Download or read book Teachers Matter written by Marcus A. Winters and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2011-12-16 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most of us have had at least one amazing teacher who has inspired, influenced, or encouraged us to do better, aim higher, or just be more confident. However, most of us have also had at least one teacher who has not met our expectations. In Teachers Matter, education researcher Marcus A. Winters, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, argues that our failure to identify and reward high-quality teachers has been devastating for public school students. The question is how do we sort out the good teachers form the bad? Winters shows the shortcomings of the current system that relies on credentials and longevity and spells out a series of reforms based on results achieved in the classroom. For the first time, standardized test results offer an objective, reliable measure of student proficiency that can be tied to an individual teacher. Sure to be controversial, Winters’s plan will be of interest to the education community, policy makers, and parents concerned about the future of education in America.
Download or read book Studying Diversity in Teacher Education written by Arnetha F. Ball and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2011 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Studying Diversity in Teacher Education is a collaborative effort by experts seeking to elucidate one of the most important issues facing education today. First, the volume examines historically persistent, yet unresolved issues in teacher education and presents research that is currently being done to address these issues. Second, it centers on research on diverse populations, bringing together both research on diversity and research on diversity in teacher education. The contributors present frameworks, perspectives and paradigms that have implications for reframing research on complex issues that are often ignored or treated too simplistically in teacher education literature. Concluding the volume with an agenda for future research and a guide for preparing teachers for diversity education in a global context, the contributors provide a solid foundation for all educators. Studying Diversity in Teacher Education is a vital resource for all those interested in diversity and education research.
Download or read book The Influence of Teachers written by John Merrow and published by LM Books. This book was released on 2011 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How can schools and teachers change to keep up with the current educational landscape, a world in which young people must learn how to ask the right questions, not merely parrot back the 'right' answers? In this urgent and insightful book, John Merrow draws on his experience as a reporter for PBS and NPR to examine this question and others, and offer possibilities and solutions for a new education system. Told through warm storytelling and compelling case studies, Merrow paints a vibrant and inspiring picture of why and how we must transform - not reform - our schools.
Download or read book Handbook of Research on Special Education Teacher Preparation written by Paul T. Sindelar and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-03-05 with total page 526 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The purpose of this seven-part handbook is to expand our knowledge of teacher education broadly by providing an in-depth look at the most up-to-date research on special education teacher preparation.
Download or read book Renewal written by Harold Kwalwasser and published by R&L Education. This book was released on 2012 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Harold Kwalwasser has put together a call to action for education reform that makes a clear case for what has to be done in order to educate all children to their full potential. He visited forty high-performing and transforming school districts, charters, parochial, and private schools to understand why they have succeeded where others have failed. The analysis in Renewal: Remaking America's Schools for the Twenty-First Century brings together all of the necessary changes in one dynamic strategy. Many schools, even though facing seemingly impossible odds, have succeeded brilliantly. But their histories also reflect that there are neither silver bullets or demons. The heart of successful reform is systemic change, which requires the patience, understanding, and commitment of every adult who has a role in the process, from parents and taxpayers, to the school board members, superintendents, and teachers, and on to state legislators and members of Congress. Renewal offers a clear picture of how to move away from the mass-production style of education that most schools offered throughout the twentieth century to a new, more innovative, and flexible model that can meet this country's promise of truly educating every child and preparing each of them for the challenges ahead.
Download or read book School Boards in America written by G. Maeroff and published by Springer. This book was released on 2010-11-14 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: School boards spend almost $500 billion in taxpayer-provided funds, they employ more than 6 million people, offering pensions and lifetime health benefits that have helped build the obligation that has put state governments in fiscal peril. This book lifts the veil of obscurity from school boards and makes readers think about the issues.
Download or read book Handbook of Early Childhood Education written by Robert C. Pianta and published by Guilford Publications. This book was released on 2015-08-12 with total page 656 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Comprehensive and authoritative, this forward-thinking book reviews the breadth of current knowledge about early education and identifies important priorities for practice and policy. Robert C. Pianta and his associates bring together foremost experts to examine what works in promoting all children's school readiness and social-emotional development in preschool and the primary grades. Exemplary programs, instructional practices, and professional development initiatives?and the systems needed to put them into place?are described. The volume presents cutting-edge findings on the family and social context of early education and explores ways to strengthen collaboration between professionals and parents.
