appropriateness of sources, and use sources in effective ways (e.g., how to integrate quotes, when to paraphrase, among others). This book provides this information in a concise and easy-to-understand format.

Assessment and evaluation have always been an integral part of educational process. Quality and purposeful assessment can assist in students’ learning and their achievement. While there has been a rapid growth in international, standardized student assessments in the past few decades, a large number of education systems participating in these assessments are now focusing their attention on developing new national, within-country assessments to evaluate educational standards and to modify the curriculum to better suit to the demands of the 21st century. Education systems that are successful in linking the national curriculum and assessments directly to international standards are performing better on international standardized assessments of reading, mathematics, and science.

This book covers studies related to educational assessment in addressing quality of education and performance improvement. The book presents the distinguished and exemplary works by educators and researchers in the field highlighting the contemporary trends and issues, creative and unique approaches, innovative methods, frameworks, pedagogies and theoretical and practical aspects in assessment processes in various educational settings.

This volume, Technological Aspects of Mentoring, edited by Frances K. Kochan and Joseph T. Pascarelli, will examine mentoring in the technological age. It will focus upon the impact and use of technology in terms of program development, mentoring roles, problems and solutions and issues to be addressed including confidentiality, ethics, and implications for future practice. The editors will explore the possibilities for tomorrow from the work of today.

While the research on bullying and peer victimization has increased considerably over the past 20 years, a number of studies are emerging that document mixed results of bullying and prevention programs. During the last decades, several special issues devoted to research on bullying and victimization have been published in national and international scholarly journals. Based on the increase of published articles on bullying and victimization in journals, textbooks, government reports, and documents in professional organizations, it is timely for a special volume on research on bullying and victimization to appear in the series on Contemporary Perspectives in Early Childhood Education. The purpose of this volume is to share a collection of research strands on bullying and victimization of young children. It describes the historical roots and suggests anti-bullying programs and strategies to decrease bullying and victimization. The bullying and victimization volume can be a valuable tool to researchers who are conducting studies in that area. It focuses on important historical and contemporary issues on bullying and victimization in early childhood education (ages 0 to 8) to provide the information necessary to make judgments about these issues. It also motivates and guides researchers to explore gaps on research on bullying and victimization.

The year 2020 presented conflicts in higher education, including a global pandemic, racial protests, cries for Black Lives Matter following the deaths of Black women and men by police, education moved online to virtual classrooms, and the U.S. economy struggling as millions of Americans were furloughed or worked remotely and ordered everything curbside; all of this compounded by an election year. This book is a compilation of perspectives shared from students enrolled in a graduate course on diversity and social justice in higher education who found community in sharing their personal and professional experiences associated with identity and allyship development, socialization, activism, institutionalized racism, academic traditions, advising, to implications for change in higher education policies, processes, and practice.

The heightened resonance of identity-driven politics in many states across twenty first century Europe emphasizes the critical role of history in shaping public contestation of the idea of the nation, and accordant manifestations of nationalism and national identity. How the past is interpreted or what and how is remembered has proven increasingly febrile, contentious, and divisive. Debates about history have gone beyond academia, and have permeated and polarised politics and society in many European countries. Intense debate and dispute about national history and culture has often focused on the history teaching in schools, colleges, and universities. According to the aforementioned, it is evident that the teaching of history in the classroom is a relevant topic within the educational system. For this reason, it is not surprising that many times the choice of what kind of history to teach becomes a controversial topic.

The existence in a given society of different visions about the nation or the various responses proposed to face the social challenges existing in it (immigration, independence nationalisms...) can turn the teaching of history into a debated and controversial topic. Logically, depending on the specific political context of each country, this debate can acquire different developments and characteristics. The school is not an institution isolated from its socio-political context. In fact, both areas constantly interact. Therefore, this book proposes an approach to this topic that tries to connect the specific political context of different countries with the debates about education and history teaching from 1990 until the present. It deals with the extent to which the social and political context affects the history teaching practice developed in the classrooms through the decisions made on the official curricula and textbooks. Emphasizing this connection between both aspects is one of the strengths of this book. That is the reason why this book proposes an approach to that reality from diverse points of view and show the different materializations observed in this area in the studied cases. The chapters of this volume allow us to verify this heterogeneous reality and help enrich our knowledge on this broad and interesting topic.

Child development 'laboratory schools are dedicated to research-based instruction and furthering innovation in education. Many of these schools are connected to universities, where students are able to benefit from university resources and best practices' (Khan, 2014). They have been in existence on university campuses for centuries in the United States. The earliest colonial colleges (e.g., Harvard, Yale, William and Mary, University of Pennsylvania) administered Latin schools or departments to prepare students for college (Good & Teller, 1973). Rutgers Preparatory School was founded in 1768 and was linked to the university until the 1950s (Sperduto, 1967). During the course of time, the laboratory schools have changed to meet the needs of the teaching professionals and have frequently guided the instructional methods to improve the science and art of teaching [International Association of Laboratory Schools (IALS), 2018]. They have also changed throughout the years from part-day, part-time programs (McBride, 1996, Myers & Palmer, 2017) to full-day child care, some of which is inclusive of care offered through student service funds (Keyes, 1984; Shirah, 1988).

Throughout the previous century, college and university institutions have established child development laboratory schools. In the early 1900s, they were initially considered to be sites for the recent discipline of child study but their purposes have progressed gradually. They also have assumed a fundamental function in promoting teaching, research, and service (such as outreach/engagement practice) in child development and early childhood education. However, a lot of them had to struggle for their survival when economic periods turned out to be problematic. Several extended operating programs were discontinued (Barbour & McBride, 2017).

In 1894 John Dewey founded the University of Chicago Laboratory School. His laboratory school is unquestionably the most well-known of experimental schools. It was used to research, develop, and confirm innovative theories and principles of child development and education. Later at the beginning of the early 1900s, exemplary schools were developed as important centers for the preparation of teachers. Dewey’s laboratory school and the preparation of interns in a hospital were used as a model for laboratory schools to focus on methodical research, dual faculty university appointments, and the preparation of preservice teachers. During the initial half of the 20th century, laboratory schools increased in colleges and universities, especially between 1920 and 1940. University-based child development laboratory programs assumed a critical responsibility in contributing to the knowledge base on child development and early childhood education as well as the professional development of early childhood educators. This concept of the child development laboratory schools has heavily influenced modern views. Researchers and educators need to understand the current sources based on theoretical frameworks that contribute to the purposes of the child development laboratory schools. The contents of the volume reflect the major shifts in the views of early childhood researchers and educators in relation to the research on child development laboratory schools, the role of child development laboratory programs in early childhood education, and their relationship to theory, research, and practice. The chapters in this special volume reviews and critically analyzes the literature on several aspects of the child development laboratory schools. This volume can be a valuable tool to researchers who are conducting studies in the child development laboratory schools and practitioners who are working directly or indirectly in these schools. It focuses on important contemporary issues on child development laboratory schools in early childhood education (ages 0 to 8) to provide the information necessary to make judgments about these issues. It also motivates and guides researchers to explore gaps in the child development laboratory schools’ literature.

Although there has been an increase in literature regarding children of color with disabilities, it mainly focuses on their experiences in one social context. Crises of Identifying: Negotiating and Mediating Race, Gender, and Disability within Family and Schools includes narratives on the familial and educational experiences in public, private, and institutional educational settings of five African American adults who have disabilities associated with blindness, cerebral palsy, and speech impairment. As a deaf African American female, the author and researcher also highlights her familial and educational experiences throughout the book as a frame of analysis. This book can serve as a literary resource to academics and educational programs and/or institutions as well as an informational guide to parents, teachers, administrators, and paraprofessionals/caregivers of children with disabilities regarding the significance of leadership, advocacy, activism, and identification development within familial and educational contexts on the experiences of children including the impact of complex dynamics that exist within and between families and schools.

Hopefully, this book will provide parents, teachers, administrators, and paraprofessionals with an understanding and comprehension of complexities concerning disability, gender, and race within family and schools including their association with crises of identifying, essentialist discourses, as well as power and privilege dynamics. This book consists of nine chapters which are organized into three parts. Part I focuses on background, rationale, theoretical and methodological underpinnings of the research this book is based on. Part II introduces the reader to the narratives of five African Americans with disabilities. Each narrative provides insights into the lived experiences and leadership qualities of two males and three females. Part III presents the concluding chapters of the book and highlights the significance of this research for the educational field including disability studies, teacher education programs, and special education.

Racism and ignorance churn on college campuses as surely as they do in society at large. Over the past fifteen years there have been many discussions regarding racism and higher education. Some of these focus on formal policies and dynamics such as Affirmative Action or The Dream Act, while many more discussions are happening in classrooms, dorm rooms and in campus communities. Of course, corollary to these conversations, some of which are generative and some of which are degenerative, is a deafening silence around how individuals and institutions can actually understand, engage and change issues related to racism in higher education. This lack of dialogue and action speaks volumes about individuals and organizations, and suggests a complicit acceptance, tolerance or even support for institutional and individual racism. There is much work to be done if we are to improve the situation around race and race relation in institutions of higher education.

There is still much work to be done in unpacking and addressing the educational realities of those who are economically, socially, and politically underserved and oppressed by implicit and overt racism. These realities manifest in ways such as lack of access to and within higher education, in equitable outcomes and in a disparity of the quality of education as a student matriculates through the system. While there are occasional diversity and inclusion efforts made in higher education, institutions still largely address them as quotas, and not as paradigmatic changes. This focus on “counting toward equity rather” than “creating a culture of equity” is basically a form of white privilege that allows administrators and policymakers to show incremental “progress” and avoid more substantive action toward real equity that changes the culture(s) of institutions with longstanding racial histories that marginalize some and privilege others.

Issues in higher education are still raced from white perspectives and suffer from a view that race and racism occur in a vacuum. Some literature suggests that racism begins very early in the student experience and continues all the way to college (Berlak & Moyenda). This mis-education, mislabeling and mistreatment based on race often develops as early as five to ten years old and “follows” them to postgraduate education and beyond.

For decades, politicians, businessmen and other leaders have been concerned with the quality of education, including early childhood education, in the United States. While more than 50% of the children between the ages of three and five are enrolled in preschool and kindergarten programs in the United States, no state, federal, or national standards exist for science or technology education in preschool or kindergarten programs. Knowledge about science and technology is an important requirement for all in contemporary society. An increasing number of professions require the use of scientific concepts and technological skills and society as a whole depends on scientific knowledge.

Scientific and technological knowledge should be a part of every individual’s education. There are many ways to enhance young children’s scientific thinking and problem-solving skills as well as their technological abilities. The purpose of this volume is to present a critical analysis of reviews of research on science and technology education in early childhood education. The first part of the volume includes contributions by leading scholars in science, while the second part includes contributions by leading scholars in technology.

As the title indicates, this book highlights the shifting and emergent features that represent life online, specifically in and around the territory of e-learning.

Cybercultures in themselves are complex conglomerations of ideas, philosophies, concepts, and theories, some of which are fiercely contradictory. As a construct, 'cyberculture' is a result of sustained attempts by diverse groups of people to make sense of multifarious activities, linguistic codes, and practices in complicated and ever-changing settings. It is an impossibly convoluted field. Any valid understanding of cyberculture can only be gained from living within it, and as Bell suggests, it is 'made up of people, machines and stories in everyday life.' Although this book contains a mix of perspectives, as the chapters progress, readers should detect some common threads.

Technology-mediated activities are featured throughout, each evoking its particular cultural nuances and, as Derrick de Kerckhove (1997) has eloquently argued, technology acts as the skin of culture. All the authors are passionate about their subjects, every one engages critically with his or her topics, and each is fully committed to the belief that e-learning is a vitally important component in the future of education. All of the authors believe that digital learning environments will contribute massively to the success of the information society we now inhabit. Each is intent on exploration of the touchstone of 'any time, any place' learning where temporal and spatial contexts cease to become barriers to learning, and where the boundaries are blurring between the formal and informal.

This book is divided into four sections. In Part I, which has been titled 'Digital Subcultures,' we begin an exploration of 'culture' and attempt to locate the learner within a number of digital subcultures that have arisen around new and emerging technologies such as mobile and handheld devices, collaborative online spaces, and podcasting. The chapters in this section represent attempts by the authors to demonstrate that there are many subdivisions present on the Web, and that online learners cannot and should not be represented as one vast amorphous mass of 'Internet' users.

The year 2020 presented conflicts in higher education, including a global pandemic, racial protests, cries for Black Lives Matter following the deaths of Black women and men by police, education moved online to virtual classrooms, and the U.S. economy struggling as millions of Americans were furloughed or worked remotely and ordered everything curbside; all of this compounded by an election year. This book is a compilation of perspectives shared from students enrolled in a graduate course on diversity and social justice in higher education who found community in sharing their personal and professional experiences associated with identity and allyship development, socialization, activism, institutionalized racism, academic traditions, advising, to implications for change in higher education policies, processes, and practice.

