Margaret MacDonald – författare

At Work in the Field of Birth is an ethnographic study of midwifery in Canada in the wake of its historic transition from the margins as a grassroots social movement devoted to low-tech, woman-centered care to a regulated profession within the public health care system. In January 1994, after decades of lobbying by midwives and their supporters, the province of Ontario recognized midwifery as a profession for the first time in more than a century. Through stories about becoming and being a midwife and stories about receiving midwifery care, this book describes how fundamental tenets of midwifery philosophy and practice - the meaning of tradition, natural birth, and home birth, and the place of medical technology in midwifery - are being reworked by the practical and ideological challenges of midwifery's new place within the formal health care system. MacDonald presents contemporary midwifery as a complex cultural system in which ""nature"" and ""tradition"" emerge as dynamic rather than essentialized social categories of meaning and experience.

At Work in the Field of Birth is an ethnographic study of midwifery in Canada in the wake of its historic transition from the margins as a grassroots social movement devoted to low-tech, woman-centered care to a regulated profession within the public health care system. In January 1994, after decades of lobbying by midwives and their supporters, the province of Ontario recognized midwifery as a profession for the first time in more than a century. Through stories about becoming and being a midwife and stories about receiving midwifery care, this book describes how fundamental tenets of midwifery philosophy and practice - the meaning of tradition, natural birth, and home birth, and the place of medical technology in midwifery - are being reworked by the practical and ideological challenges of midwifery's new place within the formal health care system. MacDonald presents contemporary midwifery as a complex cultural system in which ""nature"" and ""tradition"" emerge as dynamic rather than essentialized social categories of meaning and experience.

A quintessential guide for educators and caregivers, this book explores the intersections of sustainability and childhood curriculum.Educators Elaine Beltran-Sellitti and Margaret MacDonald follow the story and findings of a nine-month long research project that took place in a living, environmentally friendly, “more than green” building housing two university-run childcare centres. The building of interest was designed with many of Reggio Emilia’s learning principles in mind. Together, the authors asked the questions: What can children and teachers learn from and with this environmentally conscious Reggio-inspired building? And what is the educator’s role in supporting their resultant curiosity and learning? In addition to understanding the special context that was engendered by the living building, the book also addresses the wide-ranging tensions and pressures affecting contemporary teaching practices of curriculum as living inquiry.This book includes the articulation of a vision for curriculum that is attuned to the elements of sustainability reflected in the architecture of the childcare building, in its furnishings and materials, in the intention to avoid waste, and in the relationships with the forest and garden. It highlights an emergent curriculum project attuning to children’s imaginative meaning-making through the structure of the building. Nurtured by varied perspectives including the pedagogy of Reggio Emilia, social constructivism, and new materialism, this book embraces a future for sustainability achieved through the nourishment of meaningful curriculum.

In Disrupting Boundaries in Education and Research, six educational researchers explore together the potentialities of transdisciplinary research that de-centres human behaviour and gives materiality its due in the making of educational worlds. The book presents accounts of what happens when researchers think and act with new materiality and post-human theories to disrupt boundaries such as self and other, human and non-human, representation and objectivity. Each of the core chapters works with different new materiality concepts to disrupt these boundaries and to consider the emotive, sensory, nuanced, material and technological aspects of learning in diverse settings, such as in mathematics and learning to swim, discovering the bio-products of 'eco-sustainable' building, making videos and contending with digital government and its alienating effects. When humans are no longer at the centre of the unfolding world it is both disorienting and exhilarating. This book is an invitation to continue along these paths.

Looking for fresh ideas to liven up your storytimes? Here you'll find a wonderfully diverse collection of easy-to-tell tales from around the world, along with tips and profiles of the storytellers featured in the book.Ideal for educators and others who work with young children, these stories have been selected because they are easy for anyone to tell, even novices, and they readily engage listeners. Along with each tale, you'll find a profile of the "teller" who provides it, adding a cultural dimension to help you and your audiences better understand the context. There are also tips to improve your programs.In addition to storytimes, this guide can be used for read-alouds, or even silent reading with older children. Whether you are a librarian, educator, or parent, Storyteller's Sampler: Tales from Tellers around the World will help you keep children entertained—all while encouraging their learning and development.

Whistler was one of the most original, if also tirelessly self-promoting artists of the later 19th century. After his disastrous run-in with John Ruskin, the greatest critic of the previous generation, Whistler poured his thoughts and feelings about art into this lecture, which made him if anything more notorious, but was also widely admired for its insights and wit. It is reproduced here exactly as he had it printed, with an essay by the leading scholar Margaret MacDonald putting it into the context of Whistler's career and times.