William B. Russell III, Ph.D. is Associate Professor of Social Science Education at The University of Central Florida. He teaches social studies education courses and serves as the Social Science Education Ph.D. track coordinator.

Stewart Waters, Ph.D. is Assistant Professor of Social Science Education in the Department of Theory and Practice in Teacher Education at The University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

Thomas N. Turner, Ed.D. is Professor of Social Science Education in the Department of Theory and Practice in Teacher Education at The University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

Dr. Russell serves as the director for The International Society for the Social Studies and is the editor of a preeminent journal in the field of social studies education, The Journal of Social Studies Research. His research interests include alternative methods for teaching social studies, pre-service teacher education, and teaching with film. Dr. Russell has authored/edited numerous books. Dr. Russell has also authored over forty five peer-reviewed journal articles related to social studies education which have been featured in journals like Action in Teacher Education, Social Education, The History Teacher, Journal of Social Studies Research, The Clearing House, Social Studies and the Young Learner, The High School Journal, and The Social Studies.

Dr. Waters' research interests include alternative methods for teaching social studies, character education, visual literacy, social studies curriculum, and teaching with film. Dr. Waters is the conference coordinator for The International Society for the Social Studies and is the assistant editor for The Journal of Social Studies Research. Dr. Waters has authored three books and several peer-reviewed journal articles related to social studies education which have been featured in journals like Social Education, Action in Teacher Education, The Journal of Social Studies Research, Social Studies Research and Practice, and The Social Studies.

Dr. Turner's research interests include teaching elementary social studies, social studies methods, and drama in the classroom. He received his BS in Elementary Education from the University of Cincinnati and his master’s and doctorate in Social Science Education at Pennsylvania State University. He is author of numerous books and over a hundred book chapters and journal articles.

Jean’s newest book Time to Talk: Implementing outstanding practice in speech, language and communication is published this month by Routledge. In it, she says, she has ‘Done what I always do when I write – collected the fantastic practice I have seen on my travels and tried to put a conceptual framework around it, linking practice to research evidence.’

She took a similar approach in Beating Bureaucracy in Special Educational Needs, another Routledge book, now in its (2012) second edition. Here and in the earlier Special Educational Needs and School Improvement (David Fulton, 2004), she sought to demonstrate that improving outcomes for pupils with special needs is fundamentally a teaching and learning issue , and that we need to shift our focus away from bureaucratic special needs ‘procedures’ towards what is actually happening in the classroom and in school leadership.

She got into writing by accident. ‘I saw a series of articles about swimming – of all things – that a friend wrote for the local paper when we were living in the Middle East. I could do that too, I thought! I was a parent of young children, so I started writing for the paper about parenting. When I came back to the UK I put the articles together as a book, Psychology and Parenthood, and amazingly got it accepted for publication by the Open University Press.’

Jean describes the influence her early experience as an educational psychologist has had on her career. ‘I spent a lot of time with children who experience disadvantage of one kind or another. Since then I have always wanted to make a difference to children who don’t have much going for them in their lives. To make that difference, we need to support parenting, develop oral language skills, make sure these children do learn to read and become numerate by seven, and build social and emotional skills including the crucial dimension of self-efficacy. I’m motivated by evidence on ‘what works’ in all these areas and all my career choices have been driven by trying to embed what works in local and national policy and spending.’

The same desire to make a difference shapes her writing. ‘I don’t think that practitioners – whether they be parents, early years workers or teachers – always have access to good evidence. So I’ve tried to fill that gap in a way that makes evidence accessible, and blends it with real-life examples that people can emulate. So in my latest book, for example, I have put together what we know about the conditions that support children’s language development right through from infancy to the teenage years, but also described work that has been done in schools, early years settings and local authorities to ensure those conditions are in place – using a simple framework of ‘a place to talk’, ‘a reason to talk’, and ‘support for talk.’

Jean has been fascinated by the research on how children’s secure attachment and communication skills develop through warm reciprocal interaction with caregivers and says this is motivating her now to focus on what we need to do very early in children’s lives, to give them the best start in life. She is a founding Trustee of MP Graham Allen’s Early Intervention Foundation, and currently much involved with government on a joint approach to early years provision across health and education.

You can find her at www.jean-gross.com.

Gerontology & Geriatrics Education
Free Access to the Special Issue: The Evolution of Service-Learning: New Models and Directions
Volume 34, Issue 1, 2013
 

This handbook illustrates how education scholars employ Critical Race Theory (CRT) as a framework to bring attention to issues of race and racism in education.

Dr. Marvin Lynn is an internationally recognized expert on race and education. His research examines the work and lives of African American male teachers as well as the impact of teacher beliefs on African American students. He serves as an editorial board member of several journals, and has published more than two-dozen research articles and book chapters in reputable outlets.

