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For educators and parents of young people today, this book shows the benefits of digital learning and how it can engage children in meaningful learning that will bridge inequality instead of creating more.
One of the first champions of the positive effects of gaming reveals the dark side of today's digital and social media Today's schools are eager to use the latest technology in the classroom, but rather than improving learning, the new e-media can just as easily narrow students' horizons. Education innovator James Paul Gee first documented the educational benefits of gaming a decade ago in his classic What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. Now, with digital and social media at the center of modern life, he issues an important warning that groundbreaking new technologies, far from revolutionizing schooling, can stymie the next generation's ability to resolve deep global challenges. The solution-and perhaps our children's future-lies in what Gee calls synchronized intelligence, a way of organizing people and their digital tools to solve problems, produce knowledge, and allow people to count and contribute. Gee explores important strategies and tools for today's parents, educators, and policy makers, including virtual worlds, artificial tutors, and ways to create collective intelligence where everyday people can solve hard problems. By harnessing the power of human creativity with interactional and technological sophistication we can finally overcome the limitations of today's failing educational system and solve problems in our high-risk global world. The Anti-Education Era is a powerful and important call to reshape digital learning, engage children in a meaningful educational experience, and bridge inequality.
In a context of increased politicization led by state and federal policymakers, corporate reformers, and for-profit educational organizations, The Politics of Education Policy in an Era of Inequality explores a new vision for leading schools grounded in culturally relevant advocacy and social justice theories. This timely volume tackles the origins and implications of growing accountability for educational leaders and reconsiders the role that educational leaders should and can play in education policy and political processes. This book provides a critical perspective and analysis of today’s education policy landscape and leadership practice; explores the challenges and opportunities associated with teaching in and leading schools; and examines the structural, political, and cultural interactions among school principals, district leaders, and state and federal policy actors. An important resource for practicing and aspiring leaders, The Politics of Education Policy in an Era of Inequality shares a theoretical framework and strategies for building bridges between education researchers, practitioners, and policymakers.
Anti-intellectualism to Anti-rationalism to Post-truth Era: The Challenges for Higher Education argues that emergence of the post-truth world is evidence that anti-intellectualism, long recognized as a characteristic of American culture, has morphed into anti-rationalism as a surging force in American society that threatens our collective commitment to rationality. A post-truth world, however, is not an immutable condition and cannot be accepted as the new norm. The author argues that American higher education take responsibility for combating anti-rationalism by promoting the development of student's personal attributes that constitute a rational mind-set and rationalist identity, such that they hold themselves accountable for commitments to seeking truth and the value of critical thought and reasoned discourse as defining element of their way of being in the world. Scholarship exists across many disciplines regarding anti-intellectualism and anti-rationalism in American society and the personal attributes that together constitute a rational mind-set, including an evaluativist personal epistemology, open-mindedness and conscientiousness, and a rationalist identity. The author brings the perspective of a psychologist to the analysis and synthesis of this scholarship and the implications for educational practices that are effective in promoting the development of student's rational mind-set and rationalist identity necessary to combat anti-rationalism and the post-truth world.
Following the American Revolution, it was a cliche that the new republic's future depended on widespread, informed citizenship. However, instead of immediately creating the common schools--accessible, elementary education--that seemed necessary to create such a citizenry, the Federalists in power founded one of the most ubiquitous but forgotten institutions of early American life: academies, privately run but state-chartered secondary schools that offered European-style education primarily for elites. By 1800, academies had become the most widely incorporated institutions besides churches and transportation projects in nearly every state. In this book, Mark Boonshoft shows how many Americans saw the academy as a caricature of aristocratic European education and how their political reaction against the academy led to a first era of school reform in the United States, helping transform education from a tool of elite privilege into a key component of self-government. And yet the very anti-aristocratic critique that propelled democratic education was conspicuously silent on the persistence of racial and gender inequality in public schooling. By tracing the history of academies in the revolutionary era, Boonshoft offers a new understanding of political power and the origins of public education and segregation in the United States.
This book takes a new look at one of the most contentious periods in American history. The battles over schools that surrounded the famous Scopes "monkey" trial in 1925 were about much more than evolution. Fundamentalists fought to maintain cultural control of education. As this book reveals for the first time, the successes and the failures of these fundamentalist campaigns transformed both the fundamentalist movement and the nature of education in America. In turn, those transformations determined many of the positions of the "culture wars" that raged throughout the twentieth century.
Tinkering with the current educational system from within has not provided a just and equitable education for all children. In this book, acclaimed education theorist Joanne Larson poses basic questions about the nature and purpose of schooling. Proposing that what is needed is a new purpose that is more consistent with contemporary knowledge production processes—one that moves beyond the either/or binary of preparing workers/citizens in a competitive global economy or a democracy, Larson argues that the only real solution is to start over in U.S. education—the purpose of schooling should be to facilitate human learning, meaning making, and knowledge production toward just and equitable education for all. Radical Equality in Education offers a new ontological starting point and a new theoretical framing that would follow from it; articulates theoretical, curricular, pedagogical, and assessment principles that frame a real plan for fundamental change in American education, and presents examples of what these ideas might look like in schools and communities.
Shakespeare education is being reimagined around the world. This book delves into the important role of collaborative projects in this extraordinary transformation. Over twenty innovative Shakespeare partnerships from the UK, US, Australia, New Zealand, the Middle East, Europe and South America are critically explored by their leaders and participants. –Structured into thematic sections covering engagement with schools, universities, the public, the digital and performance, the chapters offer vivid insights into what it means to teach, learn and experience Shakespeare in collaboration with others. Diversity, equality, identity, incarceration, disability, community and culture are key factors in these initiatives, which together reveal how complex and humane Shakespeare education can be. Whether you are interested in practice or theory, this collection showcases an abundance of rich, inspiring and informative perspectives on Shakespeare education in our contemporary world.
Serious games provide a unique opportunity to fully engage students more than traditional teaching approaches. Understanding the best way to utilize these games and the concept of play in an educational setting is imperative for effectual learning in the 21st century. Gamification in Education: Breakthroughs in Research and Practice is an innovative reference source for the latest academic material on the different approaches and issues faced in integrating games within curriculums. Highlighting a range of topics, such as learning through play, virtual worlds, and educational computer games, this publication is ideally designed for educators, administrators, software designers, and stakeholders in all levels of education.
This book constitutes the proceedings of the 11th European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning, EC-TEL 2016, held in Lyon, France, in September 2016. The 26 full papers, 23 short papers, 8 demo papers, and 33 poster papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 148 submissions.
