Schooling Reform In Hard Times

Schooling Reform In Hard Times
Author: Bob Linguard
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2003-09-02
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1135722072

Based on research carried out under Labour governments throughout the 1990s in Western Australia, the authors consider the social, political and economic conditions under which policy is formulated, understood and enacted. They look at how the state structure affects the content and nature of policy statements and provide an outline of the history of policy developments and point to future possibilities and probabilities. Outcomes within funding ceilings, accountability frameworks and national guidelines are but some of the changes referred to. The emergence of competency-based standards in education and training in schools, workplaces and the professions is evident throughout Australia at state level, but the concern is whether issues of education should be played out within the state and outside civil society. The authors argue for the mediation in implementation of policy - rather than a lambasting of policy formulation and implementation. This text is intended for heads of education departments, PGCE, BEd. MEd. students and researchers interested in education policy and planning. Education policymakers, and educational historians.

Public Schools in Hard Times

Public Schools in Hard Times
Author: David B. Tyack
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 294
Release: 1984
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780674738003

In the first social history of what happened to public schools in those "years of the locust," the authors explore the daily experience of schoolchildren in many kinds of communities--the public school students of working-class northeastern towns, the rural black children of the South, the prosperous adolescents of midwestern suburbs. How did educators respond to the fiscal crisis, and why did Americans retain their faith in public schooling during the cataclysm? The authors examine how New Dealers regarded public education and the reaction of public school people to the distinctive New Deal style in programs such as the National Youth Administration. They illustrate the story with photographs, cartoons, and vignettes of life behind the schoolhouse door. Moving from that troubled period to our own, the authors compare the anxieties of the depression decade with the uncertainties of the 1970s and 1980s. Heirs to an optimistic tradition and trained to manage growth, school staff have lately encountered three shortages: of pupils, money, and public confidence. Professional morale has dropped as expectations and criticism have mounted. Changes in the governing and financing of education have made planning for the future even riskier than usual. Drawing on the experience of the 1930s to illuminate the problems of the 1980s, the authors lend historical perspective to current discussions about the future of public education. They stress the basic stability of public education while emphasizing the unfinished business of achieving equality in schooling.

Hard Times

Hard Times
Author: Charles Dickens
Publisher:
Total Pages: 392
Release: 1854
Genre:
ISBN:

Teaching Difficult Histories in Difficult Times

Teaching Difficult Histories in Difficult Times
Author: Lauren McArthur Harris
Publisher: Teachers College Press
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2022
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0807780774

Despite limitations and challenges, teaching about difficult histories is an essential aspect of social studies courses and units across grade levels. This practical resource highlights stories of K–12 practitioners who have critically examined and reflected on their experiences with planning and teaching histories identified as difficult. Featuring the voices of teacher educators, classroom teachers, and museum educators, these stories provide readers with rare examples of how to plan for, teach, and reflect on difficult histories. The book is divided into four main sections: Centering Difficult History Content, Centering Teacher and Student Identities, Centering Local and Contemporary Contexts, and Centering Teacher Decision-making. Key topics include teaching about genocide, slavery, immigration, war, racial violence, and terrorism. This dynamic book highlights the practitioner’s perspective to reveal how teachers can and do think critically about their motivations and the methods they use to engage students in rigorous, complex, and appropriate studies of the past. Book Features: Expanded notions of what difficult histories can be and how they can be approached pedagogically.Thoughtful pictures of practice of some of the most complex histories to teach. Stories of K–12 teachers and museum educators with the research of leading scholars in social studies education. Examples from a wide range of educational contexts in the United States and other countries. Resources useful to teachers and teacher educators. Contributors include LaGarrett J. King, Cinthia Salinas, Stephanie van Hover, Amanda Vickery, Sohyun An, H. James (Jim) Garrett, Christopher C. Martell, and Jennifer Hauver.

Tinkering toward Utopia

Tinkering toward Utopia
Author: David B. TYACK
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 193
Release: 2009-06-30
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0674044525

For over a century, Americans have translated their cultural anxieties and hopes into dramatic demands for educational reform. Although policy talk has sounded a millennial tone, the actual reforms have been gradual and incremental. Tinkering toward Utopia documents the dynamic tension between Americans' faith in education as a panacea and the moderate pace of change in educational practices. In this book, David Tyack and Larry Cuban explore some basic questions about the nature of educational reform. Why have Americans come to believe that schooling has regressed? Have educational reforms occurred in cycles, and if so, why? Why has it been so difficult to change the basic institutional patterns of schooling? What actually happened when reformers tried to reinvent schooling? Tyack and Cuban argue that the ahistorical nature of most current reform proposals magnifies defects and understates the difficulty of changing the system. Policy talk has alternated between lamentation and overconfidence. The authors suggest that reformers today need to focus on ways to help teachers improve instruction from the inside out instead of decreeing change by remote control, and that reformers must also keep in mind the democratic purposes that guide public education.

