Counterpoints Primers – serie

Self-Study of Teaching Practices is an excellent introduction to the field of self-study research and practice. This student- and teacher-friendly primer provides a comprehensive review and synthesis of the self-study literature, complete with guidelines and examples of cutting-edge self-study methods. It addresses four central areas of self-study of teaching practices: purposes, foundations, nature, and guidelines for practice. School-based and university-based teachers interested in rethinking and reframing their instructional methods will benefit from reading this book and assigning it in the classroom. This primer, which includes glossaries and references, is an invaluable resource for undergraduate and graduate education students searching for guidelines to develop and improve their teaching practice.

The lives of America’s students, educators, and parents are being significantly touched by the current standards and accountability reform. The Standards Primer explores the historical development of this reform, and compares two different views of educational standards and accountability – technical standards and standards of complexity. How each view impacts curriculum, instruction, and assessment is discussed, and implications of these views for teachers, administrators, school boards, parents, community, and students are presented, along with a discussion of related issues involving equity and ethics on this topic. The Standards Primer provides critical information – including an extensive reference section containing print and nonprint resources – that will lead to informed decision making concerning this national educational reform.

This book provides a concise introduction to the practical and theoretical complexities of studying urban youth culture today. Looking across disciplines such as anthropology, sociology, and education, Dimitriadis explores the ways urban youth have been framed – in often limiting and problematic ways – in the popular and academic imagination. Moving beyond critique alone, this highly accessible primer opens a discussion about what a truly powerful, emergent field of «critical youth studies» might look like. Looking toward the future of this field, this book discusses the most important methodological and substantive trends and issues scholars will be addressing now and in the years to come. The Studying Urban Youth Culture Primer is an indispensable text for students in a range of qualitative methods and urban education courses.

This book explores the works of Michel Foucault and their relevance for educational theory and practice. Gail McNicol Jardine investigates Foucault’s early examinations of the transformation of systems of knowledge as societies change, his in-depth, critical analyses of Knowledge-Power, and his increasingly more explicit examination of the relationship of the Self to acts of Knowledge-Power. Specific themes that are explored from Foucault’s work are archeology, genealogy, disciplinary knowledge and power, normality, the gaze, panopticism, the examination, critique and resistance. This primer contains ample references that allow the reader to examine Foucault’s own use of these important analytic concepts and tools. This book will be useful in undergraduate and graduate courses in education, critical theory, educational theory, critical pedagogy, philosophy, psychology, and sociology.

The Critical Constructivism Primer introduces education students to the study of knowledge; how it is inscribed by particular values and produced in problematic ways; whose interests it serves; and how it shapes the identities of those who consume it. Critical constructivism is an epistemological position that examines the process by which knowledge is socially constructed. Joe L. Kincheloe takes readers through the basic concepts and alerts them to the dangers of objectivism, reductionism, and the pathological views of self and world that emerge if students and educators are unaware of the construction of knowledge by dominant power interests. The book is essential reading for individuals who want to become researchers and educators.

As accountability expectations for schools, universities, and businesses rapidly take root in Westernized countries, the widespread importance of mentoring is indisputable. Current trends have escalated the role and practice of mentorship, aligning it with human performance, institutional reform, teacher education, leadership development, student learning, cultural diversity, and policy initiatives. Although already a hot topic in educational research, new policy and legislative changes for success within K-12 public schools and, with growing attention, higher education have secured the fate of mentorship. The Mentorship Primer raises awareness about the value of mentoring and presents its changing and complex meaning for students, educators, and leaders. This comprehensive introduction covers three broad areas: the foundations of mentorship, technical mentoring, and alternative mentoring. Anyone searching for guidance in their profession or for a clearer picture of mentorship in its myriad forms will benefit from reading this book, complete with glossaries and references.

