This comprehensive, research-based resource illuminates the challenges and benefits of integrating community-based transformational learning (CBTL) experiences of teachers, students, and the community in early childhood settings. Balancing historical context with theoretical underpinnings, ongoing research, and current practice, this multi-authored volume demystifies the praxeology of CBTL. It uses annotated case studies to explore the importance of considering contextual factors (i.e., cultural practices, community health and demographics, and student level) that may influence what early-years students gain from CBTL experiences, and it encourages a community dialogue that is both challenging and affirming to support students' confidence in their own capacity to make a better world for all people. As the first CBTL book specific to early childhood settings, it is key reading for future teachers. It is also of great interest to current educators, administrators, and community organizers who want to help center CBTL as a vital part of early childhood curriculum.

Rooted in the work of community – school collaborations, this text focuses on connecting the rigors of the classroom with the ambiguity of lived community experience. Community-Based Transformational Learning (CBTL) draws on the increasing evidence that course-learning conducted in an applied, community setting, can positively transform students' professional and personal identity and creates new ways of thinking and working in university courses and pre-professional experiences. To illustrate the different ways to successfully implement community-based learning, examples are provided of experiences integrated in courses across multiple disciplines across an American university whose mission is focused on teaching. Topics covered include refugee and immigration transition issues, incarceration and health needs with international examples of community experiences from Jamaica, Korea and Belize. Qualitative and quantitative data depict how these experiences impact students and each chapter presents how community engagement has been established as an effective approach in the different disciplines, including computer science and sports management. The authors demonstrate how CBTL experiences can be transformative when students are provided a chance to connect the academic commitment to community aims, but also provides suggestions for overcoming challenges and pit-falls in developing these experiences.

The Reggio Emilia approach is reintroduced in this book through rich stories and examples of children's projects that invite readers to examine their personal learning process. It offers innovative ways to meld theory with teaching and action research while considering the professional development of each reader pre-service, in-service, teacher educator, teacher researcher. Unlike other texts on Reggio Emilia, it considers assessment, cultural diversity, and teaching issues from a U.S. perspective. The place of Reggio Emilia in the United States. Amiable communities for learning. Teacher education: Inquiry teaching and the possibilities for change. Progettazione and documentation: Learning moments among protagonists. "

This volume of New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education presents discussions of well-established theories and new perspectives on learning in adulthood. Knowles' andragogy, self-directed learning, Mezirow's perspective transformation, and several other models are assessed for their contribution to our understanding of adult learning. In addition, recent theoretical orientations, including consciousness and learning, situated cognition, critical theory, and feminist pedagogy, are discussed in terms of how each expands the knowlege base of adult learning. This is the 57th issue of the Jossey-Bass quarterly report series New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education.

This volume brings together the expert and timely writings of educational practitioners and researchers struggling to reform their classrooms to reach and teach diverse student populations. The contributors describe the importance of bringing one's own identity, culture, and history to discussions with disenfranchised communities. This book brings the reader into the classroom, where innovative teachers and researchers describe the transformative potential of personal experience when it is properly integrated into the learning environment. The balance between theory and practice makes Shifting Histories a valuable resource for teachers, school administrators, and policymakers alike. Edited by Gladys R. Capella Noya, Kathryn Geismar, and Guitele Nicoleau