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The prime focus on the social processes of schooling within educational ethnography has tended to marginalise or eschew the importance of other 'informal' educational sites. Other social institutions, such as family, community, media and popular culture, work and prisons are salient arenas in which behaviours and lives are regulated. They all interrelate and are all implicated in the generation, management and development of social identities and the social and cultural reproduction of structures and relations. Individuals, though, are not merely shaped by these social institutions, their agency is evident in the way they creatively adapt and accommodate to the tensions and constraints of economic, educational and social policies. The maintenance of self in these situations requires identity work involving mediation, conflict, contestation and modes of resistance, which often contribute to a continual reconstruction of situations and contexts.

This volume of Studies in Educational Ethnography focuses on identity and agency in a variety of social institutions in educational ethnography. The contributors explore these themes in a wide range of international contexts including; Belgium, Sweden, North America, South Africa and England. They demonstrate the capacity of educational ethnography to provide accounts of participants' perspectives and understandings to highlight the agency of educational subjects. ... Read more

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Demonstrating how schools can reduce conflict and bullying, this title promotes tolerance and stimulates a generally positive attitude to teaching and learning by creating an emotionally literate environment. The text includes: an array of case studies illustrating how different schools have implemented a strategy for emotional literacy; stimulating examples of good practice; practical ideas on how to introduce emotional literacy into schools or other organizations; and sources of additional information. ... Read more

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This volume is comprised of contributions from leading scholars in education and psychology. In part one of the book the authors provide insight into the psychology of change, examining:

• What factors work as catalysts for change in environments, institutions and people
• What factors hinder change
• When change is deemed beneficial

In the second part of this volume the authors turn their attention to the issue of peace education. They examine the types of problems that societies and scholars should identify and try to solve in hopes of building more peaceful environments. The final chapter is a biography honoring Professor Gavriel (Gabi) Salomon, a significant contributor to the vast literature on change.  This book is appropriate reading for professors, students and academics who are dedicated to fostering change to benefit institutions, environments and people.

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This book examines the use of language in face-to-face encounters between some university students and their academic counselors. It describes the role language plays in shaping institutional role identities, in accomplishing institutional tasks and activities, and in constituting associated knowledge and affective stances. It documents how the academic counselors and student clients do what they do through grammatical and interactional details. Put more generally, it investigates how certain aspects of institutional life are lived linguistically. Methodologically, this book focuses on specific lexicogrammatical forms, turns, sequences, and narrative episodes which constitute the seemingly routine, ordinary life of academic counseling. It relies on detailed transcripts from audio and video recordings of naturally occurring academic counseling activities, knowledge gained from participant observation, field notes and interview data to advance a tripartite approach to researching institutional discourse. ... Read more

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For the last half century, higher spending and many modern reforms have failed to raise the achievement of students in the United States to the levels of other economically advanced countries. A possible explanation, says Herbert Walberg, is that much current education theory is ill informed about scientific psychology, often drawing on fads and pop psychology, and contradicting well-evidenced behavioral insights. In Advancing Student Learning, Walberg draws on both psychological and economic research to describe how students actually learn and how family, classroom, and school practices can help them learn more effectively.

The author debunks many of the myths of modern education and presents research showing that young learners thrive when teachers have clear goals, plan effective activities to attain them, and measure student progress. He discusses the powerful influence of parents on what students learn within and outside school and how choice programs give parents a stronger role in their children's education. And he presents evidence to reveal why teachers' classroom practices-not their credentials or experience-are what makes a true difference in student learning.

Customer Reviews (1)

Short, and To the Point!
The purpose of this book is to describe how students learn, and to explain how family and school practices can help them learn more. Author Walberg, currently a distinguished fellow at the Hoover Institution and emeritus professor of education and psychology at the University of Illinois at Chicago, contends that relying on rising expenditures has led nowhere - it is time to instead to draw upon careful research instead.

