Major Themes in Education – serie

In the last forty years philosophy of education has become established as a distinct area of philosophical study concerned within educational thought and practice. Twentieth century analytic philosophy prompted the emergence of a philosophy of education as a separate subject.The work collected here represents the major ideas and arguments which have come to characterise philosophy of education. This comprehensive set includes work from the perspectives of Marxism, phenomenology, feminist theory, critical theory and others. The individual volumes cover:* philosophy and education* education and human being* society and education* problems of educational content and practice.The featured articles map the most important writings within the analytic and intersecting traditions, and the set presents an influential and essential body of work for researchers in the philosophy of education, the field of educational studies and educationally-oriented policy studies.

Depicting the ways that adult education has evolved as society has changed and how it has been incorporated into lifelong learning, this is a truly unique set that puts a stamp on an exciting field and important, far-reaching issues. These five volumes represent a great advance to scholars, as this is the first comprehensive overview of the field.The set draws on books, journals, reports and historical papers to map the vast field of education for adults. The writings included in the set have influenced the development of both the practice and the study of adult education from the Guilds to vocational education, distance learning and leisure learning. The collection also covers the recent emergence of corporations as new providers of education for adults with the corporate classroom, corporate universities and consultancies.A detailed index and new introduction by the editor will help the reader navigate this wealth of diverse material.

History of Education: Major Themes brings together some of the most significant and influential writing on the history of education during the past thirty years. It illustrates the key themes on which historians of education have worked during this period and shows their relevance for our understanding of the development of schooling and education systems worldwide.The four volumes are structured so that readers will see clearly what is distinctive about the study of the history of education in different parts of the English-speaking world. They will also gain an insight into the ways in which historians have increasingly identified common themes and problems which are of significance well beyond the boundaries of individual nations.This collection will be of interest to all who wish to enhance their understanding of the development and impact of education systems and schooling in the modern world.

This set is comprised of four volumes, covering the following topics:* Schools, teachers and parents* Pupils and learning* The school curriculum* School behaviour and the school peer groupThe selected pieces include review articles as well as original studies. Selections includes contributions from North America, the UK, continental Europe, Australasia and Japan (all in the English Language).

Education management and leadership is a key area of study in education. Educational Management: Major Themes in Education brings together the most important literature in the field, exploring the historical context, the training and development of leaders and their roles in leading people and managing resources in education. The collection provides a focus on the major issues which are current in educational management throughout the world.The four volumes are arranged thematically, as follows:Volume 1: Educational ValuesValues and ReligionEmotions and GenderPolitics and MicropoliticsVolume 2: Educational TheoryTheorySchool of Effectiveness and School ImprovementFinancial Management and LSMFurther EducationVolume 3: Educational LeadershipLeadership and HeadteachersLearning LeadershipMiddle Leadership Volume 4: Educational ChangeHistory and ResearchStrategy, Marketing, Change and Culture A new introduction by the editor provides an overview of the field and guides the reader through this wealth of material.Titles also available in this series include, Literacy (June 2004, 4 Volumes, £495), Special Educational Needs and Inclusive Education (August 2004, 4 Volumes, £495) and the forthcoming Early Years Education (2005, c.4 Volumes, c. £475)

The field of special educational needs and inclusive education is not only of enormous importance to the study of education as a whole, it also constitutes a site of major debate. Conflicting arguments include:* changes in the conceptualisation of special needs* the role of assessment* the extent to which students with special needs should and can be educated in regular school settings* the relative weight given to central versus local control of education* pedagogical issues.In all of these paradigm clashes, countries are at different stages in reaching settlements. These difficulties reflect a range of factors, including intellectual traditions, cultural values, economic circumstances, and demography.The articles assembled in this collection provide a global perspective on these debates. The collection as a whole demonstrates how the fields of special education and inclusive education have evolved philosophically and technically over the past thirty years, as well as showing the contemporary state of approaches to educating students with special education needs.Titles also available in this series include: Literacy (June 2004, 4 Volumes, £495), Educational Management (October 2004, 4 Volumes, £495) and the forthcoming Early Years Education (2005, c.4 Volumes, c. £475).

