Excellence in student learning is dependent upon cross-cultural understanding--having a broader view of people and the world than the traditional western-oriented view. This is a vital contextual resource for learning how and why to employ the recommended classroom practices outlined in the three classroom practice volumes. The presentation builds cultural competence. Readers become more observant and open to questioning why certain practices exist in schools. Through the process in this and in additional volumes of the series, readers gain new knowledge, deeper insights, and a way of thinking about schooling that will extend to the classroom and beyond.

Culturally-transformative teaching restores teaching excellence to prominence in classroom practice through its systematic approach to precise teaching. It develops the pedagogical and cultural competence of both beginning and experienced teachers with learners in all instructional settings from the primary grades through university levels. Comprehensive explanations and examples throughout the volume help teachers get better and better at designing and conducting effective lessons so that all students have an equal opportunity to learn regardless of their cultural backgrounds or status in American society. The lesson framework and principles of the teaching model have been field-tested to serve as a growth-oriented university, school, or district-wide teacher development and evaluation system.

This book examines the multiple ways that concepts associated with Native North American indigeneity can contribute to creative and critical approaches to the process of teaching and learning. A must-read for all pre-service and in-service teachers, the book illustrates how applying these new perspectives to the process of teacher education can shed light on new possibilities for curricular reform. This text will be especially useful to social studies educators interested in interdisciplinary approaches to critical curriculum development.

This book presents previously unexamined connections between teaching practices and specific philosophical ideas, locating the prior beliefs and practical knowledge of early childhood practitioners in urban India within the broader social and historical religio-philosophical context.

The goal of cultural psychology is to explain the ways in which human cultural constructions -- for example, rituals, stereotypes, and meanings -- organize and direct human acting, feeling, and thinking in different social contexts. A rapidly growing, international field of scholarship, cultural psychology is ready for an interdisciplinary, primary resource. Linking psychology, anthropology, sociology, archaeology, and history, The Oxford Handbook of Culture and Psychology is the quintessential volume that unites the variable perspectives from these disciplines. Comprised of over fifty contributed chapters, this book provides a necessary, comprehensive overview of contemporary cultural psychology. Bridging psychological, sociological, and anthropological perspectives, one will find in this handbook: - A concise history of psychology that includes valuable resources for innovation in psychology in general and cultural psychology in particular - Interdisciplinary chapters including insights into cultural anthropology, cross-cultural psychology, culture and conceptions of the self, and semiotics and cultural connections - Close, conceptual links with contemporary biological sciences, especially developmental biology, and with other social sciences - A section detailing potential methodological innovations for cultural psychology By comparing cultures and the (often differing) human psychological functions occuring within them, The Oxford Handbook of Culture and Psychology is the ideal resource for making sense of complex and varied human phenomena.

This volume provides an in-depth, comparative examination of how primary mathematics education is influenced by national education reform, policy, local resources, and culture in three different countries. By drawing on first-hand observations and interviews, as well as analysis of policy documents and learning resources, the book considers the viability of transferring best practices in primary mathematics education across global contexts. Three diverse countries – Ghana, the US, and Singapore – are explored. Similarities and differences are highlighted, and the influence of national and regional initiatives related to pedagogical strategies, teacher education, and cultural expectations are considered, to offer an insightful examination of how best practices might be shared across borders. This book will benefit researchers, academics, and postgraduate scholars with an interest in international and comparative education, mathematics, and educational policy. Those with a specialization in primary mathematics education, including pedagogy and teacher preparation, will also benefit from this book.

This volume addresses personalisation, a key education policy in England and a key issue identified by the OECD for the schools of the future. The central questions addressed are: Which are the main theoretical perspectives on personalisation? Which are the policy strategies in different contexts? Which ingredients and theories of personalisation as legitimated knowledge from abroad are locally adopted and adapted in different countries? What are the meanings and purposes of personalisation? Why does it come paradoxically to be implemented by teachers through grouping by ability? Which alliances between the public and the private sectors are proposed? Leading scholars in the comparative education field as well as scholars committed to understanding the design and substance of education processes and politics, such as Michael Fullan, Chris Watkins, Michael Peters, Michael Fielding, Giorgio Chiosso, Ruth Deakin Crick, Ferran Ferrer, and Baocun Liu, engage with personalisation from a plurality of theoretical frameworks and in relation to many national contexts. The volume, prefaced by Mark Ginsburg, presents two main perspectives which are simultaneously at work. In the first, personalisation is assessed as a recent and global education policy, in line with the current restructuring reforms of State administration worldwide. In the second perspective, personalisation is assumed to be not only a matter of recent education policy regarding school clients and their choices, but foremost a pedagogical theory, a reassembly of old and new pedagogical approaches under new reform discourses. The volume edited by Monica Mincu offers a remarkable map of the theoretical understandings which inform different educational politics and school practices. Personalisation tends to legitimising forms of autonomy and a flexible educational relationship and thus its connection to standardisation represents a salient issue of this work. Luciano Benadusi, University of Rome Moving from teaching/learning theories to theoretical, critical, historical and religious arguments about schooling and its reforms, the various contributions provide impressive insights into the possibilities and limits of personalization for school innovation. The reader is engaged in a dialogue about the specifics of personalization as a reform focus and the historical, social and comparative complexities in which such efforts are bound. Thomas S. Popkewitz, University of Wisconsin-Madison The volume represents a significant opportunity to engage with the possibilities of personalized/individualized learning environments. It is our duty to provide our children with such positive learning contexts, and over the last thirty years we have focused considerable effort on this area in Japan. Koji Kato, President of the Japanese Society of Education for Individual Development

Culturally-centered educational experiences form the core of classroom practice. Beginning and experienced teachers at all grade levels and instructional settings learn how to help all students achieve their full potentials through an education program which draws on information from multiple cultures and perspectives. Through day-to-day classroom practice in both the regular and hidden curriculum and by joining forces with parents and the community they learn to employ practices which broaden students’ understanding of the world and its peoples.

This is a research-based book that deals with a broad range of issues about mathematics teacher education. It examines teacher education programs from different societies and cultures as it develops an international perspective on mathematics teacher education. Practical situations that are associated with related theories are studied critically. It is intended for teacher educators, mathematics educators, graduate students in mathematics education, and mathematics teachers.