Cultivating Curious and Creative Minds presents a plethora of approaches to developing human potential in areas not conventionally addressed. Organized in two parts, this international collection of essays provides viable educational alternatives to those currently holding sway in an era of high-stakes accountability. Taken together, the chapters in Part I of Cultivating Curious and Creative Minds provide a sampling of what the cultivation of curious and creative minds en...

This book aims to explore and make visible the intersection of subject matter knowledge and teacher knowledge in the narratives of teachers. This complicated interaction between these two bodies of knowledge is often studied and little understood.This book uses narrative to examine the complexities of teaching and learning. The authors of the chapters, as well as the editors, use innovative approaches to narrative methodology for research on teaching and teacher education in areas ...

"Narrative Inquirers in the Midst of Meaning-making: Interpretive Acts of Teacher Educators" illustrates interim narrative field texts of identity as "teacher educator stories" and demonstrates how researchers utilize common places of temporality, sociality, and place in analyzing narratives. It describes conceptualizations of narrative research processes, bringing forward narrative tools and methods of layering narratives from experienced narrative researchers. Through the metaphor of bra...

Comparing math teaching practices in Japan and Germany with those in the United States, two leading researchers offer a surprising new view of teaching and a bold action plan for improving education inside the American classroom.For years our schools and children have lagged behind international standards in reading, arithmetic, and most other areas of academic achievement. It is no secret that American schools are in dire need of improvement, and that education has...

In Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes, Robert M. Emerson, Rachel I. Fretz, and Linda L. Shaw present a series of guidelines, suggestions, and practical advice for creating useful fieldnotes in a variety of settings, demystifying a process that is often assumed to be intuitive and impossible to teach. Using actual unfinished notes as examples, the authors illustrate options for composing, reviewing, and working fieldnotes into finished texts. They discuss different organizational and ...

Collaborative Practice in Psychology and Therapy provides mainstream academics and practitioners with easy access to cutting-edge thinking in social constructionist psychology and therapy. This unique book is geared to readers who may not be familiar with narrative, social constructionist, or critical psychology and therapy, presenting contemporary theory and practice with a minimum of jargon. The field's leading practitioners and theorists demonstrate, through a collaborative and relation...

Nurturing Creativity in the Classroom is a groundbreaking collection of essays by leading scholars, who examine and respond to the tension that many educators face in valuing student creativity but believing that they cannot support it given the curricular constraints of the classroom. Is it possible for teachers to nurture creative development and expression without drifting into curricular chaos? Do curricular constraints necessarily lead to choosing conformity over creativity? This book...

Vygotsky at Work and Play is an intimate portrayal of the Vygotskian-inspired approach to human development known as ‘social therapeutics’and ‘the psychology of becoming’. Holzman provides an accessible, practical-philosophical portrayal of a unique performance-based methodology of development and learning that draws upon a fresh reading of Vygotsky.This expanded edition includes new content dealing with how Lev Vygotsky’s work can be applied to profound social is...

“Opportunity to learn (OTL) factors interact and ultimately influence mathematics achievement.  Many important OTL interactions take place in school settings.  This volume provides insights into the role of peer interactions in the mathematics learning process.  The analysis describes with a sense of purpose a topic that is typically overlooked in discussions of mathematics reform.  The case study is an important contribution to the urban mathematics education literature.” ...

Designed for novice as well as more experienced researchers, Reason & Rigor presents conceptual frameworks as a mechanism for aligning literature review, research design, and methodology. The book explores the conceptual framework—defined as both a process and a product—that helps to direct and ground researchers as they work through common research challenges. Focusing on published studies on a range of topics and employing both quantitative and qualitative methods, the u...

This book provides invaluable guidance for thinking through and planning a qualitative study. Rather than offering recipes for specific techniques, master storyteller Robert Stake stimulates readers to discover "how things work" in organizations, programs, communities, and other systems. Topics range from identifying a research question to selecting methods, gathering data, interpreting and analyzing the results, and producing a well-thought-through written report. In-depth examples from a...

The Learning SelfThis new book from the award-winning author of Psychology and Adult Learning puts the spotlight on the kind of learning that brings about significant personal change. Tennant explores the techniques, processes, and practices educators can use to promote learning that leads to change and examines assumptions about self and identity, how we are formed, and our capacity for change.The Learning Self addresses the different con...