This four-volume collection contains over ninety papers drawn from a broad range of contemporary writing on the curriculum. Major trends and developments from the 1970s through to the present day are represented. The following four volumes of the set offer a comprehensive introduction to, and overview of, the field:* Curriculum Knowledge* Curriculum Forms* Pedagogy* Boundaries: Subjects, assessments and evaluation.The collection covers the key points of dispute and areas of controversy within the field of curriculum studies and includes papers from many of the leading writers. Each volume features an introduction by the editor.

With contributions drawn from a variety of contexts, this extensive new six-volume collection from Routledge’s Major Themes in Education series, reflects the international diversity of English Language Teaching in practice. Bringing together material from a broad range of perspectives, it highlights the controversial nature of many apparent ‘givens’ in the field, and provides a useful balance between academic and practical insights.With a general introduction and separate section introductions presenting the historical context for current debates and guiding users through the various issues raised in the collection, this is a highly useful resource for both student and scholar alike.

The effective development and education of teachers is central to the enterprise of education itself, and teacher education is currently viewed as a key educational priority issue at European Union level, requiring attention and further development as part of a broad approach to the raising of educational standards internationally. However, it is not easy for those interested in the subject - policy makers, teacher educators, other academic researchers, serving teachers and student teachers - to access the wealth of material already published on teacher education. Addressing this issue, this five-volume collection will for the first time bring together the most important papers and articles published between 1797 and 2005.Comprising an introductory volume that provides a philosophical and historical foundation to the collection, this comprehensive work then presents four closely inter-related volumes focusing on issues within the field.

The education and care of children under the age of eight has become one of the major focuses of attention in recent education research and policy-making around the world, and it is now widely recognised that investment in provision at this stage can be both cost effective and beneficial to the social fabric of communities. Approaches to education in nurseries, kindergartens and preschools have traditionally been significantly different from those that inform the teaching of older children but, until recently, these approaches have had little impact on education beyond early years settings.This wide-ranging collection of papers provides a valuable resource for scholars who need to ground their own study in wider historical and global discourses concerning the education of children under eight. Including both important historical sources and contemporary analysis of current issues, this fascinating set represents a broad variety of countries, cultures and traditions.

Education in, about, and through, the sciences – physics, chemistry, biology, earth science – has grown rapidly in the last 150 years. Starting from the twin bases of an elective provision for those likely to become scientists and engineers and of informal provision for the general populace, it has evolved into a core component of compulsory education across the globe. Above this rises an edifice of provision at university level and beyond, both formal and informal. This expansion has been justified by the perceptions that science is one of the major roots for economic prosperity, that it must inform an increasing number of decisions in democratic societies, and that it increasingly impinges on the personal lives of individuals. This collection of papers, drawn from worldwide literature and reflecting diverse cultural traditions, provides a fascinating resource for scholars seeking to unravel the historical trajectories of these complexities, to understand the nature of current provision, and to identify likely future directions of development.

This new Major Work is a five-volume collection in Routledge’s Major Themes in Education series. It charts the history and development of higher education. Encompassing the period since 1760, the principal focus is on the late-eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, although more recent developments are also addressed.The rise and development of universities and of higher education in Britain provides the central theme of the collection and is used as a model for developments elsewhere in the English-speaking world. Particular attention is paid to the United States and the British Empire, but some material on other European countries and on the rise of higher education in countries such as Japan and China has also been included. Thus, at the core of this collection is the dissemination of a university ideal around the globe and its particular implications and interpretation in specific societies and locations.

