Forthcoming Books


Book Description







Making up Numbers: A History of Invention in Mathematics


Book Description

Making up Numbers: A History of Invention in Mathematics offers a detailed but accessible account of a wide range of mathematical ideas. Starting with elementary concepts, it leads the reader towards aspects of current mathematical research. The book explains how conceptual hurdles in the development of numbers and number systems were overcome in the course of history, from Babylon to Classical Greece, from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, and so to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The narrative moves from the Pythagorean insistence on positive multiples to the gradual acceptance of negative numbers, irrationals and complex numbers as essential tools in quantitative analysis. Within this chronological framework, chapters are organised thematically, covering a variety of topics and contexts: writing and solving equations, geometric construction, coordinates and complex numbers, perceptions of ‘infinity’ and its permissible uses in mathematics, number systems, and evolving views of the role of axioms. Through this approach, the author demonstrates that changes in our understanding of numbers have often relied on the breaking of long-held conventions to make way for new inventions at once providing greater clarity and widening mathematical horizons. Viewed from this historical perspective, mathematical abstraction emerges as neither mysterious nor immutable, but as a contingent, developing human activity. Making up Numbers will be of great interest to undergraduate and A-level students of mathematics, as well as secondary school teachers of the subject. In virtue of its detailed treatment of mathematical ideas, it will be of value to anyone seeking to learn more about the development of the subject.




See Me After Class


Book Description

The Most Dog-Eared "Teacher's Edition" You'll Have in Your Classroom Teaching is tough. And teachers, like the rest of the population, aren't perfect. Yet good teaching happens, and great teachers continue to inspire and educate generations of students. See Me After Class helps those great teachers of the future to survive the classroom long enough to become great. Fueled by hundreds of hilarious—and sometimes shocking—tales from the teachers who lived them, Elden provides tips and strategies that deal head-on with the challenges that aren't covered in new-teacher training. Lessons can go wrong. Parents may yell at you. Sunday evenings will sometimes be accompanied by the dreaded countdown to Monday morning. As a veteran teacher, Elden offers funny, practical, and honest advice, to help teachers walk through the doors of their classrooms day after day with clarity, confidence...and sanity! "A useful, empathetic guide to weathering the first-year lumps...a frothy, satisfying Guinness for the teacher's soul."—Dan Brown, NBCT, Director of the Future Educators Association, and author of The Great Expectations School "See Me After Class is a must-have book for any teacher's bookshelf. On second thought, you'll probably want to keep it on your classroom desk since you'll use it so much!"—Larry Ferlazzo, teacher and author of Helping Students Motivate Themselves "This is the kind of no-nonsense straight talk that teachers are starved for, but too rarely get...Roxanna Elden tells it like it is, with a heavy dose of practicality, a dash of cynicism, a raft of constructive suggestions, and plenty of wry humor."—Rick Hess, Director of Education Policy Studies at AEI, author of Education Week blog, "Rich Hess Straight Up"




Letters to a Young Teacher


Book Description

“This remarkable book is a testament to teachers who not only respect and advocate for children on a daily basis but who are the necessary guardians of the spirit. Every citizen who cares about the future of our children ought to read this.”—Eric Carle, author of The Very Hungry Caterpillar and other classic works for children “Kozol’s love for his students is as joyful and genuine as his critiques of the system are severe. He doesn’t pull punches.”—The Washington Post In these affectionate letters to Francesca, a first grade teacher at an inner-city school in Boston, Jonathan Kozol vividly describes his repeated visits to her classroom while, under Francesca’s likably irreverent questioning, he also reveals his own most personal stories of the years that he has spent in public schools. Letters to a Young Teacher reignites a number of the controversial issues Jonathan has powerfully addressed in his bestselling The Shame of the Nation and On Being a Teacher: the mania of high-stakes testing that turns many classrooms into test-prep factories where spontaneity and critical intelligence are no longer valued, the invasion of our public schools by predatory private corporations, and the inequalities of urban schools that are once again almost as segregated as they were a century ago. But most of all, these letters are rich with the happiness of teaching children, the curiosity and jubilant excitement children bring into the classroom at an early age, and their ability to overcome their insecurities when they are in the hands of an adoring and hard-working teacher.




Multicultural Art Activities


Book Description

Generate interest in multicultural studies by making Akuaba dolls, learning the art of quilling, designing Islamic Spanish tiles, and more! Background information, illustrated directions, and patterns are provided for more than 40 art projects from various cultures.




