Connecting Practices

Connecting Practices develops a distinctive method of conceptualising significant trends and global issues including environmental sustainability and inequalities in wealth and health, arguing that these are outcomes of the ways in which social practices interact and combine across space and time. Engaging with the question of how connections are made between practices and how past and present combinations make some futures more likely than others, this book brings practice theory to bear on large problems in society. Richly illustrated with examples from the spreading of germs to the history of shipping containers, this powerful analysis of how societies hang together and how they change will appeal to scholars and students of sociology and social theory.

Connecting Research and Practice for Educational Improvement presents powerful arguments and richly illustrated cases for how more collaborative relationships between researchers and educators can yield more relevant research that impacts practice. This book can be useful for anyone teaching or learning about research–practice partnerships, in both school and out-of-school settings. The chapters highlight the different dispositions and skills needed to cultivate ethical relationships and promote equity through partnerships and provide rich frameworks for guiding future work.

Since their release in 2010, the Common Core State Standards Initiative (CCSSI) has had a profound impact on educational reform. The adoption of these standards represents an opportunity to support teachers in the common goal of helping students achieve a high-quality education. The Common Core State Standards for Mathematics will affect almost every K-12 student and the majority of the US’s teachers over the next decade. Although the CCSSM was created through a top-down approach, spearheaded by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School officers, the primary audience and the ultimate users of the standards are classroom teachers. The focus of this book is on the Standards of Mathematical Practice outlined in the CCSSM. Although the CCSSM features these standards prominently, they are not described in detail and are not integrated into CCSSM's Standards for Mathematical Content. As a result, they are easy to overlook or ignore. The ideas in the Standards for Mathematical Practice are not new but linked to previous practices and standards articulated by other groups, including the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM). For example, problem solving and reasoning are at the core of all practices outlined in CCSSM, just as they have been at the core of NCTM's vision for mathematics education since the publication of An Agenda for Action in 1980. Subsequent NCTM curriculum recommendations, emphasized and elaborated the role and place of mathematical processes and practices. The Standards of Mathematical Process outlined in CCSSM, and explored in greater detail in this book, reaffirm the significance of habits of mind, mathematical processes, and proficiency as crucial aspects of learning mathematics. Although the terms and emphasis may be new to teachers, the main ideas have existed a long time and remain unchanged. Intended for classroom teachers, this book makes explicit connections between these related ideas and the CCSSM Standards for Mathematical Practice. By connecting the CCSSM to previous standards and practices, the book serves as a valuable guide for teachers and administrators in implementing the CCSSM to make mathematics education the best and most effective for all students.

The most effective leaders know how to connect with people. It's not about power or popularity, but about making the people around you feel heard, comfortable, and understood. This book will teach you how to do that. While it may seem like some folks are born with a commanding presence that draws people in, the fact is anyone can learn to communicate in ways that consistently build powerful connections. Bestselling author and leadership expert John C. Maxwell offers advice for effective communication to those who continually run into obstacles when it comes to personal success. In Everyone Communicates, Few Connect, Maxwell shares five principles and five practices to develop connection skills including: Finding common ground Keeping your communication simple Capturing people’s interest Creating an experience everyone enjoys Staying authentic in all your relationships Your ability to achieve results in any organization is directly tied to the leadership skills in your toolbox. Connecting is an easy-to-learn skill you can apply today in your personal, professional, and family relationships to start living your best life.

Found in Translation: Connecting Reconceptualist Thinking with Early Childhood Education Practices highlights the relationships between reconceptualist theory and classroom practice. Each chapter in this edited collection considers a contemporary issue and explores its potential to disrupt the status quo and be meaningful in the lives of young children. The book pairs reconceptualist academics and practitioners to discuss how theories can be relevant in everyday educational contexts, working with children who are from a wide range of cultural, ethnic, gender, language, and social orientations to enable previously unimagined ways of being, thinking, and doing in contemporary times.

Transform classrooms and student performance with evidence-based, effective practices Two brains are better than one, as the saying goes, and this is especially true in education. Educators who employ effective collaboration and co-teaching greatly amplify student engagement, achievement, and growth, particularly for those learners needing extra support. Written by two of the nation’s top experts in co-teaching, Connecting High-Leverage Practices to Student Success is an essential, reader-friendly guide for educators and instructional leaders who are passionate about creating truly inclusive classrooms where all students thrive— academically, behaviorally, socially, and emotionally. Inside, authors Melissa Jenkins and Wendy Murawski provide: Three clearly defined steps to build a strong foundation, leverage collaboration, and support students’ growth A laser focus on high-leverage and evidence-based practices for general and special education that optimize educators’ impact, including collaboration, instruction, assessment, and social emotional/behavior skills Seamless integration of practices within MTSS and RTI processes to meet the needs of all learners Countless and concrete samples, examples, tools, reflection exercises, and supplemental materials that enable you to move from theory to immediate instructional practice Positioning collaboration as the catalyst to maximizing high-leverage and evidence-based practices for the success of all students, this easy-to-use handbook belongs on the desk of every teacher working toward a truly inclusive environment.

This volume delivers a selection of papers presented at an international teaching conference on issues of theory and practice. These key topics will be of interest to novice and veteran teachers, policy makers and all education professionals.

The need for a scientifically literate citizenry, one that is able to think critically and engage productively in the engineering design process, has never been greater. By raising engineering design to the same level as scientific inquiry the Next Generation Science Standards’ (NGSS) have signaled their commitment to the integration of engineering design into the fabric of science education. This call has raised many critical questions...How well do these new standards represent what actually engineers do? Where do the deep connections among science and engineering practices lie? To what extent can (or even should) science and engineering practices co-exist in formal and informal educational spaces? Which of the core science concepts are best to leverage in the pursuit of coherent and compelling integration of engineering practices? What science important content may be pushed aside? This book, tackles many of these tough questions head on. All of the contributing authors consider the same core question: Given the rapidly changing landscape of science education, including the elevated status of engineering design, what are the best approaches to the effective integration of the science and engineering practices? They answered with rich descriptions of pioneering approaches, critical insights, and useful practical examples of how embodying a culture of interdisciplinarity and innovation can fuel the development of a scientifically literate citizenry . This collection of work builds traversable bridges across diverse research communities and begins to break down long standing disciplinary silos that have historically often hamstrung well-meaning efforts to bring research and practice from science and engineering together in meaningful and lasting ways.

The Nexus of Practices: connections, constellations, practitioners brings leading theorists of practice together to provide a fresh set of theoretical impulses for the surge of practice-focused studies currently sweeping across the social disciplines. The book addresses key issues facing practice theory, expands practice theory’s conceptual repertoire, and explores new empirical terrain. With each intellectual move, it generates further opportunities for social research. More specifically, the book’s chapters offer new approaches to analysing connections within the nexus of practices, to exploring the dynamics and implications of the constellations that practices form, and to understanding people as practitioners that carry on practices. Topics examined include social change, language, power, affect, reflection, large social phenomena, and connectivity over time and space. Contributors thereby counter claims that practice theory cannot handle large phenomena and that it ignores people. The contributions also develop practice theoretical ideas in dialogue with other forms of social theory and in ways illustrated and informed by empirical cases and examples. The Nexus of Practices will quickly become an important point of reference for future practice-focused research in the social sciences.