The past century has witnessed an ever-accelerating revolution in the ways by which we communicate with each other, and that revolution is far from complete. Understanding how our literacy skills and behaviours are evolving—how we make use of old technologies and adapt to new ones—and how critical development may be fostered is arguably one of the greatest challenges of the twenty-first century. It is vital to education, to civic participation, to political and commercial judgement, and to many other areas of contemporary life.One of the principal barriers to gaining a comprehensive grasp of how people understand and use contemporary media lies in differential adoption of media technologies. This differential adoption, whether generational, financial, or geographic, has major implications for the development of literacies related to particular media. Official educational practices often lag far behind behaviours ‘on the ground’, and the ways in which learners develop new strategies for relating to media are as likely to be tacitly acquired through play as explicitly articulated in formal learning processes. It is essential, therefore, to pay careful attention to people’s implicit assumptions about media use as well as to look at what is more explicitly understood.To help make sense of these complexities and the global explosion of interest and research in media and digital education, this four-volume collection, a new title in the Routledge Major Work series, Major Themes in Education, brings together the best research and theory on issues relating to literacies in both old- and new-media technologies.The volumes in the collection gather both canonical and the finest cutting-edge scholarship on media literacies, exploring media technologies from a variety of perspectives. As well as focusing on the theoretical questions and the practical educational issues arising out of the constantly changing nature of the technological revolution, Media Literacies also examines the behaviours of media users themselves, from their first tacit understandings of how to make sense of a new kind of text to their later articulated and critical responses. This attention to users is reflected in the organization of the volumes. The editor, a leading scholar in the field, has organized the collection under the ‘verbs’ of media behaviour: viewing, listening, game-playing, using the Internet, interacting with other people, information-seeking, and reading and writing in new times. The set also comprises a general introductory section and a final section exploring some of the engines that have driven media change (such as aesthetic developments, corporate priorities, political pressures, and a few select ‘global accelerators’ of change: sports, religion, and the movement of people across national boundaries).Media Literacies is an essential collection and is destined to be valued as a vital research resource by all scholars and students with an interest in the subject.

Mathematics education is one of the most publicized and contested fields of endeavour in the area of education more generally. The entrails of international comparative mathematics achievement surveys are pored over by the media, politicians and educators alike; and, while for the last fifty years at least it has been assumed by most everyone in modern societies that mathematics should be a compulsory subject in all schools, parents and scholars alike argue furiously about whether traditional teaching and rote practising of mathematical skills is better or worse for pupils than conceptual teaching based on children’s own constructed ideas. University mathematics professors tend either to deplore the dropping of standards in their students, and thus the dropping of standards in teachers, or heartily embrace the new learning techniques made possible through careful use of the new technologies.As academic thinking about and around mathematics education continues to flourish and develop, this new title in the Routledge series, Major Themes in Education, meets the need for an authoritative reference work to make sense of the subject’s vast literature and the continuing explosion in research output. Edited by Alan Bishop, a prominent scholar in the field, this Routledge Major Work is a four-volume collection of foundational and cutting-edge contributions that cover all of the major themes in mathematics education.The first of the four volumes (‘Mathematics, Mathematics Education, and the Curriculum’) brings together key work on the goals of mathematics education, as well as vital material on the relationship of the curriculum with numeracy, assessment, technology, and the place of marginalized students. The second volume (‘Mathematics Teaching and Teachers’) gathers the most important thinking on topics such as pedagogical practices; mathematics teachers’ beliefs, attitudes, and values; professional development; teacher education; and teachers as researchers. The third volume covers the central theories of ‘Mathematics Learning and Learners’. The final volume in the collection (‘The Contexts of Mathematics Education’) gathers vital material from the rich body of literature that explores the social, cultural and political contexts in which mathematics education sits.With comprehensive introductions to each volume, newly written by the editor, which place the collected material in its historical and intellectual context, this Routledge Major Work is an essential work of reference. It is destined to be valued by specialists in mathematics education and scholars working in related areas—as well as by educational policy-makers and professionals—as a vital one-stop research tool.