Download or read book Lone Star Tarnished written by Cal Jillson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-08-09 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Texas pride, like everything else in the state, is larger than life. So, too, perhaps, are the state’s challenges. Lone Star Tarnished approaches public policy in the nation’s most populous "red state" from historical, comparative, and critical perspectives. The historical perspective provides the scope for asking how various policy domains have developed in Texas history. In each chapter, Cal Jillson compares Texas public policy choices and results with those of other states and the United States in general. Finally, the critical perspective allows readers to question the balance of benefits and costs attendant to what is often referred to as "the Texas way" or "the Texas model" and to assess the many claims of Texas’s exceptionalism. Through Jillson’s lively and lucid prose, students are well equipped to analyse how Texas has done and is doing compared to selected states and the national average over time and today. This text is aimed at students and professors of Texas politics who want to stress history, political culture, and public policy. New to the Fourth Edition Fully updated to include the most recent Texas elections and political events Covers the 2019 legislative session Highlights new population data, with projections forward to 2050, recently released by the U.S. Census and the Texas State Data Center. Explores the dramatic increases in Texas oil and gas production and their impact on global and U.S. prices and on the profitability and the viability of many Texas producers in light of the recent plunge in prices. All figures and tables include the most recent data available.
Download or read book Teacher Evaluation Around the World written by Jorge Manzi and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-10-29 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents some of the leading technical, professional, and political challenges associated with the development and implementation of teacher evaluation systems, along with characterizing some of these systems in different countries around the world. The book promotes a broader comprehension of the complexities associated with this kind of initiatives, which have gained relevance in the last two decades, especially in the context of policies aimed at improving the quality of education. The first section of the book includes conceptual chapters that will detail some of the central debates around teacher evaluation, such as a) performance evaluation versus teaching effectiveness; b) tensions between formative and summative uses of evaluation; c) relationship between evaluation and teacher professionalization; and d) political tensions around teacher evaluation. In the second section, the book addresses specific examples of national or state-wide initiatives in the field of teacher evaluation. For this section, the authors have invited contributions that reflect experiences in North America, Asia, Europe, Oceania, and Latin America. In each chapter, a teacher evaluation system is presented, including their main results and validity evidence, as well as the main challenges associated with its design and implementation. This wide-ranging presentation of teacher evaluation systems around the world is a valuable reference to understand the diverse challenges for the implementation of teacher evaluation programs. The presence of conceptual chapters with others that illustrate how teacher evaluation has been implemented in different contexts gives the reader a comprehensive view of the complex nature of teacher evaluation, considering their technical and political underpinnings. It is a valuable source for anyone interested in the design, improvement, and implementation of teacher evaluation systems.
Download or read book Teacher Preparation as an Inspirational Practice written by Shelley Sherman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-07-18 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How can teacher educators provide prospective teachers with a philosophical foundation for dimensions of teaching associated with responsiveness to students? How can they help focus teacher candidates, during their through coursework and, especially, during clinical experiences, on developing their capacity to be responsive to students as unique human beings? Drawing from the literature base on teaching’s moral dimensions, this book establishes a conceptual framework for responsiveness, describes obstacles to its actualization, and suggests approaches for nurturing responsive capacities in teacher candidates. Voices of teacher candidates and teacher educators animate the conversation about responsiveness . Philosophy and practice are situated within the context of tensions between standardization and teachers’ commitments to remain true to the unique needs of students. The book provides multiple entry points for approaching the topic of responsiveness, including scholarly literature, qualitative data analysis, the author’s personal voice as a teacher educator, and the voices of other teacher educators and of teacher candidates discussing personal experiences, including successes and challenges within clinical experiences. Philosophy and practice are intertwined and practice-based interventions are suggested.
Download or read book On Class Race and Educational Reform written by Antonia Darder and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2023-03-23 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On Class, Race, and Educational Reform provokes new dialogue between Marxists, critical race theory scholars, and other race-inspired educational theorists with the aim of countering racism and class inequalities. The book opens with a lead chapter by Howard Ryan, a doctoral student with a background in teaching and labor organizing, that substantively engages questions of class, race, and educational reform. In response to the opening chapter, educational theorists from Germany, South Africa, the UK, and the USA, provide insightful and penetrating responses highlighting the differences and similarities in perspectives. The responses show how educators can overcome theoretical differences to create international collaborations and educational campaigns of solidarity that counter the treacherous impact of racism and class inequalities in the classroom and beyond. The book includes a Foreword by Stephen Brookfield (University of St Thomas, USA) and an Afterword by Cheryl Matias (University of Kentucky, USA).
Download or read book What Lies Ahead for America s Children and Their Schools written by Richard Sousa and published by Hoover Institution Press. This book was released on 2014-03-01 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The coming decade holds immense potential for dramatic improvement in U.S. education and in the achievement of American children and in this volume, members of the Hoover Institution’s Koret Task Force on K–12 Education examine both the potential gains and the pitfalls that lie ahead, informed by where U.S. education has been, what changes have been made in recent years, and what’s still required for the comprehensive overhaul that this vital enterprise so urgently needs. Looking backward is infinitely easier than predicting the future, but planning for the future is necessary if anything is to change and by analyzing the recent past and present condition of American primary and secondary school education across a host of key topics, task force members in this volume chart a bold course for the years ahead. Optimistic about the opportunities at hand, they identify essential—and feasible—reforms as well as the barriers that must be overcome if those changes are to occur. They offer high-quality scholarship and thoughtful prescriptions for productive policy alternatives.