Work Hard. Be Nice.

Work Hard. Be Nice.
Author: Jay Mathews
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2009-01-20
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1565126734

When Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin signed up for Teach for America right after college and found themselves utter failures in the classroom, they vowed to remake themselves into superior educators. They did that—and more. In their early twenties, by sheer force of talent and determination never to take no for an answer, they created a wildly successful fifth-grade experience that would grow into the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP), which today includes sixty-six schools in nineteen states and the District of Columbia. KIPP schools incorporate what Feinberg and Levin learned from America's best, most charismatic teachers: lessons need to be lively; school days need to be longer (the KIPP day is nine and a half hours); the completion of homework has to be sacrosanct (KIPP teachers are available by telephone day and night). Chants, songs, and slogans such as "Work hard, be nice" energize the program. Illuminating the ups and downs of the KIPP founders and their students, Mathews gives us something quite rare: a hopeful book about education.

Lives on the Boundary

Lives on the Boundary
Author: Mike Rose
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2005-07-26
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0143035460

The award-winning account of how America's educational system fails it students and what can be done about it Remedial, illiterate, intellectually deficient—these are the stigmas that define America’s educationally underprepared. Having grown up poor and been labeled this way, nationally acclaimed educator and author Mike Rose takes us into classrooms and communities to reveal what really lies behind the labels and test scores. With rich detail, Rose demonstrates innovative methods to initiate “problem” students into the world of language, literature, and written expression. This book challenges educators, policymakers, and parents to re-examine their assumptions about the capacities of a wide range of students. Already a classic, Lives on the Boundary offers a truly democratic vision, one that should be heeded by anyone concerned with America’s future. "A mirror to the many lacking perfect grammar and spelling who may see their dreams translated into reality after all." -Los Angeles Times Book Review "Vividly written . . . tears apart all of society's prejudices about the academic abilities of the underprivileged." -New York Times

So Much Reform, So Little Change

So Much Reform, So Little Change
Author: Charles M. Payne
Publisher:
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2008
Genre: Education
ISBN:

This frank and courageous book explores the persistence of failure in today's urban schools. At its heart is the argument that most education policy discussions are disconnected from the daily realities of urban schools, especially those in poor and beleaguered neighborhoods. Charles M. Payne argues that we have failed to account fully for the weakness of the social infrastructure and the often dysfunctional organizational environments of urban schools and school systems. The result is that liberals and conservatives alike have spent a great deal of time pursuing questions of limited practical value in the effort to improve city schools. Payne carefully delineates these stubborn and intertwined sources of failure in urban school reform efforts of the past two decades. Yet while his book is unsparing in its exploration of the troubled recent history of urban school reform, Payne also describes himself as "guardedly optimistic." He describes how, in the last decade, we have developed real insights into the roots of school failure, and into how some individual schools manage to improve. He also examines recent progress in understanding how particular urban districts have established successful reforms on a larger scale. Drawing on a striking array of sources--from the recent history of various urban school systems, to the growing sophistication of education research, to his own experience as a teacher, scholar, and participant in reform efforts--Payne paints a vivid and unmistakably realistic portrait of urban schools and reforms of the past few decades. So Much Reform, So Little Change will be required reading for everyone interested in the plight--and the future--of urban schools.

Paradigm Shift in Education

Paradigm Shift in Education
Author: Yin Cheong Cheng
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 276
Release: 2019-02-18
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0429759339

As social contexts and demands change in the 21st century, pedagogies and policies must adapt to keep up. Increasing emphasis on global preparedness, competitivity, and holistic education alongside a fast-paced, ever-changing environment may make policy implementation difficult. However, Cheng asserts that it is only by understanding the current trends, visions, and issues in education policy, implementation, and research that we can reflect, adapt, and improve future initiatives. To that end, Cheng elucidates the different paradigm shifts in classrooms and pedagogy all over the world. In his exploration of third-wave paradigm shifts in education, he charts the rationales, concerns, and effects in topics such as contextualized multiple intelligences, integrated learning, national education in globalization, teacher effectiveness and development, school-based management, and systemic education reform. This book is a promising referential resource for any policy-maker, academic, and educator who knows that the only way to progress is to look at and learn from the current issues and future trends globally.