Evelyn Jacob - Böcker

Explains why powerful educational innovations like "cooperative learning" do not always reach their full potential in everyday classrooms.Cooperative Learning in Context examines the real-world implications of cooperative learning techniques used in a culturally diverse, suburban elementary school fourth grade mathematics class and sixth grade social studies class. Evelyn Jacob takes an anthropologist's eye to document not just the successes, but also the failures and missed opportunities exhibited by the participating teachers and students. Six interwoven contextual aspects that affect teaching and learning are explored: task structure, psychological and technical tools, interpersonal interactions and social relationships, individual and social meanings, local cultures and institutions, and larger cultures and institutions. In exploring the implications of the study, Jacob discusses how an understanding of contextual features can enable educators to improve the processes and outcomes of cooperative learning and other powerful educational innovations.

This volume brings the perspectives of educational anthropology to the consideration of the education of ethnic and linguistic minority students and to the challenges often associated with that enterprise. Built around a core of chapters originally published in the Anthropology and Education Quarterly, which presented two major anthropological perspectives on school success and failure for minority students, focuses on the cultural difference approach and the discontinuity approach. Each is represented by a theoretical chapter and two case studies. Chapters contrast anthropological and nonanthropological perspectives on minority education, outlining key concepts and methods in educational anthropology for readers who may be unfamiliar with the field. A later section offers recent modifications or additions to the two major perspectives. These chapters examine the role of parents and community in minority education, call attention to the cultural groupings that an form in response to the school context itself, focus attention on children as active decision-makers in school, and question the validity of the whole conceptualization of school success and failure. Concluding chapters on applying anthropological perspectives to policy and practice.

This volume brings the perspectives of educational anthropology to the consideration of the education of ethnic and linguistic minority students and to the challenges often associated with that enterprise. Built around a core of chapters originally published in the Anthropology and Education Quarterly, which presented two major anthropological perspectives on school success and failure for minority students, focuses on the cultural difference approach and the discontinuity approach. Each is represented by a theoretical chapter and two case studies. Chapters contrast anthropological and nonanthropological perspectives on minority education, outlining key concepts and methods in educational anthropology for readers who may be unfamiliar with the field. A later section offers recent modifications or additions to the two major perspectives. These chapters examine the role of parents and community in minority education, call attention to the cultural groupings that an form in response to the school context itself, focus attention on children as active decision-makers in school, and question the validity of the whole conceptualization of school success and failure. Concluding chapters on applying anthropological perspectives to policy and practice.