Download or read book A Process Approach to General Education Reform written by Susan Gano-Phillips and published by Atwood Publications. This book was released on 2010 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The call for general education reform in higher education has sounded clearly and consistently, but responses to this call have been varied. Gano-Phillips, Barnett, and the text's contributors believe that many of the institutional efforts have been content focused, and they argue that this fragments the efforts, creating divides between constituencies. Instead, the editors and contributors urge reformers to adopt a process focus which creates a community striving toward a goal together. In A Process Approach, editors Gano-Phillips and Barnett have put together a definitive collection of essays on the reform of general education programs in higher education, presented much like case studies. The contributors come from large and small institutions and from various parts of the country. Common among all the stories is the emphasis on bringing together all the stakeholders so that all can be represented and heard. Collectively, this group then works with a process approach to reach a general education reform appropriate to and reflective of the individual institution. As Gano-Phillips and Barnett write in the Introduction: A one-size-fits-all approach has not proven successful historically. Rather, as campus culture and reform processes are examined in synchrony, we contend that sustainable and substantive curricular reform is more likely to occur. This book offers readers and reformers paths for examining and encouraging the evolution of their unique campus cultures. And, through that examination, new and more useful models can emerge, resulting in a curricular reform that can be embraced by all.

Download or read book Studies of Education Reform written by Steven Gary Klein and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 1996 with total page 55 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reviews the essential elements of planning, implementing, and sustaining school reform. Designed to assist policymakers and practitioners at the district, school, and community levels in creating strategies that will enable them to increase student learning. Eight key lessons, drawn from 12 major studies of education reform, identify a cluster of concerns relative to the reform process -- leadership, goals, timing, training, flexibility, infrastructure, managing resources, and self-assessment. Taken together, they emphasize a comprehensive, strategic, and common-sense approach to school reform. Includes planning guides and worksheets.

Download or read book General Education Essentials written by Paul Hanstedt and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2012-04-25 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: General Education Essentials "Full-time and part-time faculty in any discipline and at any size campus with any type of mission can pick up this volume and learn something that will help her or him improve teaching and learning.???"—From the Foreword by Terrel L. Rhodes, vice president for Curriculum, Quality, and Assessment, Association of American Colleges and Universities Every year, hundreds of small colleges, state schools, and large, research-oriented universities across the United States (and, increasingly, Europe and Asia) revisit their core and general education curricula, often moving toward more integrative models. And every year, faculty members who are highly skilled in narrowly defined fields ask two simple questions: "Why?" and "How is this going to affect me?" General Education Essentials seeks to answer these and other questions by providing a much-needed overview of and a rationale for the recent shift in general education curricular design, a sense of how this shift can affect a faculty member's teaching, and an understanding of how all of this might impact course and student assessment. Filled with examples from a variety of disciplines that will spark insights, General Education Essentials explores the techniques that can be used to ensure that students are gaining the skills they need to be perceptive scholars and productive citizens. "This is THE ONE BOOK for academics to get up to speed about reforming general education." —Jerry Gaff, senior scholar, Association of American Colleges and Universities

Download or read book Realizing General Education Reconsidering Conceptions and Renewing Practice written by Cynthia A. Wells and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2016-01-11 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: General education is widely touted as an enduring distinctive of higher education, but what do we actually mean by general education? Differing perspectives not only make it challenging to consider its significance, but also open it up to a wide range of determinations regarding its effectiveness. This volume aims to sharpen understanding of the complex picture of general education by: describing how various conceptions of general education evolved historically, identifying various functions expected of general education in the contemporary context, and pointing out the educational practices that fulfill general education’s aims in the current context. The conceptions of, and aspirations for, general education are consequential. This volume disentangles the divergent conceptions that hinder its renewal and considers the range of avenues for realizing its effectiveness. This is the second issue of the 42nd volume of the Jossey-Bass series ASHE Higher Education Report. Each monograph is the definitive analysis of a tough higher education issue, based on thorough research of pertinent literature and institutional experiences. Topics are identified by a national survey. Noted practitioners and scholars are then commissioned to write the reports, with experts providing critical reviews of each manuscript before publication.

Download or read book Applying Anthropology to General Education written by Jennifer R. Wies and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2022-03-30 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The current higher education policy and practice landscape is simultane-ously marked by uncertainty and hope, and nowhere are these tensions more present than in discussions and actions around general education. This volume uses an anthropological approach to contemplate ways of re-imagining general education for the 21st century and how faculty, teach-ers, administrators, and others can transform the educational endeavor to be holistic, comprehensive, and aligned with the needs of people and the planet in the decades to come. Included are analyses of general education concepts such as "diversity," case studies of general education and con-necting curricula, opportunities for faculty development, unique general education student populations, assessment strategies, and philosophical/ pedagogical challenges. Contributors make the case that far from receding from a central role in higher education, there is a need to strengthen general education curricula as key to the educational needs of students, for the skills and competencies they require in the workplace and for civic engagement.

