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 new edition brings McLaren's popular, classic textbook into a new era of Common Core Standards and online education. The book is renowned for its clear, provocative classroom narratives and its coverage of political, economic, and social factors that are undervalued in other educational textbooks...read more

A powerful examination of the rightist resurgence in education and the challenges it presents to concerned educators, Official Knowledge analyzes the effects of conservative beliefs and strategies on educational policy and practice. Apple looks specifically at the conservative agenda's incursion into education through the curriculum, textbook adoption policies and the efforts of the private and business sectors to centralize its interests within schools. At the same time, however, he points out areas of hope for the future, showing how students and teachers have continued the struggle and are now successfully engaged in building more democratic education policies and practices. Finally, Apple writes in personal terms about his own teaching techniques and work with students which challenge some of the ideological and educational policies and practices of the Right.

This much-anticipated fourth edition of Exploring Education offers an alternative to traditional foundations texts by combining a point-of-view analysis with primary source readings. Pre- and in-service teachers will find a solid introduction to the foundations disciplines -- history, philosophy, politics, and sociology of education -- and their application to educational issues, including school organization and teaching, curriculum and pedagogic practices, education and inequality, and school reform and improvement. This edition features substantive updates, including the addition of discussion on the neo-liberal educational policy and recent debates about teacher evaluation, updated data and research, and new readings by leading researchers, such as Diane Ravitch, Robert Dreeben, and Helen F. Ladd. At a time when foundations of education are marginalized in many teacher education programs and teacher education reform pushes scripted approaches to curriculum and instruction, Exploring Education helps teachers to think critically about the "what" and "why" behind the most pressing issues in contemporary education.