This book makes the case that the changes brought about by the connectivity of the Internet have so transformed the nature of post secondary learning that we need to view it differently. Both the content and the processes of learning have been profoundly altered because of the accessibility of information and the multi-way interactivity provided by the Internet. We call this new phenomenon ‘the Connecticon’ – which encompasses the new opportunities created by the infrastructure, the content, the multiple connection devices of the Web, as well as by the hyper-interactivity of the connected generation for whom attention is the new currency. It is the aim of this book to identify and document the Connecticon – its nature, its impact and its implications. We will do this in the broad domain of learning, though a similar study could be carried out in commercial, social or political fields.

The primary purpose of this book is to invite educators to (re)think what it means to critically conceptualize knowledge about the world. In other words, imagining curriculum in a critical way means decolonizing mainstream knowledge about global societies. Such an approach re-evaluates how we have come to know the world and asks us to consider the socio-political context in which we have come to understand what constitutes an ethical global imagination. A critical reading of the world calls for the need to examine alternative ways of knowing and teaching about the world: a pedagogy that recognizes how diverse subjects have come to view the world. A critical question this book raises is: What are the radical ways of re-conceptualizing curriculum knowledge about global societies so that we can become accountable to the different ways people have come to experience the world? Another question the book raises is: how do we engage with complexities surrounding social differences such as gender, race, ethnicity, religion, etc., in the global contexts? Analyzing global issues and events through the prism of social difference opens up spaces to advocate a transformative framework for a global education curriculum. Transformative in the sense that such a curriculum asks students to challenge stereotypes and engages students in advocating changes within local/global contexts.

A critical global perspective advocates the value of going beyond the nation-state centered approach to teaching about topics such as history, politics, culture, etc. It calls for the need to develop curriculum that accounts for transnational formations: an intervention that asks us to go beyond issues that are confined within national borders. Such a practice recognizes the complicated ways the local is connected to the global and vice versa and cautions against creating a hierarchy between national and global issues. It also suggests the need to critically examine the pitfalls of forming dichotomies between the local (or the national) and the global or the center and the periphery.

Social epistemology is a broad set of approaches to the study of knowledge and to gain information about the social dimensions. This intellectual movement of wide cross-disciplinary sources reconstructs the problems of epistemology when knowledge is considered to be intrinsically social. In the first chapter, "Social Epistemology and Social Learning," Olivia Saracho and Bernard Spodek discuss the social and historical contexts in which different forms of knowledge are formulated based on the perspective of social epistemology. They also discuss the emergence of social epistemology, which guides researchers to investigate social phenomena in laboratory and field settings. Social factors "external" to the appropriate business of science have a major impact in the social studies researchers’ historical case studies. Thus, social studies researchers may be considered social epistemologists, because (a) they focus on knowledge of social influences and (b) they infer epistemologically significant conclusions from their sociological or anthropological research. In addition, analyses indicate that studies of scientific paradigms are basically a struggle for political power rather than reflecting reliable epistemic merit. Social studies researchers focus on knowledge of social influences on knowledge, which is analogous to the knowledge of the social epistemologists. They also use their sociological or anthropological research to infer epistemologically significant conclusions.

Across the country, women are pursuing doctoral degrees at a rate higher than males. While the data indicates that women are now more likely to pursue this advance degree, limited research addresses the real experiences of diverse women who are pursuing a doctoral degree. This book highlights the lived experiences of diverse women who are progressing through a doctoral degree program and the challenges as well as opportunities that they face. These women share unique and transparent experiences of progressing through a doctoral program.

Through a narrative approach, Conquering Academia Transparent Stories of Diverse Women Doctoral Students, addresses themes of intersectionality, lived experiences, challenges and opportunities, and adopting an academia mindset. Featured in the Contemporary Perspectives on Access, Equity, and Achievement series, this book shares perspectives of diverse women doctoral students and how their cultural identities assist them with navigating the academic landscape. It also provides insight for current female doctoral students about strategic positioning as a student within the doctoral program and personal necessary transformation in academia. It informs faculty and staff in academia about the experiences of diverse women and how to support their progression and overall retention.

Racism and ignorance churn on college campuses as surely as they do in society at large. Over the past fifteen years there have been many discussions regarding racism and higher education. Some of these focus on formal policies and dynamics such as Affirmative Action or The Dream Act, while many more discussions are happening in classrooms, dorm rooms and in campus communities. Of course, corollary to these conversations, some of which are generative and some of which are degenerative, is a deafening silence around how individuals and institutions can actually understand, engage and change issues related to racism in higher education. This lack of dialogue and action speaks volumes about individuals and organizations, and suggests a complicit acceptance, tolerance or even support for institutional and individual racism. There is much work to be done if we are to improve the situation around race and race relation in institutions of higher education.

There is still much work to be done in unpacking and addressing the educational realities of those who are economically, socially, and politically underserved and oppressed by implicit and overt racism. These realities manifest in ways such as lack of access to and within higher education, in equitable outcomes and in a disparity of the quality of education as a student matriculates through the system. While there are occasional diversity and inclusion efforts made in higher education, institutions still largely address them as quotas, and not as paradigmatic changes. This focus on “counting toward equity rather” than “creating a culture of equity” is basically a form of white privilege that allows administrators and policymakers to show incremental “progress” and avoid more substantive action toward real equity that changes the culture(s) of institutions with longstanding racial histories that marginalize some and privilege others.

Issues in higher education are still raced from white perspectives and suffer from a view that race and racism occur in a vacuum. Some literature suggests that racism begins very early in the student experience and continues all the way to college (Berlak & Moyenda). This mis-education, mislabeling and mistreatment based on race often develops as early as five to ten years old and “follows” them to postgraduate education and beyond.

Memory construction and national identity are key issues in our societies, as well as it is patriotism. How can we nowadays believe and give sense to traditional narrations that explain the origins of nations and communities? How do these narrations function in a process of globalization? How should we remember the recent past? In the construction of collective memory, no doubt history taught at school plays a fundamental role, as childhood and adolescence are periods in which the identity seeds flourish vigorously. This book analyses how history is far more than pure historical contents given in a subject matter; it studies the situation of school history in different countries such as the former URSS, United States, Germany, Japan, Spain and Mexico, making sensible comparisons and achieving global conclusions. The empirical part is based on students interviews about school patriotic rituals, very close to the teaching of history, specifically carried out in Argentina but very similar to these rituals in other countries.

The author analizes in which ways that historical knowledge is understood by students and its influence on the construction of patriotism. This book--aside from making a major contribution to the cultural psychology field--should be of direct interest and relevance to all people interested in the ways education succeeds in its variable functions. As a matter of fact, it is related to other IAP books as Contemporary Public Debates Over History Education (Nakou & Barca, 2010) and What Shall We Tell the Children? International Perspectives on School History Textbooks (Foster & Crawford, 2006).

Once the province and tool of élite learning in American society, and the core of the Humanities, the study of the Classics now occupies a tenuous place on the margins of curriculum in most public schools. Administrators of schools and districts with limited resources, teachers, and students of ancient Greek and Roman culture and language confront many questions regarding the relevance and utility of including the Classics in education that must address modern challenges.

In this book, Toni Ryan argues that the Classics provide students with a uniquely wide range of opportunities for critical examination of the connections among language, cultural constructions of power and knowledge, and oppression in society. She proposes rationale for incorporating a critical approach to classical studies in American public schools as a path to exploring social justice issues. Critical pedagogy in Classics offers a platform for illuminating paths for critical awareness, reflection, and action in the quest to understand and address the broad concerns of social justice.

Ryan asserts the potential for education in Classics to be reconstructed to empower and emancipate, particularly through the exploration of philosophical questions that have been pondered in classical cultures (and in classical studies) since antiquity. For public school educators and students, the examination of classical language and culture allows us to safely explore critical questions in an admittedly unsafe world. Those questions that are eternally ours, that are eternally centered in the human condition, are the province of Classics.

This volume traces the socialization process, professional development, career paths, and theory and research of contemporary pioneers in education and psychology. This volume contains interviews with leading scholars who are at the vanguard of teaching and learning. They shared how their childhood development influenced their theoretical paths and research endeavors and revealed their thoughts, beliefs, and experiences that made them who they are today. These scholars responded to questions pertaining to their childhood, initial interest in education and psychology, role models, research interests and major findings, future directions of their research, educational implications derived from their research, and perception of their legacy. They are real people who have had experiences like anybody else, but found homes and teachers who supported them. While in college, they found educators who mentored them.

Readers will find that this volume offers them an opportunity to learn the background of contemporary pioneers in education and psychology, provides valuable sources where they can learn about how major theories developed and where they are moving, and reveals the personal anecdotes that influenced the conceptualization of contemporary theories and research. Educators and students will find that this book provides hope and a rejuvenated enthusiasm about the status of education and psychology and that they too can be leaders in their own ways.

This book makes the case that the changes brought about by the connectivity of the Internet have so transformed the nature of post secondary learning that we need to view it differently. Both the content and the processes of learning have been profoundly altered because of the accessibility of information and the multi-way interactivity provided by the Internet. We call this new phenomenon ‘the Connecticon’ – which encompasses the new opportunities created by the infrastructure, the content, the multiple connection devices of the Web, as well as by the hyper-interactivity of the connected generation for whom attention is the new currency. It is the aim of this book to identify and document the Connecticon – its nature, its impact and its implications. We will do this in the broad domain of learning, though a similar study could be carried out in commercial, social or political fields.

This is a ground-breaking research study on Black immigrant identities in South African schools. It is the first major book on racial integration and immigrant children in South African schools. The overall aim of this study is to investigate how immigrant students negotiate and mediate their identity within the South African schooling context.

This study set out to explain this complex phenomenon, guided by the following research objectives: One, to describe how immigrant student identities are framed, challenged, asserted and negotiated within the institutional cultures of schools. Two, to evaluate the extent to which the ethos of these schools has been transformed towards integration in the truest sense and to determine how immigrant students perceive this in practice? Three, to explore the ‘transnational social fields’ in terms of social networks and cross-border linkages of immigrant students and how this impacts on their identity formation. Four, to determine if there are any new forms of immigrant student self-identities that are beginning to emerge? Five, to determine the extent to which racial desegregation has been accompanied by social integration between immigrant and local students. Six, to determine the impact of the South African social/schooling context on immigrant student identity formation. And seven, to identify critical lessons and ‘good practice’ that could be learnt and used to accelerate the racial desegregation and social integration of immigrant students in South African schools.

In recent years there have been significant changes in education across the globe, largely as a result of changing demographics, technological developments, and increased globalization. Relatedly, the changing needs of societies and families, along with new research findings, provide new directions in early childhood education. Consequently, early childhood teachers today are faced with higher and more complex expectations to help ensure that their students achieve their full potential. Such expectations suggest that early childhood teachers should be professionals who are able to draw on a robust knowledge base in making educational decisions. It follows that teacher education programs should develop and implement innovative programs that can potentially enhance the quality of our future teachers.

An awareness of pressing issues in the field of early childhood teacher education led the editors to develop this volume. The chapters in these two volumes bring together scholars from across the US and the globe who are interested in improving the quality of early childhood teacher education. The chapters present their experiences, perspectives, and lessons learned as they addressed some of the challenging issues concerning the education and preparation of future early childhood teachers. The various issues and perspectives from different states in the US or countries across the globe provide insights into current issues and dilemmas facing the field. The contributions of these scholars should inform the discourse on early childhood teacher education and help those who work with preservice teachers improve the quality of their work.

Across the country, women are pursuing doctoral degrees at a rate higher than males. While the data indicates that women are now more likely to pursue this advance degree, limited research addresses the real experiences of diverse women who are pursuing a doctoral degree. This book highlights the lived experiences of diverse women who are progressing through a doctoral degree program and the challenges as well as opportunities that they face. These women share unique and transparent experiences of progressing through a doctoral program.

Through a narrative approach, Conquering Academia Transparent Stories of Diverse Women Doctoral Students, addresses themes of intersectionality, lived experiences, challenges and opportunities, and adopting an academia mindset. Featured in the Contemporary Perspectives on Access, Equity, and Achievement series, this book shares perspectives of diverse women doctoral students and how their cultural identities assist them with navigating the academic landscape. It also provides insight for current female doctoral students about strategic positioning as a student within the doctoral program and personal necessary transformation in academia. It informs faculty and staff in academia about the experiences of diverse women and how to support their progression and overall retention.

Taken together, these authors explore the many and varied challenges faced by teacher educators generally, and social studies teacher educators specifically. Their analyses and recommendations provide a starting point for ongoing deliberations about the nature and challenges of the field. There are no easy answers; but continuing the discussion is crucial.

What is (R)Evolutionary Leadership? Why Does it Matter?

How can contemporary school district administrators, specifically superintendents, contend with so many difficult, and almost impossible competing commitments? Building on the definitions of revolution, revolutionary, evolution, and evolutionary, the notion of (R)Evolutionary Leadership emerged while discussing the need for school district leaders to push back against the status quo while improving teacher and leadership practices, improving student learning outcomes, engaging with the community, and ensuring decision making processes that include check and balance systems that are just, fair, and equitable for all.