Download or read book Teaching Talent written by Rachel E. Curtis and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Teaching Talent presents a framework for human capital development that draws on a two-year initiative by the Aspen Institute Education and Society Program to research sectors that have effective, well-developed human capital systems and point the way toward human capital innovations in public education. About 80 percent of education spending is devoted to personnel, yet the capacity of schools and districts to recruit, develop, and retain top talent is stunningly low compared with other knowledge sectors. This problem is most profoundly felt in urban school systems, which creates tremendous inequity for the students who most need a high-quality education. Research findings make it clear that human capital is one of the most important levers we have for improving school effectiveness and student achievement. However, educators, district leaders, and policy makers are just beginning to recognize that strengthening human capital should be their top priority--and to act on that recognition. The book first identifies the elements of a robust human capital strategy in education--teacher recruitment and career development; the principal's role in ensuring teacher quality; and the district's role in creating the conditions necessary to support effective human capital management. It then offers a comprehensive, visionary framework that weaves these elements together.
Download or read book World Yearbook of Education 2012 written by Gita Steiner-Khamsi and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-03-12 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The phenomenon of "travelling reforms" has become an object of great professional interest and intensive academic scrutiny. The fact that the same set of educational reforms is transferred from one country to another made scholars wonder whether policy transfer has increased as a result of globalization. But also the fact that policy makers increasingly import "best practices "and international standards and use them as a tool to accelerate reform has captured the imagination of many that deal with policy studies. An international comparative perspective is key for understanding why reforms travel from one corner of the world to another. Not surprisingly, the study of policy borrowing and lending constitutes one of the core research topics of comparative policy studies; a new area of research that links comparative education with policy studies. The World Yearbook of Education 2012 brings together a diverse range of perspectives on education policy through contributions from internationally renowned authors. It reflects on the way policy borrowing and lending is reconfiguring the world of education and offers a new collection of insights into the changes occurring across the world. It particularly focuses on: The political and economic reasons for policy borrowing, The agencies, international networks and regimes that instigate policy change, The process of borrowing and lending The impact of these systems, agendas and institutions on indigenous settings. This book will prove invaluable to researchers of globalization and to policy experts, especially those interested in comparative and international educational studies. It is also essential reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students and anyone involved in the sociology, economy or history of education. Gita Steiner-Khamsi is Professor of Comparative and International Education at Teachers College Columbia University, New York, US. Florian Waldow is Research Director at the University of Münster, Germany.
Download or read book International Handbook of Teacher Quality and Policy written by Motoko Akiba and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-09-01 with total page 880 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The International Handbook of Teacher Quality and Policy is a comprehensive resource that examines how teacher quality is conceptualized, negotiated, and contested, and teacher policies are developed and implemented by global, national, and local policy actors. Edited by two of the leading comparative authorities in the field, it draws on the research and contributions of scholars from across the globe to explore five central questions: How has teacher quality been conceptualized from various disciplinary and theoretical perspectives? How are global and transnational policy actors and networks influencing teacher policies and practices? What are the perspectives and experiences of teachers in local policy contexts? What do comparative research studies tell us about teachers and how their work and policy contexts influence their teaching? How have various countries implemented policies aimed at improving teacher quality and how have these policies influenced teachers and students? The international contributors represent a wide variety of scholars who identify global dynamics influencing policy discourses on teacher quality, and examine national and local teaching and policy environments influencing teacher policy development and implementation in various countries. Divided into five sections, the book brings together the latest conceptual and empirical studies on teacher quality and teacher policies to inform future policy directions for recruiting, educating, and supporting the teaching profession.
Download or read book Children s Exploration and Cultural Formation written by Mariane Hedegaard and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-02-28 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This open access book examines the educational conditions that support cultures of exploration in kindergartens. It conceptualises cultures of exploration, whether those cultures are created through children’s own engagement or are demanded of them through undertaking specific tasks within different institutional settings. It shows how the conditions for children’s exploration form a web of activities in different settings with social relationships, local landscapes and artefacts. The book builds on the understanding of cultural traditions as deeply implicated in the developmental processes, meaning that local considerations must be reflected in education for sustainable futures. Therefore the book examines and conceptualises exploration and cultural formation through locally situated cases and navigates toward global educational concepts. The book provides different windows into how children may explore in everyday practice settings in kindergarten, and contributes to a loci-based, ecological, integral knowledge relevant for early childhood education.
Download or read book LGBTQ Issues in Education written by George Wimberly and published by . This book was released on 2015-04-19 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: LGBTQ Issues in Education: Advancing a Research Agenda examines the current state of the knowledge on LGBTQ issues in education and addresses future research directions. The editor and authors draw on existing literature, theories, and data as they synthesize key areas of research. Readers studying LGBTQ issues or working on adjacent topics will find the book to be an invaluable tool as it sets forth major findings and recommendations for additional research. Equally important, the book brings to light the importance of investing in research and data on a topic of critical educational and social significance.
