Download or read book Dropping Out Drifting Off Being Excluded written by John Smyth and published by Peter Lang. This book was released on 2004 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book deals with one of the most urgent, damaging, and complex issues affecting young lives and contemporary society in general - the escalating high school dropout rate. Though against the wishes of teachers and school administrators, young people's decision to leave school is usually made under circumstances that provide little time or space for discussion. This book provides a disturbing account of how students' voices are over-ridden - lost in the imposition of curriculum and the rush to impose testing, accountability, and management regimes on schools. 'Dropping Out', Drifting Off, Being Excluded reveals the complex stories that surround identity formation in young lives and the «interactive trouble» as young people struggle to be heard within inhospitable schools and an equally unhelpful education system.

Download or read book Changing Schools written by Terry Wrigley and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2011-08-09 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Changing Schools places educational and social aims at the centre of a discussion of educational change. It draws on forteen case studies to explore school change which is oriented towards social justice and democracy. In an age of global mobility, economic polarization and unprecedented environmental and cultural challenges, the education of all children and young people to higher levels has become a key issue of international policy. Educational reform in such a context requires a serious rethinking and reworking of school and classroom practices. Social justice is integral to the challenge of raising standards, since this requires removing the ongoing influence of poverty on school success. This thoughtful book presents new thinking and practice for bringing about school change, drawn from diverse contexts around the world. It distils and compares the experiences and theories-in-action of engaged teachers, school principals and academics. It seeks to challenge the dominance that human capital theories of school improvement currently hold on policy making. The authors draw on contemporary innovations in practice and theory and also long-standing traditions of alternative thinking and practice. Linking together and articulating other ways of conceiving of and implementing school change, the collection bases its findings on values of equality and global citizenship. It shows how schools can work to make different languages, knowledge, narratives, and truths integral to the mainstream curriculum, everyday pedagogy, assessment and general culture of the school. Changing Schools is directed at all who are concerned with progressive school change and the promotion of democratic citizenship and social justice. It will prove an invaluable source of inspiration for all involved in schools, including teachers, head teachers, policy makers, and those currently studying for school leadership positions.

Download or read book Education and Poverty in Affluent Countries written by Carlo Raffo and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2009-12-04 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This unique book brings together scholarship and analysis from some of the most influential scholars on education to provide a comprehensive mapping of research evidence and policy strategies about education and poverty in affluent countries.

Download or read book Spatial Theories of Education written by Kalervo N. Gulson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2007-11-21 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of original work, within the sociology of education, draws on the 'spatial turn' in contemporary social theory. The premise of this book is that drawing on theories of space allows for a more sophisticated understanding of the competing rationalities underlying educational policy change, social inequality and cultural practices. The contributors work a spatial dimension into the consideration of educational phenomena and illustrate its explanatory potential in a range of domains: urban renewal, globalisation, race, markets and school choice, suburbanisation, regional and rural settings, and youth and student culture.

Download or read book Youth Education and Marginality written by Kate Tilleczek and published by Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press. This book was released on 2013-05-30 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Youth, Education, and Marginality: Local and Global Expressions is a close examination of the lives of marginalized young people in schools. Essays by scholars and educators provide international insights grounded in educational and community practice and policy. They cover the range and intersections of marginalization: poverty, Aboriginal cultures, immigrants and newcomers, gay/lesbian youth, rural—urban divides, mental health, and so forth. Presenting challenges faced by marginalized youth alongside initiatives for mitigating their impact, the contributors critique existing systems and engage in a dialogue about where to go from here. Youth poetry, prose, and visual art complement the essays.

Download or read book A Case for Radical Pragmatic Leaders and Personalised Learning Schools written by Andrew Bills and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2020-06-23 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thousands of young people from disadvantaged backgrounds are forsaking education in secondary mainstream schools across Australia. This book places a sociological and lived experience phenomenological lens on public policy that is working against school inclusion, learning engagement and post-school opportunity. The school case studies provided here highlight the damage done and the opportunity for refreshed policy approaches to address this malaise. Across the educational landscape, there are a number of fine examples of schools that are choosing to do schooling ‘against the grain’ of unhelpful regulatory policy that works to exclude many from their educational entitlement. These schools and their practices are examined in this book and are presented as examples for policy learning. If education systems learn to embrace an ongoing culture of research and inquiry, where the evidence-based and contextual learning experiences of students, teachers and Principals are equally valued and heard in the policy realm, the phenomenon of early school leaving can begin to turn around. This work calls upon Principals in the first instance to become more radical and pragmatic in their leadership of schools, collectively working with courage to ensure that the experience of schooling is personalised to the learning needs and career aspirations of all young people.

Download or read book Composing Lives in Transition written by D. Jean Clandinin and published by Emerald Group Publishing. This book was released on 2013-03-28 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Composing Lives in Transition: A Narrative Inquiry into the Experiences of Early School Leavers is structured around ten narrative accounts, each one offering glimpses into the lives of early school leavers from different backgrounds. Framed by the puzzling question of why someone would want to leave school early, the authors worked alongside youths from culturally and socially diverse backgrounds in order to understand their experiences and motivations in more depth. In doing so, however, the research team learnt that the stories are also as much about how early school leaving shaped their lives after they left education. By looking across the accounts provided in the book, paying particular attention to place, temporality and personal and social dimensions, the authors were able to identify resonant threads that enabled them to reframe a narrative reconceptualization of the phenomenon of early school leaving.

