Merging Numeracy with Literacy Practices for Equity in Multilingual Early Year Settings


Book Description

This book draws on both in and out of school literacy practices with teachers and families to enhance the numeracy of early learners. It provides highly illustrative exemplars, targeted for learners up to approximately eight years of age whose home language differs from the language of instruction. It identifies the challenges faced by these learners and their families, and shares ways of building both literacy and numeracy skills for some of the vulnerable learners nationally and internationally. The book shares the outcomes and strategies for teaching mathematics to early years learners and highlights the importance of literacy practices for learners for whom the language of instruction is different from their home language. Readers will gain a practical sense of how to create contexts, classrooms and practices to scaffold these learners to build robust understandings of mathematics.







Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8


Book Description

Children are already learning at birth, and they develop and learn at a rapid pace in their early years. This provides a critical foundation for lifelong progress, and the adults who provide for the care and the education of young children bear a great responsibility for their health, development, and learning. Despite the fact that they share the same objective - to nurture young children and secure their future success - the various practitioners who contribute to the care and the education of children from birth through age 8 are not acknowledged as a workforce unified by the common knowledge and competencies needed to do their jobs well. Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8 explores the science of child development, particularly looking at implications for the professionals who work with children. This report examines the current capacities and practices of the workforce, the settings in which they work, the policies and infrastructure that set qualifications and provide professional learning, and the government agencies and other funders who support and oversee these systems. This book then makes recommendations to improve the quality of professional practice and the practice environment for care and education professionals. These detailed recommendations create a blueprint for action that builds on a unifying foundation of child development and early learning, shared knowledge and competencies for care and education professionals, and principles for effective professional learning. Young children thrive and learn best when they have secure, positive relationships with adults who are knowledgeable about how to support their development and learning and are responsive to their individual progress. Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8 offers guidance on system changes to improve the quality of professional practice, specific actions to improve professional learning systems and workforce development, and research to continue to build the knowledge base in ways that will directly advance and inform future actions. The recommendations of this book provide an opportunity to improve the quality of the care and the education that children receive, and ultimately improve outcomes for children.




Funds of Knowledge


Book Description

The concept of "funds of knowledge" is based on a simple premise: people are competent and have knowledge, and their life experiences have given them that knowledge. The claim in this book is that first-hand research experiences with families allow one to document this competence and knowledge, and that such engagement provides many possibilities for positive pedagogical actions. Drawing from both Vygotskian and neo-sociocultural perspectives in designing a methodology that views the everyday practices of language and action as constructing knowledge, the funds of knowledge approach facilitates a systematic and powerful way to represent communities in terms of the resources they possess and how to harness them for classroom teaching. This book accomplishes three objectives: It gives readers the basic methodology and techniques followed in the contributors' funds of knowledge research; it extends the boundaries of what these researchers have done; and it explores the applications to classroom practice that can result from teachers knowing the communities in which they work. In a time when national educational discourses focus on system reform and wholesale replicability across school sites, this book offers a counter-perspective stating that instruction must be linked to students' lives, and that details of effective pedagogy should be linked to local histories and community contexts. This approach should not be confused with parent participation programs, although that is often a fortuitous consequence of the work described. It is also not an attempt to teach parents "how to do school" although that could certainly be an outcome if the parents so desired. Instead, the funds of knowledge approach attempts to accomplish something that may be even more challenging: to alter the perceptions of working-class or poor communities by viewing their households primarily in terms of their strengths and resources, their defining pedagogical characteristics. Funds of Knowledge: Theorizing Practices in Households, Communities, and Classrooms is a critically important volume for all teachers and teachers-to-be, and for researchers and graduate students of language, culture, and education.







Advocating for English Learners


Book Description

"English learners (ELs) are the fastest-growing segment of the K-12 population. But Els and their families, who are in the process of learning English and navigating an often-unfamiliar education system, may not have a voice powerful enough to articulate their needs. Consequently, all teachers and administrators must advocate for this all-important diverse group of students who will become tomorrow's workforce."--Back cover.




Using Understanding by Design in the Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Classroom


Book Description

How can today's teachers, whose classrooms are more culturally and linguistically diverse than ever before, ensure that their students achieve at high levels? How can they design units and lessons that support English learners in language development and content learning—simultaneously? Authors Amy Heineke and Jay McTighe provide the answers by adding a lens on language to the widely used Understanding by Design® framework (UbD® framework) for curriculum design, which emphasizes teaching for understanding, not rote memorization. Readers will learn the components of the UbD framework; the fundamentals of language and language development; how to use diversity as a valuable resource for instruction by gathering information about students’ background knowledge from home, community, and school; how to design units and lessons that integrate language development with content learning in the form of essential knowledge and skills; and how to assess in ways that enable language learners to reveal their academic knowledge. Student profiles, real-life classroom scenarios, and sample units and lessons provide compelling examples of how teachers in all grade levels and content areas use the UbD framework in their culturally and linguistically diverse classrooms. Combining these practical examples with findings from an extensive research base, the authors deliver a useful and authoritative guide for reaching the overarching goal: ensuring that all students have equitable access to high-quality curriculum and instruction.




Equity in Mathematics Education


Book Description

Following in the steps of the socio-political turn of the discipline, Equity in Mathematics Education: Addressing a Changing World emerged as a response of the editor and the chapter authors to the enormous changes that have in the last years occurred at a global level (for example, the ongoing war in Syria, the political [in]actions of powerful nations to fight climate change, the rise of far-right parties in many countries around the world, and so on). In recent years, massive migration waves from the Middle East have caused significant demographic changes to many European countries, Canada and the US, that are reflected in schools and classrooms. These observations have led this book’s contributors to reconsider the concept and/or practice of equity, and its related concept, social justice, and the role of mathematics education research in addressing and promoting a fairer world. Contrary to other, perhaps highly specialized books concerned with similar topics, this book aims to provide a smooth, yet deep introduction to those who are new to this research area. Equity in Mathematics Education: Addressing a Changing World contributes to the understanding of equity and its complex relations to mathematics education. It is anticipated that it will support individuals in teaching, educational research, policy making and planning, and teacher education, in becoming more aware of the interplay between school mathematics and socio-political issues that, ultimately, impacts the lives of learners and their communities, teachers as practitioners and as citizens, the wider society, and the world as a whole. Even though each chapter can be read independently of others, an engagement with all chapters in this volume will provide readers with a solid holistic understanding of the research territory of equity and mathematics education.




Overview: MELQO


Book Description

The Measuring Early Learning Quality and Outcomes (MELQO) initiative began in 2014 as part of the global emphasis on early childhood development (ECD). Led by UNESCO, the World Bank, the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution and UNICEF, the initiative aims to promote feasible, accurate and useful measurement of childrenâs development and learning at the start of primary school, and of the quality of their pre-primary learning environments. Items are designed for children between the ages of 4 and 6 years. Following the premise that many existing tools include similar items, the leading organizationsâ core team worked with a consortium of experts, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and multilaterals to build upon current measurement tools to create a common set of items organized into modules for measuring: 1) early childhood development and learning, and 2) the quality of pre-primary learning environments. The MELQO core team and experts also collaborated to outline a process for context-specific adaptation of the measurement modules resulting from lessons learned from field-testing in several countries in 2015 and 2016. The modules are designed to be implemented at scale, with an emphasis on feasibility for low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). A key question addressed by MELQO was the balance between a global tool suitable for use everywhere, and local priorities and goals for childrenâs development. [Introduction, ed]