Download or read book Becoming Good American Schools written by Jeannie Oakes and published by Jossey-Bass. This book was released on 2002-04-04 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A convincing portrait of teachers actively engaged in educational reform...offering a hopeful yet realistic vision of revitalized democracy inspired by a passion for the public good. This book is an eloquent defense of civic virtue." —Jonathan Kozol, author of Amazing Grace and Savage Inequalities "Rich, realistic, invigorating, and scary. Any middle school educator who has been part of an effort to reform the educational process will see himself or herself in this book--as the brave risk taker, the naive visionary, the frightened frontline trooper, and the touched individual who can make a difference." —Judy Cunningham, principal, South Lake Middle School, Irvine, California This book tells the stories of sixteen schools in California, Illinois, Massachusetts, Texas, and Vermont that sought to alter their structures and practices and become places fostering innovative ideas, caring people, principles of social justice, and democratic processes. Based on longitudinal, comparative case-study research, these accounts attest to the power of committing to public virtue and the struggle of educators to transform that commitment into changed school practice. The authors argue that better schools will come only when policy makers, educators, and citizens move beyond technical and bureaucratic reforms to engage in the same educative, socially just, caring, and participatory processes they want for schoolchildren. Those processes constitute betterment--both the means and the ends of school reform. Becoming Good American Schools is for administrators, policy makers, practitioners, and citizens who are prepared to blend inspiration and caution, idealism and skepticism in their own pursuit of good schools.

Download or read book A Blueprint for Education Reform written by Connaught Coyne Marshner and published by . This book was released on 1984 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a continuation of the national debate over education reform, the 14 contributors to this book outline several approaches to reform, address a variety of current education issues, and relate parent and teacher perspectives on education. An overview by President Ronald Reagan of education reform issues is provided, followed by chapters on the importance of parental rights in schooling and the need to bring pluralism to public education through the parents' right of school choice and the elimination of majority control of school policy. Other chapters discuss the lack of classroom discipline, the need for teacher training reform, the politicization of the classroom by means of the curriculum and by teachers, the need to revitalize citizenship education, the conclusions of effective schools research, the case for a federal voucher program, issues in the educational progress of black people, the advantages of home education and delayed schooling, the grassroots parent-based effort to reform public education, and the life experiences and observations of a teacher. (DCS)

Download or read book Performative Approaches to Education Reforms written by Dorthe Staunæs and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-05-21 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The purpose of this book is to investigate with conceptualization how reforms change educational organizations and subjectivities, and how educational organizations change reforms. The book gives an account of the power of conceptual endeavors, with close readings of empirical material. The book elaborates this through empirical investigations of the intertwinement of different educational reforms, of policies, standards, and everyday educational lives across the globe. As well as telling stories of reforms and how they transform and are transformed by the educational organizations and subjects they engage, the book highlights how a careful enactment of methodologies and critiques might enable a tracing of not only intended but also unintended effects of reforms. In this way, the book explores performative approaches to education reform and thus attempts to nuance the idea of causality and linearity in the implementation of education reforms. Engaging with performative approaches, this book scrutinizes how reforms are involved with the creation and shaping of the world and thus offers insight into what happens when reforms are borrowed, translated, and taken up in a range of ways. This book was originally published as a special issue of the International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education.

Download or read book Integrated General Education written by Catherine M. Wehlburg and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2010-04-19 with total page 125 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: General education has been an essential part of American higher education for a long time. Unfortunately, it is often seen as something to "get out of the way" so that the student can go on to take the more "important" courses within a chosen major. This volume changes that perception. Topics discussed include: Integrated General Education: A Brief Look Back Why are Outcomes So Difficult to Achieve? Making General Education Matter: Structures and Strategies Unifying the Undergraduate Curriculum Through Inquiry-Guided Learning University of the Pacific's Bookend Seminars on a Good Society Core Curriculum Revision at TCU: How Faculty Created and Are Maintaining the TCU Core Curriculum Creating an Integrative General Education: The Bates Experience Building an Integrated Student Learning Outcomes Assessment for General Education: Three Case Studies Meaningful General Education Assessment That is Integrated and Transformative Institutions of higher education have a responsibility to develop a meaningful general education curriculum that cultivates qualities of thinking, communication, and problem solving (to name a few of the general education goals that many institutions share). What is missing from many institutions, though, is the concept of integrating general education with the overall educational curriculum. If this is done, general education courses are no longer something to take quickly so they can be checked off; instead; they become part of the educational development of the student. This integration benefits the student, certainly, but also the larger society--baccalaureate graduates steeped in the liberal arts will become future leaders. Having been prepared with a broad knowledge base, our current students will be able to think more critically and make good use of information to solve problems that have not yet even been identified. This is the 121st volume of the Jossey-Bass higher education quarterly report series New Directions for Teaching and Learning, which offers a comprehensive range of ideas and techniques for improving college teaching based on the experience of seasoned instructors and the latest findings of educational and psychological researchers.

