Evidence is increasingly being demanded before education policy in Canada is developed. Unfortunately, all too often education research and policy proposals come from relatively isolated perspectives. This volume arose from a project that brought together a diverse group of stakeholders as part of an ongoing effort to improve communications between relevant groups.
Americans worry continually about their schools with frequent discussions of the "crisis" in American education, of the "failures" of the public school systems, and of the inability of schools to meet the current challenges of contemporary life. Such concerns date back at least to the nineteenth century. A thread that weaves its way through the critiques of American elementary and secondary schools is that the educational system is not serving its children well, that more should be done to enhance achievement and higher performance. These critiques first began when the United States was industrializing and were later amplified when the Soviets and Japan were thought to be grinding down the competitive position of America. At the start of the twenty-first century, as we discuss globalization and maintaining our leadership position in the world economy, they are being heard again. The Urban School: A Factory for Failure challenges these assumptions about American education. Indeed, a basic premise of the book is that the American school system is working quite well-doing exactly what is expected of it. To wit, that the schools in the United States affirm, reflect, and reinforce the social inequalities that exist in the social structures of the society. Stated differently, the schools are not great engines for equalizing the existing social inequalities. Rather, they work to reinforce the social class differences that we have had in the past and continue to have in more pronounced ways at present. Rist uses both sociological and anthropological methods to examine life in one segregated African-American school in the mid-western United States. A classroom of some thirty children were followed from their first day of kindergarten through the second grade. Detailed accounts of the day-by-day process of sorting, stratifying, and separating the children by social class backgrounds demonstrates the means of ensuring that both the poor and middle-class students soon learned their appropriate place in the social hierarchy of the school. Instructional time, discipline, and teacher attention all varied by social class of the students, with those at the bottom of the ladder consistently receiving few positive rewards and many negative sanctions. When The Urban School was first published in 1973, the National School Boards Association called it one of the ten most influential books on American education for the year. It remains essential reading for educators, sociologists, and economists.
For more than two decades, the concept of student engagement has grown from simple attention in class to a construct comprised of cognitive, emotional, and behavioral components that embody and further develop motivation for learning. Similarly, the goals of student engagement have evolved from dropout prevention to improved outcomes for lifelong learning. This robust expansion has led to numerous lines of research across disciplines and are brought together clearly and comprehensively in the Handbook of Research on Student Engagement. The Handbook guides readers through the field’s rich history, sorts out its component constructs, and identifies knowledge gaps to be filled by future research. Grounding data in real-world learning situations, contributors analyze indicators and facilitators of student engagement, link engagement to motivation, and gauge the impact of family, peers, and teachers on engagement in elementary and secondary grades. Findings on the effectiveness of classroom interventions are discussed in detail. And because assessing engagement is still a relatively new endeavor, chapters on measurement methods and issues round out this important resource. Topical areas addressed in the Handbook include: Engagement across developmental stages. Self-efficacy in the engaged learner. Parental and social influences on engagement and achievement motivation. The engaging nature of teaching for competency development. The relationship between engagement and high-risk behavior in adolescents. Comparing methods for measuring student engagement. An essential guide to the expanding knowledge base, the Handbook of Research on Student Engagement serves as a valuable resource for researchers, scientist-practitioners, and graduate students in such varied fields as clinical child and school psychology, educational psychology, public health, teaching and teacher education, social work, and educational policy.
Praise for The Teaching Portfolio "This new edition of a classic text has added invaluable, immediately useful material. It's a must-read for faculty, department chairs, and academic administrators." —Irene W. D. Hecht, director, Department Leadership Programs, American Council on Education "This book offers a wealth of wisdom and materials. It contains essential knowledge, salient advice, and an immediately useful model for faculty engaged in promotion or tenure." —Raymond L. Calabrese, professor of educational administration, The Ohio State University "The Teaching Portfolio provides the guidelines and models that faculty need to prepare quality portfolios, plus the standards and practices required to evaluate them." —Linda B. Nilson, director, Office of Teaching Effectiveness and Innovation, Clemson University "Focused on reflection, sound assessment, and collaboration, this inspiring and practical book should be read by every graduate student, faculty member, and administrator." —John Zubizarreta, professor of English, Columbia College "All the expanded and new sections of this book add real value, but administrators and review committees will clearly benefit from the new section on how to evaluate portfolios with a validated template." —Barbara Hornum, director, Center for Academic Excellence, Drexel University "This book is practical, insightful, and immediately useful. It's an essential resource for faculty seeking promotion/tenure or who want to improve their teaching." —Michele Stocker-Barkley, faculty, Department of Psychology, Kishwaukee Community College "The Teaching Portfolio has much to say to teachers of all ranks, disciplines, and institutions. It offers a rich compendium of practical guidelines, examples, and resources." —Mary Deane Sorcinelli, Associate Provost for Faculty Development, University of Massachusetts Amherst "Teaching portfolios help our Board on Rank and Tenure really understand the quality and value of individual teaching contributions." —Martha L. Wharton, Assistant Vice President for Academic Affairs and Diversity, Loyola University, Maryland
Learning Patterns in Higher Education brings together a cutting edge international team of contributors to critically review our current understanding of how students and adults learn, how differences and changes in the way students learn can be measured in a valid and reliable way, and how the quality of student learning may be enhanced. There is substantial evidence that students in higher education have a characteristic way of learning, sometimes called their learning orientation (Biggs 1988), learning style (Evans et al. 2010) or learning pattern (Vermunt and Vermetten 2004). However, recent research in the field of student learning has resulted in multi-faceted and sometimes contradictory results which may reflect conceptual differences and differences in measurement of student learning in each of the studies. This book deals with the need for further clarification of how students learn in higher education in the 21st century and to what extent the measurements often used in learning pattern studies are still up to date or can be advanced with present methodological and statistical insights to capture the most important differences and changes in student learning. The contributions in the book are organized in two parts: a first conceptual and psychological part in which the dimensions of student learning in the 21st century are discussed and a second empirical part in which questions related to how students’ learning can be measured and how it develops are considered. Areas covered include: Cultural influences on learning patterns Predicting learning outcomes Student centred learning environments and self-directed learning Mathematics learning This indispensable book covers multiple conceptual perspectives on how learning patterns can be described and effects and developments can be measured, and will not only be helpful for ‘learning researchers’ as such but also for educational researchers from the broad domain of educational psychology, motivation psychology and instructional sciences, who are interested in student motivation, self-regulated learning, effectiveness of innovative learning environments, as well as assessment and evaluation of student characteristics and learning process variables.
Le terme promotion de la santé en Afrique, près de 30 ans après l'adoption de la Charte d'Ottawa, continue d'avoir des connotations complètement hors du sens que lui confère cette charte. Cela n'est pas étonnant quand on sait que la notion de santé dans ce contexte africain équivaut à la lutte contre la maladie à travers les soins de santé dispensés par des professionnels de la santé dans des formations sanitaires et les hôpitaux. L'évolution que connait le continent depuis quelques décennies est de donner un peu plus de place à la communauté à travers les relais communautaires dans une participation communautaire vidée de son contenu, car le pouvoir n'est jamais passé entre les mains des communautés.C'est au vu de tout ceci que le présent ouvrage à sa raison d'être pour expliquer les fondements de l'autonomisation communautaire et de la promotion de la santé avec leur importance pour la région africaine en proie aux mauvais indicateurs de santé comparativement aux autres régions du monde.