The Bakhtin Primer offers a truly new and innovative approach to leading and reforming schools. It delves into some of Bakhtin’s most salient concepts – chronotope, polyphony and heteroglossia, dialogue and dialogism, and carnival – and presents them as the basis for a comprehensive reform agenda – one that focuses on high levels of student achievement and on socially just and inclusive educational practice. The primer demonstrates the relevance of theory to educational practice and presents it in clear, concise language coupled with numerous illustrative examples to make the ideas accessible to readers. It elaborates the importance of thinking about dialogue, not just as talk, but as an ontological concept that informs how we embrace the diversity inherent in our world. It explores how dialogue and carnival can disrupt the status quo and confront inequitable practices and relationships. It argues that education informed by Bakhtin’s concepts would be more open, more conscious of inquiry, ambiguity, incompleteness, complexity, and relationships than traditional, more rational approaches. It would challenge, and teach students to question authoritative views and traditions and lead them to develop important understandings about our interconnectedness as well as how to interact with and learn from differences across time, place, class, and culture.

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.

The Standardized Testing Primer provides non-specialists with a thorough overview of this controversial and complicated topic. It eschews the statistical details of scaling, scoring, and measurement that are widely available in textbooks and at testing organization Web sites, and instead describes standardized testing’s social and political roles and its practical uses – who tests, when, where, and why. Topics include: an historical background of testing’s practical uses in psychology, education, and the workplace; the varied structures of educational testing programs and systems across countries; the mechanics of test development and quality assurance; and current trends in test development and administration. A glossary and bibliography are also provided. The Standardized Testing Primer is an ideal text for teaching this subject to undergraduate and graduate students.

This readable introduction to American public education law is designed to assist practicing educators, college and graduate students, parents, and the public in acting on everyday legal issues such as student expression, church/state separation, student and teacher discipline, curriculum, legislating and lobbying, parent associations, discrimination, special education, No Child Left Behind, student privacy, and more. Unique features include practical situations, the «Facts and Find» research method, and the «Cascade» approach to understanding the American legal system.

The second edition of the Critical Pedagogy Primer not only introduces the topic but also provides a vision for the future of the critical pedagogy. Kincheloe’s notion of an «evolving criticality» makes sure that critical pedagogy will continue to be a vibrant and creative force that makes a powerful difference in education and in the world in general. As it prepares readers for the challenges of the future, it focuses on the traditions and individuals who have helped construct the discipline. This attention to the past and the future provides readers with an introduction unlike most initiations into academic disciplines. In a richly textured but direct manner, Kincheloe captures the spirit of critical pedagogy in a language accessible to diverse audiences. Both the uninitiated and those with experience in critical pedagogy can learn from this unique and compelling perspective on the field.

The Aesthetics Primer is intended for anyone interested in the topic of aesthetics and how it can influence directions in education. The text is suitable for university courses that address aesthetics specifically, but also art education, values education, philosophy of education, and qualitative research methods. While examples are frequently taken from art, the primer is applicable beyond the discipline of aesthetic education. The text approaches its topic from two directions. First, there is a theoretical and philosophical section, providing a historical context for the term «aesthetics». It then provides a practical application, describing a research protocol that examines how participants respond to, record, and reflect on their aesthetic encounters. These activities result in a merging of aesthetic responses and, in the examples provided, art criticism. The implication is that the exercise could be extended to include other educational disciplinary foci as well. The research clearly indicates emerging patterns of self- and social awareness that result from subjects’ participation.

The Social Theory in Education Primer shows how classical sociology sets the frame for theory and research in education. Three major paradigms are explained in their historical context, and are used as a key to making sense of contemporary work that understands education from a sociological point of view. The central classical theorists considered are seen both in their own context, and also as the founders of the major movements that have continuing influence. The social theories of Durkheim, Marx, and Weber are used to frame and orient concepts for the different models of contemporary work. This primer is essential reading for courses devoted to social theory and education; sociology of education; social foundations of education; history of education; history of sociology; sociological theory; and sociology of knowledge.