The education of gifted and talented pupils is an established domain of study but research in the area has increased dramatically, particularly in the past fifteen years. The reason for this burgeoning interest relates principally not to conventional educational concerns but rather to the desire of governments around the world to maximize intellectual capital better to compete in a globalized economy. Nurturing those with exceptional ability is now seen as a societal necessity rather than simply an educational objective. A secondary aspect of this societal interest relates to equity; gifted and talented programmes are at the forefront of national and international educational policy and they are increasingly being adopted in the pursuit of meritocracy as a mechanism to improve life chances and to stimulate social mobility.As serious thinking about and around the education of the gifted and talented continues to flourish, this new title in the Routledge series, Major Themes in Education, meets the need for an authoritative reference work to codify and make sense of the field’s literature. Edited by Deborah Eyre, the founding Director of the world-renowned Academy for Gifted and Talented Youth at the University of Warwick, this new Major Work brings together in four volumes the foundational and the best cutting-edge scholarship. The editor has drawn on the most important and influential research from a broad range of countries to create a one-stop ‘mini library’ which describes and analyses the rationale and purposes of gifted education. Particular attention has been paid to the controversies surrounding definitions and the identification of giftedness, and the collection provides a substantial overview of best practice in relation to education in schools and classrooms, as well as special programmes. The material gathered also closely considers the substantial hurdles that may face children identified as especially gifted.Gifted and Talented Education is fully indexed and has a comprehensive introduction, newly written by the editor, which places the collected material in its historical and intellectual context. It is an essential library purchase and is destined to be valued by scholars and students—as well as by educational policy-makers—as a vital reference work and research tool.

Volume I of this new Routledge collection focuses on theories of education. The gathered materials explore and analyse the impact of the classical Islamic period in history and the developments in education which have emanated from it. Volume II focuses on education in Eastern Europe and Muslim Asia, capturing the essential issues in each of the countries studied, and how they vary across a vast region. The impact of culture and modernization on traditional societies, as well as the ways in which westernized modes of education are introduced, and the aspirations of youth are in turn determined.Volume III looks at education in the Middle East and Muslim Africa. Islam has its origins in the Middle East, and today many of the challenges Muslims face in relation to Islam and education are concentrated in this region. Volume IV explores the education of Muslims in North America and Europe, and of minorities in advanced liberal secular democracies.Islam and Education is fully indexed and includes a comprehensive introduction newly written by the editor.

Assessment and evaluation are crucial aspects of any educational system and rarely can they have been so central to educational policy-making and the reform of schooling as at the present time. (The introduction of the National Curriculum and Testing system in the UK and the test-based ‘No Child Left Behind’ legislation in the USA are but two high-profile examples.) Assessment processes interact with curriculum and teaching methods to frame the student experience of education, and the outcomes of assessment are crucially important in determining individual educational progression and socio-economic futures. Equally, assessment is used by policy-makers to focus instruction on core elements of educational provision, and the aggregate outcomes of assessment are employed to measure the quality and effectiveness of an educational system. Good quality assessment is vital to individual student life-chances and to issues of parental choice, school reputation, government policy evaluation, and long-term economic development. Poor quality assessment can disrupt all of these elements of an effective school system by, for example, narrowing what is taught and learned to only the limited range of skills and abilities examined through paper-and-pencil tests.As serious thinking about and around assessment and evaluation continues to flourish and develop, this new title in Routledge’s Major Themes in Education series meets the need for an authoritative reference work to make sense of the subject’s vast literature and the continuing explosion in research output. Edited by Harry Torrance, a leading scholar in the field, this Routledge Major Work is a four-volume collection of foundational and cutting-edge contributions.With comprehensive introductions to each volume, newly written by the editor, which place the collected material in its historical and intellectual context, Educational Assessment and Evaluation is an essential work of reference. It is destined to be valued by specialists in assessment and evaluation and scholars working in related areas—as well as by educational policy-makers and professionals—as a vital one-stop research tool.