The chapters in this book introduce superintendents or research on superintendents in which these tenants were practiced; both in their ability to enact radical change by “overthrowing” the status quo – as well as evolutionary in their deliberate approach to viewing change as a process they can control over time. These leaders were willing to confront and defy practices and policies that were counter to student well-being and achievement while concurrently knowing how to reach their desired results. The chapters chosen for inclusion in this volume are those that offered a glimpse of these revolutionary tenants in practice.

We ask that you consider this emerging concept as you explore the chapters of our book. You will find the (R)evolutionary Leaders you meet in the chapters know how to evolve, not just to stay alive, but to ensure the organization (school) remains relevant and vital to society. These leaders use their positional power, social capital, and expertise to advocate for policies and practices that are in the best interest of the school community and they innovate in ways that challenge the status quo. You will also find practices that are (R)Evolutionary and provide ways for leaders to innovate, collaborate, and simply take care of themselves and those around them. Our description does not seek to support or define or delineate the characteristics of a (R)Evolutionary Leader or how one might enact (R)Evolutionary Leadership–but serves as a way to (re)think the way we view the vastly complex work of school district administrators, specifically the superintendent. (R)Evolutionary leadership may change our ways of thinking about the significant advocacy role a superintendent can play in influencing both practice and policy to enact the change necessary to move forward issues of justice, equity, and quality in PK-12 schools and further to improve educational and social outcomes for those served.

In our current systems of education, there is a trend toward compartmentalizing knowledge, standardizing assessments of learning, and focusing primarily on quantifiable and positivist forms of inquiry. Contemplative inquiry, on the other hand, takes us on a transformative pathway toward wisdom, morality, integrity, equanimity, and joy (Zajonc, 2009). These holistic learning practices are needed as a counterbalance to the over-emphasis on positivism that we see today. In addition to learning quantifiable information, we also need to learn to be calmer, wiser, kinder, and happier. This book aims to find and share various pathways leading to these ends.

This book will describe educational endeavors in various settings that use contemplative pedagogies to enable students to achieve deep learning, peace, tranquility, equanimity, and wisdom to gain new understanding about self and life, and to grow holistically.

Embodiment is a central concept in this book. We hope to highlight strategies for exploring internal wisdoms through engaging ourselves beyond simply the rational mind. Contemplative pedagogies such as meditation, yoga, tai chi, dance, arts, poetry, reflective writing and movements, can help students embody what they learn by integrating their body, heart, mind, and spirit.

Contemporary Challenges Confronting School Leaders is the eleventh in a series on research and theory dedicated to advancing our understanding of schools through empirical study and theoretical analysis. Consequently, the chapters include analyses that investigate relationships between school organizations and administrative practice that affect teacher and student effectiveness. This edition is organized around concepts that are significant to contemporary school leaders: student achievement and variables that contribute to it or influence achievement indirectly.

Mathematics is traditionally seen as the most neutral of disciplines, the furthest removed from the arguments and controversy of politics and social life. However, critical mathematics challenges these assumptions and actively attacks the idea that mathematics is pure, objective, and value-neutral. It argues that history, society, and politics have shaped mathematics—not only through its applications and uses but also through molding its concepts, methods, and even mathematical truth and proof, the very means of establishing truth. Critical mathematics education also attacks the neutrality of the teaching and learning of mathematics, showing how these are value-laden activities indissolubly linked to social and political life. Instead, it argues that the values of openness, dialogicality, criticality towards received opinion, empowerment of the learner, and social/political engagement and citizenship are necessary dimensions of the teaching and learning of mathematics, if it is to contribute towards democracy and social justice.

This book draws together critical theoretic contributions on mathematics and mathematics education from leading researchers in the field. Recurring themes include: The natures of mathematics and critical mathematics education, issues of epistemology and ethics; Ideology, the hegemony of mathematics, ethnomathematics, and real-life education; Capitalism, globalization, politics, social class, habitus, citizenship and equity.

The book demonstrates the links between these themes and the discipline of mathematics, and its critical teaching and learning. The outcome is a groundbreaking collection unified by a shared concern with critical perspectives of mathematics and education, and of the ways they impact on practice.

This is a ground-breaking research study on Black immigrant identities in South African schools. It is the first major book on racial integration and immigrant children in South African schools. The overall aim of this study is to investigate how immigrant students negotiate and mediate their identity within the South African schooling context.

This study set out to explain this complex phenomenon, guided by the following research objectives: One, to describe how immigrant student identities are framed, challenged, asserted and negotiated within the institutional cultures of schools. Two, to evaluate the extent to which the ethos of these schools has been transformed towards integration in the truest sense and to determine how immigrant students perceive this in practice? Three, to explore the ‘transnational social fields’ in terms of social networks and cross-border linkages of immigrant students and how this impacts on their identity formation. Four, to determine if there are any new forms of immigrant student self-identities that are beginning to emerge? Five, to determine the extent to which racial desegregation has been accompanied by social integration between immigrant and local students. Six, to determine the impact of the South African social/schooling context on immigrant student identity formation. And seven, to identify critical lessons and ‘good practice’ that could be learnt and used to accelerate the racial desegregation and social integration of immigrant students in South African schools.

Traditionally, American educators and communities have looked to Europe and Asia for ideas for rethinking and reforming education for America’s diverse children. This book, Contemporary Voices from the Margin: African Educators on African and American Education, brings together new voices of diverse African-born teacher educators and Africanist scholars who share personal experiences as well as researchbased perspectives about education in Africa and America that will be valuable to rethinking and reforming education for America’s struggling schools. The book is a comprehensive work of experienced educators and scholars in the field of teacher education and African Studies. The editors of the book invited a diverse group of African-born teacher educators and scholars from different countries of Africa who teach in the U.S. The contributors share a common African experience, but they are geographically diverse in countries of origin and research. Their knowledge about African communal living as well as colonial powers and imperialism as they operated in various African countries enables them to compare and contrast various educational models and practices, including traditional ones. They are also diverse in their fields of specialization but have expertise in multicultural education, urban education, and culturally responsive pedagogy that have become the focus of U.S. discourses in public education and teacher preparation programs. Given that these scholars were born or socialized, and educated in, as well as, taught schools and colleges in their respective African countries before settling in the United States, they bring a wealth of experience and insights into what it means to successfully educate children and youth.

The book is divided into three parts. Part 1 examines African processes and practices of education, both formal and informal, as contributing authors share perspectives about African indigenous education including cultural socialization and formal western-type education and organization of schools. Part 2 focuses on patterns and structures of formal, western-type education in selected African countries. Part 3 explores cross-cultural perspectives on American education. The contributors provide chapters of stimulating and rich perspectives that will engage the discourse on rethinking and reforming education and schooling for America’s diverse students.

Over the years, educational scholars have proposed different conceptions of the curriculum. It is as if each scholar, researcher, university educator, and practitioner has developed her or his own personal definition. Unfortunately, there is no one single definition that everybody has agreed upon. Table 1 presents a sample of these definitions.

A universal definition for curriculum may continue to be elusive and may even change through the years to address changes in the social forces and changes in related school goals. Nonetheless, the approach in curriculum development is consistent. Curriculum developers establish goals, develop experiences, designate content, and evaluate experiences and outcomes. Most curriculum developers consistently use such terms as curriculum planning, curriculum development, curriculum implementation, and curriculum evaluation, and many others to describe curriculum related activities. Unfortunately, without a consistent definition of curriculum, it is difficult for the curriculum developers to identify what it is that needs to be planned, developed, implemented, or evaluated. If curriculum developers rely on the curriculum experts’ definitions, they will find that their definitions identify a product, a program, determine goals and objectives, and learner experiences. However, its heterogeneity may be inspiring if curriculum developers rely on the components of each definition that depict the richness of the field, which in turn, can provide a foundation for contemporary content, concepts, and creativity.

A curriculum is an anthology of learning experiences, conceived and arranged based on a program’s educational goals and the community’s social forces. Each curriculum manifests an image of what children "ought to be and become" (Biber, 1984, p. 303) grounded on the awareness of social values and a system that interprets those values into experiences for learners. The concept of curriculum, as a distinctive domain of study within education, arose from the demand to arrange, organize, and translate such awareness into educational programs of study. It integrates the historical study of the goals and content of schooling, analyses of curriculum documents, and analyses of the children’s experiences in school. The first formal curriculum text was published in 1918 (Bobbit, 1918), although in the United States contemporary curriculum study goes back to the early 1890's, when lead committees challenged the form and structure of public schooling. Presently curriculum development is fundamental at all educational levels.

This book is the fifth in a series on research and theory dedicated to advancing our understanding of schools through empirical study and theoretical analysis. Scholars, both young and established, are invited to publish original analyses, but we especially encourage young scholars to contribute to this series. The current volume is similar to its predecessors in that it provides a mix of beginning and established scholars and a broad range of theoretical perspectives; in all 14 authors contributed to 9 separate but related analyses, which were selected for publication this year.

Critical Perspectives on Education Policy and Schools, Families, and Communities offers scholars, students, and practitioners important new knowledge about how current policies impact families, schools, and community partnerships. The book’s authors share a critical orientation towards policy and policy research and invite readers to think differently about what policy is, who policymakers are, and what policy can achieve. Their chapters discuss findings from research grounded in diverse theories, including institutional ethnography, critical disability theory, and critical race theory. The authors encourage scholars of family, school, and community partnerships to ask who benefits from policies (and who loses) and how proposed reforms maintain or disrupt existing relations of power.

The chapters present original research on a broad range of policies at the local, state/provincial, and national levels in Canada and the USA. Some authors look closely at the enactment of specific district policies, including a school district’s language translation policy and a policy to create local advisory bodies as part of decentralization efforts. Other chapters reveal the often unacknowledged yet necessary work parents do to meet their children’s needs and enable schools to operate. A few chapters focus on challenges and paradoxes of including families and community members in policymaking processes, including a case where parents demonstrated a preference for a policy that research demonstrates can be detrimental to their children’s future education opportunities. Another set of chapters emphasizes the centrality of policy texts and how language influences the educational experiences and engagement of students and their families. Each chapter concludes with a discussion of implications of the research for educators, families, and other community partners.

Continuing to Disrupt the Status Quo? Young and New Women Professors of Educational Leadership was conceptualized as a follow-up to Breaking Into the All-Male Club: Female Professors of Educational Administration (Mertz, 2009), a book about and by many women who were the first women faculty admitted into departments of educational administration primarily in the 1970's and 1980's.

This book offers narratives of those women new to the field of educational leadership and makes comparisons to those stories shared by the veteran women in the field to highlight both similarities and differences. Continuing to Disrupt the Status Quo? Young and New Women Professors of Educational Leadership is a literary way to preserve and continue the tradition of the sharing/addition of voices to the field of educational leadership that was begun with Breaking Into the All-Male Club. It begs the question, 'If the women from Breaking Into the All-Male Club are 'firsts,' 'pioneers,' and 'groundbreakers,' then who are we, the young and new women of the field? If the entrance of women into the field of educational leadership was threatening enough for the veteran women (and still is for many of the young and new women), then the addition of age and ethnicity as confounding factors has likely created a cacophony of dissonance forty years later! Continuing to Disrupt the Status Quo? represents a decade of stories (2002-2012) from young and new women to the field of educational leadership.

This volume begins by locating critical inquiry within the epistemological and methodological history of second language study. Subsequent chapters portray researcher-participant exploration of identity and agency while challenging inequitable policies and practices. Research on internationalization, Englishization, and/or transborder migration address language policies and knowledge production at universities in Hong Kong, Standard English and Singlish controversies in Singapore, media portrayals of the English as an Official Language movement in South Korea, transnational advocacy in Japan, and Nicaraguan/Costa Rican South to South migration. Transnational locations of identity and agency are fore-fronted in narrative descriptions of Korean heritage language learners, a discursive journey from East Timor to Hawaii, and a reclaimed life history by a Chinese peasant woman. Labor union and GLBT legal work illustrate discourses that can hinder or facilitate agency and change. Hawaiian educators advocate for indigenous self-determination through revealing the political and social meanings of research. California educators describe struggles at the front-lines of resistance to policies and practices harmful to marginalized children. A Participatory Action Research (PAR) project portrays how Latina youth in the U.S. “resist wounding inscriptions” of the intersecting emotional and physical violence of homes, communities, and anti-immigrant policies and attitudes. Promoting agency through drawing on diversity resources is modeled in a bilingual undergraduate PAR project. The volume as a whole provides a model for critical research that explores the multifaceted and evolving nature of language identities while placing those traditionally known as participants at the center of agency and advocacy.

We recognize that our society and demands for lifelong learning changes rapidly, and needs to continue to be rapidly effectively infused in changing forms into the teaching and learning process. Conversations about Adult Learning in Our Complex World focuses the study of adult learning to address the issues of living and learning within a complex world- the epitome of the 21st century.

