Knowledge, Curriculum, and Preparation for Work


Book Description

In Knowledge, Curriculum, and Preparation for Work, Stephanie Allais and Yael Shalem offer a timely collection of articles approaching debates on economic and social change and employment within different types of economies.




Education for Life and Work


Book Description

Americans have long recognized that investments in public education contribute to the common good, enhancing national prosperity and supporting stable families, neighborhoods, and communities. Education is even more critical today, in the face of economic, environmental, and social challenges. Today's children can meet future challenges if their schooling and informal learning activities prepare them for adult roles as citizens, employees, managers, parents, volunteers, and entrepreneurs. To achieve their full potential as adults, young people need to develop a range of skills and knowledge that facilitate mastery and application of English, mathematics, and other school subjects. At the same time, business and political leaders are increasingly asking schools to develop skills such as problem solving, critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and self-management - often referred to as "21st century skills." Education for Life and Work: Developing Transferable Knowledge and Skills in the 21st Century describes this important set of key skills that increase deeper learning, college and career readiness, student-centered learning, and higher order thinking. These labels include both cognitive and non-cognitive skills- such as critical thinking, problem solving, collaboration, effective communication, motivation, persistence, and learning to learn. 21st century skills also include creativity, innovation, and ethics that are important to later success and may be developed in formal or informal learning environments. This report also describes how these skills relate to each other and to more traditional academic skills and content in the key disciplines of reading, mathematics, and science. Education for Life and Work: Developing Transferable Knowledge and Skills in the 21st Century summarizes the findings of the research that investigates the importance of such skills to success in education, work, and other areas of adult responsibility and that demonstrates the importance of developing these skills in K-16 education. In this report, features related to learning these skills are identified, which include teacher professional development, curriculum, assessment, after-school and out-of-school programs, and informal learning centers such as exhibits and museums.




A Curriculum of Hope


Book Description

Written by Debra Kidd, A Curriculum of Hope: As rich in humanity as in knowledge explores how good curriculum design can empower schools to build bridges between their pupils' learning and the world around them. A great many schools are wondering how they can build a curriculum model that meets the demands of government policy as well as the needs of the children and communities they serve. In Curriculum of Hope, Debra illustrates how teachers can deliver learning experiences that genuinely link knowledge to life. Working on the premise that a strong curriculum is supported by five key pillars of practice coherence, credibility, creativity, compassion and community she presents a plethora of examples that demonstrate how schools, parents, pupils and the wider local community can learn together to build from within. Debra enquires into the ways in which schools can create units of work that are both knowledge- and humanity-rich, and challenges the view that the role of children is simply to listen and learn instead advocating their active engagement with local and global issues. She does so by delving into the role of pedagogy as a means of empowering children, and by exploring some of the more overlooked pedagogical tools that can have a great impact on children's learning and well-being story, movement and play as well as some of the recent research into memory and retention. Towards the back of the book you will find case studies demonstrating how teachers can work with both their own and other subject departments across the school to plan in ways that allow for pupil choice, autonomy and responsibility. Furthermore, there are some accompanying planning documents for these examples provided in the appendix (The Seed Catalogue) which you may find useful, and these documents are also available for download. Suitable for teachers and leaders in all schools.




Extraordinary Learning in the Workplace


Book Description

The contributing authors of this multidisciplinary text agree that workplace learning truly is extraordinary when it is marked by structural congruence and a positive synergy among the intended and formal preparation of professionals, that tacit learning occurs within the hidden curriculum, and that the subsequent demands, both formal and tacit, are embedded in subsequent workplace settings. Thus, for this text, these authors explore research and practice literature related to curriculum, instruction and assessment of professionals’ learning in the workplace and the implications for best practices. But what makes this book truly unique is that the authors examine that literature in the context of four professions—education, nursing, medicine and clergy—at the point of those professions wherein students are learning during the degree program stages of their education. Extraordinary Learning in the Workplace is broken into four main sections. Part I explores curriculum, both formal and hidden. Part II focuses on conceptions and theories of learning and instruction and is intended to inform the work of educators with regard to components of professional education that occur in the practice settings of the workplace. Part III covers assessment, using medicine as its example to argue that assessment has remained largely unchanged for years, thus making the multiple choice questions tests introduced in the 1950s the de facto gold standard for “quality” assessment. And Part IV focuses on the training of the instructors, visiting the three key themes of relationships, activities or tasks, and work practices.




Reading Reconsidered


Book Description

TEACH YOUR STUDENTS TO READ WITH PRECISION AND INSIGHT The world we are preparing our students to succeed in is one bound together by words and phrases. Our students learn their literature, history, math, science, or art via a firm foundation of strong reading skills. When we teach students to read with precision, rigor, and insight, we are truly handing over the key to the kingdom. Of all the subjects we teach reading is first among equals. Grounded in advice from effective classrooms nationwide, enhanced with more than 40 video clips, Reading Reconsidered takes you into the trenches with actionable guidance from real-life educators and instructional champions. The authors address the anxiety-inducing world of Common Core State Standards, distilling from those standards four key ideas that help hone teaching practices both generally and in preparation for assessments. This 'Core of the Core' comprises the first half of the book and instructs educators on how to teach students to: read harder texts, 'closely read' texts rigorously and intentionally, read nonfiction more effectively, and write more effectively in direct response to texts. The second half of Reading Reconsidered reinforces these principles, coupling them with the 'fundamentals' of reading instruction—a host of techniques and subject specific tools to reconsider how teachers approach such essential topics as vocabulary, interactive reading, and student autonomy. Reading Reconsidered breaks an overly broad issue into clear, easy-to-implement approaches. Filled with practical tools, including: 44 video clips of exemplar teachers demonstrating the techniques and principles in their classrooms (note: for online access of this content, please visit my.teachlikeachampion.com) Recommended book lists Downloadable tips and templates on key topics like reading nonfiction, vocabulary instruction, and literary terms and definitions. Reading Reconsidered provides the framework necessary for teachers to ensure that students forge futures as lifelong readers.




