Linda Irwin-DeVitis – författare

Written by a prominent array of scholars and practitioners, this book elucidates the complexities, contradictions, and confusion surrounding adolescence in American culture and education. For too long, harmful public myths and lies have portrayed teenagers as a principal cause of our nation’s social ills. Similar unfair charges have been lodged against America’s teachers and schools throughout our history. This book offers public counterpoints to those simplistic blaming-the-victim arguments. Instead, it traverses a more nuanced and realistic path toward uncovering the developmental, socio-cultural realities faced by today’s teenagers. It also provides rich pedagogical strategies, and educational wisdom for allowing adolescents to grow as worthy human beings. This important and timely book will appeal to preservice teachers, teacher educators, education and social service professionals, policymakers, and all those interested in bettering the lives of adolescents in this uncertain world.

As many young adults continue to disengage with learning each day, teachers and administrators struggle to find programming that re-engages secondary students with their schooling and communities. This book profiles one program that succeeds in doing so, and should serve as a model for others. In a Midwestern alternative school, three teachers built a curriculum around hands-on learning, restorative justice Talking Circles, and multicultural education, in the hopes that it would re-engage and inspire youth. Drawing on adult transformative learning theory, this book is an in-depth, qualitative study of the ways the program transformed adult and youth perceptions of trust, connections, schooling, and human rights. This book breaks down stereotypes about youth labeled «at-risk» and provides evidence that it is never too late to become passionate about learning.

This book has received the AESA (American Educational Studies Association) Critics Choice Award 2012.Teaching History to Adolescents: A Quest for Relevance is an exploration of research, ideas, trends, and practices for educators who teach American history to adolescents from the middle grades through high school. Higher education faculty in history and professional education will also find the book germane to their work. Topics within the field of teaching history to adolescents include the use and misuse of history textbooks, implementing primary sources into lessons, subject matter selection, professional development, technology, and the issues of diversity and assessment as directly related to history. The book includes «The World of Practice» sections – contributions from practitioners on topics such as teaching history with comic books, student engagement with public history, using young adult non-fiction books, and the role of controversial topics in the history classroom.

Picture two very different schools: one, a federal Indian boarding school emphasizing vocational training, where few graduates attend college. The other – its neighbor – an overwhelmingly white, land-grant university.These two schools had little to no contact, until an innovative initiative turned things around. In the fall of 2000, the Flandreau Indian School began a reform effort, Success Academy, aimed at preparing all of its students for postsecondary education. Over the next decade South Dakota State University responded by committing 300 of its faculty and staff and $85,000 of its annual budget to opening the doors of higher education to Indian students who had previously been excluded.The traditional way of increasing college access for students of color is through remediation, that is, through attempting to «fix» those presumed to be unprepared for higher learning. What sets Success Academy apart is that the educators involved chose instead to «fix» both their institutions, institutions that were actually preventing Indian students from entering college. Throughout all aspects of Success Academy programming, students’ American Indian identities are affirmed, honored – and incorporated into school culture. Ethnicity matters in each and every aspect of Success Academy.

This book helps young black males, educators, policy makers, parents, and all other interested parties to understand the importance of education alongside athletic pursuits. In the world today, many young black males view athletic participation as the way to secure a successful future. Yet for the majority of them, dreams of playing professional sports rarely pan out. Many end up returning to a life of poverty as a result of the sports lure which deceives them and entices them to focus exclusively on athletic talent at the expense of their education. This book presents a social historical and critical deconstruction introducing readers to this sports lure, revealing what makes it so powerful in the lives of these youths. As Isabel Ann Dwornik documents, centuries-worth of racism in the United States is at the core of this phenomenon, which has affected the academic identity development of black male youths and has discouraged them from taking full advantage of their schooling.

This book helps young black males, educators, policy makers, parents, and all other interested parties to understand the importance of education alongside athletic pursuits. In the world today, many young black males view athletic participation as the way to secure a successful future. Yet for the majority of them, dreams of playing professional sports rarely pan out. Many end up returning to a life of poverty as a result of the sports lure which deceives them and entices them to focus exclusively on athletic talent at the expense of their education. This book presents a social historical and critical deconstruction introducing readers to this sports lure, revealing what makes it so powerful in the lives of these youths. As Isabel Ann Dwornik documents, centuries-worth of racism in the United States is at the core of this phenomenon, which has affected the academic identity development of black male youths and has discouraged them from taking full advantage of their schooling.

Living on the Edge: Rethinking Poverty, Class and Schooling, Second Edition confronts one of the most enduring and controversial issues in education—the nexus between poverty and underachievement. This topic stubbornly remains a key contemporary battleground in the struggle to raise standards. Living on the Edge maps and compares a number of competing explanations, critiques inadequate and deficit accounts and offers a more convincing and useful theory. The authors challenge the view that problems can be fixed by discrete initiatives, which in many instances are deeply rooted in deficit views of youth, families and communities. The book systematically interrogates a range of explanations based outside as well as inside schools. It draws upon positive examples of schools which are succeeding in engaging marginalized young people, providing worthwhile forms of learning and improving young lives. This second edition contains two expansive case studies that exemplify, explain and illustrate the themes coursing through the book. Living on the Edge's second edition remains a "must read" for anyone concerned about or implicated in the struggle for more socially just forms of education.