Download or read book Learning from the Federal Market Based Reforms written by William J. Mathis and published by IAP. This book was released on 2016-06-01 with total page 715 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the past twenty years, educational policy has been characterized by top?down, market?focused policies combined with a push toward privatization and school choice. The new Every Student Succeeds Act continues along this path, though with decision?making authority now shifted toward the states. These market?based reforms have often been touted as the most promising response to the challenges of poverty and educational disenfranchisement. But has this approach been successful? Has learning improved? Have historically low?scoring schools “turned around” or have the reforms had little effect? Have these narrow conceptions of schooling harmed the civic and social purposes of education in a democracy? This book presents the evidence. Drawing on the work of the nation’s most prominent researchers, the book explores the major elements of these reforms, as well as the social, political, and educational contexts in which they take place. It examines the evidence supporting the most common school improvement strategies: school choice; reconstitutions, or massive personnel changes; and school closures. From there, it presents the research findings cutting across these strategies by addressing the evidence on test score trends, teacher evaluation, “miracle” schools, the Common Core State Standards, school choice, the newly emerging school improvement industry, and re?segregation, among others. The weight of the evidence indisputably shows little success and no promise for these reforms. Thus, the authors counsel strongly against continuing these failed policies. The book concludes with a review of more promising avenues for educational reform, including the necessity of broader societal investments for combatting poverty and adverse social conditions. While schools cannot single?handedly overcome societal inequalities, important work can take place within the public school system, with evidence?based interventions such as early childhood education, detracking, adequate funding and full?service community schools—all intended to renew our nation’s commitment to democracy and equal educational opportunity.

Download or read book Rethinking the Education Mess A Systems Approach to Education Reform written by I. Mitroff and published by Springer. This book was released on 2013-10-17 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using a form of systems thinking, this book analyzes K-12 education as a complex, "messy" system that must be tackled as a whole and provides a series of heuristics to help those involved in the education mess to improve the system as a whole.

Download or read book Education Reform in the 90s written by Chester E. Finn (Jr.) and published by MacMillan Publishing Company. This book was released on 1992 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The product of a two-year research project by leaders in the education field, this compelling prescription for what ails American education advises a full reworking of the system which includes professionalism and flexibility, and encourages parents to become active participants in the making of school policies.

Download or read book Education Reform in the American States written by Jerry McBeath and published by IAP. This book was released on 2008-04-01 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Education Reform in the American States is a timely evaluation of the accountability movement in American public education, culminating in the No Child Left Behind Act, federal legislation of 2002. The authors treat the current accountability movement, placing it in historical context and addressing the evolution in public education policymaking from the overwhelming emphasis on state and local discretion to increasing federal oversight and mandates related to federal funding. They provide case studies of the educational accountability movements in nine states and analyze the factors and forces which explain progress in achievement levels as measured on standardized tests and the states' prospects for meeting their NCLB targets. The book and the individual case studies acknowledge the merits of NCLB while exposing several significant flaws and unintended harmful consequences of the act, particularly its incentives for states to lower their standards in order to meet annual yearly progress targets and its threat to withdraw federal funds from districts with the highest percentage of disadvantaged students. The audience for this study includes local, state and federal education policy makers; administrators and instructors in schools of education and other teaching programs, educators; and the general public.

Download or read book Tinkering toward Utopia written by David B. TYACK and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Emerging Strategies for Public Education Reform written by Marquis Carter Grant and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book explores theories and applications of different measures of educational reform to promote fairness among individual students"--

Download or read book A Nation at Risk written by United States. National Commission on Excellence in Education and published by . This book was released on 1983 with total page 80 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Charter Schools in Action written by Chester E. Finn, Jr. and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2001-07-30 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Can charter schools save public education? This radical question has unleashed a flood of opinions from Americans struggling with the contentious challenges of education reform. There has been plenty of heat over charter schools and their implications, but, until now, not much light. This important new book supplies plenty of illumination. Charter schools--independently operated public schools of choice--have existed in the United States only since 1992, yet there are already over 1,500 of them. How are they doing? Here prominent education analysts Chester Finn, Bruno Manno, and Gregg Vanourek offer the richest data available on the successes and failures of this exciting but controversial approach to education reform. After studying one hundred schools, interviewing hundreds of participants, surveying thousands more, and analyzing the most current data, they have compiled today's most authoritative, comprehensive explanation and appraisal of the charter phenomenon. Fact-filled, clear-eyed, and hard-hitting, this is the book for anyone concerned about public education and interested in the role of charter schools in its renewal. Can charter schools boost student achievement, drive educational innovation, and develop a new model of accountability for public schools? Where did the idea of charter schools come from? What would the future hold if this phenomenon spreads? These are some of the questions that this book answers. It addresses pupil performance, enrollment patterns, school start-up problems, charges of inequity, and smoldering political battles. It features close-up looks at five real--and very different--charter schools and two school districts that have been deeply affected by the charter movement, including their setbacks and triumphs. After outlining a new model of education accountability and describing how charter schools often lead to community renewal, the authors take the reader on an imaginary tour of a charter-based school system. Charter schools are the most vibrant force in education today. This book suggests that their legacy will consist not only of helping millions of families obtain a better education for their children but also in renewing American public education itself.