The Charter School Primer presents an overview of public charter schools in the United States. The book discusses what charter schools are; the history of public charter school choice in the United States; the role of teachers, parents, boards, and unions in the charter school movement; and gives examples of innovations in education made possible under charter school legislation.

The Vygotsky on Education Primer serves as an introduction to the life and work of the Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky. Even though he died almost eighty years ago, his life’s work remains both relevant and significant to the field of education today. This book examines Vygotsky’s emphasis on the role of cultural and historical context in learning, while challenging theories that emphasize a universalistic view of learning through fixed, biologically determined stages of development. Given our current preoccupation with standardized outcomes and the corporatization of schooling, Vygotsky’s most important ideas about education need to be reconsidered. The primer provides an overview of his two best-known ideas: the zone of proximal development and the development of thinking and speech as a means of empowerment, and discusses Vygotsky’s views of the roles of critical and creative imagination in the formation of personal agency and in creative collaboration. Applications to current practices from a wide range of sources clarify and promote relevance to diverse audiences. This primer presents the essence of Vygotsky’s work in language that is accessible to all students of education.

The Arts-Based Research Primer explores the arts-based research paradigm and its potential to intersect with and augment traditional social science and educational research methods. The arts-based research (ABR) paradigm may be broadly understood as a flexible architecture of practice-based theory-building methodologies. This text aims to reveal how arts-based ways of knowing and doing lend themselves to blended spaces of naturalistic inquiry, and is intended to aid artists and scientists alike in their research and professional practices.This text also highlights the utility of arts-based research concepts toward building innovative curriculum-making strategies for educational practice both within and beyond the classroom setting. Accessible examples of analytic, synthetic, critical-activist, and improvisational arts-based research methodologies and their outcomes were solicited from a wide range of researchers in varying disciplines, including senior faculty and emerging graduate level scholars. Chapters include a paradigm analysis of the characteristics of arts-based research; brief historical overviews along with a review of recent ABR literature; charts, diagrams and photographs representing ABR approaches for addressing diverse kinds of questions; suggestions for using an ABR inquiry model when writing a research paper; and detailed glossaries of key concepts and terms.

What makes for peace as lived? What images of peace issue from examination of daily experience? What can be gleaned from reflection upon the topic for the meanings and makings of peace in our world? Considering that to work for peace, we must begin with ourselves and with our children, Molly Quinn addresses these questions through her own life and work. She does so with those who would, and do, teach children, and with the children they teach. The text is rooted in inquiry with aspiring elementary teachers through a university social studies course in New York City, where East Harlem first-graders engage peace curriculum, and in the South Bronx, where fourth-graders attempt to understand and respond to neighborhood violence. The author seeks to elucidate educational possibilities for dreaming peace anew, and passionately living and laboring, singularly and together, for its realization among us.

Apparent political apathy among youth in the United States has led to a moral panic about the future of democracy. Many researchers question the facts, while others seek to engage and mobilize young people around public issues they care about in order to master the citizen role and to bring social change. Civic youth work has its modern roots in this work. Its guiding ethos is authentic, meaningful, just, inclusive, and consequential youth involvement in everyday civic life through a small-group process, with the goal of supporting citizenship for young people as a life-long practice.Using their U.S. and international experience, the authors discuss civic youth work touchstones, promising practices, and activities. The text expands earlier notions of youth engagement by grounding them to a conception of the lived-citizen. A substantive bibliography lists the sources on the subject of civic youth work and provides links to scholarly work for researchers and practitioners to effectively support youth involvement in community, social, and political development.

This clear, readable introductory text for undergraduate and graduate Education Law courses or modules offers a practical guide to everyday problems such as student expression, discipline, religion, curriculum, social media, privacy, charter schools, discrimination, special education, and more. Features include distinctions among school, district, state, and federal law; the Facts and Find research method; the Cascade approach to the American legal system; lobbying advice; and the new federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), the replacement to No Child Left Behind. Written by the ex-Counsel to the New York City Board of Education and a graduate of Columbia University Law School, American Public Education Law Primer is more than an academic text, presenting the real world of Education Law to benefit professionals, parents, and the general public.