Download or read book International Handbook of Student Experience in Elementary and Secondary School written by D. Thiessen and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2007-06-03 with total page 910 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This handbook brings together in a single volume the groundbreaking work of scholars who have conducted studies of student experiences of school in Afghanistan, Australia, Canada, England, Ghana, Ireland, Pakistan, and the United States. Drawing extensively on students’ interpretations of their experiences in school as expressed in their own words, chapter authors offer insight into how students conceptualize and approach school. The book examines how students understand and address the ongoing social opportunities for and challenges in working with other students and teachers, and the multiple ways in which students shape and contribute to school improvement.

Download or read book English Classes in Slumber written by S.-H. Gyemyong Ahn and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-01-01 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explains why some Korean high school students sleep during English classes in spite of the emphasized value of English in their society. It examines how this sleeping-in-class phenomenon can be understood by means of such marginalized students’ emic outlooks on themselves, the target language, their teachers, schools, and society/culture; and by means of the views of teachers who have experienced such in-class sleepers. To understand the phenomenon more holistically, it pursues a multi-disciplinary approach drawing on studies of demotivation and amotivation, psychological needs, and student experiences of schooling, as well as sociocultural theories of learning and agency and of interpersonal dynamics, among others. On the basis of a multi-modal analysis of interview data from the student and teacher participants, it theoretically interprets the phenomenon at the classroom (‘micro-’), school (‘meso-’) and society-culture (‘macro-’) levels. Taking a humanistic/existential approach to education, it subsequently presents a number of cultural actions that it advocates implementing in a situation-sensitive manner to help in-class sleepers and their educational institutions awaken from their chronic slumber. Lastly, it presents practical and theoretical implications for more humanistic pedagogy, and global studies of student disengagement, in English-as-a-foreign-language classes.

Download or read book School Scandals written by Thomson, Pat and published by Policy Press. This book was released on 2020-09-09 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With almost daily reports of failings in school management, what can be done to improve educational outcomes for everyone? Pat Thomson takes on England’s muddled education system, highlighting failings caused by the actions of ministers in successive governments. While corrupt actions are taken by some, it is predominantly the corruption of the system that is at fault. She exposes fraudulent and unethical practices, including the skewing of the curriculum and manipulation of results, and argues for an urgent review, leading to a revitalised education system that has the public good at its heart.

Download or read book Hanging in with Kids in Tough Times written by John Smyth and published by Peter Lang. This book was released on 2010 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book brings a unique, innovative and refreshing perspective to one of the most protracted issues affecting young lives - disengagement from schooling. Rather than continuing to blame young people, as most educational policies do, this book examines disengagement from the vantage point of the lives, experiences, interests and aspirations of the communities from which young people come, and within which they are embedded. It uses a narrative and representational approach that gives detailed insights into the wider context of poverty, class, power, relationships and identity. A major and defining hallmark of the book is the emphasis it places upon a number of 'doings', - including community voice, identity formation, critical work education and education policy - all of which provide a very different set of scripts with which to reinvent the institution of high school.

Download or read book Student Engagement in Urban Schools written by Brenda J. McMahon and published by IAP. This book was released on 2012-03-01 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The focus of this book extends the discourse on student engagement beyond prescriptive definitions and includes substantive ethical and political issues relating to this concept. As such, this collection includes voices of educational theorists, practitioners, and students. It provides a counter discourse to the current dialogue on student engagement in educational theory and practice which equate it primarily with behavioral and attitudinal characteristics including student compliance and qualities of teaching or teachers. In this collection, engagement is not viewed simply as a matter of techniques, strategies or behaviours. Rather, the understandings of student engagement presented, while distinct from each other, are imbued with a common vision of education for democratic transformation or reconstruction as operational for and in democratic communities. Contributors to this volume examine issues of the purpose of student engagement, and the question of the criteria, standards, and norms which are used to determine the quality and degree of engagement, and ultimately whether or not all forms of student engagement are equally worthwhile. This collection is intended for use in teacher and administrator preparation programs as well as school and district professional development initiatives.

Download or read book The Socially Just School written by John Smyth and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-07-08 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores schools and how they can function as social institutions that advance the interests and life chances of all young people, especially those who are already the most marginalized and at an educational disadvantage. Social justice is a key theme as the book examines the needs of youth, the concept of school culture, school/community relations, socially critical pedagogy, curriculum and leadership and a socially critical approach to work. The Socially Just School is based upon four decades of intensive writing and researching of young lives. This work presents an alternative to the damaging school reform in which schools are made to serve the interests of the economy, education systems, the military, corporate or national interests. Readers will discover the hallmarks of socially just schools: - They educationally engage young people regardless of class, race, family or neighbourhood location and they engage them around their own educational aspirations. - They regard all young people as being morally entitled to a rewarding and satisfying experience of school, not only those whose backgrounds happen to fit with the values of schools. - They treat young people as having strengths and being ‘at promise’ rather than being ‘at risk’ and with ‘deficits’ or as ‘bundles of pathologies’ to be remedied or ‘fixed’. - They are ‘active listeners’ to the lives and cultures of their students and communities and they construct learning experiences that are embedded in young lives. This highly readable book will appeal to students and scholars in education and sociology, as well as to teachers and school administrators with an interest in social justice.