The recent, rapid, and massive expansion of higher education in the Western world has been such that in many developed countries it is now expected that close to—or more than—half of the population will have some significant engagement with a university at least once during their lives. More than ever, universities and other institutions of higher education are major businesses; they are seen as key economic drivers by national governments. Moreover, their reach is also increasingly international through their research, knowledge-dissemination, and off-campus teaching activities.As serious thinking about and around higher education continues to flourish and develop, this new title in Routledge’s Major Themes in Education series meets the need for an authoritative reference work to make sense of the subject’s vast literature and the continuing explosion in research output. Edited by Malcolm Tight, a leading scholar in the field, it is a five-volume collection of foundational and cutting-edge contributions.The collection is organized into eight principal parts: teaching and learning; course design; the student experience; system policy; institutional management; quality; academic work; and knowledge and research. Close attention is also given to the various methods and theories applied to the study of higher education.Comprehensive introductions to the collection as a whole, and to each thematic part, which have been newly written by the editor, place the collected material in its historical and intellectual context to make this Routledge Major Work an essential work of reference. It is destined to be valued by specialists in higher education and scholars working in related areas—as well as by educational policy-makers and professionals—as a vital one-stop research tool.

Multicultural education is a thriving – though sometimes controversial and increasingly contested – field of study and research. Its major aim and purpose has been described as to create equal educational opportunities for students from diverse racial, ethnic, social, and cultural backgrounds to help them acquire the knowledge, aptitudes, and skills needed to function effectively in a pluralistic democratic society. Multicultural education draws its content, concepts, paradigms, and theories from specialized interdisciplinary domains such as ethnic and women’s studies (and from history and the social and behavioural sciences), as well as by interrogating, challenging, and reinterpreting the work of other established disciplines and applying it to pedagogy and curriculum development in educational settings.As academic thinking about and around multicultural education continues to develop, this new title in the Routledge series, Major Themes in Education, meets the need for an authoritative reference work to make sense of the field’s vast literature and the continuing explosion in research output. Compiled by David Gillborn, editor of the leading international journal, Race, Ethnicity, and Education, this new collection of major works brings together in four volumes the canonical and the best cutting-edge scholarship. The editor has drawn on the most important and influential research to create a one-stop ‘mini library’ which describes and analyses the nature, scope, and principal issues of global multicultural education today.Multicultural Education is fully indexed and has a comprehensive introduction, newly written by the editor, which places the collected material in its historical and intellectual context. It is an essential work of reference and is destined to be valued by scholars and students – as well as by educational policy-makers – as a vital research and pedagogic tool.

Language is at the very core of the educational process, both as a medium for the transmission of knowledge and as a cognitive tool. The learning and use of second languages has often been associated with purely instrumental views of education. But the importance of the socio-cultural dimension of language learning is increasingly acknowledged as the need to educate children for life in multilingual and multicultural societies becomes compelling, and as new technologies transform communication.Second-language education is a well-established and flourishing area of research and study in the Anglophone world, and increasingly too in China and other Asian countries. It is also a complex and contested sphere in which many learning theories and pedagogies compete for attention.This new five-volume collection from Routledge’s acclaimed Major Themes in Education series meets the need for an authoritative, up-to-date, and comprehensive reference work to make sense of the area’s voluminous literature. Indeed, the dizzying scale of the research output—and the breadth of the field—makes this new Routledge title especially welcome. It provides a one-stop collection of classic and contemporary contributions to facilitate ready access to the most influential and important scholarship.Fully indexed and with an introduction, newly written by the editor, which places the collected material in its historical and intellectual context, Second-Language Education is an essential work of reference. It is destined to be valued by L2 specialists and scholars working in related areas—as well as by educational policy-makers and professionals—as a vital research tool.

