Product Description: Since the late 1970s, Sri Lanka has undergone a socio-economic transformation, from protectionism towards economic liberalisation and increasing integration into the world economy. Through a systematic comparison of these periods of economic change (1956–1977, and 1977 to the present), Angela W...read more

Product Description: Exploring the theoretical, policy and classroom (pedagogical) dimensions of transformative change within the context of inclusive education policy and practice, this book documents how ideological presuppositions and professional practice should be transformed in order to meet learner diversity in effective and non-discriminatory ways...read more

Product Description: Rethinking US Education Policy links proposals on educational policy to the need for a new sociopolitical framework that might allow for improved thinking on educational reform. Using research data produced by the Obama administration, including public policy texts, and interviews with scholars and experts on the knowledge economy and education, Araya argues that the rhetoric on the knowledge economy has come to dominate and structure a wide range of educational reform policies, and explores sociopolitical proposals for rethinking US educational reform...read more

A public school principal’s account of the courageous leaders who have dismantled the tracking systems in their schools in order to desegregate classrooms  What would happen if a school eliminated the “tracks” that rank students based on their perceived intellectual abilities? Would low-achieving students fall behind and become frustrated? Would their higher-achieving peers suffer from a “watered-down” curriculum? Or is tracking itself the problem? A growing body of research shows that tracking doesn’t increase learning for the minority and low-income students who are overrepresented in low-track classrooms. This de facto segregation has led many civil rights advocates to argue that tracking is turning back the clock on equal education.   As a principal at a New York high school, Carol Corbett Burris believed that the curriculum for the best students was the best curriculum for all. She helped lead a bold plan to eliminate tracking from her school, and the results couldn’t have been further from the doom-and-gloom scenarios of tracking proponents. Instead, there was a dramatic improvement in the achievement of all students, across racial and socioeconomic divisions, and a near elimination of the achievement gap. Today, due to those efforts, International Baccalaureate English is the twelfth-grade curriculum for South Side students, and all students take the same challenging courses, together, to prepare them for college.   In On the Same Track, Burris draws on her own experience, on the experiences of other schools, and on the latest research to make an impassioned case for detracking. Not only does the practice of tracking fail to benefit lower-tracked students, as Burris shows, but it also results in the resegregation of classrooms. Furthermore, she argues that many of today’s popular reforms emanate from the same “sort and select” mentality that reinforces social stratification based on race and class.   On the Same Track is a rousing, controversial, and yet optimistic account of how we need to change our assumptions and policies if we are to live up to the promise of democratic public education. Only by holding all students to the same high standards can we ensure that all have the same opportunity to live up to their full potential.

Product Description: Countering the commonplace view of teaching as inclusive, this collection highlights the persistence of inequalities in the teaching profession. It explores the ways in which gender, ethnicity, social class and other identity markers shape teachers' experiences in a range of institutional and national contexts...read more

Drawing on his widely read Huffington Post columns―rated one of the top educational blogs in the United States―Alan Singer introduces readers to contemporary issues in education in the United States. The issues are presented with a point of view and an edge intended to promote widespread classroom debate and discussion. Each section opens with a new topical summary essay followed by a series of brief essays updated and adapted from Huffington Post columns. The book includes guest contributions, guiding questions, and responses to essays by teacher education students and teachers to further classroom discussion. Education Flashpoints is written in a conversational style that draws readers into a series of debates by presenting issues in a clear and concise manner, but also with a touch of irony and a bit of rhetorical bite. The topics examined in these essays read like the latest newspaper headlines in the battle to define public education in the United States.

Product Description: Through a case study of the Los Angeles city school district from the 1950s through the 1970s, Judith Kafka explores the intersection of race, politics, and the bureaucratic organization of schooling. Kafka argues that control over discipline became increasingly centralized in the second half of the twentieth century in response to pressures exerted by teachers, parents, students, principals, and local politicians - often at different historical moments, and for different purposes...read more

Product Description: School Choice in China explores the major characteristics of schooling options in China, highlighting how largely middle-class parents exploit their cultural, economic and social capital for their children's admission into choice schools...read more

Product Description: Some of the most prominent sociologists working in education today have collaborated to address a wide range of empirical and theoretical issues. Adopting an international perspective, this book foregrounds cutting-edge research that highlights both the diversity and complexity of understanding education in society...read more

Product Description: Teacher Education through Active Engagement identifies and addresses a contemporary issue: the ways in which teaching and teacher education are articulated by politicians, civil servants, business leaders and educational entrepreneurs intent on profit-making in the current global neoliberal policy context...read more

Product Description: Finnish education has been a focus of global interest since its first PISA success in 2001. After years of superficial celebration, astonishment and educational tourism, the focus has recently shifted to what is possibly the most interesting element of this Finnish success story: that Finnish schools have been effectively applying methods that go against the flow of global education policy with no testing, no inspection, no hard evaluation, no detailed national curriculum, no accountability and no hard competition...read more

Product Description: A leading American legal scholar offers a surprising account of the incompleteness of prevailing theories of freedom of speech. Robert C. Post shows that the familiar understanding of the First Amendment, which stresses the “marketplace of ideas” and which holds that "everyone is entitled to an opinion," is inadequate to create and preserve the expert knowledge that is necessary for a modern democracy to thrive...read more

Product Description: Award-winning education journalist Peg Tyre mines up-to-the-minute research to equip parents with the tools and knowledge necessary to get their children the best education possibleWe all know that the quality of education served up to our children in U...read more

Product Description: Inside the race to save a great American high school, where making the numbers is only the beginningBeing principal was never her dream. Anabel Garza, the young widow of a young cop, got by teaching English to immigrant children, taking college classes at night and raising her son...read more

Product Description: A Student’s Guide to Education Studies is a much-needed resource for any undergraduate making their first explorations into the fascinating world of education. The first publication of this book in 2002 helped to define the nature of the subject, introducing topics into the field which had not been previously considered...read more

Product Description: This pioneering book examines how policies to raise efficiency and performance in Europe's universities have profoundly altered ties between government, society and higher education, outlining how Evaluation Agencies have urged Europe's universities to meet the challenge of modernization...read more

Product Description: China has been experiencing great economic and social changes since the late 1970s when the Reform and Opening-Up policies were accepted. While some Sinologists argue that such changes have made the Chinese structure of authority fragmented and discrepant, and have weakened the directive power of the Central Government, a few others emphasize that despite a certain degree of economic decentralization and segmentation of public power, the Central Government has been seeking ways to hold the nation together...read more

Product Description: Currently, linguistic minority students – students who speak a language other than English at home – represent 21% of the entire K-12 student population and 11% of the college student population. Bringing together emerging scholarship on the growing number of college-bound linguistic minority students in the K-12 pipeline, this ground-breaking volume showcases new research on these students’ preparation for, access to, and persistence in college...read more

Product Description: Launching Palgrave’s new Interagency Working in Health and Social Care series, this book provides one of the first reflective assessments of the Every Child Matters legacy of New Labour. Woven through with the voice of the child, it addresses the history, successes and limitations of the ECM agenda, in terms of both principle and practice...read more

Product Description: Two persistent dilemmas haunt school reform: curriculum politics and classroom constancy. Both undermined the 1960s' new social studies, a dynamic reform movement centered on inquiry, issues, and social activism. Dramatic academic freedom controversies ended reform and led to a conservative restoration...read more

Product Description: The inside story of the most-watched attempt to transform a troubled high school Stray Dogs, Saints, and Saviors tells the real-life story of Locke High School. Locke High– originally known for its excellence–became one of the toughest, most dysfunctional schools in the nation...read more