Sarah Jordan – författare

In calling this book Beyond the Culture Tours, the authors bring the reader's attention to a set of issues in the teaching of literature and culture. The Culture Tour is an old concept in the West, dating back to the seventeenth century. The educated young man -- it was an exclusively male project at first -- was expected to round off his education with the Grand Tour. This meant a visit to the major sites on the European continent, particularly Greece and Rome, and occasionally to the Holy Land. The object was to have a first-hand view of these monuments, and looking at them alone brought people the name of being cultured or well-traveled. As the idea spread in the early part of the twentieth century, it allowed for the vicarious tour rather than the actual one. Students were asked to look at collections of art or reproductions of art work, listen to concerts or later recordings, and to read certain classical works drawn from what has come to be known as "the canon." The point of this form of education was that exposure to these works in itself formed a version of the Grand Tour. The basic idea behind the tour approach is that exposure to a culture in books is like travel to an ethnic theme park.This volume looks beyond the tour approach and reports on the results of a four-year project undertaken by a research team from the National Center for Research in the Learning and Teaching of Literature. Their intent was to study the teaching and impact of multicultural literature. The team examined how students approached texts that either came from their culture or from another, and how teachers perceived the students, the literature, and their role. This volume details various aspects of their findings.

In calling this book Beyond the Culture Tours, the authors bring the reader's attention to a set of issues in the teaching of literature and culture. The Culture Tour is an old concept in the West, dating back to the seventeenth century. The educated young man -- it was an exclusively male project at first -- was expected to round off his education with the Grand Tour. This meant a visit to the major sites on the European continent, particularly Greece and Rome, and occasionally to the Holy Land. The object was to have a first-hand view of these monuments, and looking at them alone brought people the name of being cultured or well-traveled. As the idea spread in the early part of the twentieth century, it allowed for the vicarious tour rather than the actual one. Students were asked to look at collections of art or reproductions of art work, listen to concerts or later recordings, and to read certain classical works drawn from what has come to be known as "the canon." The point of this form of education was that exposure to these works in itself formed a version of the Grand Tour. The basic idea behind the tour approach is that exposure to a culture in books is like travel to an ethnic theme park.This volume looks beyond the tour approach and reports on the results of a four-year project undertaken by a research team from the National Center for Research in the Learning and Teaching of Literature. Their intent was to study the teaching and impact of multicultural literature. The team examined how students approached texts that either came from their culture or from another, and how teachers perceived the students, the literature, and their role. This volume details various aspects of their findings.

The Anxieties of Idleness: Idleness in Eighteenth-Century British Literature and Culture investigates the preoccupation with idleness that haunts the British eighteenth century. Sarah Jordan argues that as Great Britain began to define itself as a nation during this period, one important quality it claimed for itself was industriousness. But this claim was undermined and complicated by, among other factors, the importance of leisure to the upholding of class status, thus making idleness a subject of intense anxiety. One result of this anxiety was an increased surveillance of the supposed idleness of marginalized and less powerful members of society: the working classes, the nonwhite races, and women.In a widely researched and elegantly argued book, Jordan analyzes how idleness is figured in eighteenth-century literature and culture, including both traditional forms of literature and a wide variety of other cultural discourses. At the center of this account, Jordan investigates the lives and works of Johnson, Cowper, Thomson, and many other, lesser known writers. She incorporates their obsession with idleness into a new and lucid theorization of the professionalization of writing and the place of idleness and industry in the larger cultural formation that was eighteenth-century British identity.

As attitudes to mental health shift, schools are taking the wellbeing of their pupils much more seriously. All schools in England are required to provide lessons on health and wellbeing; in addition, most now have a mental health leadership role. Yet mental health is far more than the absence of illness - it also means having self-belief and the resilience to cope with stress and change. To teach such skills, staff must equip themselves and their workplaces with the procedures, understanding and confidence needed to monitor mental health, share concepts effectively and act appropriately if issues arise. Mental Health and Wellbeing in Secondary Education puts all the information they need at their fingertips - with guidance on creating a culture of wellbeing, warning signs to look out for, and overviews of how a range of common mental health and wellbeing problems can be identified and managed.

As attitudes to mental health shift, primary schools in England will teach compulsory lessons on health (including mental health) from 2020. Yet mental health is far more than the absence of illness - it also means having self-belief and the resilience to cope with stress and change. In order to teach such skills, teachers and other staff must equip themselves and their workplaces with the procedures, understanding and confidence required to monitor mental health, share concepts effectively, identify warning signs and act appropriately if issues arise. Mental Health and Wellbeing in Primary Education puts all the information they need at their fingertips - with detailed guidance on creating a culture of wellbeing, overviews of how a wide variety of common mental health problems are diagnosed and managed, warning signs to look out for, and a range of ready-made forms, exercises and lesson plans