Transformative Leadership: A Primer both delivers a complete and engaging overview of transformative leadership and also clearly distinguishes it from other popular approaches to leadership. Hence, this will be the text of choice for many graduate courses in educational leadership. Carolyn M. Shields shows how the tenets of transformative leadership interact with one another, and how they provide a lens for leadership that offers an excellent, inclusive, equitable, and socially just education for all students. Using anecdotes and narratives drawn from empirical research, as well as current data, Dr. Shields establishes how transformative leadership comprises a comprehensive approach to leadership in highly diverse contexts, and how it can empower students who are traditionally marginalized due to race, ethnicity, sexual orientation and gender identity, home language, or religion. Accepting a mandate for educational change, reconstructing knowledge frameworks, and redistributing power in more equitable ways are starting points for transformative leaders. Changing the structures, cultures, curricula, and pedagogies of the school to be more democratic and emancipatory; acknowledging our interconnectedness and interdependence with global neighbors; and accepting responsibility for promoting both public and private good are processes that implement the transformation. Taken together, these changes cannot be accomplished without considerable collaboration, conversation, and moral courage. No leader wanting to promote excellence and equity for all should be without this primer that offers a new way of thinking about all aspects of schooling, from facilities and fiscal issues to academic programs and school policy. Transformative leadership offers a promising and robust theory of change for all situations and contexts.

Uncovering Black Heroes: Lesser-Known Stories of Liberty and Civil Rights is a series of stories regarding real people who are not so well known in the mainstream of American freedom and civil rights discussions. These people have made a difference by the events of their lives and by the deliberate contributions they made. In some chapters depictions of fugitive slaves create awareness of the perils of freedom runs and of the desperate, dangerous, and terrifying life of being a hunted person. In other chapters the degree of local level blockage individuals needed to confront is exposed. Still other chapters point out major efforts by diligent, but for the most part unknown, local people that result in court case settlements and state laws to advance civil rights, in particular suffrage. One chapter takes a close look at leaders in women’s clubs and how those leaders defined women’s roles in the Black freedom and civil rights movements. Themes stand out as they all build upon each other and are seen from one chapter to the next. In the end, a subtle evolution of ideas can be realized that forms the notion that the great and recognized Black leaders in history have their important place but that freedom and civil rights advancements are made on the backs of the local unknowns who need to be recognized for what they have contributed. This uncovering of unknown players involved in crucial events of their times in the quest for social, political, civil, and personal equality and freedom provides a unique perspective somewhat counter to mainstream thinking.

Engaging in a bricolage of critical personal history self-study allowed one school administrator to better understand his roles, responsibilities, and formation of identity within the context of a school system while envisioning the divergent possibilities of a yet-to-be-known future through the lens of love. Pedagogies of love can be understood as more than the embodiment of romantic notions of the word. Pedagogies of love enact relationality and challenge historically adequate practices that conjure a monological, prescriptive, and safe understanding of living classrooms—dynamic systems that are ever-emergent and continually adapting. These classrooms, better understood through a sense of ecological sensibilities, are spaces of the possible and not yet imagined. They can be the fertile locations of growth and change.This book sets out to share the story and journey towards self-knowledge for one school leader; however, the process will likely apply to others interested in social research. Through the recursive journey towards better understandings, the author has come to a place of increased awareness of his relationality and a better recognition of interconnected nature of all social interactions.