Working Knowledge


Book Description

This book describes and analyzes the current state of work-based learning in the US. It begins with a review of the history of work-based learning and its place in policy-making around school reform, which establishes the theoretical and empirical basis for the rest of the book. Based on over five years of research on work-based learning in high school and community college programs across the country, it explores the potential for using work-based learning as part of a broad education reform strategy. The authors emphasize the importance of situated learning in understanding work-based learning and in creating engaging and educational experiences for youth.




Preparing Teachers for Deeper Learning


Book Description

Preparing Teachers for Deeper Learning answers an urgent call for teachers who educate children from diverse backgrounds to meet the demands of a changing world. In today’s knowledge economy, teachers must prioritize problem-solving ability, adaptability, critical thinking, and the development of interpersonal and collaborative skills over rote memorization and the passive transmission of knowledge. Authors Linda Darling-Hammond and Jeannie Oakes and their colleagues examine what this means for teacher preparation and showcase the work of programs that are educating for deeper learning, equity, and social justice. Guided by the growing knowledge base in the science of learning and development, the book examines teacher preparation programs at Alverno College, Bank Street College of Education, High Tech High’s Intern Program, Montclair State University, San Francisco Teacher Residency, Trinity University, and University of Colorado Denver. These seven programs share a common understanding of how people learn that shape similar innovative practices. With vivid examples of teaching for deeper learning in coursework and classrooms; interviews with faculty, school partners, and novice teachers; surveys of teacher candidates and graduates; and analyses of curriculum and practices, Preparing Teachers for Deeper Learning depicts transformative forms of teaching and teacher preparation that honor and expand all students’ abilities, knowledges, and experiences, and reaffirm the promise of educating for a better world.




Why Knowledge Matters


Book Description

In Why Knowledge Matters, influential scholar E. D. Hirsch, Jr., addresses critical issues in contemporary education reform and shows how cherished truisms about education and child development have led to unintended and negative consequences. Hirsch, author of The Knowledge Deficit, draws on recent findings in neuroscience and data from France to provide new evidence for the argument that a carefully planned, knowledge-based elementary curriculum is essential to providing the foundations for children’s life success and ensuring equal opportunity for students of all backgrounds. In the absence of a clear, common curriculum, Hirsch contends that tests are reduced to measuring skills rather than content, and that students from disadvantaged backgrounds cannot develop the knowledge base to support high achievement. Hirsch advocates for updated policies based on a set of ideas that are consistent with current cognitive science, developmental psychology, and social science. The book focuses on six persistent problems of recent US education: the over-testing of students; the scapegoating of teachers; the fadeout of preschool gains; the narrowing of the curriculum; the continued achievement gap between demographic groups; and the reliance on standards that are not linked to a rigorous curriculum. Hirsch examines evidence from the United States and other nations that a coherent, knowledge-based approach to schooling has improved both achievement and equity wherever it has been instituted, supporting the argument that the most significant education reform and force for equality of opportunity and greater social cohesion is the reform of fundamental educational ideas. Why Knowledge Matters introduces a new generation of American educators to Hirsch’s astute and passionate analysis.




Knowledge and Practice


Book Description

Longstanding cultural heritages about the nature of knowledge continue to dominate Western education. Yet the ways of knowing represented through teaching and workplace practices, including assessment, and their relationship to views of learning, are often ignored in debates about learning. This book provides a rich collection of readings that challenge traditional understandings of knowledge and the view of mind that underpins them. It offers socioculturally informed alternatives and tools for innovating change and transforming practice that value different ways of knowing, embracing those that learners bring to educational and workplace settings. The book takes forward thinking about curriculum in a number of unique and important ways. It adopts a relational view of learning and knowledge, covers educational and workplace learning, and examines knowledge from a sociocultural perspective where learner identities are conceived as forms of competency or knoweldge. It presents challenging ways of thinking about knowledge and learning and considers how to enact these in practice. Drawing from the international literature, this book will be essential reading for students of curriculum, learning and assessment in all sectors from primary to further and higher education. It is suitable as a core text for masters and taught doctorate programmes. It will also be of interest to a wide range of professionals involved with the processes of curriculum, learning and the practice of teaching and assessment. It will be relevant to those in work-based and professional education and training and informal educationsl settings, as well as traditional educational institutions at all levels. A unique collection in a field that is underrepresented, it will also be of interest to an academic audience.




International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work


Book Description

This six-volume handbook covers the latest practice in technical and vocational education and training (TVET). It presents TVET models from all over the world, reflections on the best and most innovative practice, and dozens of telling case studies. The handbook presents the work of established as well as the most promising young researchers and features unrivalled coverage of developments in research, policy and practice in TVET.