Professor Walberg begins with the too-often forgotten sad state of U.S. pupil achievement vs. other nations - U.S. high-school students recently ranked 25th out of thirty countries in science, the hoped-for source of new high-paying jobs in high technology areas to replace those lost to off-shoring. This is not new news - similar findings were reported 30+ years ago. However, then the findings were 'excused' on the grounds that Americans educated a much higher proportion of their teenagers. No longer - between just 1995 and 2005 our high-school completion rates fell from 2nd to 21st among OECD nations, even though U.S. spending/pupil is among the world's highest.

Studentsthemselves recognize that substantial improvement is possible, and want to do so. A 1997 survey of teens found 75% said schools should promote only students who master the material, almost two-thirds reported they could do much better if they tried, and nearly 80% said students would learn more if schools made certain they were on time and did their homework. Other surveys find that educators' standards, especially those in colleges of education, are lax compared to those of the public. One obvious problem - time on task. High achieving schools spend about 75% of the time on instruction, while low-achieving schools average only 51%. The difference is taken up by tardiness, disruptions, and off-task activities.

Walberg, however, does not believe that schools are the primary determinant of pupil achievement. "In the first eighteen years of life, children spend only about 8 percent of their time in school. Therefore, psychological conditions in the 92% of the time for which parents are chiefly responsible greatly influence what students learn." Walberg suggests specific child-rearing practices to help build a positive approach to learning.

Psychologist Walberg also emphasizes the importance of pupil motivation, citing research showing that monetary incentives improved successful Advanced Placement course completion, as well as praise based on effort - from both parents and teachers.

Unfortunately, traditional recipes for improving schools, such as paying teachers according to years of experience and number of advanced courses, and reducing class size have repeatedly been found ineffectual in improving pupil outcomes. This finding holds whether evaluated through research findings or assessing historical trends. Classroom practices, not teacher credentials or experience, are what count. Walberg also has no sympathy for those claiming teachers are underpaid, pointing out that they work only about 61% the hours/year of other workers.


Summarizing, Walberg believes pupil achievement is best accomplished through:

Clear, measurable classroom goals

Frequent, close monitoring of results.

Appropriate reinforcement and positive correction.

Periodic information reports for parents, citizens, and school boards.

Utilization of efficient means for achieving the goals.


Bottom-Line: "Advancing Student Achievement" is important reading for those interested in improving American education. ... Read more

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As a result of the research taking place in cognitive science, neuroscience, the human genome project, physics and pharmacology, we are in the midst of a knowledge explosion. Never before have we had the potential for increasing our success with a wider range of students; knowing how students learn will inevitably lead us to more effective ways of teaching. In this groundbreaking work, Cram and Germinario present brain-based research in the language of laymen. More importantly, they show how administrators and teachers can use those findings to improve schools. This volume examines the mental models upon which schools operate, and how they blend (or compete) with the emerging frameworks for brain-compatible teaching and learning. ... Read more

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Informative overview of brain-based applications
The authors have surveyed extensive literature in recent studies of brain-compatible applications in learning and education.Although they use mostly secondary sources, they have provided a great service to school administrators and teachers.So much useful information has been distilled from numerous books and packed into this small book of just over 200 pages.

For example, on p.13, you get a list of Ron Brandt's principles of human learning: "People learn what is meaningful to them.People learn more when they accept challenging but achievable goals.Learning is developmental.Individuals learn differently.Leaning takes place through social interaction.People need feedback to learn.Succesful learning involves the use of strategies that themselves are learned.A positive emotional climate influences learning."

On the next page, you get another list of Caine and Caine's Twelve Principles of the Mind.Almost every page is filled with succinct summaries.Topics covered include: how we learn, memory, the importance of meaning and understanding, brain-compatible instruction, curriculum and teacher development. Senge's views on learning organizations and systems thinking have also been included for developing the school as a learning community.

