There is a paradox at the heart of our lives. We all want more money, but as societies become richer, they do not become happier. This is not speculation: It's the story told by countless pieces of scientific research. We now have sophisticated ways of measuring how happy people are, and all the evidence shows that on average people have grown no happier in the last fifty years, even as average incomes have more than doubled. The central question the great economist Richard Layard asks in Happiness is this: If we really wanted to be happier, what would we do differently? First we'd have to see clearly what conditions generate happiness and then bend all our efforts toward producing them. That is what this book is about-the causes of happiness and the means we have to effect it. Until recently there was too little evidence to give a good answer to this essential question, but, Layard shows us, thanks to the integrated insights of psychology, sociology, applied economics, and other fields, we can now reach some firm conclusions, conclusions that will surprise you. Happiness is an illuminating road map, grounded in hard research, to a better, happier life for us all.
The sheer amount of resources on the subject of information literacy is staggering. Yet a comprehensive but concise roadmap specifically for librarians who are new to instruction, or who are charged with training someone who is, has remained elusive. Until now. This book cuts through the jargon and rhetoric to ease the transition into library instruction, offering support to all those involved, including library supervisors, colleagues, and trainees. Grounded in research on teaching and learning from numerous disciplines, not just library literature, this book shows how to set up new instruction librarians for success, with advice on completing an environmental scan, strategies for recruiting efficiently, and a training checklist; walks readers step by step through training a new hire or someone new to instruction, complete with hands-on activities and examples; explores the different roles an instruction librarian is usually expected to play, such as educator, project manager, instructional designer, and teaching partner; demonstrates the importance of performance evaluation and management, including assessment and continuing education, both formal and informal; and provides guided reading lists for further in-depth study of a topic. A starter kit for librarians new to instruction, this resource will be useful for training coordinators as well as for self-training.
What is understanding and how does it differ from knowledge? How can we determine the big ideas worth understanding? Why is understanding an important teaching goal, and how do we know when students have attained it? How can we create a rigorous and engaging curriculum that focuses on understanding and leads to improved student performance in today's high-stakes, standards-based environment? Authors Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe answer these and many other questions in this second edition of Understanding by Design. Drawing on feedback from thousands of educators around the world who have used the UbD framework since its introduction in 1998, the authors have greatly revised and expanded their original work to guide educators across the K-16 spectrum in the design of curriculum, assessment, and instruction. With an improved UbD Template at its core, the book explains the rationale of backward design and explores in greater depth the meaning of such key ideas as essential questions and transfer tasks. Readers will learn why the familiar coverage- and activity-based approaches to curriculum design fall short, and how a focus on the six facets of understanding can enrich student learning. With an expanded array of practical strategies, tools, and examples from all subject areas, the book demonstrates how the research-based principles of Understanding by Design apply to district frameworks as well as to individual units of curriculum. Combining provocative ideas, thoughtful analysis, and tested approaches, this new edition of Understanding by Design offers teacher-designers a clear path to the creation of curriculum that ensures better learning and a more stimulating experience for students and teachers alike.
Focused on physical literacy and measurable outcomes, empowering physical educators to help students meet the Common Core standards, and coming from a recently renamed but longstanding organization intent on shaping a standard of excellence in physical education, National Standards & Grade-Level Outcomes for K-12 Physical Education is all that and much more. Created by SHAPE America — Society of Health and Physical Educators (formerly AAHPERD) — this text unveils the new National Standards for K-12 Physical Education. The standards and text have been retooled to support students’ holistic development. This is the third iteration of the National Standards for K-12 Physical Education, and this latest version features two prominent changes: •The term physical literacy underpins the standards. It encompasses the three domains of physical education (psychomotor, cognitive, and affective) and considers not only physical competence and knowledge but also attitudes, motivation, and the social and psychological skills needed for participation. • Grade-level outcomes support the national physical education standards. These measurable outcomes are organized by level (elementary, middle, and high school) and by standard. They provide a bridge between the new standards and K-12 physical education curriculum development and make it easy for teachers to assess and track student progress across grades, resulting in physically literate students. In developing the grade-level outcomes, the authors focus on motor skill competency, student engagement and intrinsic motivation, instructional climate, gender differences, lifetime activity approach, and physical activity. All outcomes are written to align with the standards and with the intent of fostering lifelong physical activity. National Standards & Grade-Level Outcomes for K-12 Physical Education presents the standards and outcomes in ways that will help preservice teachers and current practitioners plan curricula, units, lessons, and tasks. The text also • empowers physical educators to help students meet the Common Core standards; • allows teachers to see the new standards and the scope and sequence for outcomes for all grade levels at a glance in a colorful, easy-to-read format; and • provides administrators, parents, and policy makers with a framework for understanding what students should know and be able to do as a result of their physical education instruction. The result is a text that teachers can confidently use in creating and enhancing high-quality programs that prepare students to be physically literate and active their whole lives.