If a primary objective of feminism is to expose and challenge the social relations of power embedded in all spheres of life, then an exploration of the issues attached to female education is a vital aspect of such a project. Indeed, ‘women and education’ is now an established—and flourishing—domain of study. And as academic thinking continues to develop, this new title in Routledge’s acclaimed series, Major Themes in Education, meets the need for an authoritative reference work to make sense of the subject’s vast literature and the continuing explosion in research output.Edited by two leading scholars in the field, Women and Education is a four-volume collection of foundational and cutting-edge contributions. Issues affecting women and education cannot be analysed in territorial isolation; while it is possible in many parts of the Western world to cite evidence of widening opportunities, choices, and potential in women’s lives, the gendered nature of educational provision, practice, and thought is often more starkly apparent in less developed parts of the world. Consequently, the collection adopts an explicitly international approach to explore fully the complexities of the educational experience, its gendered history, and its particular implications and interpretations in specific societies and locations. The collection’s temporal scope is similarly ambitious. Moreover, Women and Education is further distinguished by the inclusion of autobiographical works to capture the experience of education as a broad societal process, and not simply as formal schooling.Volume one Space, Place, and Time is a theoretical and historical framework for the collection. Taken together, the materials gathered here constitute a sophisticated and versatile toolbox of ideas for theory-building and research. This volume, in particular, will be an invaluable tool for researchers and students of feminist theory and research methods, and for users across the social sciences concerned with issues of gender. Volume two Pupils, Students, and Learning brings together key studies in gender and education. In particular, this volume explores past experiences through autobiography and life history, and investigates gender dynamics within schools. Volume three Teachers and Teaching, meanwhile, focuses on the culture and politics of work. It presents essential findings into processes and pedagogy and gathers critical research on women teachers’ expectations, their struggles to achieve equality, and attempts to change practice. The last volume in the collection Politics and Policies contains a selection of materials that discuss the history and gendered nature of education policies. Presenting a range of views, the work gathered in Volume IV illuminates women’s place in the development of educational traditions, reforms, and theories, and examines their role as educational policy-makers.With a full index, together with a comprehensive introduction, newly written by the editors, which places the collected material in its historical and intellectual context, Women and Education is an indispensable work of reference. It will be welcomed as a crucial database permitting rapid access to less familiar—and sometimes overlooked—texts. It will also be valued as a vital one-stop research and pedagogic resource for researchers and students of education, women’s studies, and social history, as well as for practising teachers and policy-makers.

As academic thinking about and around physical education continues to flourish and develop, this new title in the Routledge series, Major Themes in Education, meets the need for an authoritative reference work to make sense of the subject’s vast literature and the continuing explosion in research output. Edited by David Kirk of the Institute for Sport and Physical Activity Research at the University of Bedfordshire, this Routledge Major Work set is a four-volume collection of foundational and cutting-edge contributions that cover all of the major themes in physical education.With a comprehensive introduction, newly written by the editor, which places the collected material in its historical and intellectual context, Physical Education is an essential work of reference. It is destined to be valued by specialists in physical education and scholars working in related areas—as well as by educational policy-makers and professionals—as a vital one-stop research tool.

This series addresses the relation of education to knowledge-based growth and broader measures of development beyond growth, central features of the modern world in which education has a central role. This role includes the effects of education on pure economic growth including it’s effects on the creation, adaptation, and dissemination of new ideas. Beyond this, the series presents pivotal research on the contribution of education to the many non-market private and social benefits beyond earnings. These non-market benefits largely define individuals’ life chances and are, for a society, standard indicators of development.Education readers will be able to easily access the most recent and key research defining education’s role in earnings, in growth, and in the flow of new ideas, all in volume one. The contributions of education to development outcomes beyond earnings, both private and social, are addressed in volume two. The introductions to the series and to each volume place this in a coherent framework. Education dynamics and short and long term ‘endogenous development’ are defined and explored in volume three, and finance and policy in volume four. The views of skeptics about education’s effects are considered. It is also explained how the controls they use can eliminate education’s effects through technical change, on broader development beyond GDP, and can focus only on smaller short term education outcomes. Economists in development, growth, and in the economics of education should be especially interested in this series, which is cross listed in economics, because of the new insights into ‘education dynamics’ in volume three. This includes the short term dynamics of endogenous development involving estimates of difference equations and of five to thrirty-five year education outcomes that build up with time. Volume three also addresses the long run dynamics of optimal growth and optimal development. Other new aspects include the contributions of education to new ideas improving non-market development outcomes and through indirect effects that feed back and enhance growth. This chips away at the mystery of unexplained ‘technical change’ and also helps explain why static models do not always find education significant to growth, external benefits, or development.For policy, financing criteria need to consider education’s effects on earnings but also on non-market development outcomes beyond earnings, or overall efficiency and equity. The pivotal articles addressing these important issues are presented in this series together with explanatory transition articles and introductions that put them in a readable and coherent context.