Readers will find that this book is valuable for a wide variety of professors, researchers, practitioners, and students in fields related to adult learning and adult education as it reveals emerging research and trends relevant for today and tomorrow. Moreover, this publication represents some of the most innovative and thoughtful scholarship resulting from the work of the Adult Higher Education Alliance and, arguably, the field of adult education.

The book is arranged thematically in five sections, each one dealing with a domain where intercultural competence and other fundamental skills may improve the learning experiences for adult learners. The sections include, The Learning Environment and Authentic Teaching, Interculturally Competent Classroom Practices, Programming for Adults—Redesigning University to Serve Adult Learners, Professional Development, Teacher Training, and Leadership Development, and Meaningful Assessment of Programs for Adults.

Contemporary Challenges Confronting School Leaders is the eleventh in a series on research and theory dedicated to advancing our understanding of schools through empirical study and theoretical analysis. Consequently, the chapters include analyses that investigate relationships between school organizations and administrative practice that affect teacher and student effectiveness. This edition is organized around concepts that are significant to contemporary school leaders: student achievement and variables that contribute to it or influence achievement indirectly.

Over the years, educational scholars have proposed different conceptions of the curriculum. It is as if each scholar, researcher, university educator, and practitioner has developed her or his own personal definition. Unfortunately, there is no one single definition that everybody has agreed upon. Table 1 presents a sample of these definitions.

A universal definition for curriculum may continue to be elusive and may even change through the years to address changes in the social forces and changes in related school goals. Nonetheless, the approach in curriculum development is consistent. Curriculum developers establish goals, develop experiences, designate content, and evaluate experiences and outcomes. Most curriculum developers consistently use such terms as curriculum planning, curriculum development, curriculum implementation, and curriculum evaluation, and many others to describe curriculum related activities. Unfortunately, without a consistent definition of curriculum, it is difficult for the curriculum developers to identify what it is that needs to be planned, developed, implemented, or evaluated. If curriculum developers rely on the curriculum experts’ definitions, they will find that their definitions identify a product, a program, determine goals and objectives, and learner experiences. However, its heterogeneity may be inspiring if curriculum developers rely on the components of each definition that depict the richness of the field, which in turn, can provide a foundation for contemporary content, concepts, and creativity.

A curriculum is an anthology of learning experiences, conceived and arranged based on a program’s educational goals and the community’s social forces. Each curriculum manifests an image of what children "ought to be and become" (Biber, 1984, p. 303) grounded on the awareness of social values and a system that interprets those values into experiences for learners. The concept of curriculum, as a distinctive domain of study within education, arose from the demand to arrange, organize, and translate such awareness into educational programs of study. It integrates the historical study of the goals and content of schooling, analyses of curriculum documents, and analyses of the children’s experiences in school. The first formal curriculum text was published in 1918 (Bobbit, 1918), although in the United States contemporary curriculum study goes back to the early 1890's, when lead committees challenged the form and structure of public schooling. Presently curriculum development is fundamental at all educational levels.

This volume identifies and critically analyzes research studies related to the critical skills, environments, and adult interactions that contribute to young children’s literacy development. The volume reminisces on the reformation that has emerged in the language and literacy education of young children. Prior to the 1960's, few studies were available on pre?first?grade literacy. Then studies began to emerge in the 1960's focusing on the reading readiness paradigm and on the conventional assumption that literacy development was only introduce and when children experienced formal reading instruction in school (Sulzby & Teale, 1986). Fortunately, Durkin (1966) found that there were children reading before first grade and determined that the reading readiness paradigm was theoretically and pragmatically incongruous. Others followed Durkin’s footsteps. Sulzby and Teale (1986) identify the following concepts about young children’s acquisition of literacy learning:

1. Literacy development originates well before children are introduced to formal instruction.

2. The notion that reading precedes writing or that writing precedes reading is a fallacy.

3. Literacy blooms in "real?life" settings and by performing real?life activities that are used to "get things done."

4. The purposes of literacy for young children are as important in learning about writing and reading as are the dimensions of literacy.

5. Children’s cognitive development is important to their acquisition of literacy during the years from birth to six.

6. Children learn written language when they actively engage in their world.

Competent teachers throughout the United States suggest that prior to attending school, children have acquired a distinctive culture, collection of experiences, and group of abilities (Vacca & Vacca, 2000). Many prekindergarten children have been in a group setting for three and four years such as a child care setting where teachers and caregivers teach them reading and writing.

Critical Small Schools: Beyond Privatization in New York City Urban Educational Reform features the most current empirical research about the successes and challenges of the small schools movement and the implications of such for urban public educational policy. Situated in a climate of hierarchical reform, many of the principles of the original small schools movement,which are rooted in community participation, innovative pedagogies and assessment, and equity and social justice,have become obscured by an educational agenda that emphasizes top-down mandates and standards-based reform. With the increased popularity and the rapid proliferation of small schools, the emphasis on ‘‘size only’’ has resulted in a bifurcation of the small schools movement; on one end are the small schools which have embraced the democratic, participatory, and self-governing nature of the original movement, while on the other end are schools that have simply reduced their size without rethinking school structures and practices.

This book distinguishes the small schools featured and researched in this volume from schools that are simply small and labels them ''critical small schools.'' By documenting the practices that take place in various critical small schools in New York City, we show how these schools have narrowed the achievement gap and increased graduation and college acceptance rates. Although smallness is an essential feature in the design of these schools, it is certainly not the only one and this volume illuminates the other elements that contribute to these schools’’ successes and shortcomings.

Critical Small Schools also challenges the recent emphasis on charter schools as a panacea for urban educational reform. By featuring research about the inner workings of public schools, this volume challenges this new direction that steers successful school development away from public education. Moreover, as every site is fraught with some tension, Critical Small Schools not only offers glimpses into intellectually vibrant and democratic learning communities, but also acknowledges that these concepts are not static and necessitate continual reflection and renewal. At this pivotal moment in educational reform, this volume provides keen insight into the challenges and possibilities of the small schools movement and is indispensable for anyone interested in comprehensive public school reform.

Early childhood education has always been an enterprising one. Innovative models that provide connections among the family, community, and school of early childhood will continue to emerge through the years to acknowledge new educational ideologies, new social demands, and new knowledge. The issues addressed in this volume can provide new directions to prepare early childhood scholars, researchers, and practitioners to work as a team in these different settings.

The edited volume, Contemporary Perspectives on Capital in Educational Contexts, is timely in its unique and appropriate analyses of the prevailing internal and external dynamics of capital as indicative of the type of currency within institutional structures or the currency among individual stakeholders of education. The intersection of capital and currency emerges similarly and differently within the American compulsory-based system of K-12 and the choice-based system of higher education. More specifically, Contemporary Perspectives on Capital in Educational Contexts disentangles the broader challenges and opportunities of the institution of education and the individuals who comprise. Emerging insights from the analyses provide an informed basis for ascertaining the rules of engagement and means of negotiation for the respective constituencies. With that said, this volume essentially responds to three important questions: 1) What are the tenets of capital and currency in public schools and higher education?; 2 ) How do institutions and individuals navigate those tenets?; and 3) What general and specific implications do capital hold for the educational pipeline and beyond? These questions provide a useful framework for engaging critical conversations about the dynamics of capital while offering perspectives about how to improve the quality of currency in K-12 or colleges and universities. These questions further serve as a basis for eliciting more questions toward the consideration capital as both a conceptual construct and applicable model.

Contemporary Perspectives on Capital in Educational Contexts, too, is an expansion of the work of School matters: Why African American students need multiple forms of capital, where Bartee & Brown (2006) examines how the acquisition and possession of capital equips African American students in a highperforming, high-achieving magnet school in Chicago for competitiveness in school-generated and non-school generated activities. Success experienced by the students and the school become associated with the academic rigor and reputation while any shortcomings reflect an inadequate capacity of the school or the student to appropriately engage the other. School matters: Why African American students need multiple forms of capital (2006) further introduces an initial exploration of different forms of capital as producer (improve the status quo through inputs), consumer (participant based upon outputs), and regulator (maintain the status quo through the process) within the educational system. The multifaceted role of capital demonstrates its span of influence for institutional and individual capacities.

This volume, offering a critical perspective on studies on education and society is a valuable resource to instructors who teach in the fields of teacher education, social studies, educational leadership, social work, social, cultural and philosophical foundations of education, sociology, political science, and global studies as well as their students.

In this anthology, Saracho (curriculum and instruction, University of Maryland) and Spodek (early childhood education, University of Illinois) present work reviewing the current state of knowledge on the education of students who are not fully proficient in English. The editors attempt to move beyond the narrow focus of language instruction that has dominated education and policy discussions to examine individual, social, and instructional factors that affect English language learners.

As a consequence of the federal 'No Child Left Behind' (NCLB) law, there is tremendous pressure on school principals, teachers, school superintendents, district staff, state departments of education and governors to maximize the increase in student achievement that is obtained with every dollar of expenditure.

Currently, teachers are forced to rely on extremely inefficient approaches that take enormous amounts of time, both during the school day and throughout the K-12 learning years. This is experienced in terms of the reduced time that is available to teach subjects other than math and reading, as schools resort to double periods of math, double periods of reading, and enormous amounts of remedial instruction that directly reduce the time available for other subjects including science, art, and music.

In contrast, this book suggests that student achievement may be increased in a way that is not only cost-effective in dollar terms, but efficient in the sense that it does not rely on unusual investments in the time required to obtain results. The book draws upon a wealth of cost-effectiveness data to dispel common notions about 'what works' in addressing the achievement gap: increased expenditure per pupil, charter schools, voucher programs, increased educational accountability, class size reduction, comprehensive school reform, increased teacher salaries, more selective teacher recruitment, the use of 'value-added' methods to measure and reward teacher performance, the use of National Board teacher certification to identify high-performing teachers, and a host of other approaches.

The purpose of the book series is to present reviews of current research in specific areas of early childhood education. Each volume is devoted to a particular area of the field. Within each volume scholars present reviews of research on particular aspects of the field of early childhood education. Each chapter summarizes the current research and provides an extended set of references which will facilitate readers in furthering their inquiries into research in that area. All contributions to each volume are juried, with an Editorial Board and additional scholars reviewing the draft chapters, suggesting ways that the chapters could be improved , and finally recommending them for publication. This process insures the quality of the contributions to the chapter and avoids the possibility of bias in the work.

Recent findings suggest that young children’s learning experiences are critical to their learning development, which has attracted the attention of researchers, scholars, and policy makers. Interest has focused on the early childhood policy and practice that can help improve the academic paths of children in poverty. Many of these children are from linguistically and culturally diverse families. The purpose of this volume is to review and summarize the current state of knowledge related to linguistically and culturally diverse children. It expanded cultural diversity to include social justice which can contribute knowledge in providing effective teacher preparation programs and high quality programs for linguistically and culturally diverse children.

The edited volume, Contemporary Perspectives on Capital in Educational Contexts, is timely in its unique and appropriate analyses of the prevailing internal and external dynamics of capital as indicative of the type of currency within institutional structures or the currency among individual stakeholders of education. The intersection of capital and currency emerges similarly and differently within the American compulsory-based system of K-12 and the choice-based system of higher education. More specifically, Contemporary Perspectives on Capital in Educational Contexts disentangles the broader challenges and opportunities of the institution of education and the individuals who comprise. Emerging insights from the analyses provide an informed basis for ascertaining the rules of engagement and means of negotiation for the respective constituencies. With that said, this volume essentially responds to three important questions: 1) What are the tenets of capital and currency in public schools and higher education?; 2 ) How do institutions and individuals navigate those tenets?; and 3) What general and specific implications do capital hold for the educational pipeline and beyond? These questions provide a useful framework for engaging critical conversations about the dynamics of capital while offering perspectives about how to improve the quality of currency in K-12 or colleges and universities. These questions further serve as a basis for eliciting more questions toward the consideration capital as both a conceptual construct and applicable model.

Contemporary Perspectives on Capital in Educational Contexts, too, is an expansion of the work of School matters: Why African American students need multiple forms of capital, where Bartee & Brown (2006) examines how the acquisition and possession of capital equips African American students in a highperforming, high-achieving magnet school in Chicago for competitiveness in school-generated and non-school generated activities. Success experienced by the students and the school become associated with the academic rigor and reputation while any shortcomings reflect an inadequate capacity of the school or the student to appropriately engage the other. School matters: Why African American students need multiple forms of capital (2006) further introduces an initial exploration of different forms of capital as producer (improve the status quo through inputs), consumer (participant based upon outputs), and regulator (maintain the status quo through the process) within the educational system. The multifaceted role of capital demonstrates its span of influence for institutional and individual capacities.

Recently, a new understanding of creative thought and creative performance has surfaced. It has also attracted the attention of early childhood professional organizations and researchers. Professional organizations have included it in their publications and conferences. While current creativity researchers have initiated a far more sophisticated understanding of young children’s creative thinking, ways to assess creativity, strategies to promote creativity, and research methodologies.