This book is a very good introductory overview.For follow-up, I'd recommend: Brain-based Learning, Schools that Learn and Ten Steps to a Learning Organization. ... Read more

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The purpose of this series is to bring together the main currents in today's higher education and examine such crucial issues as the changing nature of education in the U.S., the considerable adjustment demanded of institutions, administrators, the faculty; the role of Catholic education; the remarkable growth of higher education in Latin America, contemporary educational concerns in Europe, and more. Among the many specific questions examined in individual articles are: Is it true that women are subtly changing the academic profession? How is power concentrated in academic organizations? How successful are Latin America's private universities? What is the correlation between higher education and employment in Spain? Is minority graduate education in the U.S. producing the desired results? ... Read more

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This study of 'transfer' addresses the perplexing question: How can students possess knowledge and skills in one set of circumstances and yet not be able to apply those same skills to other situations that require them? Madeline Hunter introduces four factors designed to aid the process of transfer and promote creativity and problem-solving techniques among students: similarity, association, degree of original learning, and critical attributes.

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This is an OCR edition without illustrations or index. It may have numerous typos or missing text. However, purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original rare book from GeneralBooksClub.com. You can also preview excerpts from the book there. Purchasers are also entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Volume: 1; Original Published by: Teachers college, Columbia university in 1913 in 352 pages; Subjects: Educational psychology; Education / Educational Psychology; Education / Educational Psychology; Psychology / Cognitive Psychology; Psychology / Statistics; ... Read more

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This book includes a thorough conceptual framework, with descriptions and “how to”applications of educational planning, architectural design, and research.Serving as both a reference and textbook, each of the 18 chapters includes exercises to expand traditional and computer-assisted facilities planning and design activities. The book is amenable to web-assisted instruction and there are numerous citations from the Internet.

Each chapter provides a special “reality-based”contribution to the educational facilities planning and design process.Ideas are conveyed through comprehensive descriptions, illustrations, summaries, and extended activities developed to increase understanding and emphasize the relevance of school planning and design in a regulated, political climate. The reader is guided to visualize a broader context for educational planning and design, where design principles are categorized according to building organization, primary education, shared school and community resources, character of all spaces, and site design and outdoor spaces.

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Jean M. Bartunek, the 2001-2002 President of the Academy of Management, has written an excellent scholarly book on organizational and educational change. Using a joint insider/outsider approach, this book tells the story of a change agent group--a group of teachers--that was creating change in its organization setting, a Network of Independent Schools. The group's focus was on empowerment and professional development for teachers in the Network. The book describes virtually everything that happened in the group over its first seven years and summarizes what happened during its final two years. It explores the identity, work, and evolution of change agent groups in organizations, with particular emphasis on teachers and educational change. Through the book's extensive quotations and narrative account, the reader is enabled to enter into the world of the teacher group studied over the course of its nine-year history.

In addition, the book includes analysis of the underlying processes involved in the change, focusing on the change agent group's identity, its actions and relationships with stakeholders as they jointly evolved over time, and their impacts on the vitality of the change effort. It contributes a new understanding of fundamental processes involved in organizational change, especially when viewed from the perspective of change agents. In addition, the book provides practical implications for change agents, specifically change agents in schools. As such, this account will be useful for graduate students and researchers in organizational change, educational leadership, and professional development. It is a part of Lawrence Erlbaum Associates growing series in organization management.
... Read more

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This handbook encompasses a range of disciplines that underlie the field of peace education and provides the rationales for the ways it is actually carried out . The discipline is a composite of contributions from a variety of disciplines ranging from social psychology to philosophy and from communication to political science. That is, peace education is an applied subject which is practiced in differing ways, but must always be firmly based on a range of established empirical disciplines.

The volume is structured around contributions from expert scholars in various fields that underpin peace education, plus contributions from experts in applying peace education in a range of settings, all complemented by chapters which deal with issues related to research and evaluation of peace education.