New York Times Bestseller COVID-19 is speeding up history, but how? What is the shape of the world to come? Lenin once said, "There are decades when nothing happens and weeks when decades happen." This is one of those times when history has sped up. CNN host and best-selling author Fareed Zakaria helps readers to understand the nature of a post-pandemic world: the political, social, technological, and economic consequences that may take years to unfold. Written in the form of ten "lessons," covering topics from natural and biological risks to the rise of "digital life" to an emerging bipolar world order, Zakaria helps readers to begin thinking beyond the immediate effects of COVID-19. Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World speaks to past, present, and future, and, while urgent and timely, is sure to become an enduring reflection on life in the early twenty-first century.
Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf's fourth novel, offers the reader an impression of a single June day in London in 1923. Clarissa Dalloway, the wife of a Conservative member of parliament, is preparing to give an evening party, while the shell-shocked Septimus Warren Smith hears the birds in Regent's Park chattering in Greek. There seems to be nothing, except perhaps London, to link Clarissa and Septimus. She is middle-aged and prosperous, with a sheltered happy life behind her; Smith is young, poor, and driven to hatred of himself and the whole human race. Yet both share a terror of existence, and sense the pull of death. The world of Mrs Dalloway is evoked in Woolf's famous stream of consciousness style, in a lyrical and haunting language which has made this, from its publication in 1925, one of her most popular novels.
If you are looking for the definitive resource to help you measure your students’ achievement, your search is over. PE Metrics: Assessing Student Performance Using the National Standards & Grade-Level Outcomes for K-12 Physical Education, Third Edition, aligns with SHAPE America’s National Standards and Grade-Level Outcomes for K-12 Physical Education, was created by SHAPE America and its writing team, and was reviewed by researchers and teachers with expertise in assessment. The result is a text that you can use with confidence as you help develop physical literacy in your students. Written for physical educators, administrators, and curriculum writers (and for physical education majors and minors), this latest edition offers the following: • 130 ready-to-use assessments for kindergarten through grade 12 (65 elementary, 43 middle school, and 22 high school) • Worksheets, checklists, and rubrics that support the assessments • Guidance on creating your own assessments for any lesson or unit These assessments are aligned with the three SHAPE America lesson planning books for elementary, middle, and secondary school and dovetail with SHAPE America’s The Essentials of Teaching Physical Education. The assessments can be used as they are, or you can modify them or use them as samples in creating assessments that are best suited to your needs. PE Metrics, now in a four-color design, is organized into four main parts: Part I introduces the purpose and uses of assessment, how to develop an assessment plan, and the various types of assessments and tools you can use. Part II contains sample assessments for students in grades K-5, focusing on fundamental motor skills; as such, the elementary-level assessments center heavily on Standard 1. In part III, the emphasis shifts to middle school assessments, with a concentration on Standard 2 and on the categories of dance and rhythms, invasion games, net/wall games, fielding/striking games, outdoor pursuits, aquatics, and individual-performance activities. Part IV offers sample assessments for high school students, with a priority on providing evidence of the knowledge and skills students will need to remain active and fit after they leave high school. This resource provides a comprehensive, performance-based assessment system that enables you to incorporate assessment into every facet of your teaching, create assessments that are unique to your program, and measure your students’ performance against the grade-level outcomes. The assessments are process focused and are designed to measure multiple constructs as well as provide meaningful feedback to students—ultimately helping them to develop holistically across all three learning domains (psychomotor, cognitive, and affective). PE Metrics will help you instill in students the knowledge, skills, and confidence they need to enjoy a lifetime of healthful physical activity.