The purpose of this volume is to present a wide range of different theories and areas in the study of creativity to help researchers and theorists work toward the development of different perspectives on creativity with young children. It focuses on critical analyses and reviews of the literature on topics related to creativity research, development, theories, and practices. It will serve as a reference for early childhood education researchers, scholars, academics, general educators, teacher educators, teachers, graduate students, and scientists to stimulate further “dialogue” on ways to enhance creativity. The chapters are of high quality and provide scholarly analyses of research studies that capture the full range of approaches to the study of creativity --- behavioral, clinical, cognitive, cross-cultural, developmental, educational, genetic, organizational, psychoanalytic, psychometric, and social. Interdisciplinary research is also included, as is research within specific domains such as art and science, as well as on critical issues (e.g., aesthetics, genius, imagery, imagination, insight, intuition, metaphor, play, problem finding and solving). Thus, it offers critical analyses on reviews of research in a form that are useful to early childhood researchers, scholars, educators, and graduate students. It also places the current research in its historical context. The volume is also of interest to the general readers who are interested in the young children’s creativity. The chapters are authored by established scholars in the field of young children’s creativity.

This is a study of cross-national policies and practices on information and communication technology in education.

In response to changes in the workforce, scholars are calling for mentoring that is more fluid, flexible, and responsive to the needs of diverse groups of individuals, whether culturally (Kochan & Pascarelli, 2012; Kochan, Searby, George, & Mitchell Edge, 2015) or intergenerationally (Thorpe, 2012) diverse. With these changes, there are greater demands for intergenerational and intercultural collaboration and mentoring. One response to these changes is to take a more collaborative, interactive, and transformational approach to mentoring. In response, this book provides a model for collaborative mentoring, based on best-practice, grounded in theory and research, and framed by the Dynamic Model of Collaborative Mentorship. Each chapter provides a description of one of the five components of the mentoring model which are grounded in theory and include: agency, values, engagement, patterns, and roles. Individual chapters provide resources, prompts and questions to guide reflection, and suggested readings.

This book is authored by four individuals who work, research, and write as a team. The book itself is the product of their mentoring research as well as their mentoring practice in action. It is current and timely, focusing on team processes which are collaborative, dynamic, reflective, and continuously developing and evolving.

Service-learning is entering a post-initiatory phase. At tertiary institutions of all types and sizes, service-learning programs are common and service-learning requirements for graduation are growing in popularity. Taken together -- alongside continued faculty interest in effective teaching -- these factors have raised the visibility and popularity of service-learning. Now the greater need in service-learning is not to prove the need for, or efficacy of, service-learning, but to turn the focus squarely back on practice. Following established best practice is not enough; instructors also need to reflect on how this fits within the specific context and application of each unique course and service-learning partnership. While there are many excellent resources that detail best practice and showcase exemplary service-learning courses, faculty reflection and course revision often goes unmentioned. In response to the lack of attention on the role of reflection and course revision, we convened groups of faculty from a variety of disciplines to reflect deeply on their courses, paying specific attention to obstacles and challenges. These conversations were converted to articles for this edited collection, each chapter representing the process of reflection and revision and serving as a guide to develop effective practice in varied curricular contexts.

This text contributes to the body of literature on service-learning in a unique and practical manner. Faculty teaching or interested in teaching service-learning classes would benefit from this text as well as university administrators and community service directors involved in service-learning at a programmatic and institutional level. This book should be marketed to faculty teaching disciplinary service-learning classes and service-learning pedagogy classes and administrative offices involved in service-learning. This could be a supplementary text for graduate-level pedagogy courses. Higher education institutional libraries would benefit from this text, as well as the national and state campus compact offices.

Researchers from different disciplines (e.g., physiological, psychological, philosophical) have investigated motivation using multiple approaches. For example, in physiology (the scientific study of the normal function in living systems such as biology), researchers may use “electrical and chemical stimulation of the brain, the recording of electrical brain-wave activity with the electroencephalograph, and lesion techniques, where a portion of the brain (usually of a laboratory animal) is destroyed and subsequent changes in motivation are noted” (Petri & Cofer, 2017). Physiological studies mainly conducted with animals, other than humans, have revealed the significance of particular brain structures in the control of fundamental motives such as hunger, thirst, sex, aggression, and fear. In psychology, researchers may study the individuals’ behaviors to understand their actions. In sociology, researchers may examine how individuals’ interactions influence their behavior. For instance, in the classroom students and teachers behave in expected ways, which may differ when they are outside the classroom. Saracho (2003) examined the students’ academic achievement when they matched or mismatched their teachers’ way of thinking. She identified both the teachers and students individual differences and defined consistencies in their cognitive processes. In philosophy, researchers can study the individuals’ theoretical position such as supporting Maslow’s (1943) concept that motivation can create behaviors that augments motivation in the future. Abraham H. Maslow’s theory of self-actualization supports this theoretical position (Petri & Cofer, 2017).

These areas and others are represented in this volume. This volume is devoted to understanding mutual and contemporary themes in the individuals’ motivation and its relationship to cognition. The current literature covers several methods to the multifaceted relationships between motivational and cognitive processes. Comprehensive reviews of the literature focus on prominent cognitive perspectives on motivation with young children, which includes ages from birth to eight years of age. The chapters in this special volume review and critically analyze the literature on several aspects of the relationships between motivational and cognitive processes and demonstrates the breadth and theoretical effectiveness of this domain. This brief introduction acknowledges the valuable contributions of these chapters to the study of human motivation. This volume can be a valuable tool to researchers who are conducting studies in the motivation field. It focuses on important contemporary issues on motivation in early childhood education (ages 0 to 8) to provide the information necessary to make judgments about these issues. It also motivates and guides researchers to explore gaps in the motivation literature.

Early childhood education has always been an enterprising one. Innovative models that provide connections among the family, community, and school of early childhood will continue to emerge through the years to acknowledge new educational ideologies, new social demands, and new knowledge. The issues addressed in this volume can provide new directions to prepare early childhood scholars, researchers, and practitioners to work as a team in these different settings.

In this Third Volume of the series, Research on Education in Africa, the Caribbean and the Middle East, the volume continues with the previously established overarching purpose of publishing chapters that are based upon research conducted in those regions by scholars, many of whom are indigenous to the regions they write about and are, therefore, able to provide cultural insights about relevant issues, as well as nonindigenous scholars who have conducted their studies in countries within the regions or about those regions. This mixture of indigenous scholarship offering emic perspectives and outside scholarship offering etic perspectives continues to be a relative strength and uniqueness of this book series. In addition, several chapters in the current volume constitute collaborations between the authors etic and emic to the contexts about which they write. This bifocality in the gaze cast upon issues covered in this book series has been well received by readers of earlier volumes of the series.

Assessment and evaluation have always been an integral part of educational process. Quality and purposeful assessment can assist in students’ learning and their achievement. While there has been a rapid growth in international, standardized student assessments in the past few decades, a large number of education systems participating in these assessments are now focusing their attention on developing new national, within-country assessments to evaluate educational standards and to modify the curriculum to better suit to the demands of the 21st century. Education systems that are successful in linking the national curriculum and assessments directly to international standards are performing better on international standardized assessments of reading, mathematics, and science.

This book covers studies related to educational assessment in addressing quality of education and performance improvement. The book presents the distinguished and exemplary works by educators and researchers in the field highlighting the contemporary trends and issues, creative and unique approaches, innovative methods, frameworks, pedagogies and theoretical and practical aspects in assessment processes in various educational settings.

Over the last 35 years, studies focusing in young children’s knowledge about the mental world have developed into an important area. This body of social knowledge is called theory of mind, which refers to the individuals’ ability to interpret and anticipate the other individuals’ thinking, feeling, and behavior based on their interpretation of the situation. Many researchers and theorists believe that a representational theory of mind offers a basis for various critical facets of social-cognitive performance, such as teaching and learning, lying and pretending, making and keeping friends, and social learning more generally. The purpose of this volume is to share a collection of research strands on theory of mind research. It describes its historical roots and suggests improved alternatives. The focus of the volume is to provide a review and critical analysis of the literature on a contemporary domain of knowledge on young children’s Theory of Mind.

For several decades scholarly research on theory of mind has been flourishing and a collection of new publication outlets have emerged such as the ones reviewed in the volume, which offers a thorough critical analysis of the research in contemporary perspectives on research in theory of mind in early childhood education. The researchers who conducted the critical analyses of the reseearch focused on understanding the mind in relation to (1) young children, (2) several assessment procedures, (3) metacognitive and neuroscientific processes, (3) emotion and educational representations, (4) interaction of social and cultural elements, and (5) inferences and future research directions. The work of these scholars can help guide those researchers who are interested in pursuing studies in early childhood theory of mind in a specific area of study.

Child care environments have received extensive research attention by those interested in understanding how participating in nonparental child care might influence the children's development and learning. Throughout the United States (US Census Bureau, 2011) and Europe (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2006) a large number of young children are cared for outside of the home by non-parental adults. Young children’s nonparental care is commonly referred to as 'child care,' and is provided to children whose ages range from birth to 12 years of age. The provision of child care services has become an increasingly important part of early childhood education. In fact, the United Nations Children's Fund (2019) states that a large majority of children worldwide spend at least some of their week in child care, such arrangements include center care, family child care, in-home child care, relative child care, and supplemental child care.

Child care researchers have been conducting studies to understand how participating in nonparental child care might influence the children's development and learning outcomes. There are more than enough child care studies to make numerous major inferences. For example, research outcomes show that child care quality seems to be more influential than either the kind of child care or age of admission in determining the children’s development and learning. The adults’ child care affects the quality in child care. In the environment adults who are caring for the children have the opportunity to effectively assume both nurturing and instructional roles to help young children cultivate their social and cognitive abilities. The teachers’ effectiveness is related to their individual characteristics, such as formal education, specialized training, and the classroom environment. However, the majority of the studies show that both family and quality of child care have the most significant effects on the children’s development and learning. Therefore, the concept of child care has heavily influenced modern views.

Researchers, scholars, and educators are beginning to understand the current foundations based on theoretical frameworks that contribute to the purposes of the child care in the United States and Europe. The contents of the child care volume reflect the major shifts in the views of these early childhood researchers, scholars, and educators in relation to research outcomes on child care, its historical roots, the role of child care in early childhood education, and its relationship to theory, research, and practice.

This book explores the wide range of contexts in which research into creating connections in learning and teaching may take place. Creating connections can encompass making links, crossing divides, forming relationships, building frameworks, and generating new knowledge. The cognitive, cultural, social, emotional and/or physical aspects of understanding, meaning-making, motivating, acting, researching, and evaluating are explored as constituent forms of creativity in relation to such connections.

From this exploration the authors identify varied connective contexts and means which include the learner, the educator, the organisation, and the relevant community. The crossing of divides, forming learner-educator relationships, bringing together diverse groups of learners, establishing networks and partnerships among educators, and establishing links between organisations and communities are all considered as connections which can be created by and within the learning and teaching dynamic.

By examining the factors which help to facilitate and/or restrict the possibilities for creating connections in educational contexts, implications for and outcomes of learning and/or teaching arise from the connections created. The final chapter of this book will explicate the realisations that have emerged for educators and researchers working to create connections. These offer suggestions for future directions and enunciate what and how connections might contribute to both educational institutions and the broader society.

Over the last 35 years, studies focusing in young children’s knowledge about the mental world have developed into an important area. This body of social knowledge is called theory of mind, which refers to the individuals’ ability to interpret and anticipate the other individuals’ thinking, feeling, and behavior based on their interpretation of the situation. Many researchers and theorists believe that a representational theory of mind offers a basis for various critical facets of social-cognitive performance, such as teaching and learning, lying and pretending, making and keeping friends, and social learning more generally. The purpose of this volume is to share a collection of research strands on theory of mind research. It describes its historical roots and suggests improved alternatives. The focus of the volume is to provide a review and critical analysis of the literature on a contemporary domain of knowledge on young children’s Theory of Mind.

For several decades scholarly research on theory of mind has been flourishing and a collection of new publication outlets have emerged such as the ones reviewed in the volume, which offers a thorough critical analysis of the research in contemporary perspectives on research in theory of mind in early childhood education. The researchers who conducted the critical analyses of the reseearch focused on understanding the mind in relation to (1) young children, (2) several assessment procedures, (3) metacognitive and neuroscientific processes, (3) emotion and educational representations, (4) interaction of social and cultural elements, and (5) inferences and future research directions. The work of these scholars can help guide those researchers who are interested in pursuing studies in early childhood theory of mind in a specific area of study.

As authors, we are convinced that the time has finally arrived in academe for an extensive, experience-based, firsthand, seamless examination of what we are calling crossover pedagogy. There is no book-length examination of facultystudent affairs administrators collaboration in the academic realm anywhere. Nobody has yet to produce a case-based, hands-on, book-length treatment of how (and why) faculty and student affairs administrators can co-teach, co-author, and co-consult with one another as co-equal educators and campus leaders—with each group complementing the other in terms of their special skills, knowledge, background, and experiences. Without coming to practical terms with the case for collaboration that the above authors make, the why rationale developed in these publications on the topic of faculty-administrator collaboration (sometimes referred to as 'blended' efforts) around the teaching-learning venture is lost in the logistics of technical policy issues and challenges.

Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), which is also known as SARS-CoV-2, has had a great impact in early childhood education programs. Since the effect of this epidemic was new, and little research had been conducted, this volume is devoted to understanding mutual and contemporary themes in the impact of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) in early childhood education. Early childhood education (ECE) centers encountered unprecedented challenges due to the COVID-19 crisis. Comprehensive reviews of the literature, descriptions of programs or situations, and research studies provided accounts of current situations in early childhood education including programs and individuals who were working with young children whose ages ranged from birth to eight years of age. The chapters in this special volume discuss how early childhood education faced unprecedented challenges due to the COVID-19 crisis and demonstrate the breadth and theoretical effectiveness of this domain. This volume provides a brief introduction that acknowledges the valuable contributions of these chapters to the impact of this pandemic in early childhood education and offers a valuable tool to practitioners and researchers who are conducting studies on the impact of COVID-19.

At the beginning of the year 2020, after a December 2019 outburst in China, the World Health Organization acknowledged SARS-CoV-2 as a different kind of coronavirus. It immediately multiplied around the world, mostly through person-to-person contact. Infections ranged from mild to deadly. COVID-19 can cause a respiratory tract infection such as ones sinuses, nose, and throat or lower respiratory tract such as ones windpipe and lungs (World Health Organization, 2020a). On January 30, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) affirmed that COVID-19 had become a public health emergency causing an international problem. By March 12, 2020, everybody was aware of this pandemic. It also created an understanding about this first-time consciousness in research about this disease, which generated an immense publication production. It also became the basis for this special volume.

Recently, a new understanding of creative thought and creative performance has surfaced. It has also attracted the attention of early childhood professional organizations and researchers. Professional organizations have included it in their publications and conferences. While current creativity researchers have initiated a far more sophisticated understanding of young children’s creative thinking, ways to assess creativity, strategies to promote creativity, and research methodologies.

The purpose of this volume is to present a wide range of different theories and areas in the study of creativity to help researchers and theorists work toward the development of different perspectives on creativity with young children. It focuses on critical analyses and reviews of the literature on topics related to creativity research, development, theories, and practices. It will serve as a reference for early childhood education researchers, scholars, academics, general educators, teacher educators, teachers, graduate students, and scientists to stimulate further “dialogue” on ways to enhance creativity. The chapters are of high quality and provide scholarly analyses of research studies that capture the full range of approaches to the study of creativity --- behavioral, clinical, cognitive, cross-cultural, developmental, educational, genetic, organizational, psychoanalytic, psychometric, and social. Interdisciplinary research is also included, as is research within specific domains such as art and science, as well as on critical issues (e.g., aesthetics, genius, imagery, imagination, insight, intuition, metaphor, play, problem finding and solving). Thus, it offers critical analyses on reviews of research in a form that are useful to early childhood researchers, scholars, educators, and graduate students. It also places the current research in its historical context. The volume is also of interest to the general readers who are interested in the young children’s creativity. The chapters are authored by established scholars in the field of young children’s creativity.

Child development 'laboratory schools are dedicated to research-based instruction and furthering innovation in education. Many of these schools are connected to universities, where students are able to benefit from university resources and best practices' (Khan, 2014). They have been in existence on university campuses for centuries in the United States. The earliest colonial colleges (e.g., Harvard, Yale, William and Mary, University of Pennsylvania) administered Latin schools or departments to prepare students for college (Good & Teller, 1973). Rutgers Preparatory School was founded in 1768 and was linked to the university until the 1950s (Sperduto, 1967). During the course of time, the laboratory schools have changed to meet the needs of the teaching professionals and have frequently guided the instructional methods to improve the science and art of teaching [International Association of Laboratory Schools (IALS), 2018]. They have also changed throughout the years from part-day, part-time programs (McBride, 1996, Myers & Palmer, 2017) to full-day child care, some of which is inclusive of care offered through student service funds (Keyes, 1984; Shirah, 1988).

Throughout the previous century, college and university institutions have established child development laboratory schools. In the early 1900s, they were initially considered to be sites for the recent discipline of child study but their purposes have progressed gradually. They also have assumed a fundamental function in promoting teaching, research, and service (such as outreach/engagement practice) in child development and early childhood education. However, a lot of them had to struggle for their survival when economic periods turned out to be problematic. Several extended operating programs were discontinued (Barbour & McBride, 2017).

In 1894 John Dewey founded the University of Chicago Laboratory School. His laboratory school is unquestionably the most well-known of experimental schools. It was used to research, develop, and confirm innovative theories and principles of child development and education. Later at the beginning of the early 1900s, exemplary schools were developed as important centers for the preparation of teachers. Dewey’s laboratory school and the preparation of interns in a hospital were used as a model for laboratory schools to focus on methodical research, dual faculty university appointments, and the preparation of preservice teachers. During the initial half of the 20th century, laboratory schools increased in colleges and universities, especially between 1920 and 1940. University-based child development laboratory programs assumed a critical responsibility in contributing to the knowledge base on child development and early childhood education as well as the professional development of early childhood educators. This concept of the child development laboratory schools has heavily influenced modern views. Researchers and educators need to understand the current sources based on theoretical frameworks that contribute to the purposes of the child development laboratory schools. The contents of the volume reflect the major shifts in the views of early childhood researchers and educators in relation to the research on child development laboratory schools, the role of child development laboratory programs in early childhood education, and their relationship to theory, research, and practice. The chapters in this special volume reviews and critically analyzes the literature on several aspects of the child development laboratory schools. This volume can be a valuable tool to researchers who are conducting studies in the child development laboratory schools and practitioners who are working directly or indirectly in these schools. It focuses on important contemporary issues on child development laboratory schools in early childhood education (ages 0 to 8) to provide the information necessary to make judgments about these issues. It also motivates and guides researchers to explore gaps in the child development laboratory schools’ literature.

In this volume in the IAP series on Advances in Service-Learning Research, top researchers present recent work studying aspects of program development, student and community outcomes, and future research directions in the field of service-learning and community engagement. These chapters, selected through a rigorous peer review process, are based on presentations made at the annual meeting of the International Research Conference on Service-Learning and Community Engagement, held in October, 2008, in New Orleans.

This volume features efforts in research and practice to support and expand service-learning and engaged scholarship in both K-12 and higher education. Models of effective partnerships between institutions of higher education and their community partners are developed in chapters looking at relationships between campus and community in terms of partnership identity or in terms of shared understanding by campus and community partners. Outcomes for K-12 and college students engaged in service learning are the focus of several studies. The impact of high-quality service-learning on K-12 student achievement and school-related behaviors is described. Racial identity theory provides a useful frame for understanding developing student conceptualizations, while another chapter emphasizes aspects of self-exploration and relationship building as bases for gains in student attitudes and skills. In a final section, chapters deal with service-learning and community engagement as a coherent research field with a distinct identity, reviewing current work and proposing directions for future research.

Chapters discuss issues impacting the education of African American girls and many of challenges that they encounter during their schooling experiences. The chapters were written by 24 authors including a school superintendent, university administrator and professors, classroom teacher, mother and a 10th grade African American student.

The 20 chapters of the book are organized into four sections. Section one introduces the book and provides critical perspectives. Section Two focuses on Curriculum and instruction. Section Three shares information from significant stakeholders while the last section includes other schooling experiences and ends with a powerful poem by a tenth grade African American girl, entitled 'Proud.' The forward of the book, written by a Japanese American scholar, Valerie Pang, denotes the urgency of the book noting that the book 'warms the heart.' The book ends with an epilogue, written by an African American scholar, Tyrone Howard, who has a vested interest in African American males. He shares commanding interest in this scholarship, because what happens to African American females, impacts African American males and the entire African American community.

This book originates from a collaborative research initiative to examine how various societies in the Asia-Pacific Region construct moral and civic education, and to what extent these systems achieve the democratic objective of creating socially responsible citizens. In many western societies there is at least a rhetorical tendency to separate the moral and civic dimensions of citizenship education, and in some cases to exclude the moral dimension from the discourse of preparing citizens.

However, as cross-societal dialogues and research about citizenship education have increased in the past two decades, scholars have identified differences in the emphasis put on the moral dimension of citizenship education across the Asia-Pacific region. In many predominantly Confucian, Islamic and Buddhist societies, for example, the emphasis on the moral dimension of citizenship education is explicit, and in some cases, central.

While awareness of a divide, or perhaps more appropriately a continuum in the role of moral versus civic education in democratic societies has been recognized for some time, to our knowledge this book marks the first effort of this scope to address the issue of the moral/civic divide in citizenship education. Thus, through a cross-cultural dialogue across societies in the Asia-Pacific Region, this book addresses the issue of whether elements of both civic and moral education can be effectively joined to create a “socially responsible” citizen.

Rural life is more complex than it is perhaps credited. This edited volume explores several themes that highlight such complexities, particularly in terms of what they imply for rural teaching and learning. These themes include the geographic, demographic, and socioeconomic diversity within and across rural communities; the notion that rurality is not a deficit but rather a context; and the array of novel and interesting ways to build upon rural assets and overcome challenges so that rural students are not afforded fewer educational opportunities simply by virtue of their zip code. More practically, this book offers counsel for readers who may be interested in learning more about rural circumstances so that they can make informed and responsive decisions about policies and programs targeting rural students, educators, and schools.

The currency of social capital serves as an important function given the capacity to generate external access (getting to) and internal accountability (getting through) for individuals and institutions alike. Pierre Bourdieu (1986) defines social capital as “the aggregate of the actual or potential resources which are linked to possession of a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition or in other words, to membership in a group” (p. 251). Social capital contains embedded resources as a tool for manifesting opportunities and options among individuals and groups. Inevitably, the aforementioned opportunities and options become reflective of the depth and breadth of access and accountability experienced by the individual and institution. As educational stakeholders, we must consistently challenge ourselves with the question, “How do K-12 schools and colleges and universities accomplish shared, egalitarian goals of achieving access and accountability?” Such goals become fundamental toward ensuring students matriculating through K-12 and higher education, irrespective of background, are provided the caliber of education and schooling experience to prepare them for economic mobility and social stability.

To that end, the volume, Contemporary Perspectives on Social Capital in Educational Contexts (2019), as part of the book series, Contemporary Perspectives on Capital in Educational Contexts, offers a unique opportunity to explore social capital as a currency conduit for creating external access and internal accountability for K-12 and higher education. The commonalities of social capital emerging within the 12 chapters of the volume include the following: 1) Social Capital as Human Connectedness; 2) Social Capital as Strategic Advocacy; 3) Social Capital as Intentional Engagement; and 4) Social Capital as Culturally-Responsive Leadership. Thus, it becomes important for institutions of education (i.e. secondary, postsecondary, continuing) and individuals to assume efforts with intentionality and deliberateness to promote access and accountability.

Child care environments have received extensive research attention by those interested in understanding how participating in nonparental child care might influence the children's development and learning. Throughout the United States (US Census Bureau, 2011) and Europe (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2006) a large number of young children are cared for outside of the home by non-parental adults. Young children’s nonparental care is commonly referred to as 'child care,' and is provided to children whose ages range from birth to 12 years of age. The provision of child care services has become an increasingly important part of early childhood education. In fact, the United Nations Children's Fund (2019) states that a large majority of children worldwide spend at least some of their week in child care, such arrangements include center care, family child care, in-home child care, relative child care, and supplemental child care.

Child care researchers have been conducting studies to understand how participating in nonparental child care might influence the children's development and learning outcomes. There are more than enough child care studies to make numerous major inferences. For example, research outcomes show that child care quality seems to be more influential than either the kind of child care or age of admission in determining the children’s development and learning. The adults’ child care affects the quality in child care. In the environment adults who are caring for the children have the opportunity to effectively assume both nurturing and instructional roles to help young children cultivate their social and cognitive abilities. The teachers’ effectiveness is related to their individual characteristics, such as formal education, specialized training, and the classroom environment. However, the majority of the studies show that both family and quality of child care have the most significant effects on the children’s development and learning. Therefore, the concept of child care has heavily influenced modern views.

Researchers, scholars, and educators are beginning to understand the current foundations based on theoretical frameworks that contribute to the purposes of the child care in the United States and Europe. The contents of the child care volume reflect the major shifts in the views of these early childhood researchers, scholars, and educators in relation to research outcomes on child care, its historical roots, the role of child care in early childhood education, and its relationship to theory, research, and practice.

The purpose of this volume is to present a selection of chapters that reflect current issues relating to children’s socialization processes that help them become successful members of their society. From birth children are unique in their rates of growth and development, including the development of their social awareness and their ability to interact socially. They interpret social events based on their developing life style and environmental experiences. The children’s socialization is influenced by several important social forces including the family and its organization, their peer group, and the significant others in their lives. In “Theories of Socialization and Social Development,” Olivia Saracho and Bernard Spodek describe the children’s socialization forces and the different developmental theories that have influenced our understanding of the socialization process. These include maturationist theory (developed by Arnold Gesell), constructivist theories (developed by such theorists as Jean Piaget, Lev S. Vygotsky, and Jerome Bruner), psychodynamic theories (developed by such theorists as Sigmund Freud, Erik Erikson, Harry Stack Sullivan, and Alfred Adler), and ecological theory (developed by Urie Bronfenbrenner). Each theory provides interpretations of the meaning of the children’s social development and describes the different characteristics for each age group in the developmental sequences.

