Patricia H. Hinchey - Böcker

Despite the fact that publishers and policy-makers have had increasing influence over classrooms, it is the teacher who must make decisions on a minute-by-minute basis about what will help specific students learn. Similarly, local administrators must make key decisions at the school and district level that will best serve particular communities of teachers, students, and parents. Action research offers educators and other stakeholders a systematic way to research and reflect on specific students, classrooms, schools, and communities in order to solve local problems and improve local conditions. This book offers an overview of various definitions and perspectives on action research without prescribing any single approach. Instead, key questions are explored: Who conducts action research? Why? How? Possible answers sketch the many types of possible projects, ranging from an individual teacher trying to improve the experience of a particular student to a group of educators and community members striving to improve local socioeconomic conditions. The Action Research Primer presents an accessible but comprehensive introduction to the field, providing a basic compass and map for the interested practitioner. Chapters include a brief historical overview, an introduction to competing research paradigms, discussion of key issues that inform project design, a serviceable guide to process, and an extensive list of resources pointing to more detail on the many categories, communities, and publication outlets of action research.

Since its introduction in 1998, Finding Freedom in the Classroom has impacted countless educators and preservice teachers by providing provocative questions about taken-for-granted educational routines as well as an alternative, imaginative view of what classrooms might become. This revised edition brings the conversation to the present day with contemporary examples and references to the best current thinking and writing on relevant issues. By defining terms in everyday language and demonstrating their relevance to everyday life in and out of the classroom, the book demystifies such formidable concepts as hegemony, epistemology, and praxis for readers with little or no background in educational philosophy. Each chapter in this edition ends with several thought-provoking discussion questions and an annotated list of suggestions for further reading, which together provide a sturdy bridge between the theoretical and the practical. Finding Freedom in the Classroom can help teachers both imagine and build new classroom worlds, empowering students and teachers alike to actively shape – rather than passively accept – their fates.

Since its inception, action research has been the subject of confusion and controversy. Can something be research if it doesn’t «prove» anything? Can something be action research if it’s a project run by an expert who does not consider participants co-researchers? Questions multiply when the general term is limited to critical action research. What makes critical action research different from action research generally?Can the action research project of a classroom teacher intended to raise standardized test scores properly be considered critical? Is there a role for advocacy in any enterprise calling itself research? If critical action research is distinct from traditional empirical research, then what formats make sense for sharing results? This highly diverse collection of previously unpublished and published works offers a sampling of opinions on key theoretical and methodological questions, complemented by a wide range of critical action research reports illustrating what various theories look like in practice. The book provides a sketch of the topography of critical action research terrain and illuminates some diverse paths through it.

For teachers and teacher educators striving to address a growing number of state mandates relating to the education of English language learners (ELLs), Educating English Language Learners in an Inclusive Environment, Second Edition provides a reader-friendly survey of key topics, including: legal and professional imperatives, cultural concerns, linguistics, literacy instruction, assessment, policy, and politics. This overview will be useful to in-service teachers with little or no preparation for working with ELLs but who nevertheless face legislative demands to teach both academic content and English. It will also be useful to teacher educators trying to squeeze preparation for working with ELLs into already overflowing teacher preparation programs. Though many try, no one text can provide exhaustive information; there is simply too much to learn. This second edition instead provides readers with a road map to critical topics and to specific resources they can use independently to learn more, as they will surely need to do.

A survey of the evolution of student rights, from children as property to free speech, prayer in the classroom, compulsory flag salutes, school searches, drug testing, and the right to equal education.This fascinating survey provides a comprehensive introduction to student rights, tracing the legal status of children as their father's property to their current status as citizens entitled to constitutional rights. Written by Patricia Hinchey, Student Rights: A Reference Handbook chronicles the landmark legislation and court decisions that have enabled the gradual transformation of students' rights.This book explains issues surrounding mandatory education and education as a property right, examines various inequities such as the segregation of minority students, and discusses bilingualism (notably the Ebonics, or Black English, controversy in Oakland, California). It describes the persistent tension regarding religion and education, and explores current controversies such as the widespread use of strip searches in schools by nonuniformed officials.Provides a chronology of selected legislation and Supreme Court cases from the Bill of Rights in 1791 to the 2000 ruling in Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe, which struck down a Texas high school policy allowing student-led prayers at football gamesIncludes a diverse directory of organizations and Internet resources from the ACLU and Christian Coalition of America to the Internet Free Expression Alliance and the official Teen Rights home page

Education policy over the past thirty years has been powerfully influenced by well-funded and slickly produced research reports produced by advocacy think tanks. The quality of think tank reports and the value of the policies they support have been sharply debated. To help policymakers, the media, and the public assess these quality issues, the Think Tank Review Project provides expert third party reviews. The Project has, since 2006, published 59 reviews of reports from 26 different institutions. This book brings together 21 of those reviews, focusing on examining the arguments and evidence used by think tanks to promote reforms such as vouchers, charter schools and alternative routes to teacher certification. The reviews are written using clear, non-academic language, with each review illustrating how readers can approach, understand and critique policy studies and reports. The book will be of interest to practitioners, policymakers, researchers, and anyone concerned with the current debates about educational reform.

