Bringing together a group of the best and most creative educational thinkers to reflect on the purpose and future of public education, this collection of original essays by leading social and educational commentators in North America attempts to articulate a new vision for education, especially public education, and begin to set an alternative direction.

We want to have it all: financial strength, secure homes, clean air and water for our children. With the latest technological advances available, we deserve to have every dilemma resolved. Isn't that the way it's supposed to work? Hope in Troubled Times dares to say "no." Poverty, terrorism, and overtaxed land are planetary problems that make even believers despair. But the authors point to Christ as the source of hope. Our choice is obvious. We work together, learning to live unselfishly, or we watch civilization sink further into the abyss. With a foreword by renowned human rights activist Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Hope in Troubled Times provides real-world solutions to life-threatening problems. The authors show that with God's guidance we can knock down the idols that stunt clear thinking.

This empathic book suggests simple ways of guiding honest and responsive classroom discussion, with insights into dealing with a number of real-world challenges.

Also included is a thought-provoking section on the dominant connection between higher education and the economy that evaluates how well the test of service to the labor market has been met and counters the charge that our educational system is to blame for the nation's decline in economic productivity and lack of international competitiveness.

Teaching Economics in a Time of Unprecedented Change is a one-stop collection that helps pre- and in-service social studies teachers to foster an understanding of classic content as well as recent economic developments.

With the current climate and economic crises, education for sustainability has never been more critical. This timely and essential book encourages readers to rethink our current values systems and to interrogate common assumptions about our world. Written for all educators with an interest in sustainability, chapters address several possible future scenarios for our planet, allowing readers to make more educated choices about sustainability and to transfer this knowledge to students within the classroom. Each chapter focuses on a specific Sustainable Development Goal. Beginning with a brief historical and theoretical introduction to contextualise the goal, chapters then showcase the practical activities, case studies and exemplars that teachers can adopt when teaching. Topics explored include, but are not limited to: Poverty Renewable energy Climate change Peace and justice Human rights Access to education This book is an essential classroom resource for any teacher or student teacher wishing to promote the Sustainable Development Goals and to teach for a better and brighter future.

This book offers a groundbreaking examination of citizenship education programs that serve contemporary youth in schools and communities across the United States. These programs include social studies classes and curricula, school governance, and community-based education efforts. The book takes an interdisciplinary approach to exploring the experiences and perspectives of educators and youth involved in these civic education efforts. The contributors offer rich analyses of how mainstream and alternative programs are envisioned and enacted, and the most important factors that shape them. A variety of theoretical lenses and qualitative methodologies are used, including ethnography, focus group interviews, and content analyses of textbooks.

Contested Issues in Troubled Times provides student affairs educators with frameworks to constructively think about and navigate the contentious climate they are increasingly encountering on campus.The 54 contributors address the book’s overarching question: How do we create an equitable climate conducive to learning in a dynamic environment fraught with complexity and a socio-political context characterized by escalating intolerance, incivility, and overt discrimination?Rather than attempting to offer readers definitive solutions, this book illustrates the possibilities and promise of acknowledging multiple approaches to addressing contentious issues, articulating a persuasive argument anchored in professional judgment, listening attentively to others for points of connection as well as divergence, and drawing upon new ways of thinking to foster safe and inclusive campuses.Among the issues this volume addresses are such topics as sexual violence; historically underrepresented racial and ethnic groups; transgender and undocumented students; the professional skills, knowledge and/or dispositions needed to thrive and facilitate systemic change in contemporary higher education organizations; the implications of maintaining personal and professional identities via social media; and self-care.In this companion volume to Contested Issues in Student Affairs (whose issues remain as relevant today as they were upon publication in 2011), a new set of contributors explore new questions which foreground issues of equity, safety, and civility – themes which dominate today’s higher education headlines and campus conversations.The book concludes with calls to action, encouraging student affairs educators to exhibit the moral courage needed to critically examine routine practices that (un)knowingly perpetuate inequity and enact the foundational values and principles upon which the student affairs profession was founded.

Scholars of ecocriticism have long tried to articulate emotional relationships to environments. Only recently, however, have they begun to draw on the complex interdisciplinary body of research known as affect theory. Affective Ecocriticism takes as its premise that ecocritical scholarship has much to gain from the rich work on affect and emotion happening within social and cultural theory, geography, psychology, philosophy, queer theory, feminist theory, narratology, and neuroscience, among others. This vibrant and important volume imagines a more affective—and consequently more effective—ecocriticism, as well as a more environmentally attuned affect studies. These interdisciplinary essays model a range of approaches to emotion and affect in considering a variety of primary texts, including short story collections, films, poetry, curricular programs, and contentious geopolitical locales such as Canada’s Tar Sands. Several chapters deal skeptically with familiar environmentalist affects like love, hope, resilience, and optimism; others consider what are often understood as negative emotions, such as anxiety, disappointment, and homesickness—all with an eye toward reinvigorating or reconsidering their utility for the environmental humanities and environmentalism. Affective Ecocriticism offers an accessible approach to this theoretical intersection that will speak to readers across multiple disciplinary and geographic locations.

This book brings together the literature in a field which may define the 21st century. Can economic and technological progress continue with educational systems which seem to answer to no one but themselves and which output graduates who can barely read and write and who have only the faintest clue how to use a map? This bibliography provides access via Title, Author and Subject Indexes. Contents: Educational Accountability; Educational Change; Educational Equalisation; Educational Leadership; Educational Planning; Educational Indicates.