Learning as Social Practice

Learning as Social Practice

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  • Author: Gunther Kress
  • Publisher: Routledge
  • ISBN: 1000382095
  • Category : Education
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 293

This book studies learning as a social enterprise, contextually situated, organized and assessed. It gives a broad theoretic grounding for an understanding of learning which goes beyond a common reductionist approach. The book discusses four related approaches to learning which share a social perspective: social semiotics and multimodality; a design-theoretic approach to learning; a socio-cultural perspective; and a perspective of mimetic learning. Contributing authors consider the theoretical question of how to understand educational systems, learning and social communication as historically situated practices. The chapters in this book analyze key working practices including: analyzing what learning, remembering and cognitive work is like in a practice involving different kinds of expertise; problem-solving and engaging through collaboration; learning and teaching in different formal, semi- and non-formal environments; a design-theoretic approach to learning; social semiotic perspectives on learning; the mimetic and ritual dimension of learning; how social learning can be organized to support students; how learning has been conceptualized in psychology and neighbouring research areas. This book will be of great interest to students and researchers interested in learning and meaning-making, multimodal representations and communication, designs for learning, education and teaching, and social achievement in different formal and non-formal contexts.


The Individual, Society, and Education

The Individual, Society, and Education

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  • Author: Clarence J. Karier
  • Publisher: University of Illinois Press
  • ISBN: 9780252013096
  • Category : Education
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 492

This is an updated version of Karier's highly regarded Man, Society, and Education, which focuses on the concepts of human nature and community throughout American educational history. For the new edition, Karier has added chapters on the major movements in American education from World War II to the present and on the major Supreme Court cases involving educational policy during the same period. "This classic volume remains a remarkable study in the history of ideas into which the implications for American schooling have been deftly woven. It is balanced, thorough, and intelligently challenging." --- Ann M. Keppel, College of Education, University of Hawaii at Manoa "This new edition should have great use as a primary text at the graduate and advanced undergraduate levels." --- Peter A. Sola, School of Education, Howard University


Investment in Learning

Investment in Learning

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  • Author: Howard Bowen
  • Publisher: Routledge
  • ISBN: 1351309900
  • Category : Education
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 427

The value of higher education has been under attack as seldom before in American history. We are told of the overeducated American, of the case against college, and of the failure of education to contribute significantly to the reduction of inequality. In this environment, republication of an exceptionally comprehensive and judicious analysis of all that has been learned and not learned about the consequences of American higher education comes at a most appropriate time. Investment in Learning more fully covers the various aspects of this subject than any yet to appear. Howard Bowen is optimistic about higher education, but his viewpoint is based on profound knowledge of both the economic and social aspects of education. Unlike some economists who insist on a strict cost-benefit analysis of expenditures on higher education in relation to outcomes, Bowen argues that the non-monetary benefits are far greater, to the point that individual and social decisions should be made primarily on those broader indicators. Cameron Fincher, in his new opening for the book, notes that "Publication of Howard Bowen's Investment in Learning was like a break in a long summer drought. . . . It was a comprehensive rebuttal to return-on-investment studies with negativistic findings." And in the foreword to the book, Clark Kerr simply says, "Howard Bowen is better prepared to survey the overall consequences of higher education in the United States than anyone else."


Individual and Social Responsibility

Individual and Social Responsibility

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  • Author: Victor R. Fuchs
  • Publisher: University of Chicago Press
  • ISBN: 0226267954
  • Category : Political Science
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 366

Does government spend too little or too much on child care? How can education dollars be spent more efficiently? Should government's role in medical care increase or decrease? In this volume, social scientists, lawyers, and a physician explore the political, social, and economic forces that shape policies affecting human services. Four in-depth studies of human-service sectors—child care, education, medical care, and long-term care for the elderly—are followed by six cross-sector studies that stimulate new ways of thinking about human services through the application of economic theory, institutional analysis, and the history of social policy. The contributors include Kenneth J. Arrow, Martin Feldstein, Victor Fuchs, Alan M. Garber, Eric A. Hanushek, Christopher Jencks, Seymour Martin Lipset, Glenn Loury, Roger G. Noll, Paul M. Romer, Amartya Sen, and Theda Skocpol. This timely study sheds important light on the tension between individual and social responsibility, and will appeal to economists and other social scientists and policymakers concerned with social policy issues.


Individual Learners

Individual Learners

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  • Author: W. Ray Crozier
  • Publisher: Routledge
  • ISBN: 1134785925
  • Category : Psychology
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 254

No two learners are the same. They take different approaches to learning tasks and they respond to formal education in different ways. Yet the current emphasis in education is on what is common to learners, from a common curriculum to a common teaching method. Individual Learners reviews and discusses recent research that shows that differences in personality contribute significantly to children's and adults' experiences of success and failure in education. Individual Learners considers fundamental issues in the study of personality, and provides an up-to-date review and evaluation of the continuing nature-nurture debate. It then examines five traits that can have an impact upon learning: aggressiveness, anxiety, achievement, motivation, self-confidence and shyness. The book provides an accessible account of the recent research into the links between personality and education and its implications for educational practice. It will be invaluable to anyone with an interest in education, whether students, teachers or lecturers.