Education policy over the past thirty years has been powerfully influenced by well-funded and slickly produced research reports produced by advocacy think tanks. The quality of think tank reports and the value of the policies they support have been sharply debated. To help policymakers, the media, and the public assess these quality issues, the Think Tank Review Project provides expert third party reviews. The Project has, since 2006, published 59 reviews of reports from 26 different institutions. This book brings together 21 of those reviews, focusing on examining the arguments and evidence used by think tanks to promote reforms such as vouchers, charter schools and alternative routes to teacher certification. The reviews are written using clear, non-academic language, with each review illustrating how readers can approach, understand and critique policy studies and reports. The book will be of interest to practitioners, policymakers, researchers, and anyone concerned with the current debates about educational reform.

Exploring the School Choice Universe: Evidence and Recommendations gives readers a comprehensive, complete picture of choice policies and issues. In doing so, it offers cross-cutting insights that are obscured when one looks only at single issue or a single approach to choice. The book examines choice in its various forms: charter schools, home schooling, online schooling, voucher plans that allow students to use taxpayer funds to attend private schools, tuition tax credit plans that provide a public subsidy for private school tuition, and magnet schools and other forms of public school intra- and interdistrict choice. It brings together some of the top researchers in the field, presenting a comprehensive overview of the best current knowledge of these important policies.The questions addressed in Exploring the School Choice Universe are of most importance to researchers and policy makers. What do choice programs actually do? What forms do they take? Who participates, and why? What are the funding implications? What are the results of different forms of school choice on outcomes that matter, like student performance, segregation, and competition effects? Do they affect teachers’ working conditions? Do they drive innovation?The contents of this book offer reason to believe that choice policies can further some educational goals. But they also suggest many reasons for caution. If choice policies are to be evidence-based, a re-examination is in order. The information, insights and recommendations facilitate a more nuanced understanding of school choice and provide the basis for designing sensible school choice reforms that can pursue a range of desirable outcomes.

Exploring the School Choice Universe: Evidence and Recommendations gives readers a comprehensive, complete picture of choice policies and issues. In doing so, it offers cross-cutting insights that are obscured when one looks only at single issue or a single approach to choice. The book examines choice in its various forms: charter schools, home schooling, online schooling, voucher plans that allow students to use taxpayer funds to attend private schools, tuition tax credit plans that provide a public subsidy for private school tuition, and magnet schools and other forms of public school intra- and interdistrict choice. It brings together some of the top researchers in the field, presenting a comprehensive overview of the best current knowledge of these important policies.The questions addressed in Exploring the School Choice Universe are of most importance to researchers and policy makers. What do choice programs actually do? What forms do they take? Who participates, and why? What are the funding implications? What are the results of different forms of school choice on outcomes that matter, like student performance, segregation, and competition effects? Do they affect teachers’ working conditions? Do they drive innovation?The contents of this book offer reason to believe that choice policies can further some educational goals. But they also suggest many reasons for caution. If choice policies are to be evidence-based, a re-examination is in order. The information, insights and recommendations facilitate a more nuanced understanding of school choice and provide the basis for designing sensible school choice reforms that can pursue a range of desirable outcomes.

Some hundred years after John Dewey worked to illuminate what it means to educate and how public education serves as the bedrock of democracy, his seminal Democracy and Education speaks urgently not only to critical contemporary educational issues but to contemporary political issues as well. As mania for testing forces a steadily narrowing curriculum, Dewey explains why democracy cannot “flourish” if “the chief influences in selecting subject matter of instruction are utilitarian ends narrowly conceived for the masses.” As such utilitarian subject matter is increasingly placed online, isolating individual students and their electronic screens, he insists that education happens not through direct instruction but “indirectly by means of the environment” where members of a community engage in meaningful tasks. As the American population appears increasingly subject to rhetorical manipulation and ideological extremism, Dewey imagines the possibility of education cultivating “habits of mind which secure social changes without introducing disorder.” Insightful and inspiring, Dewey’s classic reintroduces readers to educational and political possibilities hard to remember as political and corporate forces to work reshape American public schools in the service of global profit rather than democratic life.Through Myers Education Press’s Timely Classics in Education, readers are offered the opportunity to return to the original works of giants whose influence on education have persisted through the years. Critical introductions to each work offer information on the context of the original work as well as insights into current relevance. For readers unfamiliar with each text, the introductions provide entrée to the work; for experienced readers, the series offers an opportunity to return to original works untainted by the distortions of decades of interpretation. Unlike poorly produced facsimile editions, Timely Classics are high-quality products. They can be adopted for use in many types of education classes.