Christine Doddington - Böcker

The Cambridge Primary Review Research Surveys is the outcome of the Cambridge Primary Review – England’s biggest enquiry into primary education for over forty years. Fully independent of government, it was launched in 2006 to investigate the condition and future of primary education at a time of change and uncertainty and after two decades of almost uninterrupted reform. Ranging over ten broad themes and drawing on a vast array of evidence, the Review published thiry-one interim reports, including twenty-eight surveys of published research, provoking media headlines and public debate, before presenting its final report and recommendations. This book brings together the twenty-eight research surveys, specially commissioned from sixty-five leading academics in the areas under scrutiny and now revised and updated, to create what is probably the most comprehensive overview and evaluation of research in primary education yet published. A particular feature is the prominence given to international and comparative perspectives. With an introduction from Robin Alexander, the Review’s director, the book is divided into eight sections, covering: children’s lives and voices: school, home and community children’s development, learning, diversity and needs aims, values and contexts for primary education the structure and content of primary education outcomes, standards and assessment in primary education teaching in primary schools: structures and processes teaching in primary schools: training, development and workforce reform policy frameworks: governance, funding, reform and quality assurance. The Cambridge Primary Review Research Surveys is an essential reference tool for professionals, researchers, students and policy-makers working in the fields of early years, primary and secondary education.

The Cambridge Primary Review Research Surveys is the outcome of the Cambridge Primary Review – England’s biggest enquiry into primary education for over forty years. Fully independent of government, it was launched in 2006 to investigate the condition and future of primary education at a time of change and uncertainty and after two decades of almost uninterrupted reform. Ranging over ten broad themes and drawing on a vast array of evidence, the Review published thiry-one interim reports, including twenty-eight surveys of published research, provoking media headlines and public debate, before presenting its final report and recommendations. This book brings together the twenty-eight research surveys, specially commissioned from sixty-five leading academics in the areas under scrutiny and now revised and updated, to create what is probably the most comprehensive overview and evaluation of research in primary education yet published. A particular feature is the prominence given to international and comparative perspectives. With an introduction from Robin Alexander, the Review’s director, the book is divided into eight sections, covering: children’s lives and voices: school, home and community children’s development, learning, diversity and needits aims, values and contexts for primary education the structure and content of primary education outcomes, standards and assessment in primary education teaching in primary schools: structures and processes teaching in primary schools: training, development and workforce reform policy frameworks: governance, funding, reform and quality assurance. The Cambridge Primary Review Research Surveys is an essential reference tool for professionals, researchers, students and policy-makers working in the fields of early years, primary and secondary education.

Against an increasingly authoritarian background of testing and instruction, concern is growing about disengagement and loss of depth and quality in education at all levels. Child Centred Education seeks to explore the role of Primary education within this debate.

The book will inspire teachers and head teachers seeking to make their practice more genuinely educational. The authors capture the current opinion that primary schools can begin to reclaim some of their autonomy, be innovative and become more creative.

Based on wide ranging research, the book sets out to revive the creative alternative to

the rigid and impoverished learning experienced by too many primary school children.

The authors:

-Trace the origins and history of the child-centred tradition

-Set out its fundamental beliefs and values

-Explore its place in education today

This book is for teachers, school governors, local authority officers, undergraduate and postgraduate teacher training, and professional development courses.

Against an increasingly authoritarian background of testing and instruction, concern is growing about disengagement and loss of depth and quality in education at all levels. Child Centred Education seeks to explore the role of Primary education within this debate.

The book will inspire teachers and head teachers seeking to make their practice more genuinely educational. The authors capture the current opinion that primary schools can begin to reclaim some of their autonomy, be innovative and become more creative.

Based on wide ranging research, the book sets out to revive the creative alternative to

the rigid and impoverished learning experienced by too many primary school children.

The authors:

-Trace the origins and history of the child-centred tradition

-Set out its fundamental beliefs and values

-Explore its place in education today

This book is for teachers, school governors, local authority officers, undergraduate and postgraduate teacher training, and professional development courses.

This book makes a strong case for the abiding relevance of Dewey’s notion of learning through experience, with a community of others and what this implies for democratic education in the 21st century. Its first section addresses the experience of today’s generation of so-called ‘digital natives’ in terms of how we should now understand ‘knowledge’ and how their online experience creates opportunities and challenges for the curriculum, such as schools linking internationally to study classical texts; an exposition of why makerspaces, hackerspaces and Fab Labs might support Dewey’s democratic communities in our time, with on-line affordances of ‘a commons’, a space to use imagination and invent and share with others. The book’s second section is original in its focus on the central Deweyan idea of ‘embodiment’ with chapters on Dewey and the Alexander technique and on experiences of Afro-American students, in public schools, especially those situated in multi-racial, multi-ethnic countries like the U.S. with deep, racial divides and tensions. The section ends with a chapter on the somaesthetic, educational value of learning outside of buildings. A third section on experience related to democracy and education, has chapters on Dewey and the democratic curriculum, experience as a preparation for democracy, communication and the critique of individualism. Dewey’s notion of interest is analyzed and questioned as to whether it is a sympathetic notion for educational development. With contributions from Spain, Cameroon, the US and the UK the book ranges across varied curricular and policy contexts to explore what reading Dewey can contribute to contemporary education studies.