Ideas Have Consequences

Ideas Have Consequences

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  • Author: Richard M. Weaver
  • Publisher: University of Chicago Press
  • ISBN: 022609023X
  • Category : Philosophy
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 224

A foundational text of the modern conservative movement, this 1948 philosophical treatise argues the decline of Western civilization and offers a remedy. Originally published in 1948, at the height of post–World War II optimism and confidence in collective security, Ideas Have Consequences uses “words hard as cannonballs” to present an unsparing diagnosis of the ills of the modern age. Widely read and debated at the time of its first publication, the book is now seen as one of the foundational texts of the modern conservative movement. In its pages, Richard M. Weaver argues that the decline of Western civilization resulted from the rising acceptance of relativism over absolute reality. In spite of increased knowledge, this retreat from the realist intellectual tradition has weakened the Western capacity to reason, with catastrophic consequences for social order and individual rights. But Weaver also offers a realistic remedy. These difficulties are the product not of necessity, but of intelligent choice. And, today, as decades ago, the remedy lies in the renewed acceptance of absolute reality and the recognition that ideas—like actions—have consequences. This expanded edition of the classic work contains a foreword by New Criterion editor Roger Kimball that offers insight into the rich intellectual and historical contexts of Weaver and his work and an afterword by Ted J. Smith III that relates the remarkable story of the book’s writing and publication. Praise for Ideas Have Consequences “A profound diagnosis of the sickness of our culture.” —Reinhold Niebuhr “Brilliantly written, daring, and radical. . . . It will shock, and philosophical shock is the beginning of wisdom.” —Paul Tillich “This deeply prophetic book not only launched the renaissance of philosophical conservatism in this country, but in the process gave us an armory of insights into the diseases besetting the national community that is as timely today as when it first appeared. [This] is one of the few authentic classics in the American political tradition.” —Robert Nisbet


Perspectives on Individual Characteristics and Foreign Language Education

Perspectives on Individual Characteristics and Foreign Language Education

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  • Author: Wai Meng Chan
  • Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
  • ISBN: 1614510938
  • Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 352

Learner characteristics have been at the center of second language acquisition and foreign language education research in response to the puzzling questions: Why are there often large differences in second language (L2) learning achievement and why do many learners, though proficient first language speakers, not succeed in learning a L2? The papers in this book explore and challenge the three key factors in individual difference research: language aptitude, language learning strategies and motivation.


Education, Justice & Democracy

Education, Justice & Democracy

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  • Author: Danielle Allen
  • Publisher: University of Chicago Press
  • ISBN: 022601293X
  • Category : Education
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 366

Education is a contested topic, and not just politically. For years scholars have approached it from two different points of view: one empirical, focused on explanations for student and school success and failure, and the other philosophical, focused on education’s value and purpose within the larger society. Rarely have these separate approaches been brought into the same conversation. Education, Justice, and Democracy does just that, offering an intensive discussion by highly respected scholars across empirical and philosophical disciplines. The contributors explore how the institutions and practices of education can support democracy, by creating the conditions for equal citizenship and egalitarian empowerment, and how they can advance justice, by securing social mobility and cultivating the talents and interests of every individual. Then the authors evaluate constraints on achieving the goals of democracy and justice in the educational arena and identify strategies that we can employ to work through or around those constraints. More than a thorough compendium on a timely and contested topic, Education, Justice, and Democracy exhibits an entirely new, more deeply composed way of thinking about education as a whole and its importance to a good society.


The Promise of Adolescence

The Promise of Adolescence

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  • Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
  • Publisher: National Academies Press
  • ISBN: 0309490111
  • Category : Social Science
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 493

Adolescenceâ€"beginning with the onset of puberty and ending in the mid-20sâ€"is a critical period of development during which key areas of the brain mature and develop. These changes in brain structure, function, and connectivity mark adolescence as a period of opportunity to discover new vistas, to form relationships with peers and adults, and to explore one's developing identity. It is also a period of resilience that can ameliorate childhood setbacks and set the stage for a thriving trajectory over the life course. Because adolescents comprise nearly one-fourth of the entire U.S. population, the nation needs policies and practices that will better leverage these developmental opportunities to harness the promise of adolescenceâ€"rather than focusing myopically on containing its risks. This report examines the neurobiological and socio-behavioral science of adolescent development and outlines how this knowledge can be applied, both to promote adolescent well-being, resilience, and development, and to rectify structural barriers and inequalities in opportunity, enabling all adolescents to flourish.


Experience And Education

Experience And Education

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  • Author: John Dewey
  • Publisher: Simon and Schuster
  • ISBN: 1416587276
  • Category : Education
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 62

Experience and Education is the best concise statement on education ever published by John Dewey, the man acknowledged to be the pre-eminent educational theorist of the twentieth century. Written more than two decades after Democracy and Education (Dewey's most comprehensive statement of his position in educational philosophy), this book demonstrates how Dewey reformulated his ideas as a result of his intervening experience with the progressive schools and in the light of the criticisms his theories had received. Analyzing both "traditional" and "progressive" education, Dr. Dewey here insists that neither the old nor the new education is adequate and that each is miseducative because neither of them applies the principles of a carefully developed philosophy of experience. Many pages of this volume illustrate Dr. Dewey's ideas for a philosophy of experience and its relation to education. He particularly urges that all teachers and educators looking for a new movement in education should think in terms of the deeped and larger issues of education rather than in terms of some divisive "ism" about education, even such an "ism" as "progressivism." His philosophy, here expressed in its most essential, most readable form, predicates an American educational system that respects all sources of experience, on that offers a true learning situation that is both historical and social, both orderly and dynamic.