Mathematical Recreations and Essays


Book Description

Mathematical Recreations and Essays W. W. Rouse Ball For nearly a century, this sparkling classic has provided stimulating hours of entertainment to the mathematically inclined. The problems posed here often involve fundamental mathematical methods and notions, but their chief appeal is their capacity to tease and delight. In these pages you will find scores of "recreations" to amuse you and to challenge your problem-solving faculties-often to the limit. Now in its 13th edition, Mathematical Recreations and Essays has been thoroughly revised and updated over the decades since its first publication in 1892. This latest edition retains all the remarkable character of the original, but the terminology and treatment of some problems have been updated and new material has been added. Among the challenges in store for you: Arithmetical and geometrical recreations; Polyhedra; Chess-board recreations; Magic squares; Map-coloring problems; Unicursal problems; Cryptography and cryptanalysis; Calculating prodigies; ... and more. You'll even find problems which mathematical ingenuity can solve but the computer cannot. No knowledge of calculus or analytic geometry is necessary to enjoy these games and puzzles. With basic mathematical skills and the desire to meet a challenge you can put yourself to the test and win. "A must to add to your mathematics library."-The Mathematics Teacher We are delighted to publish this classic book as part of our extensive Classic Library collection. Many of the books in our collection have been out of print for decades, and therefore have not been accessible to the general public. The aim of our publishing program is to facilitate rapid access to this vast reservoir of literature, and our view is that this is a significant literary work, which deserves to be brought back into print after many decades. The contents of the vast majority of titles in the Classic Library have been scanned from the original works. To ensure a high quality product, each title has been meticulously hand curated by our staff. Our philosophy has been guided by a desire to provide the reader with a book that is as close as possible to ownership of the original work. We hope that you will enjoy this wonderful classic work, and that for you it becomes an enriching experience.




Qualitative Research from Start to Finish, First Edition


Book Description

This lively, practical text presents a fresh and comprehensive approach to doing qualitative research. The book offers a unique balance of theory and clear-cut choices for customizing every phase of a qualitative study. A scholarly mix of classic and contemporary studies from multiple disciplines provides compelling, field-based examples of the full range of qualitative approaches. Readers learn about adaptive ways of designing studies, collecting data, analyzing data, and reporting findings. Key aspects of the researcher's craft are addressed, such as fieldwork options, the five phases of data analysis (with and without using computer-based software), and how to incorporate the researcher's “declarative” and “reflective” selves into a final report. Ideal for graduate-level courses, the text includes:* Discussions of ethnography, grounded theory, phenomenology, feminist research, and other approaches.* Instructions for creating a study bank to get a new study started.* End-of-chapter exercises and a semester-long, field-based project.* Quick study boxes, research vignettes, sample studies, and a glossary.* Previews for sections within chapters, and chapter recaps.* Discussion of the place of qualitative research among other social science methods, including mixed methods research.




The One World Schoolhouse


Book Description

A free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere: this is the goal of the Khan Academy, a passion project that grew from an ex-engineer and hedge funder's online tutoring sessions with his niece, who was struggling with algebra, into a worldwide phenomenon. Today millions of students, parents, and teachers use the Khan Academy's free videos and software, which have expanded to encompass nearly every conceivable subject; and Academy techniques are being employed with exciting results in a growing number of classrooms around the globe. Like many innovators, Khan rethinks existing assumptions and imagines what education could be if freed from them. And his core idea-liberating teachers from lecturing and state-mandated calendars and opening up class time for truly human interaction-has become his life's passion. Schools seek his advice about connecting to students in a digital age, and people of all ages and backgrounds flock to the site to utilize this fresh approach to learning. In The One World Schoolhouse, Khan presents his radical vision for the future of education, as well as his own remarkable story, for the first time. In these pages, you will discover, among other things: How both students and teachers are being bound by a broken top-down model invented in Prussia two centuries ago Why technology will make classrooms more human and teachers more important How and why we can afford to pay educators the same as other professionals/DIV How we can bring creativity and true human interactivity back to learning/DIV Why we should be very optimistic about the future of learning. Parents and politicians routinely bemoan the state of our education system. Statistics suggest we've fallen behind the rest of the world in literacy, math, and sciences. With a shrewd reading of history, Khan explains how this crisis presented itself, and why a return to "mastery learning," abandoned in the twentieth century and ingeniously revived by tools like the Khan Academy, could offer the best opportunity to level the playing field, and to give all of our children a world-class education now. More than just a solution, The One World Schoolhouse serves as a call for free, universal, global education, and an explanation of how Khan's simple yet revolutionary thinking can help achieve this inspiring goal.