This book introduces readers to the development of Lesson Study (LS) in the UK, making historical connections to the growth of Lesson Study in Japan, East Asia, the US and Europe. It explains how to conduct LS in schools and educational institutions, providing examples of compelling, externally evaluated impact outcomes for both primary learners and teacher learners, and vivid exemplars of LS in action across age ranges and curricular contexts. Each chapter presents international research outcomes that clearly demonstrate how and why LS has a place within teacher learning approaches that have the greatest impact and the greatest capacity building potential for creating outstanding teaching. This is supported by primary research evidence, and linked with contemporary and recent high quality research worldwide into pupil learning, teacher learning, school improvement and system improvement. The book illustrates the diverse application of LS for innovating or transferring highly effective practices in a variety of contexts to boost learning for children with a range of challenges and specific needs. Lesson Study provides a global perspective on the development of LS worldwide, exploring its impact on innovation, creativity, curricula and achievement in a variety of contexts. It will be of key interest to practitioners in schools and teacher education institutions, researchers, and policy and decision-makers at local, national and international levels. The book’s explicit focus on the leadership of local authorities will also make it valuable reading for all leaders of professional development and school improvement.
• New York Times bestseller • The 100 most substantive solutions to reverse global warming, based on meticulous research by leading scientists and policymakers around the world “At this point in time, the Drawdown book is exactly what is needed; a credible, conservative solution-by-solution narrative that we can do it. Reading it is an effective inoculation against the widespread perception of doom that humanity cannot and will not solve the climate crisis. Reported by-effects include increased determination and a sense of grounded hope.” —Per Espen Stoknes, Author, What We Think About When We Try Not To Think About Global Warming “There’s been no real way for ordinary people to get an understanding of what they can do and what impact it can have. There remains no single, comprehensive, reliable compendium of carbon-reduction solutions across sectors. At least until now. . . . The public is hungry for this kind of practical wisdom.” —David Roberts, Vox “This is the ideal environmental sciences textbook—only it is too interesting and inspiring to be called a textbook.” —Peter Kareiva, Director of the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, UCLA In the face of widespread fear and apathy, an international coalition of researchers, professionals, and scientists have come together to offer a set of realistic and bold solutions to climate change. One hundred techniques and practices are described here—some are well known; some you may have never heard of. They range from clean energy to educating girls in lower-income countries to land use practices that pull carbon out of the air. The solutions exist, are economically viable, and communities throughout the world are currently enacting them with skill and determination. If deployed collectively on a global scale over the next thirty years, they represent a credible path forward, not just to slow the earth’s warming but to reach drawdown, that point in time when greenhouse gases in the atmosphere peak and begin to decline. These measures promise cascading benefits to human health, security, prosperity, and well-being—giving us every reason to see this planetary crisis as an opportunity to create a just and livable world.
It is now time to break down the ideology of exceptionalism in the United States and other Anglo-American nations if we are to develop reforms that will truly inspire our teachers to improve learning for all our studentsespecially those who struggle the most. In that essential quest, Pasi Sahlberg is undoubtedly one of the very best teachers of all. From the Foreword by Andy Hargreaves, Lynch School of Education, Boston College Finnish Lessons is a first-hand, comprehensive account of how Finland built a world-class education system during the past three decades. The author traces the evolution of education policies in Finland and highlights how they differ from the United States and other industrialized countries. He shows how rather than relying on competition, choice, and external testing of students, education reforms in Finland focus on professionalizing teachers work, developing instructional leadership in schools, and enhancing trust in teachers and schools. This book details the complexity of educational change and encourages educators and policymakers to develop effective solutions for their own districts and schools.
