School of Education: Books and Ebooks

Most young children with additional educational needs are enrolled in their local childcare center or pre-school. Whether they have delayed or advanced skills, many will need extra support from teachers and childcare workers so that they can participate fully in these settings. Educating Young Children with Special Needs is a comprehensive guide to working with these children. It outlines how to recognize when young children have atypical needs, individualize relevant programs for them, and make sure that they can participate socially with other children in the group. It highlights the importance of teachers' and caregivers' responsiveness both to the children and their parents.

In this provocative volume, Chester E. Finn, Jr., and Brandon L. Wright argue that, for decades, the United States has done too little to focus on educating students to achieve at high levels. The authors identify two core problems: First, compared to other countries, the United States does not produce enough high achievers. Second, students from disadvantaged backgrounds are severely underrepresented among those high achievers. The authors describe educating students to high levels of achievement as an issue of both equity and human capital: talented students deserve appropriate resources and attention, and the nation needs to develop these students' abilities to remain competitive in the international arena. The authors embark on a study of twelve countries and regions to address these issues, exploring the structures and practices that enable some countries to produce a higher proportion of high-achieving students than the United States and to more equitably represent disadvantaged students amongtheir top scorers. Based on this research, the authors present a series of ambitious but pragmatic points that they believe should inform US policy in this area. This candid and engaging book takes a topic that is largely discussed behind closed doors and puts it squarely on the table for public debate.

This book can help all of us in the field fine-tune the effectiveness of strategies and interventions designied to improve health-related behaviors. This book is definitely on my list as one of the top five 'big picture theoretical framework' resources for the serious public health professional. --American Journal of Health Promotion The contributors draw from such fields as cognitive and organizational psychology, marketing, and communications to explain the diverse factors affecting health behavior.

Key Concepts for Understanding Curriculumis an invaluable guide for all involved in curriculum matters. Now fully updated, this revised and enlarged fourth edition provides not only a solid grounding in the subject but also covers the latest trends and issues affecting the field. Written in Marsh's clear and accessible style, the book is divided into six sections, including Curriculum planning and development Curriculum management Teaching perspectives Collaborative involvement in curriculum Curriculum ideology Now updated to include a new chapter which looks at curriculum models and how these might be used by teachers, the new edition also includes extra detail on standards and essential learning factors recently introduced in a number of countries, including the UK, USA and Australia. This up-to-date edition will be essential reading for anyone involved in curriculum planning or development and will be especially useful to students training to be teachers and practising teachers following professional development programmes.

This book explores how multiculturalism should be promoted throughout higher education due to its benefits for students. It adopts a strengths-based student-centred perspective and offers practical illustrations of how multicultural education can instigate students to understand each other and to relate to each other meaningfully. With the rise of international students in higher education across the globe it is crucial that institutions promote multicultural education for their wider communities. 

Provides a background to conceptual, theoretical and philosophical issues in multicultural education. This edition has been revised and reorganized, now containing two additional chapters. Much of the text has been rewritten to make it more consistent with current theory, research and terminology.

VGM PROFESSIONAL CAREERS SERIES PRESENTS EXPERT GUIDANCE ON EXPLORING AND CHOOSING THE PERFECT JOB Whether they are college students planning a future, or professionals looking to change fields, this series offers: Specific information on each profession; Career choices within each field • Details on responsibilities, education, and training required • Information on the demands of different careers • And much more

This book of twelve essays applies the holistic theories of process philosophy to the educational challenges that teachers face in today's complexly changing world. Topics range from staff development to spirituality, exploring issues of student and teacher motivation, developmental stages of learning, imaginative thinking and writing, nourishing relationships, moral and environmental education, and the development of hospitable learning environments.

The early childhood services of Reggio Emilia in Northern Italy has gained worldwide interest and admiration. Drawing on the ‘Reggio approach', and others, this book explores the ethical and political dimensions of early childhood services and argues the importance of these dimensions at a time when they are often reduced to technical and managerial projects, without informed consideration for what is best for the child. Extending and developing the ideas raised in Beyond Quality in Early Childhood Care and Education the successful team of authors make a wide range of complex material accessible to readers who may have little knowledge of the various important and relevant areas within philosophy, ethics, or politics, covering subjects such as: post-structural thinkers and their perspectives the history and practice of early childhood work in Reggio Emilia globalization, technological change, poverty, and environmental degradation ethical and political perspectives relevant to early childhood services from Foucault and Deleuze, to Beck, Bauman and Rose. This book presents essential ideas, theories and debates to an international audience.

What's it really like to learn online?Learning Online: The Student Experience Online learning is ubiquitous for millions of students worldwide, yet our understanding of student experiences in online learning settings is limited. The geographic distance that separates faculty from students in an online environment is its signature feature, but it is also one that risks widening the gulf between teachers and learners. In Learning Online, George Veletsianos argues that in order to critique, understand, and improve online learning, we must examine it through the lens of student experience. Approaching the topic with stories that elicit empathy, compassion, and care, Veletsianos relays the diverse day-to-day experiences of online learners. Each in-depth chapter follows a single learner's experience while focusing on an important or noteworthy aspect of online learning, tackling everything from demographics, attrition, motivation, and loneliness to cheating, openness, flexibility, social media, and digital divides. Veletsianos also draws on these case studies to offer recommendations for the future and lessons learned. The elusive nature of online learners' experiences, the book reveals, is a problem because it prevents us from doing better: from designing more effective online courses, from making evidence-informed decisions about online education, and from coming to our work with the full sense of empathy that our students deserve. Writing in an evocative, accessible, and concise manner, Veletsianos concretely demonstrates why it is so important to pay closer attention to the stories of students--who may have instructive and insightful ideas about the future of education.

Performance Theories in Education: Power, Pedagogy, and the Politics of Identity breaks new ground by presenting a range of approaches to understanding the role, function, impact, and presence of performance in education. It is a definitive contribution to a beginning dialogue on how performance, as a theoretical and pragmatic lens, can be used to view the processes, procedures, and politics of education. The conceptual framework of the volume is the editors' argument that performance and performativity help to locate and describe repetitive actions plotted within grids of power relationships and social norms that comprise the context of education and schooling.

This book, the first comprehensive, critical examination of the theory and pedagogy of the field of social foundations of education and its relevance and role within teacher education:•Articulates central questions in the field--such as'What is social foundations?';'Is there a social foundations canon?';'Is it possible to teach for social justice?';'What is student resistance?';•Explores the limits and possibilities of teaching social foundations of education;•Provides strong arguments for the continued relevance of the discipline for teacher education;•Features a variety of clearly presented, theoretically grounded models for teaching social foundations within teacher education programs--including aesthetic education, critical theory, and eco-justice perspectives, the use of community-based oral histories, and experiential learning activities;•Provides concrete examples, actual syllabi, and a host of additional resources to help faculty teach, publish, and do research; and•Proposes new directions for research and dialogue within the field. This volume is an ideal entrance into the field for graduate students, junior faculty, and professors from other areas of education who are teaching in the social foundations field for the first time.