A Cross-Cultural Consideration of Teacher Leaders’ Narratives of Power, Agency and School Culture presents groundbreaking work that expands discussions of teachers’ work to highlight the struggles of a profession in three different countries: England, Jamaica and the United States. This research provides examples of teacher leaders’ narratives about power, agency and school culture, presenting the voices of teacher leaders across diverse contexts. It identifies the “lessons” that transcend culture and speaks to the importance of understanding how teachers’ work (and teacher leadership) functions within complex school cultures. This work has profound implications for teaching, learning and leading in a 21st century global economy.

Connecting cultures to educational settings is an essential component of critical pedagogy. This book addresses many of the key issues and challenges in decolonizing the African school curriculum. It highlights important philosophical arguments on the challenges and possibilities of achieving these goals in a meaningful manner. Topics covered in the book include: operationalizing the key terms of “inclusion” and “curriculum,” strategies for Africanizing the school curriculum, and the implications of local knowledge for schooling reform.

An Alternate Pragmatism for Going Public interrogates composition’s most prominent responses to contemporary K–16 education reform. By “going public,” teachers, scholars, and administrators rightfully reassert their expertise against corporate-political standards and assessments like the Common Core, Complete College America, and the Collegiate Learning Assessment. However, author Jim Webber shows that composition’s professional imperative for self-defense only partly fulfils the broader aims of “going public,” which include fostering public participation that can assess and potentially affirm the public good of professional judgment.

Drawing on the pragmatic/democratic tradition, Webber envisions an alternate rhetoric of professionalism, one that not only reasserts compositionists’ expertise but also expands opportunities for publics to authorize this expertise. While this public inquiry and engagement may not safeguard professional standing against neoliberal reform, it reorients composition toward an equally important goal, enabling publics to gauge the adequacy of the educational standardization so often advocated by contemporary reform.

As Jana Noel taught courses in Educational Foundations, she was constantly struck by the lack of attention to the development of education in California within the currently available Educational Foundations textbooks. As she and other teachers worked their way through traditional texts, they began asking their students questions such as the following. How has the unique, diverse social history of California impacted the development of its public schools? Did California have legalized school segregation? Is there anything about the political structure of California that may have an impact on education? How many times has California law changed to either allow or ban bilingual education? By simply raising questions such as these, Noel noticed a large increase in interest in what had often been considered dry subjects such as history, educational politics, and educational funding. California Foundations of Education addresses the lack of attention to California’s education within Educational Foundations textbooks. The ultimate goal of the book is to scrutinize how education in California has developed in relation to the unique, diverse social history of California.

Case Studies and Case-Based Learning brings authentic, real-world learning to the classroom and:

• Transforms students' thinking and fosters 21st-century skills.
• Provides strategies, examples, and resources for implementing case-based learning across the disciplines.
• Features a step-by-step process for creating case-based lessons.
• Includes connections to inquiry-based, problem-based, and project-based learning.
• Builds off of a prominent educational strategy used in medicine and law.

In the wake of the tragedy and destruction that came with Hurricane Katrina in 2005, public schools in New Orleans became part of an almost unthinkable experiment—eliminating the traditional public education system and completely replacing it with charter schools and school choice. 

In Charter School City, Douglas N. Harris provides an inside look at how and why these reform decisions were made and offers many surprising findings from one of the most extensive and rigorous evaluations of a district school reform ever conducted. Through close examination of the results, Harris finds that this unprecedented experiment was a noteworthy success on almost every measurable student outcome. But, as Harris shows, New Orleans was uniquely situated for these reforms to work well and that this market-based reform still required some specific and active roles for government. Letting free markets rule on their own without government involvement will not generate the kinds of changes their advocates suggest.

Teachers and curriculum specialists are exposed to many ideas from educational leaders, but it is difficult to know which ones can be transformed into meaningful learning experiences in the classroom. 

Readers will learn how to create practical and organized units that inspire student thinking, discussion, conversation, and written assignments, as well as use levels of questioning and task complexity based on various forms of assessments and demonstrated readiness.