Early childhood professionals are often required to work with children and families from a range of diverse backgrounds. This book goes beyond simplistic definitions of diversity, encouraging a much broader understanding and helping early childhood educators develop a critical disposition towards assumptions about children and childhood in…

The purpose of this monograph is to serve as a primer for practitioners on the foundational theories of adult learning. It begins with an explanation two lenses through which learning theory is viewed: behaviorism and constructivism. The next section defines andragogy and delineates Knowles's five assumptions about adult learners. This is followed…

This conference proceedings compiles papers presented at the Institute of Early Childhood in July 2000, the fifth in a series examining the challenges which the schools of Reggio Emilia, Italy present the early childhood profession in Australia. The conference focused on time and play in preschool education. Paper topics related to the history of…

Formulates a pedagogical position that articulates religious experience as complementary to formal-rational thought. Recent postmodernist criticism has located secular thinking as a coequal position to subjective religious experience on the now-leveled philosophical playing field. Explores what this newfound (academic) respectability means for…

Argues that, far from being a dangerous and destructive break with the past, various factions of postmodernism actually parallel modernist beliefs. Both movements share groups whose creative revisionists approach seeks a constructive accommodation. Similar parallel destructive approaches also exist. (MJP)

The USA is undergoing tremendous cultural changes as we open the first decade of the 21st century. In this paper the author discusses the need to close the performance gap that exists between White, African American, and Latino/a students. To do so, educators must carefully consider several important cultural forces. The author examines the shift…

This document contains 17 papers, organized in three sections, presented at a conference on Eastern and Western adult and continuing education. The following papers are included in Section I, "Ideas and Tasks of Adult Education: Views of East and West": "Imagineries of 'East and West': Slippery Curricular Signifiers in…

A new, prevailing wisdom is guiding the thinking of policy makers and policy shapers throughout North America; its watchwords are "global competitiveness" and "economic restructuring." The preoccupation with viewing schooling and its role in society through the single lens of global economic competitiveness closes off other…

This book presents information from a study of Teach for America, an alternative teacher education program that recruits and trains people with degrees in fields other than education to work in urban and rural schools with chronic teacher shortages, poverty, and minority students. The book is an effort to understand how different discourses of…

This volume is part of a series of 18 monographs service learning and the academic disciplines. This collection focuses on the use of service learning as an approach to teaching and learning in philosophy. After a Foreword by David A. Hoekema and an Introduction by C. David Lisman, chapters in Part 1, "Service-Learning as a Mode of…

The relationship between imagination, the individual, and the global media was examined. The examination focused on two underpinning theorizations of individuality, namely, the notion of the "discursive construction of subjectivity" that draws on the work of various poststructuralist thinkers and Judith Baker's notion of the…

This book examines family traditions of over two centuries in the United States and finds a complicated process of change in the way Americans have celebrated holidays such as Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, Passover, and Chinese New Year as well as the life cycle rituals of birth, birthdays, coming of age, marriage, and death. The book notes…

Defines evangelization as a cooperative religious educational experience regarding the efficacy of the gospel. Considers its role in the lives of young people. Concludes that evangelization must incorporate and address current social concerns as well as questions of belief and unbelief. (MJP)

Compares and contrasts two emerging approaches to educational historical research. Reveals a double-edged sword in that while these approaches open up the field to a wide array of subject matter and styles of inquiry, they also may weaken the epistemological stature of the discipline. (MJP)

This book argues that adult learning from experiences in paid and unpaid work contexts should be the basis for a new perception of what is truly educative about life. Part I sets out what practice is like in postmodern times. Chapter 1 introduces the argument that 'know how' is important in lifelong learning. Chapter 2 shows organic learning is a…