Demythologizing Educational Reforms

There are dozens of myths surrounding educational reform today, maintaining the school’s role in economic competitiveness, the deficiency of teachers, the benefits of increased testing, and the worthiness of privatization. In this volume, the editors argue that this discussion has been co-opted to reflect the values and worldviews of special interest groups such as elites in power, politicians, corporate educational foundations, and the media. Prominent educational writers tackle contemporary issues such as neoliberalism, suburban schooling, charter schools and parental involvement. They expose the "logic behind the talk" and critically examine these problematic beliefs to uncover meaningful improvements in education which are better grounded in the social, economic, political and educational realities of contemporary society.

A critical resource for literacy educators and graduate students, this volume investigates key moments in the development of literacy education and provides a much-needed overview of where, when, and how efforts to shape education influence literacy teaching, as well as what literacy educators can do to advocate for themselves, their students, and the profession. Organized around three themes—history, effects, and advocacy—this volume offers a nuanced exploration of the complex issues surrounding literacy education, and suggests coherent approaches to evaluating and understanding the various policies and reform efforts, and their impacts on literacy teaching and learning. Chapter authors draw on a variety of research– and practice-based perspectives to explore the impact of reform on literacy and literacy education, and examine the evolution of literacy education, providing much-needed historical context for shifts in policies and models in the field.

Teachers’ unions have long been controversial and divisive organizations, but criticism and distrust of them may be at an all-time high. This volume considers the prevailing assumption that unions successfully block change in education because they are primarily motivated to protect members’ interests. It challenges the conceptualization of teacher union motivation and provides a more nuanced account of unions’ interests, power and impact. Through a series of international cases from the United States, Finland and the Canton of Zürich, this volume examines the hot-button issue of performance-related pay reform and compensation. It argues that a better understanding of the union-management relationship may be the key to securing more meaningful change and reform. It will be of use to scholars, policy-makers, union leaders, teachers and citizens who are interested in the possibilities for the union-management relationship, rather than the limitations.

As Asian education systems increasingly take on a stronger presence on the global educational landscape, of special interest is an understanding of the ways in which many of these states direct their schools towards higher achievement. What is missing, however, are accounts that take seriously the particular construction of the strong, developmental state witnessed across many Asian societies, and that seek to understand the politics and possibilities of curriculum change vis a vis precisely the dominance of such a state. By engaging in analyses based on some of the best current social and cultural theories, and by illuminating the interactions among various state and non-state pedagogic agents, the chapters in this volume account for the complex post-colonial, historical and cultural consciousnesses that many Asian states and societies experience. At a time when much of the educational politics in Asia remains in a state of transition and as many of these states seek out through the curriculum new forms of social control and novel bases of political legitimacy, such a volume offers enduring insights into the real if not also always relative autonomy that schools and communities maintain in countering the hegemonic presence of strong states.

This book provides ways of thinking for preservice and new teachers to transition from the theory behind curricular design to engaged teaching and learning in the classroom. It offers a comprehensive framework for the creation and implementation of one’s own authentic and effective ELA curriculum. In addition to strategies for preservice teachers to develop their own pedagogies, lessons, and teaching techniques, Costigan also demonstrates how to design tools for teaching in the current testing- and standards-driven context of the educational reform movement. Containing real-life examples of reading and writing instruction, this book empowers preservice teachers to translate the concepts of curriculum design to actual ELA classroom practices that will engage students.

The future of public education and democracy is at risk. Powerful forces are eroding commitment to public schools and weakening democratic resolve. Yet even in deeply troubling times, it is possible to broaden social imagination and empower effective advocacy for systemic progressive reform. Re-envisioning Education and Democracy explores challenges and opportunities for restructuring public education to establish and sustain more broadly inclusive, deeply democratic, and effectively transforming approaches to social inquiry and civic participation. Re-envisioning Education and Democracy adopts a non-traditional format to extend social awareness and imagination. Within each chapter, one episode of an evolving strategic narrative traces the life cycle of a systemic reform initiative. This is followed by an exploratory essay that draws from theory, research, criticism, and practice to prompt consideration of focal issues. Woven through each chapter is a poetically framed meditative stream informed by varied historical and cultural conceptions of oracles. A developmental sequence of social learning strategies (exploratory democratic practices), accompanied by thematic bibliographic references, are included to model democratic teaching and learning applicable in classroom and community settings.