Challenging and complex questions around inequality and power have been persistent within modern systems of education since their inception. But in the last four or five decades the vibrant field of critical education has developed and grown in response to such issues. Specifically, education scholars adopting a critical approach seek to interrogate how social, economic, cultural, linguistic, racial, sexual, and other forms of difference intersect and play out within school policy and classroom practices. Additionally, such scholars have shed light on the ways in which education can transform schools and society to be more just and radically democratic.The learned editors of this landmark Routledge Major Work collection argue that the field of critical education has become central within educational research. Most teacher-training programmes include courses that examine both the problems of inequality in education, and also how teachers and scholars can work to ameliorate those same problems. Moreover, the reach of critical educational research, policy, and practice is now truly international. The influence of these perspectives in Brazil and throughout Latin America, in part due to the work of Paulo Freire, is particularly striking. Powerful currents of critical education can also be found in Europe, Asia, and Africa. For example, entire states within India have based their efforts in school reform and the interruption of educationally driven inequalities around the principles of critical pedagogic and curricular traditions, arguments, and practices that have been enunciated in the literature. Another example can be found in China, where Beijing Normal University—which has the most influential school of education in China—has established a research centre in the name of the lead editor of this collection to document and spread the national and international influences of critical education.With the established and growing potency and influence of critical education across national borders, this new Routledge title answers the need for an authoritative reference work to enable users to map and make sense of critical approaches to education. The volumes focus on both historical antecedents in the field (including key works produced before the term ‘critical education’ gained wide currency but which anticipate approaches now included under that rubric), as well as what might be considered foundational or guiding texts that broke new theoretical or political ground in their time. They also address crucial controversies and contradictions, while bringing together some of the sharpest and most insightful pieces of contemporary critical education scholarship and points towards significant new directions in the field.Supplemented with a full index, and general and volume introductions, newly written by the editors, which situate the collected materials in their historical and intellectual context, Critical Education is certain to be appreciated by scholars, students, and researchers as a vital reference and pedagogic resource.

Music education is a well-established and flourishing area of research and study. It is also a complex and contested area in which there is a considerable variety of published work, ranging from the justificatory to the critical, and from advice on pedagogical practice to provocative alternative paradigms. The proliferation and range of these publications stems from the complexity of music and music education itself. Along with multiple perspectives on the nature and value of music, music education is much more socially interwoven than most school subjects. It is also very complex organizationally, with multiple sources of funding.This new four-volume collection from Routledge’s acclaimed Major Themes in Education series meets the need for an authoritative, up-to-date, and comprehensive reference work to make sense of the area’s voluminous literature. Indeed, the dizzying scale of the research output—and the breadth of the field—makes this new Routledge title especially welcome. It provides a one-stop collection of classic and contemporary contributions to facilitate ready access to the most influential and important scholarship.Fully indexed and with an introduction, newly written by the editor, which places the collected material in its historical and intellectual context, Music Education is an essential work of reference. It is destined to be valued by specialists in music education and scholars working in related areas—as well as by educational policy-makers and professionals—as a vital research tool.

