Cuba’s Academic Advantage


Book Description

The first in-depth analysis of how an entire educational system delivers higher student achievement.




Thinking Comprehensively about Education


Book Description

While much is known about the critical importance of educative experiences outside of school, little is known about the social systems, community programs, and everyday practices that can facilitate learning outside of the classroom. Thinking Comprehensively About Education sheds much-needed light on those systems, programs, and practices. This original edited collection identifies and describes the resources that enable optimal human learning and development, and offers a public policy framework that can enable a truly comprehensive educational system.




Unshackled: Education for Freedom, Student Achievement, and Personal Emancipation


Book Description

Harnessing conceptual inspiration through the work of Harriet Tubman and Queen Nanny the Maroon of Jamaica, this book explores the historical and contemporary role that education has – and can continually play as an instrument of personal and group liberation. The book discusses the early formations of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, the enslavement of native populations, and the subsequent development of the Underground Railroad and Maroon societies in the Caribbean and Americas as systems of liberation. It investigates the development and maintenance of racial, gendered and class stratifi cation, and provides a personal path to freedom as a context for a broader discussion on using education as a mechanism for dismantling the effects of colonization, miseducation, and social-psychological domination in schools and society. As a contemporary issue, it presents an in depth analysis of the Tucson Unifi ed School District in Arizona, and the controversy surrounding its ethnic studies program as an example of one of the contested sites of curriculum development and student liberation. Additionally, it discusses high performing charter schools as an alternative model of education, which may help to provide a systematic way of unshackling institutional barriers and oppression. Ultimately, this book acknowledges that today the road tofreedom is still one we must all travel as: miseducation, school failure, school dropout, unemployment/underemployment, poverty, neighborhood violence, incarceration, and a growing prison industrial complex are all reminders of the work that still must be accomplished. Like those who historically sacrifi ced their lives to gain freedom and an education, today, with the lingering effects of institutionalized systems of domination, education must continue to be an instrument of social mobility and liberation, if indeed, we are to make schools and society more humane and inclusive towards those who are still waiting to be unshackled. The book presents implications regarding the treaties on education for freedom as a school reform and public policy topic.







The Origins and Foundations of Music Education


Book Description

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. This landmark collection explores the origins and foundations of music education across five continents and considers: the inclusion of music as part of the compulsory school curriculum in the context of the historical and political landscape the aims, objectives and content of the music curriculum teaching methods the provision and training of teachers of music the experiences of pupils Contributors have been carefully selected to represent countries which have incorporated music into compulsory schooling for a variety of differing reasons giving a diverse collection which will guide future actions and policy.




That Infernal Little Cuban Republic


Book Description

Lars Schoultz offers a comprehensive chronicle of U.S. policy toward the Cuban Revolution. Using a rich array of documents and firsthand interviews with U.S. and Cuban officials, he tells the story of the attempts and failures of ten U.S. administrations to end the Cuban Revolution. He concludes that despite the overwhelming advantage in size and power that the United States enjoys over its neighbor, the Cubans' historical insistence on their right to self-determination has been a constant thorn in the side of American administrations, influenced both U.S. domestic politics and foreign policy on a much larger stage, and resulted in a freeze in diplomatic relations of unprecedented longevity.




Emergent Trends in Comparative Education


Book Description

Emergent Trends in Comparative Education: The Dialectic of the Global and the Local addresses the changes and multiple new topics that arise in education vis-à-vis processes of globalization and social transformation. As such, it complements and expands the scope of Comparative Education: The Dialectic of the Global and the Local, Fifth Edition. Chapters systematically examine the intersecting global crises in society and education occasioned by COVID-19, across types and levels of education, geographic and linguistic contexts, and fields of theory and practice. Topics addressed include the African ethic Ubuntu, Global Citizenship Education (GCE), UNESCO, STEM, teacher education, low-fee schools, social movements and protest, ecopedagogy, sustainability, media and technology, testing, and the economics of education. Furthermore, this book offers insight into how education systems can contribute to environmental social justice. Various authors employ a social justice lens to analyze the global-regional-local dialectics shaping the working of education systems with regard to who pays for and who benefits from current policy initiatives around the world.




The Capacity to Share


Book Description

This discussion of Cuba's international policies in education shows how Cuba shares its educational resources with other countries. The postcolonial critique underlying the book explores Cuba's role in relation to how the disengagement from colonial legacies in education is taking place in many countries.




Policy Issues in the Early Years


Book Description

Providing a unique and critical insight into some of the most significant issues affecting Early Years Policy, this book has chapters from leading authorities and researchers in the field and draws on current research, addresses key debates and considers international perspectives. Topics covered include: - policy making - poverty, disadvantage and social exclusion - promoting infant mental health - safeguarding and well-being - enhancing children′s potential - parenting policies and skills - national strategies versus professional autonomy - the marketisation of early years provision - democracy as a fundamental value in Early Years Taking a critical perspective and written in an accessible style, the book is relevant to all levels of Early Years courses, from Foundation Degree to Masters. The reader is encouraged to engage with debates and to develop their own views and opinions. With staggered levels of Further Reading, the editors and contributors provide a rich source of material that encourages reflection and promotes progression. Linda Miller is Professor Emeritus of Early Years, The Open University. Denise Hevey is Professor of Early Years, The University of Northampton.




Cuban Revelations


Book Description

In Cuban Revelations, Marc Frank offers a first-hand account of daily life in Cuba at the turn of the twenty-first century, the start of a new and dramatic epoch for islanders and the Cuban diaspora. A U.S.-born journalist who has called Havana home for almost a quarter century, Frank observed in person the best days of the revolution, the fall of the Soviet Bloc, the great depression of the 1990s, the stepping aside of Fidel Castro, and the reforms now being devised by his brother. Examining the effects of U.S. policy toward Cuba, Frank analyzes why Cuba has entered an extraordinary, irreversible period of change and considers what the island's future holds. The enormous social engineering project taking place today under Raúl's leadership is fraught with many dangers, and Cuban Revelations follows the new leader's efforts to overcome bureaucratic resistance and the fears of a populace that stand in his way. In addition, Frank offers a colorful chronicle of his travels across the island's many and varied provinces, sharing candid interviews with people from all walks of life. He takes the reader outside the capital to reveal how ordinary Cubans live and what they are thinking and feeling as fifty-year-old social and economic taboos are broken. He shares his honest and unbiased observations on extraordinary positive developments in social matters, like healthcare and education, as well as on the inefficiencies in the Cuban economy.