Product Description: Teaching Toward Democracy examines the contested space of schooling and school reform with a focus on the unique challenges and opportunities that teaching in a democratic society provides. Chapters are written in the spirit of notes, conversations and letters the nationally recognized team of authors wish they received in their journeys into teaching...read more

Product Description: Teaching for Democracy in an Age of Economic Disparity addresses the intersections between democratic education and economic inequality in American society. Drawing upon well-established theoretical constructs in the literature on democratic citizenship as well as recent events, this volume outlines the ways in which students can not only be educated about democracy, but become actively engaged in the social issues of their time...read more

Sociocultural Studies in Education: Critical Thinking for Democracy fills a void in the education of educators and citizens in a democracy. It explores some of the fundamentals around which disagreements in education arise. It presents a process with which those new to these debates can understand often confusing and entwined sets of facts and logics. This book leads the reader through some general concepts and intellectual skills that provide the basis for making sense out of the debates around public education in a democracy. This book can be seen as a primer on how to read texts about education. It acknowledges that good teachers must be not only trained to teach, but also educated about education. It presents the various themes and currents found within the arguments and narratives that people use to represent public education. It assumes that the more those interested in education know about how to see through the rhetoric, the better they will be at discerning whose interests are served by which texts.

Product Description: This book articulates a path for a renewed conception of-and commitment to-the public dimensions of schooling. It is an interdisciplinary book of philosophy and politics, written for educational leaders working in or on behalf of public schooling...read more

Product Description: Lost amid the debate over educational policies are the stories of the educators, parents, and students who are most affected by legislation such as No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top. In Educational Courage, veteran educators and activists Nancy Schniedewind and Mara Sapon-Shevin bring together the voices of those who are resisting market-driven initiatives such as high-stakes testing, charter schools, mayoral control, and merit pay...read more

A collection of the finest works of scholarship examining education - mostly higher education - as civic engagement published over the last decade in JAC, an award-winning journal of rhetoric, politics, and culture.

Product Description: At a time when America’s schools face many of the most difficult challenges ever, the authors of Leading for Democracy: A Case-Based Approach to Principal Preparation return the reader to an agenda for democratic leadership for schools...read more

Product Description: This work calls for the reclamation of the original democratic purposes of civic engagement and examines the requisite transformation of higher education required to achieve it. The contributors highlight the current practice of civic engagement and point to the institutional change needed to realize its democratic ideals...read more

Product Description: This compelling new book asks: How can American education policy be consistent with democratic ideals? Robust democracy is the combination of participation, self-rule, equality, understanding, and inclusion, but these norms can produce contradictory policy...read more

Sketches of Democracy is a captivating book that chronicles the first year in the life of a new urban high school. Based on journal entries and educational literature, this book traces the author’s challenging journey toward creating a democratic community of learners within a tangle of socio-economic and political issues. An experienced public school teacher and university educator, DeLorenzo brings a unique perspective to the teaching/learning process. Her poignant anecdotal stories, along with information from authoritative sources, provide a narrative that is deeply reflective and affecting. This book is a must-read for teachers, teacher candidates, and teacher educators who share a passion for teaching those on the margins of society.

Typically, school curriculum has been viewed through the lens of preparation for the workplace or higher education, both worthy objectives. However, this is not the only lens, and perhaps not even the most powerful one to use, if the goal is to optimize the educational system. Curriculum on the Edge of Survival, 2nd Edition, attempts to define basic aspects of the curriculum when viewed through the larger lens of a school as the principal instrument through which we maintain an effective democracy. In that case, the purpose of education is to prepare our students to take their rightful place as active members of a democracy. This purpose is larger than workplace or college readiness, and in fact subsumes them. The second edition of Curriculum on the Edge of Survival posits four major starting points for education under the purpose of preparing students for functional membership in a democracy: kindness, thinking, problem solving, and communications. These four foundational elements should be taught in every class, at every level, every day. They form the backbone of a great educational system.

Product Description: After her school wins the coveted United States National Secondary Education Award, a school principal embarks upon an educational odyssey. The principal discovers that the reasons for winning the award are a sham! As her school falls apart, she begins to reflect on the stagnant school organization and the ineffective prescriptions for improvement...read more

Product Description: The book aims to change the conversation about sexuality education for adolescents, making it consistent with a democratic cultural politics that is attuned to changes in youth and popular culture. Traditional sex education is nearly obsolete; sexuality curriculum is now primarily learned through popular culture and youth culture, which teach young people what it means to be a man and a woman, gay and straight, white, black, and Latino, rich and poor – and what sexuality has to do with it...read more

This book describes in detail the attributes of learning communities and how these characteristics help students acquire a sense of moral responsibility and commitment to fellow students. Clifford H. Edwards provides an account of how schools fail to satisfy student needs and thus promote discipline problems. Special attention is given to children's need for self-direction and how empowering them can promote more responsible learning involvement. There is also a focus on the factors that motivate learning and those that do not and how teachers can help their students become more intrinsically interested in school learning. Constructivist learning theory is presented as the most accepted explanation of how children learn and how it articulates with the learning community approach to education. The inquiry learning strategy is given as the most effective way to apply constructivist learning theory in classrooms. Appropriate relationships and effective communications are presented as essential components of learning communities and how they accentuate the effectiveness of this learning orientation. Democratic discipline within learning communities is described in detail.

Product Description: How are we to understand the nature and value of higher education's public purposes, mission, and work in a democratic society? How do and how should academic professionals contribute to and participate in civic life in their practices as scholars, scientists, and educators?DEMOCRACY AND HIGHER EDUCATION addresses these questions by combining an examination of several normative traditions of civic engagement in American higher education with the presentation and interpretation of a dozen oral history profiles of contemporary practitioners...read more