The Common Core State Standards Initiative is one of the most controversial pieces of education policy to emerge in decades. Detailing what and when K-12 students should be taught, it has led to expensive reforms and displaced other valuable ways to educate children. In this nuanced and provocative book, Nicholas Tampio argues that, though…

Over the past 40 years, Jim Cummins has proposed a number of highly influential theoretical concepts, including the threshold and interdependence hypotheses and the distinction between conversational fluency and academic language proficiency. In this book, he provides a personal account of how these ideas developed and he examines the credibility…

This book critiques dominant discourses and debates pertaining to cultural identity, set against the current backdrop of growing social stratification and unequal access to quality education. It addresses current discourses concerning globalisation, ideologies and the state, as well as approaches to constructing national, ethnic and religious…

This multidisciplinary collection examines the connections between education, migration and translation across school and higher education sectors, and a broad range of socio-geographical contexts. Organised around the themes of knowledge, language, mobility, and practice, it brings together studies from around the world to offer a timely critique…

In a number of Western nations, concern over literacy and numeracy standards has put huge political pressure on education systems to improve the situation. Here in New Zealand, the government has recently introduced literacy and numeracy standards designed to improve basic skills in these key fields of achievement. What is perhaps less evident is…

One of the greatest challenges for English language arts teachers today is the call to engage students in more complex texts. Tim Gillespie, who has taught in public schools for almost four decades, has found the lenses of literary criticism a powerful tool for helping students tackle challenging literary texts. Tim breaks down the dense language…

To re-engage students with literacy, teachers need an entry point that recognizes and honors students' out-of-school identities. This book looks at how artifacts (everyday objects) access the daily, sensory world in which students live. Exploring how artifacts can generate literacy learning, the book shows teachers how to use a family photo,…

Interest in and research on civic engagement and service-learning have increased exponentially. In this rapid growth, efforts have been made to institutionalize pedagogies of engagement across both K-12 and higher education. As a result, increased positive attention has been complemented equally by well-founded critiques complicating experiential…

In this book, 12 distinguished scholars provide a hard-hitting, thoroughly researched, historical and theoretical critique of our schools of education, and offer clear recommendations on what must be done to ensure all children can achieve their potential, and contribute to a vibrant, democratic society. This book contains a Foreword by Peter…

This anthology places art at the center of meaningful urban education reform. Providing a fresh perspective on urban education, the contributors describe a positive, asset-based community development model designed to tap into the teaching/learning potential already available in urban cities. Rather than focusing on a lack of resources, this…

With contributions from leading scholars, this compelling volume offers fresh insights into literacy teaching and learning--and the changing nature of literacy itself--in today's K-12 classrooms. The focus is on varied technologies and literacies such as social networking sites, text messaging, and online communities. Cutting-edge approaches to…

In this book, the author reveals the creative force of children's narrative imagination and shows how this develops through childhood. He provides a new and powerful understanding of the significance of narrative for children's intellectual growth and for learning and teaching. The book explores a series of real stories written by children between…