Download or read book Rethinking School to Work Transitions in Australia written by Barry Down and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-01-08 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book draws on the stories of thirty-two young Australians to identify the barriers and obstacles they face in ‘getting a job’ in precarious times and from their vantage point. It maps the kinds of educational policies and practices that need to be created and more widely sustained to assist their career aspirations and life chances. It is timely in terms of contributing to an alternative set of possibilities based on a commitment to the principles and values of social justice, respect, trust, care, democracy and citizenship. In constructing an alternative vision and practice for education and training it advocates the right of all young people to have a say in these broader public debates. In pursuing this agenda, it deliberately sets out to listen to what young people themselves have to say with a view to interrupting the way things are. In other words, the book seeks to identify and explain the dreams, desires and aspirations of young people with a view to creating a new imaginary and socially just future.

Download or read book Learning from the Student s Perspective written by Alison Cook-Sather and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-11-17 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Much has been written about how to engage students in their learning, but very little of it has issued from students themselves. Compiled by one of the leading scholars in the field of student voice, this sourcebook draws on the perspectives of secondary students in the United States, England, Canada, and Australia as well as on the work of teachers, researchers, and teacher educators who have collaborated with a wide variety of students.Highlighting student voices, it features five chapters focused on student perspectives, articulated in their own words, regarding specific approaches to creating and maintaining a positive classroom environment and designing engaging lessons and on more general issues of respect and responsibility in the classroom. To support educators in developing strategies for accessing and responding to student voices in their own classrooms, the book provides detailed guidelines created by educational researchers for gathering and acting upon student perspectives. To illustrate how these approaches work in practice, the book includes stories of how pre-service and in-service teachers, school leaders, and teacher educators have made student voices and participation central to their classroom and school practices. And finally, addressing both practical and theoretical questions, the book includes a chapter that outlines action steps for high school teachers, school leaders, and teacher educators and a chapter that offers a conceptual framework for thinking about and engaging in this work. Bringing together in a single text student perspectives, descriptions of successful efforts to access them in secondary education contexts, concrete advice for practitioners, and a theoretical framework for further exploration, this sourcebook can be used to guide practice and support re-imagining education in secondary schools of all kinds, and the principles can be adapted for other educational contexts.

Download or read book The Wiley Handbook of Global Educational Reform written by Kenneth J. Saltman and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2018-11-13 with total page 563 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Wiley Handbook of Global Educational Reform examines educational reform from a global perspective. Comprised of approximately 25 original and specially commissioned essays, which together interrogate educational reform from a critical global and transnational perspective, this volume explores a range of topics and themes that fully investigate global convergences in educational reform policies, ideologies, and practices. The Handbook probes the history, ideology, organization, and institutional foundations of global educational reform movements; actors, institutions, and agendas; and local, national, and global education reform trends. It further examines the “new managerialism” in global educational reform, including the standardization of national systems of educational governance, curriculum, teaching, and learning through the rise of new systems of privatization, accountability, audit, big-data, learning analytics, biometrics, and new technology-driven adaptive learning models. Finally, it takes on the subjective and intersubjective experiential dimensions of the new educational reforms and alternative paths for educational reform tied to the ethical imperative to reimagine education for human flourishing, justice, and equality. An authoritative, definitive volume and the first global take on a subject that is grabbing headlines as well as preoccupying policy makers, scholars, and teachers around the world Edited by distinguished leaders in the field Features contributions from an illustrious list of experts and scholars The Wiley Handbook of Global Educational Reform will be of great interest to scholars and graduate students of education throughout the world as well as the policy makers who can institute change.

Download or read book Comparative Perspectives on Early School Leaving in the European Union written by Lore Van Praag and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-03-15 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Early School Leaving in the European Union provides an analysis of early school leaving (ESL) in nine European Union countries, with a particular focus on young people who were previously enrolled in educational institutions inside and outside mainstream secondary education. The comparative approach employed by this volume adds to the existing body of knowledge on ESL and develops an understanding of how young people navigate through different educational systems. Contributors acknowledge the importance of reconstructing educational trajectories from the perspective of the individuals involved and, as a result, the book includes data collected during in-depth interviews, surveys, and insights from educational professionals, policymakers and representatives from civil society organisations. Adopting a classic tripartite approach, which acknowledges the complex nature of ESL, the book addresses individual, institutional and systemic factors. It identifies and analyses the prevention, intervention and compensation measures that can succeed in supporting young people’s attainment, and demonstrates how these can be used to reduce ESL. This unique book will be highly relevant for academics, researchers and postgraduate students, as well as educational practitioners. Drawing on the insights provided by the authors, the book formulates policy recommendations that should also be of interest for policymakers in European countries and beyond.