Extensively updated and revised, this new edition urges teachers to engage in the debate about educational research by undertaking meaningful research themselves. Kincheloe argues that only by engaging in complex, critical research will teachers rediscover their professional status, empower their practice in the classroom and improve the quality of education for their pupils.
Added by: lucius5 | Karma: 1660.85 | Only for teachers, Non-Fiction | 8 April 2009
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*Provides a unified theory of teaching as a profession *Opens up interesting new directions for researchers and teacher trainers. This lack of an agreed theory of teaching is one of the most important and yet intractable problems facing education. This book proposes a new integrated model of teaching, derived from aspects of the professional discipline of teaching. The resulting multi-dimensional model will challenge and stimulate education researchers and teacher trainers, as well as those with an interest in the constitution of professional discipline.
It is easy to regard the school as a venue for learning, in the cognitive sense, and to forget that pupils are also learning a great deal about social life, social interactions and friendships, in school time. Indeed school will provide the major source of these experiences for most children, and this volume is devoted to these issues, and to aspects of differences between children (sex, ethnicity) which impact on these. The readings chosen are summarised in the series introduction. Here, we mention specific alternative works, books or book chapters, which can usefully supplement or update the readings chosen here.
Theory Construction in Second Language Acquisition
Added by: rapgreen | Karma: 1035.14 | Coursebooks, Only for teachers | 8 April 2009
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SLA theory attempts to explain the phenomena involved when a person acquires a second language. We observe that people whose native language is X acquire a second language Y: How do they do it? The point of this over-simplified description is to emphasise that any theory is an attempt to explain phenomena, and to highlight three key terms: phenomena, language, and explanation.
This book shares with prospective and in-service teachers information about learning and teaching reading, writing, and thinking in linguistically and culturally diverse classrooms and communities. The underlying and recurrent thread throughout the book is the necessity for teachers to examine every instructional practice from the perspective of the culturally and linguistically diverse learner. This is a difficult task because prospective teachers and in-service teachers must "let go" of many concepts and practices they themselves experienced as students. Thus, the goal of this book is to inform and challenge English-speaking teachers who will be teaching English literacy to linguistically and culturally diverse students.
However, the focus on English literacy development does not imply advocacy for "English only" or even English as a second language (ESL) as the primary mode of literacy instruction. I have written elsewhere about the importance and benefits of first or native literacy development. In this book, I and the contributing authors assume a position that learners need to develop literacy in their native language and that the concepts and skills learned in developing the native language create a foundation of strength from which students can develop English literacy.
*Provides a unified theory of teaching as a profession 