The widespread academic study of educational technology blossomed in the years following the development of the microprocessor. Of course, that is not to say that education was technology-free before the 1970s: the telephone, wireless radio, cinema, television, and mainframe computers had all in their time been heralded as educational marvels. But the scale of change, and the academic practices that responded to it, became of an entirely different order with the arrival of personal computers, promising as they did access for ordinary people to cheaper, faster, and smarter benefits of science and technology. From that historic moment onwards, it was increasingly common to hear educationalists, computer experts, journalists, and politicians proclaiming that these new technologies would transform the world of education, for better or for worse.In the midst of this excitement (and, often, hype), Education and Technology researchers have, via empirical investigation and the development of novel or revised theoretical perspectives, explored the impact of new technologies on learning, pedagogy, design, policy, and the future of educational institutions. Psychology, Computer Science, Sociology, Pedagogical Studies, Communications, and Economics have all contributed to the domain, and connections have begun to be made to create a coherent body of thought and practice. But, while Education and Technology has stimulated a tremendous amount of published material, much of that work has been contaminated by political and commercial interests. Indeed, the dizzying quantity (and variable quality) of much research makes it difficult to discriminate the useful from the tendentious, superficial, and otiose. Now, as part of Routledge’s Major Themes in Education series, the editors of this new collection, two leading scholars from the University of Oxford’s Department of Education and the University’s Internet Institute, have undertaken the task of determining and bringing together in a one-stop resource the major works in Education and Technology.With a full index, and thoughtful introductions, newly written by the editors, Education and Technology will be valued by scholars, students, and policy-makers as a vital and enduring resource.

A new title from Routledge’s Major Works series, Major Themes in Education, Philosophy of Education II is a five-volume ‘mini library’ of the very best scholarship. It is an essential successor collection to Philosophy of Education (1998) (978-0-415-12944-2), edited by Paul Hurst and Patricia White, and described by the Bulletin of the UK-Japan Education Forum as "indispensable for libraries".Philosophy of Education was the first comprehensive collection of the field’s canonical and cutting-edge research; this new collection takes full account of the numerous important developments that have taken place since its appearance. Moreover, Philosophy of Education II also includes coverage of many new areas and topics outwith the scope of the first collection.With a full index together with a comprehensive introduction, newly written by the learned editor, which places the collected material in its historical and intellectual context, Philosophy of Education II is a crucial work of reference. It is destined to be valued by scholars, students, and researchers as a vital resource.

In the words of one academic, reading is ‘an important gateway to personal development, and to social, economic, and civic life’. Moreover, according to the International Reading Association, twenty-first-century adults ‘will read and write more than at any other time in human history. They will need advanced levels of literacy to perform their jobs, run their households, act as citizens, and conduct their personal lives.’Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, all around the world, how best to teach children to read is one of the most publicized and contested fields of research. Now, answering the need for an authoritative reference work to make sense of this vast and disputatious body of thought, and the continuing explosion in research output, Routledge announces a new title in its Major Themes in Education series. In four volumes, Reading brings together in one easy-to-use ‘mini library’ foundational major works and the very best cutting-edge contributions.With comprehensive introductions to each volume, newly written by the editor, Rona Flippo, Reading is an essential work of reference. It is destined to be valued by literacy specialists and scholars working in related areas—as well as by educational policy-makers and professionals—as a vital one-stop research tool.

Participation in higher education has never been greater, and governments around the world continue to invest huge sums of money in the sector, not least to encourage even more enrolment. Meanwhile, many countries are moving away from centralized, taxpayer-funded systems to more ‘marketized’ models. For these and other reasons, the intersection of economics and higher education has never been more apparent. Increasingly, economic principles are applied to analyses of education and education policy, as scholars and policymakers grapple with difficult questions, such as: how should the costs of higher education be shared between stakeholders? What are the ‘drivers’ of inequality in higher-education participation? And what is the appropriate role for government?