Evaluating for engagement: Enhancing learning in the middle years
Jenny Nayler
Item no: B24
Australia (GST inc): $49.95 Member price $44.95
Overseas (GST exc): $45.40 Member price $40.85
Evaluating for engagement: Enhancing learning in the middle years is a key resource for teachers and schools in their investigations of what works in the middle years of schooling. The challenges associated with engaging students during this phase of their schooling are widely documented. As a result, practical and powerful ideas about how to go about evaluating the success or otherwise of programs are needed. Along with case studies describing innovative practice and a review of key issues related to student engagement, this text provides practical resources in relation to:
- a user-friendly evaluation framework that values the perspectives of students and their teachers in finding out what works and what doesn't work in their contexts
- specific strategies that can be used to evaluate school-based initiatives
- building a collaborative inquiry culture among teachers
- successful teaching and learning strategies transferable to a
range of contexts.
Gender and IT: Ongoing challenges for Computing and Information Technology education in Australian secondary schools
Edited by Julianne Lynch
Item no: B22
Australia (GST inc): $39.95 Member price $31.95
Overseas (GST exc): $36.30 Member price $32.70
Gender and IT: Ongoing challenges for Computing and Information Technology education in Australian secondary schools brings together a diverse group of scholars to address critical questions about the decline in enrolments in computing and information technology (CIT) subjects at the school level, and the long-standing problem of the under representation of girls in CIT education. Drawing on data from three Australian states, the authors analyse current curriculum structures, pedagogical practices, school contexts and student and teacher beliefs, in order to interrogate how CIT as a curriculum area is socially constructed, and how this construction is gendered.
Going beyond questions of gender, the book contributes to our understanding more generally of a nascent discipline which holds a complex position in relation to other curriculum areas, cross-curricular initiatives, and a world outside of schools which is increasingly permeated with technology. This is an important book for teachers, curriculum designers and administrators with investments in CIT education.
12 to 18: a qualitative longitudinal study of students, values and differences in Australian schools Lyn Yates and Julie McLeod
Item no: B21
Australia (GST inc): $39.95 Member price $31.95
Overseas (GST exc): $36.30 Member price $32.70
How do young people see themselves today? How do they make decisions as they go through school? What effect does going to different schools have?
This book is based on a major eight year Australian research study that followed a number of girls and boys at four different schools from the beginning of secondary schooling through every year until their first year beyond it. The study was set up to look at girls and boys from different backgrounds, and to look at what happened to similar young people going to different schools, as well as what happened to different types of girls and boys attending the same school. It was set up to take a close-up look at what gender meant to girls and boys now; and how their individual and family qualities interacted with the particular school setting they encountered. The stories of young people and their schools in this book are one way readers might revisit some important current debates: debates about the role of public and private education; perennial questions about the shape and patterns of educational inequality; and the current concern with citizenship and values - what kinds of people are schools forming today?
Philosophy with young children - a classroom handbook
Philip Cam, Liz Fynes-Clinton, Kathlyn Harrison, Lynne Hinton, Rosie Scholl, Simon Vaseo
Item no: B20
Australia (GST inc): $39.95 Member price $31.95
Overseas (GST exc): $36.30 Member price $32.70
Imagining, wondering, reflecting, questioning, talking and speculating - philosophy with children is exciting, surprising and challenging.
Philosophy with Young Children - a classroom handbook is a handbook for teachers of early primary. The handbook is designed to assist teachers in the teaching of philosophy, and in developing skills of inquiry and reasoning in their students, utilising story books.
The handbook focuses on twelve stories and includes activities relating to each story. For each story the handbook details the area of philosophy emphasised, philosophical themes to be covered, and activities based on eliciting good questions, exploring concepts and developing reasoning skills.
To assist teachers with planning and curriculum design, two indexes are also included in the handbook - one according to themes and one according to skills. This practical handbook will assist teachers to explore philosophy in the classroom with their students - enabling students to consider issues, to ask questions, to discuss ideas and to gain further insights into their lives, and the lives of others.
Social justice and education in the 21st century
Andrew Miller
Item no: B23
Australia (GST inc): $ 35.00
Overseas (GST exc): $31.80
How might a public high school implement 'social justice' in a market-driven age? Broken Bridges High is an imaginary South Australian 'rustbelt' school struggling to survive in a neo-liberal landscape. As such, this article endeavours to imagine what staff, students, and parents might do to put 'social justice' back on the school map. Although Broken Bridges High is fictional, the resulting texts address real-life issues and dilemmas, and are themselves examples of how this imaginary school has gone about understanding and generating social justice reform. In this sense the article represents a merging of social science and creative writing as it endeavours to contextualise theoretical concerns in an everyday setting. Different texts and different textual strategies are combined to draw attention to the plight of (some) public schools in Australia today. The article opens with a letter to staff followed by a discussion paper on how social justice might be understood and implemented in the contemporary context. These suggestions could help real teachers in real schools facing similar dilemmas.