Social epistemology is a broad set of approaches to the study of knowledge and to gain information about the social dimensions. This intellectual movement of wide cross-disciplinary sources reconstructs the problems of epistemology when knowledge is considered to be intrinsically social. In the first chapter, "Social Epistemology and Social Learning," Olivia Saracho and Bernard Spodek discuss the social and historical contexts in which different forms of knowledge are formulated based on the perspective of social epistemology. They also discuss the emergence of social epistemology, which guides researchers to investigate social phenomena in laboratory and field settings. Social factors "external" to the appropriate business of science have a major impact in the social studies researchers’ historical case studies. Thus, social studies researchers may be considered social epistemologists, because (a) they focus on knowledge of social influences and (b) they infer epistemologically significant conclusions from their sociological or anthropological research. In addition, analyses indicate that studies of scientific paradigms are basically a struggle for political power rather than reflecting reliable epistemic merit. Social studies researchers focus on knowledge of social influences on knowledge, which is analogous to the knowledge of the social epistemologists. They also use their sociological or anthropological research to infer epistemologically significant conclusions.

This volume traces the socialization process, professional development, career paths, and theory and research of contemporary pioneers in education and psychology. This volume contains interviews with leading scholars who are at the vanguard of teaching and learning. They shared how their childhood development influenced their theoretical paths and research endeavors and revealed their thoughts, beliefs, and experiences that made them who they are today. These scholars responded to questions pertaining to their childhood, initial interest in education and psychology, role models, research interests and major findings, future directions of their research, educational implications derived from their research, and perception of their legacy. They are real people who have had experiences like anybody else, but found homes and teachers who supported them. While in college, they found educators who mentored them.

Readers will find that this volume offers them an opportunity to learn the background of contemporary pioneers in education and psychology, provides valuable sources where they can learn about how major theories developed and where they are moving, and reveals the personal anecdotes that influenced the conceptualization of contemporary theories and research. Educators and students will find that this book provides hope and a rejuvenated enthusiasm about the status of education and psychology and that they too can be leaders in their own ways.

The currency of social capital serves as an important function given the capacity to generate external access (getting to) and internal accountability (getting through) for individuals and institutions alike. Pierre Bourdieu (1986) defines social capital as “the aggregate of the actual or potential resources which are linked to possession of a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition or in other words, to membership in a group” (p. 251). Social capital contains embedded resources as a tool for manifesting opportunities and options among individuals and groups. Inevitably, the aforementioned opportunities and options become reflective of the depth and breadth of access and accountability experienced by the individual and institution. As educational stakeholders, we must consistently challenge ourselves with the question, “How do K-12 schools and colleges and universities accomplish shared, egalitarian goals of achieving access and accountability?” Such goals become fundamental toward ensuring students matriculating through K-12 and higher education, irrespective of background, are provided the caliber of education and schooling experience to prepare them for economic mobility and social stability.

To that end, the volume, Contemporary Perspectives on Social Capital in Educational Contexts (2019), as part of the book series, Contemporary Perspectives on Capital in Educational Contexts, offers a unique opportunity to explore social capital as a currency conduit for creating external access and internal accountability for K-12 and higher education. The commonalities of social capital emerging within the 12 chapters of the volume include the following: 1) Social Capital as Human Connectedness; 2) Social Capital as Strategic Advocacy; 3) Social Capital as Intentional Engagement; and 4) Social Capital as Culturally-Responsive Leadership. Thus, it becomes important for institutions of education (i.e. secondary, postsecondary, continuing) and individuals to assume efforts with intentionality and deliberateness to promote access and accountability.

This volume traces the socialization process, professional development, career paths, and theory and research of contemporary pioneers in education and psychology. This volume contains interviews with leading scholars who are at the vanguard of teaching and learning. They shared how their childhood development influenced their theoretical paths and research endeavors and revealed their thoughts, beliefs, and experiences that made them who they are today. These scholars responded to questions pertaining to their childhood, initial interest in education and psychology, role models, research interests and major findings, future directions of their research, educational implications derived from their research, and perception of their legacy. They are real people who have had experiences like anybody else, but found homes and teachers who supported them. While in college, they found educators who mentored them.

Readers will find that this volume offers them an opportunity to learn the background of contemporary pioneers in education and psychology, provides valuable sources where they can learn about how major theories developed and where they are moving, and reveals the personal anecdotes that influenced the conceptualization of contemporary theories and research. Educators and students will find that this book provides hope and a rejuvenated enthusiasm about the status of education and psychology and that they too can be leaders in their own ways.

This volume traces the socialization processes, professional development, career paths, and theories and research of contemporary pioneers in education and psychology. This volume contains interviews of leading scholars who are at the vanguard of teaching and learning. They shared how their childhood development influenced their theoretical paths and research endeavors and revealed their thoughts, beliefs, and experiences that made them who they are today. These scholars responded to questions pertaining to their childhood socialization, initial interest in education and psychology, role models, research interests and major findings, future direction of their research, educational implications derived from their research, and perception of their legacy. They are real people who have had experiences like anybody else, but who found homes and teachers who supported them. While in college, they found educators who mentored them.

Readers will find that this volume offers them an opportunity to learn the background of contemporary pioneers in education and psychology, provides helpful sources where they can learn about how major theories developed and where they are moving, and reveals the personal anecdotes that influenced the conceptualization of contemporary theories and research. Educators and students will find that this book provides hope and a rejuvenated enthusiasm about the status of education and psychology and that they too can be leaders in their own ways.

This book considers teacher training in social studies and finds it lacking a sense of genuine critical empathy, a sense of shared humanity. Current teacher education generally defines critical thinking as processes which examine topics in greater complexity, but does not prepare candidates to study, confront, and challenge existing social structures. Often in response to state mandates, teacher education programs rate and interpret candidate quality based on their conformance with standards and defined outcomes. There is a lack of tolerance for alternative views that may substantially challenge the often-oppressive hierarchical system of authority in our world.

This volume which includes contributions from social studies educators in the U.S., Canada, and Australia offers the thinking and practice of teacher education scholars who embrace the idea and practices of empathy in the social studies classroom. Defined as “the ability to understand and share the feelings of another”, direct emphasis on empathy represents a vehicle for developing a sense of mutual understanding and questioning of economic and social systems. Developing teacher candidates who comprehend and experience the feelings of diverse education stakeholders provides opportunities for harmonious teaching and learning environments situated in the lives of learners.

The 6th book of the International Review of History Education Series, Contemporary public debates over history education, presents public debates on history education as they appear in 14 different areas of the world, in Asia, Europe, North and South America. In alphabetical order: in Brazil, by Maria Auxiliadora Schmidt and Tânia Braga Garcia, in Canada, by Peter Seixas, in England, by Rosalyn Ashby and Christopher Edwards, in Greece, by Irene Nakou and Eleni Apostolidou, in Israel, by Eyal Naveh, in Japan and South Korea, by Yonghee Suh and Makito Yurita, in Northern Ireland, by Alan McCully, in Portugal, by Isabel Barca, in Quebec (Canada), by Jean-Francois Cardin, in Singapore, by Suhaimi Afandi and Mark Baildon, in Spain, by Lis Cercadillo, in Turkey, by Dursun Dilek and Gülcin (Yapici) Dilek, and in the United States, by Peter Stearns.

By illuminating common trends, national peculiarities and differences, this collective book further enriches our knowledge about crucial issues concerning public perspectives over history education in diverse parts of the world. It opens new questions and issues to be further investigated by all who are interested in this field, in terms of its historical, educational, global, national, ethnic, cultural, social and political dimensions in the current transitional and multicultural environment. This international dialogue therefore addresses historians, history education researchers, university professors, school teachers, policy makers, publishers, parents and all those who insist that history education is very important, especially if it enables young people to orientate in the present and the future in historical terms

The primary purpose of this book is to invite educators to (re)think what it means to critically conceptualize knowledge about the world. In other words, imagining curriculum in a critical way means decolonizing mainstream knowledge about global societies. Such an approach re-evaluates how we have come to know the world and asks us to consider the socio-political context in which we have come to understand what constitutes an ethical global imagination. A critical reading of the world calls for the need to examine alternative ways of knowing and teaching about the world: a pedagogy that recognizes how diverse subjects have come to view the world. A critical question this book raises is: What are the radical ways of re-conceptualizing curriculum knowledge about global societies so that we can become accountable to the different ways people have come to experience the world? Another question the book raises is: how do we engage with complexities surrounding social differences such as gender, race, ethnicity, religion, etc., in the global contexts? Analyzing global issues and events through the prism of social difference opens up spaces to advocate a transformative framework for a global education curriculum. Transformative in the sense that such a curriculum asks students to challenge stereotypes and engages students in advocating changes within local/global contexts.

A critical global perspective advocates the value of going beyond the nation-state centered approach to teaching about topics such as history, politics, culture, etc. It calls for the need to develop curriculum that accounts for transnational formations: an intervention that asks us to go beyond issues that are confined within national borders. Such a practice recognizes the complicated ways the local is connected to the global and vice versa and cautions against creating a hierarchy between national and global issues. It also suggests the need to critically examine the pitfalls of forming dichotomies between the local (or the national) and the global or the center and the periphery.

This volume traces the socialization process, professional development, career paths, and theory and research of contemporary pioneers in education and psychology. This volume contains interviews with leading scholars who are at the vanguard of teaching and learning. They shared how their childhood development influenced their theoretical paths and research endeavors and revealed their thoughts, beliefs, and experiences that made them who they are today. These scholars responded to questions pertaining to their childhood, initial interest in education and psychology, role models, research interests and major findings, future directions of their research, educational implications derived from their research, and perception of their legacy. They are real people who have had experiences like anybody else, but found homes and teachers who supported them. While in college, they found educators who mentored them.

Readers will find that this volume offers them an opportunity to learn the background of contemporary pioneers in education and psychology, provides valuable sources where they can learn about how major theories developed and where they are moving, and reveals the personal anecdotes that influenced the conceptualization of contemporary theories and research. Educators and students will find that this book provides hope and a rejuvenated enthusiasm about the status of education and psychology and that they too can be leaders in their own ways.

What is (R)Evolutionary Leadership? Why Does it Matter?

How can contemporary school district administrators, specifically superintendents, contend with so many difficult, and almost impossible competing commitments? Building on the definitions of revolution, revolutionary, evolution, and evolutionary, the notion of (R)Evolutionary Leadership emerged while discussing the need for school district leaders to push back against the status quo while improving teacher and leadership practices, improving student learning outcomes, engaging with the community, and ensuring decision making processes that include check and balance systems that are just, fair, and equitable for all.

The chapters in this book introduce superintendents or research on superintendents in which these tenants were practiced; both in their ability to enact radical change by “overthrowing” the status quo – as well as evolutionary in their deliberate approach to viewing change as a process they can control over time. These leaders were willing to confront and defy practices and policies that were counter to student well-being and achievement while concurrently knowing how to reach their desired results. The chapters chosen for inclusion in this volume are those that offered a glimpse of these revolutionary tenants in practice.

We ask that you consider this emerging concept as you explore the chapters of our book. You will find the (R)evolutionary Leaders you meet in the chapters know how to evolve, not just to stay alive, but to ensure the organization (school) remains relevant and vital to society. These leaders use their positional power, social capital, and expertise to advocate for policies and practices that are in the best interest of the school community and they innovate in ways that challenge the status quo. You will also find practices that are (R)Evolutionary and provide ways for leaders to innovate, collaborate, and simply take care of themselves and those around them. Our description does not seek to support or define or delineate the characteristics of a (R)Evolutionary Leader or how one might enact (R)Evolutionary Leadership–but serves as a way to (re)think the way we view the vastly complex work of school district administrators, specifically the superintendent. (R)Evolutionary leadership may change our ways of thinking about the significant advocacy role a superintendent can play in influencing both practice and policy to enact the change necessary to move forward issues of justice, equity, and quality in PK-12 schools and further to improve educational and social outcomes for those served.

Continuing to Disrupt the Status Quo? Young and New Women Professors of Educational Leadership was conceptualized as a follow-up to Breaking Into the All-Male Club: Female Professors of Educational Administration (Mertz, 2009), a book about and by many women who were the first women faculty admitted into departments of educational administration primarily in the 1970's and 1980's.