Restrictively more than most, the collective image of Black women’s identities are created by others. The glamorized life of Black women with light skin and the presumed likeness to whiteness has caused division within the Black community for years. Most often written and spoken of is the victimization of darker-hued women due to their skin tone. This thoughtful book explores colorism, which is a form of internalized racism, from the perspective of a light-skinned Black woman. By examining the social construction of race through the lens of Black Feminist Thought and Critical Race Theory the author uncovers a different narrative of colorism.Intimate accounts of skin tone stratification from Dr. Simpkins’ own lived experience are shared as she engages in self-awareness throughout the entire book. A critical perspective of popular culture in movies offers insight into the origination of inscribed identifies of Black women. The traditional roles of Mammy, Sapphire and Jezebel are examined to further illustrate the perpetuation of colorism. The context of this work should be understood as groundbreaking to the field of colorism.

This book lucidly and brilliantly demonstrates John Dewey’s ongoing significance as an educational critic. After providing a fresh and provocative personal and intellectual biography of Dewey, this primer focuses on the relevance of his views of reflective thinking for both educational practice and theorizing about issues concerning curriculum, teaching, knowledge, ethics, moral education, constructivism, and perspectivism. This book also shows the crucial differences between reflective and dogmatic thinking and their implications for schooling, teaching, and learning. The work is a primer designed for courses in educational issues, educational foundations, introduction to education, and philosophy of education.

This book, which introduces the underscoring plural perspectives in feminist theories, covers a chronology of over five centuries (from the 1600s to 2000s) in feminist work and theorizing, while introducing contemporary discourses that challenge monolithic representations of feminism. It engages the major critiques of mainstream feminism, including its exclusionary practices and limitations. The Feminist Theories and Education Primer also discusses the importance of feminist research analysis, specifically the need to genuinely comprehend the influence of ideology and subjectivity in the process of research. The author questions commonly understood binaries in understanding gender, identity, sexuality, and education in order to forge new areas of theorizing the politics of self and other while destabilizing established power hierarchies. The book concludes with a discussion of feminist pedagogy and activism, stressing the significance of analyzing pedagogy and working to create more open feminist and democratic spaces for learning.The Feminist Theories and Education Primer is ideal for courses in feminist theory, feminism, women’s studies, gender studies, feminist research, feminist pedagogy, and cultural foundations. Appropriate for either an advanced undergraduate or graduate audience, the book is replete with resources and references that are extremely instructive and useful in pursuing other areas of research, organizations, media, and current sites for feminist work. Overall, this book provides a comprehensive introduction to the progressive discussions in feminist theory over the last several decades.

Piaget & Education provides readers with a comprehensive introduction to the work of Jean Piaget. This valuable classroom work roots Piaget’s work in its historical context, and then provides dozens of classroom-based examples of how that work helps teachers understand the lives of children. It is an excellent resource for practicing teachers and student teachers, as well as undergraduate and graduate courses in teacher education, curriculum, and philosophy of education.

The Authentic Assessment Primer introduces education students to the phenomenon known as authentic assessment. As such, it is the perfect antidote to high stakes testing, since it relies on performance and shows what a student «can do.» In an authentic approach, teachers see assessment as a means to educate and improve student performance, as opposed to simply auditing it on a one-shot test. Authentic tasks require quality performance connected to the learner’s world. It is multilayered and complex. The Authentic Assessment Primer provides feedback continually and the learner self adjusts. This approach to assessment looks for higher order thinking skills and demonstration of knowledge. Beginning, intermediate, and advanced teachers can all benefit from understanding the goals, the process, and the techniques of authentic assessment, such as portfolios, essays, and writing samples, recordings, role plays, journal writing, and demonstrations to name a few. Every education student and instructor needs to read this book.

No Child Left Behind (NCLB) is the single most influential piece of federal education legislation in American history, and Hess and Petrilli provide a concise yet comprehensive look at this important and controversial act. Signed into law in 2002, NCLB seeks to ensure that all American students are proficient in math, reading, and science by 2014. Trumping two centuries of state primacy in K-12 education, it set standards for measuring student performance, ensuring the quality of teachers, and providing options for students in ineffective schools. The authors trace the heritage of these new policies, explain how they work, and examine the challenges of their implementation.