Curriculum Controversies Point and Counterpoint 1980-2005
Edited by Colin Marsh
Item no: B19
Australia (GST inc): $59.95 Member price $53.95
Overseas (GST exc): $54.50 Member price $49.05
Curriculum policies and actions are never simple. There are often many different players with widely divergent priorities. Sometimes a seemingly simple curriculum decision becomes highly controversial. Some controversial issues in curriculum never die - they just reappear in slightly different guises.
Curriculum Controversies is a timely volume which examines a number of controversial issues in curriculum which have arisen over the last twenty five years. The papers included in this volume have been extracted from Point and Counterpoint sections published in Curriculum Perspectives over the period 1980-2005.
Curriculum Controversies makes fascinating reading not only because of the range of issues presented, but also because of the recurring nature of many of them.
Curriculum Developments in Australia: Promising initiatives, impasses and dead-ends.
Edited by Catherine Harris & Colin Marsh
Item no: B18
Australia (GST inc): $49.95 Member price $44.95
Overseas (GST exc): $45.40 Member price $40.85
The editors of Curriculum Developments in Australia: Promising initiatives, impasses and dead-ends, Catherine Harris (Deakin University) and Colin Marsh (Curtin University), have produced a valuable collection of chapters about education policy and curriculum decision-making in Australia. The in-depth case studies derived from individual states provide powerful, evocative accounts of curriculum players at work. In addition, conceptualised models of curriculum change are derived from these case study accounts.
The book is a 'must read' for those educators, administrators and parents who want to gain new insights into the rhetoric, actions, cooperative ventures and conflicts between curriculum players at national, state and regional levels.
Innovations in numeracy teaching in the middle years
Edited by Robyn Zevenbergen, 2005
Item no: R31
Australia (GST inc): $39.95 Member price $35.95
Overseas (GST exc): $36.30 Member price $32.70
This book presents a series of case studies of numeracy teaching across the middle years of schooling. Drawing on examples of exemplary teaching experiences, the co-authors describe a range of innovations implemented in middle years contexts. Using writing pairs of leading mathematics educators and practising teachers, the case studies present examples of innovative teaching of numeracy. The cases studies are from Australia and New Zealand and draw on various year levels within the middle years. They represent various models of curriculum organisation, and demonstrate different aspects of mathematics knowledge, epistemologies and approaches to teaching. In terms of this book, numeracy is differentiated from school mathematics in the following ways:
- draws on but it is not confined to basic skills in mathematics;
- is an application of various aspects of school mathematics;
- is applied in meaningful and authentic contexts;
- is a disposition to use mathematics to solve problems; and
- encourages the development and application of deep understandings of many mathematical ideas and ways of working mathematically.
Thinking about Purpose in Classroom Assessment: Assessment for, as and of learning
Lorna Earl
Item no: R30
Australia (GST inc): $20.90
Overseas (GST exc): $19.00
Classroom assessment is an integral part of classroom activity. It occurs frequently; it may be formal or informal; it is often indistinguishable from instruction; it may occur with an individual or a group; and, it is the foundation for the evaluative judgements that students, teachers and parents make (Earl and Cousins, 1995).
Teachers are the key players in classroom assessment. They direct the assessments that determine what students learn and how they feel about it and they use the results of these assessments to decide how to interact with students, what questions to ask, what assignments to give and what teaching to do (Stiggins, 1994).
As learning becomes a priority for all students, assessment takes on a different role. When assessment becomes a key component of learning, it can provide teachers and students with a 'window' into what students understand and a mechanism for deciding what to do next. In this article, based on her recent book 'Assessment As Learning: Using Classroom Assessment to Maximize Student Learning (2003), Lorna Earl will highlight three purposes of assessment, all of which are important in classroom practice:
Assessment FOR Learning: formative assessment that occurs during instruction to be used in the service of the next stage of learning. Teachers use many methods (e.g., observation, worksheets, questioning in class, student-teacher conferences) so that they can modify the learning work for their students.
Assessment AS Learning: extends the role of formative assessment for learning by emphasizing the role of the student, not only as a contributor to the assessment and learning process, but the critical connector between them. This is the regulatory process in meta-cognition. It occurs when students personally monitor what they are learning and use the feedback from this monitoring to make adjustments, adaptations and even major changes in what they understand.
Assessment OF Learning: summative assessment designed to certify learning and report to parents and students about their progress in school. Teachers use a range of methods (e.g., tests, exams, homework, projects, reports) to assess the quantity and accuracy of student work.
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