21st Century Literacy: If We Are Scripted, Are We Literate? (Explorations of Educational Purpose)

21st Century Literacy: If We Are Scripted, Are We Literate? (Explorations of Educational Purpose) Review

This book offers a call to all who are involved with literacy education. It explores the prescriptions that hinder authentic and effective approaches to literacy instruction. The scripts identified here include the Bureaucratic Script, the Corporate Script, the Student Script, the Parent and Public Script, and the Administrative Script. The authors bring their classroom teaching experiences (over thirty years combined) along with their research base to a discussion of literacy spanning elementary through high school. The discussion offers the reader practical and research-based lenses for identifying and overcoming the barriers to best practice while avoiding the inherent pitfalls found too often in our schools. The implied answer to the subtitle is a definitive “No”, but the text goes beyond criticizing the current state of the field and seeks to empower both teachers and students seeking literacy growth beyond the scripts that plague twenty-first century commitments to accountability and testing.

Learning Communities In Practice (Explorations of Educational Purpose)

Learning Communities In Practice (Explorations of Educational Purpose) Review

Most would agree that a learning community of practice cultivates social and intellectual development in educational settings but what are the other benefits and what does a learning community actually look like in practice? This book explores such questions as: “Are learning communities essential in education?” “How are they designed and developed?” “What difference do they make in learning?” The book contains contributions of educators who share their research and practice in designing and implementing learning communities in school, university, and professional network settings. It presents their experiences, and the “how to” of these educators who are passionate about building and sustaining learning communities to make a real difference for students, teachers, faculty, and communities. Combining scholarly and practitioner research, the book offers practical information to teachers, school and university administrators, teacher educators, and community educators.

Narrative Life: Democratic Curriculum and Indigenous Learning (Explorations of Educational Purpose)

Narrative Life: Democratic Curriculum and Indigenous Learning (Explorations of Educational Purpose) Review

Written with educational practitioners in mind and set in a framework of progressive epistemology and pedagogy, this work tackles issues of global concern. It seeks to answer the question of how we structure education for the world’s 370 million indigenous people so as to promote intercultural understanding, maximize opportunity and right colonial wrongs.

Hooley’s work details an innovative curriculum design for indigenous school children based on the principles of participatory narrative inquiry, as well as exemplars of indigenous knowledge. Written from an Australian perspective, the book discusses broad international issues that impact on schooling such as globalisation, democratic education and whiteness and raises significant questions regarding indigenous culture and knowledge.

Taking inspiration from the works of John Dewey and Paulo Freire, Hooley asserts that a curriculum based on participatory narrative inquiry recognises and respects the interests and rights of local Indigenous communities. Further, it provides a mechanism for linking with white mainstream curricula through the compilation of portfolios of student work and exemplars of knowledge across all subjects areas. This model views formal schooling as a central aspect of a child’s personal, family and community narrative and does not impose knowledge from without, but constructs knowledge from within. Learning is given an indigenous context and thus two-way inquiry between cultural viewpoints is encouraged.

Narrative Life makes an original contribution to Indigenous education worldwide, and does so across all settings of primary and secondary schooling.

Making Teaching and Learning Matter: Transformative Spaces in Higher Education (Explorations of Educational Purpose)

Making Teaching and Learning Matter: Transformative Spaces in Higher Education (Explorations of Educational Purpose) Review

This volume captures the spirit of collaboration and innovation that its authors bring into the classroom, as well as to groundbreaking undergraduate programs and initiatives. Coming from diverse points of view and twenty different disciplines, the contributors illuminate the often perplexing debates about what matters most in higher education today. Each chapter tells a unique story about creating vital pedagogical arenas that have the potential to transform teaching and learning for both faculty and students. These exploratory spaces include courses under construction, cross-college and interdisciplinary collaborations, general education reform initiatives, and fresh perspectives on student support services, faculty development, freshman learning communities, writing across the curriculum, on-line degree initiatives, and teaching and learning centers. All these spaces lend shape to an over-arching, system-wide project bringing together the often disconnected silos of undergraduate education at The City University of New York (CUNY), America’s largest urban public university system. Since 2003, the University’s Office of Undergraduate Education has sponsored coordinated efforts to study and improve teaching and learning for the system’s 260,000 undergraduates enrolled at 18 distinct colleges. The contributors to this volume present a broad spectrum of administrative and faculty perspectives that have informed the process of transforming the undergraduate experience. Combined, the voices in these chapters create a much-needed exploratory space for the interplay of ideas about how teaching and learning need to matter in evolving notions of higher education in the twenty-first century. In addition, the text has wider social relevance as an in-depth exploration of change and reform in a large public institution.

Bringing Schools into the 21st Century (Explorations of Educational Purpose)

Bringing Schools into the 21st Century (Explorations of Educational Purpose) Review

Shift happens: Emerging technologies and globalization have resulted in political, social and cultural changes. These changes have a profound impact on all aspects of human life, including education. Yet while society has changed and continues to change, schools are slow to keep up. This book explores issues related to transforming and modernizing our educational systems, including the impact of societal shifts on education, the efforts at various levels to bring schools into the 21st century, the identification of 21st century skills, the reformation of the curriculum, the creation of alternative models of schooling, the innovative use of technology in education, and many others. It addresses questions like the following: Should schools systems adapt to better meet the needs of tomorrow’s world and how should this be accomplished? How can society better prepare students for a changing and challenging modern world? What skills do students need to lead successful lives and become productive citizens in the 21st century? How can educators create learning environments that are relevant and meaningful for digital natives? How can the school curriculum be made more rigorous to meet the needs of the 21st century? This book encourages readers to transcend the limits of their own educational experience, to think beyond familiar notions of schooling, instruction and curriculum, to consider how to best structure learning so that it will benefit future generations. It encourages a deeper analysis of the existing education system and offers practical insights into future directions focused on preparing students with 21st century skills.