Providing a series of chapters, written by teacher educators in three continents, this edited volume explores the concepts, challenges, possibilities, and implementations of competency-based instruction for developing English competencies in English as a foreign language (EFL) contexts. Recent trends in education have emphasized the need to develop competencies that connect learning with real-life performances. This need has brought about a massive increase in the number of studies and scholarly works devoted to research into competency-based education. However, for teachers and learners of EFL, it is challenging to develop competencies for using a language that does not seem to connect with their real-life scenarios. The chapters apply the concept of competency-based instruction in different EFL contexts and are structured around three themes: Theory: current thoughts on theories of competency-based education Research: empirical research on competency-based teacher education Practice: integrating competency-based instruction into teacher education This book offers examples of competency-based EFL teacher education through both research and practical applications. In addition to the innovation in competency approaches, the inclusion of language learning in virtual environments offers a valuable resource for scholars, educators, researchers, and all those concerned with current and future education.

This book provides an international platform for educators from different STEM disciplines to present, discuss, connect, and develop collaborations in two inter-related ways: (1) sharing and discussing changes and innovations in individual discipline-based education in STEM/STEAM, and (2) sharing and discussing the development of interdisciplinary STEM/STEAM education. Possible relationships and connections between individual disciplines (like mathematics or physics) and STEM education remain under explored and the integration of traditionally individual discipline-based education in STEM education is far from balanced. Efforts to pursue possible connections among traditionally separated individual disciplines in STEM are not only necessary for the importance of deepening and expanding interdisciplinary research and education in STEM, but also for the ever-increasing need of reflecting on and changing how traditional school subjects (like mathematics or physics) can and should be viewed, taught, and learned. Scholars from eight countries/regions provide diverse perspectives and approaches on changes and innovations in STEM disciplinary and interdisciplinary education. Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary Education in STEM will be a great resource to students and researchers in STEM education as well as STEM curriculum developers and teacher educators internationally.

Modernising School Governance examines the impact of recent market-based reforms on the role of governors in the English state education system. A focus of the book concerns how government and non-government demands for ‘strong governance’ have been translated to mean improved performance management of senior school leaders and greater monitoring and disciplining of governors. This book addresses fundamental questions about the neoliberal logic underpinning these reforms and how governors are being trained and responsibilised in new ways to enhance the integrity of these developments. Drawing on large-scale research conducted over three years, the book examines the impact of these reforms on the day to day practices of governors and the diminished role of democracy in these contexts. Wilkins also captures the economic and political rationalities shaping the conduct of governors at this time and traces these expressions to wider structural developments linked to depoliticisation, decentralisation and disintermediation. This book addresses timely and original issues concerning the role of corporate planning and expert handling to state education at a time of increased school autonomy, shrinking local government support/oversight, and tight, centralised accountability. It will appeal to researchers and postgraduate students in disciplines of education, sociology, political science, public policy and management. It will also be of interest to researchers and policy makers from countries with similar or emerging quasi-market education systems.

Shortlisted for BBC Radio 4's Thinking Allowed's second Ethnography Awards in partnership with the British Sociological Association! Educational Binds of Poverty tackles the assumptions made by many recent social and educational policy initiatives suggesting that the best way to improve educational prospects of children in poverty is through an increased emphasis upon a culture of control, discipline, regulation and accountability. In this book, Ceri Brown presents these assumptions against a review of the research literature and an original ethnographic longitudinal study into the lives of children in poverty, in order to highlight the gap between policy discourses and the lived experiences of children themselves. Through the theoretical concept of a set of ‘binds’ against educational success, the book explores four key areas that children in poverty have to navigate if they are to be successful in school. These are: material deprivation the cultural contexts of school, home and the community friendship and social capital the effects of student mobility through atypical school changes. In seeking to characterise and explain what life is like for young school children, this book questions why policy makers have a radically different frame of reference in purporting to understand how their policies will change the behaviour of those living in poverty. This leads onto a consideration of what lessons may be learned in order to contribute towards a more appropriate policy agenda that attends to the multiple binds that children in poverty have to negotiate.