This book offers narratives of those women new to the field of educational leadership and makes comparisons to those stories shared by the veteran women in the field to highlight both similarities and differences. Continuing to Disrupt the Status Quo? Young and New Women Professors of Educational Leadership is a literary way to preserve and continue the tradition of the sharing/addition of voices to the field of educational leadership that was begun with Breaking Into the All-Male Club. It begs the question, 'If the women from Breaking Into the All-Male Club are 'firsts,' 'pioneers,' and 'groundbreakers,' then who are we, the young and new women of the field? If the entrance of women into the field of educational leadership was threatening enough for the veteran women (and still is for many of the young and new women), then the addition of age and ethnicity as confounding factors has likely created a cacophony of dissonance forty years later! Continuing to Disrupt the Status Quo? represents a decade of stories (2002-2012) from young and new women to the field of educational leadership.

In Contemporary Urban Youth Culture in China: A Multiperspectival Cultural Studies of Internet Subcultures, Jing Sun explores contemporary Chinese urban youth culture through analyses of three Chinese Internet subcultural artifacts-A Bloody Case of a Steamed Bun, Cao Ni Ma, and Du Fu Is Busy.

Using Douglas Kellner’s (1995) multiperspectival cultural studies (i.e., critical theory and critical media literacy) as the theoretical framework, and diagnostic critique and semiotics as the analytical method, Sun examines three general themes--resistance, power relations, and consumerism.

The power of multiperspectival cultural studies, an interdisciplinary inquiry, lies in its potentials to explore contemporary Chinese urban youth culture from multiple perspectives; explore historical backgrounds and complexity of cultural artifacts to understand contradictions and trajectories of contemporary Chinese urban youth culture; recognize alternative medias as a space for contemporary urban Chinese youth to express frustrations and dissatisfactions, to challenge social inequalities and injustices, and to create dreams and hopes for their future; recognize that the intertexuality among cultural artifacts and subcultures creates possibilities for Chinese urban youth to invent more alternative media cultures that empower them to challenge dominations, perform their identities, and release their imagination for the future; invite Chinese youth to be the change agents for the era but not to be imprisoned by the era; and overcome misunderstanding, misrepresentation, or underrepresentation of contemporary Chinese urban youth cultural texts to promote linguistic and cultural diversity in a multicultural, multilingual, and multiracial world. Sun argues that contemporary urban youth need to obtain critical media literacy to become the change agents in contemporary China. They need to be the medium of cultural exchanges in the multicultural, multilingual, and multiracial world.

In order to best assist contemporary Chinese urban youth in expressing their voices, portraying their hopes, and performing their historical responsibilities as change agents, Sun sincerely hopes more research will be done on the contemporary Chinese urban youth culture, especially on its contradictions and trajectories, with the intent to shed light on more richly textured, nuanced, and inspiring insights into the interconnection between contemporary Chinese urban youth and media power in an increasingly multicultural, multilingual, and multiracial world.

In recent years there have been significant changes in education across the globe, largely as a result of changing demographics, technological developments, and increased globalization. Relatedly, the changing needs of societies and families, along with new research findings, provide new directions in early childhood education. Consequently, early childhood teachers today are faced with higher and more complex expectations to help ensure that their students achieve their full potential. Such expectations suggest that early childhood teachers should be professionals who are able to draw on a robust knowledge base in making educational decisions. It follows that teacher education programs should develop and implement innovative programs that can potentially enhance the quality of our future teachers.

An awareness of pressing issues in the field of early childhood teacher education led the editors to develop this volume. The chapters in these two volumes bring together scholars from across the US and the globe who are interested in improving the quality of early childhood teacher education. The chapters present their experiences, perspectives, and lessons learned as they addressed some of the challenging issues concerning the education and preparation of future early childhood teachers. The various issues and perspectives from different states in the US or countries across the globe provide insights into current issues and dilemmas facing the field. The contributions of these scholars should inform the discourse on early childhood teacher education and help those who work with preservice teachers improve the quality of their work.

The 6th book of the International Review of History Education Series, Contemporary public debates over history education, presents public debates on history education as they appear in 14 different areas of the world, in Asia, Europe, North and South America. In alphabetical order: in Brazil, by Maria Auxiliadora Schmidt and Tânia Braga Garcia, in Canada, by Peter Seixas, in England, by Rosalyn Ashby and Christopher Edwards, in Greece, by Irene Nakou and Eleni Apostolidou, in Israel, by Eyal Naveh, in Japan and South Korea, by Yonghee Suh and Makito Yurita, in Northern Ireland, by Alan McCully, in Portugal, by Isabel Barca, in Quebec (Canada), by Jean-Francois Cardin, in Singapore, by Suhaimi Afandi and Mark Baildon, in Spain, by Lis Cercadillo, in Turkey, by Dursun Dilek and Gülcin (Yapici) Dilek, and in the United States, by Peter Stearns.

By illuminating common trends, national peculiarities and differences, this collective book further enriches our knowledge about crucial issues concerning public perspectives over history education in diverse parts of the world. It opens new questions and issues to be further investigated by all who are interested in this field, in terms of its historical, educational, global, national, ethnic, cultural, social and political dimensions in the current transitional and multicultural environment. This international dialogue therefore addresses historians, history education researchers, university professors, school teachers, policy makers, publishers, parents and all those who insist that history education is very important, especially if it enables young people to orientate in the present and the future in historical terms

Racial, ethnic, linguistic, and cultural diversity has become of global importance in places where many never would have imagined. Increasing diversity in the U.S., Europe, Africa, New Zealand, and Asia strongly suggests that a homogeneity- based focus is rapidly becoming an historical artifact. This book highlights that culturally responsive evaluation (CRE) should no longer be viewed as a luxury or an option in our work as evaluators and this perspective requires a distinct shift from "simple" linear cause-effect models and reductionist thinking to include more holistic and culturally responsive approaches.

This book expands on Culturally Responsive Evaluation, exploring theory and practice globally. It highlights indigenous perspectives from North America and New Zealand while examining immigrant and Roma experiences in Europe, emphasizing its growing international relevance.

This book encourages mindfulness as a tool for personal growth and for intentional action for the purpose of social change. Learning exercises focus on: examining privilege, oppression, and difference; intersectional identity mapping; historical racism against marginalized groups; social dominance theory; sociological mindfulness; cultural humility; appreciative inquiry; and more. Culturally Competent Engagement: A Mindful Approach embraces a fresh approach to cultivating self, other, and systems awareness for a linguistically rich and culturally diverse world. The confluence of people and cultures requires habits of mind, dispositions, skills, and values that promote diversity affirmation while simultaneously honoring one’s own cultural integrity and limitations. The benefits of being culturally competent are numerous and include healthy, holistic relationships and connection with people across differences. This book provides conceptual context for tried and true learning exercises that promote deeper self-understanding, ways to connect with people who are culturally different, and an understanding of the systems (socio-cultural, economic, political, and environmental) that circumscribe our lives.

Written for organizational leaders, university instructors, students, and practitioners, this book includes typical approaches to enhancing culturally competent engagement, yet has several special features that differentiate it from approaches in other books and articles on the topic. Typical approaches to developing cultural competence focus on acquisition of communicative skills, behaviors, and dispositions needed to effectively navigate cross-cultural relationships and function effectively in multicultural environments. We include and build on these approaches by adding a layer of critical and complex systems understanding as a necessary foundation for effective cross-cultural engagement. The Self-Other-Systems approach challenges readers via concrete learning exercises that nudge one along the life-long path of culturally competent engagement. Perhaps the most unique feature of this book is the explicit and implicit mindful approach. A total of eleven learning exercises are offered, foregrounded by theory and completed with reflection questions or activities. All learning exercises encourage mindfulness, or awareness of oneself in the present moment, awareness of others, and awareness of broader contexts and forces at work in multicultural contexts. In specific, three learning exercises are meditations that can be read or listened to via free download from the book’s website.

Teachers provide today's youth with the tools to become a positive part of society. Whether they are successful or not determines the fate of our civilization. Unfortunately, teacher training does not completely prepare the individual for this crucial role.

All teachers need to:

Know the student and their community

Respect the student as a valuable individual

Require respect from the student

Model organization and preparedness in the classroom and require it from students

Respect effort

Reward Responsibility

Expect success

The goal of this manual is to provide teachers with tools to quickly correct the negative situations in any teaching scenario. The manual is structured to allow each teacher to customize it to the needs of his or her own classroom.

Controversial Issues in Social Studies Education in Turkey: The Contemporary Debates consists of different research each analyze a controversial topic that is significant to understand the social and political dynamics of Turkish society and culture.

One of the purpose of this volume is to analyze and discuss how various controversial issues are perceived by Turkish educators. It also provides insight about how to think and re-organize education both in Turkey and in a global world by taking perceptions of in-service and pre-service social studies teachers on controversial issues and how to teach about them in the Turkish context into consideration. Lastly, it may provide educators and researchers who are interested in teaching and examining such issues with a holistic view.

Convictions of Conscience: How Voices From the Margins Inform Public Actions and Educational Leadership seeks to help educational leaders to develop the competencies and capacities required to create socially just and equitable schools. It is for educational leaders interested in transforming systems and decolonizing education rooted socially, structurally and ideologically in hegemony. This edited volume promotes the questioning of assumptions embedded in neoliberal new managerialism practices that often undergird the preparation and training of school leaders. New managerialism in higher education seeks to understand the market forces in order to cater to the idiosyncratic, often self-promoting needs and interests of the few and seeks to respond with programs and policies aligned with those forces and interest.

This volume suggests that the confluence of context, theory and pedagogical strategies within the field of educational leadership should inform curricular decisions in educational leadership preparation programs and such programs should be designed to prepare school leaders as both activists and advocates for marginalized students, parents, communities, and staff. Convictions of Conscience is a call on educational leaders who are committed to success for all students to reject new managerial approaches at all levels of educational leadership and is an invitation to expand their emphasis to concerns rooted in human context, particularly identity politics. Towards this end a decolonizing philosophically grounded practice of educational leadership that disrupts static relations within the structures of power is required to move toward a more socially just praxis.

The chapter authors seek to problematize understandings of diversity and inclusion by emphasizing the integral role of equity and social justice as critical dimensions of human relationships. Additionally chapter authors intentionally interrogate the socio-cultural dimensions that affect educational leaders.

Mathematics is traditionally seen as the most neutral of disciplines, the furthest removed from the arguments and controversy of politics and social life. However, critical mathematics challenges these assumptions and actively attacks the idea that mathematics is pure, objective, and value-neutral. It argues that history, society, and politics have shaped mathematics—not only through its applications and uses but also through molding its concepts, methods, and even mathematical truth and proof, the very means of establishing truth. Critical mathematics education also attacks the neutrality of the teaching and learning of mathematics, showing how these are value-laden activities indissolubly linked to social and political life. Instead, it argues that the values of openness, dialogicality, criticality towards received opinion, empowerment of the learner, and social/political engagement and citizenship are necessary dimensions of the teaching and learning of mathematics, if it is to contribute towards democracy and social justice.

This book draws together critical theoretic contributions on mathematics and mathematics education from leading researchers in the field. Recurring themes include: The natures of mathematics and critical mathematics education, issues of epistemology and ethics; Ideology, the hegemony of mathematics, ethnomathematics, and real-life education; Capitalism, globalization, politics, social class, habitus, citizenship and equity.

The book demonstrates the links between these themes and the discipline of mathematics, and its critical teaching and learning. The outcome is a groundbreaking collection unified by a shared concern with critical perspectives of mathematics and education, and of the ways they impact on practice.

The influence of culture on learning and motivation has been the topic of much research in recent years. Educational and psychological researchers are now aware that the findings of their studies may not apply to other cultures, and that in this age of globalization and multiculturalism it is very important to examine the applicability of psychoeducational constructs to other cultures. Understanding learning and motivational characteristics of students of diverse backgrounds will enable educators to develop appropriate curriculum and teaching strategies to motivate these students.

The aim of this book is to present research findings and views of scholars and researchers in the field of motivation and learning, from a multicultural and international perspective. Educators and scholars from different parts of the world have examined recent learning and motivation theories in different cultural contexts in order to explore the dynamics of sociocultural processes affecting student motivation. Others have focused on teaching and learning strategies that are known to be effective with culturally diverse students.

While nation engages in debates concerning central issues of religion and religious diversity in education, the historic saliency of religion and spirituality in the Black community and in the education of its children continues to be largely ignored. Historically, religion and spirituality were foundational to the development and understanding of social justice issues, including, but not limited to, issues of protest, community up-lift, notions of care, and anti-oppression. Taking into account the historical significance of religion and spirituality in the Black community, it is essential for education scholars to cultivate these long-standing connections as a means for advancing contemporary struggles for social justice, religiosity in education, and counter-hegemonic praxis. The purpose of this book is to expand our understanding of spirituality and religion as related to the p-20 schooling of Blacks students.

Educational scholarship continues to explore the workings of social justice to ameliorate inequities for those who have not been well served in schools. Although the concept of social justice remains a somewhat inchoate term in educational literature, this book seeks to explore the historicity of religion and spirituality while offering a scaffold that links ordinary everyday acts of justice, religion, and spirituality in education to a culture that systematically and institutionally assaults the worth of Black students. It is important to note that this book is grounded in a broad concept of religion and spirituality and the editors seek to be inclusive of all types, styles, and traditions of religiosity and spirituality.