Dr. Adrienne D. Dixson is an Associate Professor in the Department of Education Policy, Organization and Leadership and the Interim Director of the Center for Education in Small Urban Communities at College of Education - University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

More about Dr. Lynn:

Currently, Dr. Lynn serves as Associate Professor of Education Studies and Associate Dean for Teacher Education at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. Previously, he worked as Associate Professor of Curriculum & Instruction, Affiliate Faculty member in African American studies and Director of graduate and undergraduate elementary teacher preparation programs at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). Prior to arriving at UIC, Dr. Lynn was Assistant and Associate Professor of Minority & Urban Education—a graduate program he founded and coordinated at the University of Maryland at College Park. He also worked for several years as an elementary and middle school teacher. In February of 2013, Dr. Lynn was named Dean of the School of Education at Indiana University South Bend.

He earned his Ph.D. in Social Sciences and Education from the University of California at Los Angeles, a Master of Arts in Curriculum and Teaching from Teachers College-Columbia University and a Bachelors of Science degree in Elementary Education with concentrations in music and language arts from DePaul University.

More about Dr. Dixson:

Dr, Dixson earned an MA in Educational Studies from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor and a PhD in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. A former classroom teacher in New Orleans, LA, her research interests focus on how issues of race, class and gender intersect and impact educational equity in urbanschooling contexts. Her scholarship is located within two theoretical frameworks: Critical Race Theory and Black feminist theories. Her current research focuses on how educational equity is mediated by school reform policies in the urban south. Specifically, she is examining school reform in post-Katrina New Orleans, how local actors make sense of and experience those reform policies and how those policies become or are "racialized."

She edited, along with her colleague, Celia K. Rousseau-Anderson, Critical Race Theory in Education: All God's Children Got a Song (2006, Routledge) one of the first book-length texts on CRT in education. Her latest publications examine race and education or race and educational research.

The goal of the Week of the Young Child is to focus public attention on the needs of young children and their families and to to ensure they reach their fullest potential in school and in life. This week also recognizes the early childhood programs and services that meet those needs.

First Established in 1971, the Week of the Young Child helps bring recognition to the idea that the early childhood years (birth through age 8) lay the foundation for children’s success in school and later life.
The Week of the Young Child is April 14 – 20, 2013 and the main theme is “Early Years Are Learning Years.” Each year schools, educational centers, and communities around the country celebrate the Week of the Young Child by organizing parties, games and other special events for young children to take part in.

Routledge believes in promoting learning early and many of our childhood education books center around this subject. In honor of the Week of the Young Child, Routledge is offering a 20% discount on the early childhood education books below. Simply visit our website now through May 16th, 2013 and enter the code IRK57 when making your purchase.

We hope to see you at the NAEYC 2013 Conference in November in Washington, DC.

You can visit our online early childhood education catalog to see some of our books that will be present at NAEYC this year.
  

The NASP Lifetime Achievement Award recognizes a school psychologist who, throughout their career, has made a significant contribution to the advancement of the profession of school psychology.

Sylvia Rosenfield’s work has been described as “inspirational,” “transformational” and “significant in defining our profession and guiding what school psychology has become.” She has been a member of the school psychology community for over 40 years, as a student, practitioner, and university trainer. After completing her undergraduate degree at Cornell University and master’s in speech pathology and audiology at the University of Illinois, she received her doctoral degree in school psychology at the University of Wisconsin. She began her professional career as a practicing school psychologist in the Madison (WI) schools. From the beginning of her professional work in the schools, she viewed the domain of consultation and collaboration as essential to school psychology practice.

After moving to NYC, she joined the faculty of the urban school psychology program at Fordham University, where she instituted a bilingual school psychology program and developed a strong interest in urban school issues. At Fordham, she also began her work on consultation and problem solving teams, working with schools in Connecticut and New York. As stated by one of her colleagues, “She led the school psychology program at Fordham to be a national model of training that focused less on diagnostic assessment and more on indirect intervention.” Based on her teaching and school experiences, she wrote Instructional Consultation (1987), now a recognized school consultation model. During her brief time at Temple University, she worked with school districts on Project Link, a precursor to Instructional Consultation Teams.

In reflecting on her career, she continues to believe in the potential of school psychology to make a difference in a place called school and is grateful for the opportunity to have contributed to that work.

About NASP
The National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) empowers school psychologists by advancing effective practices to improve students’ learning, behavior, and mental health.   

KDP members: Use discount code KDP13 when placing a book order direct from Routledge at www.routledge.com.

To receive the discount, enter KDP13 in the ‘apply discount code’ box of the shopping cart and hit ‘update cart’ before checkout. Please click here if you have any order inquiries.

In 1989 an Open University researcher, Rupert Wegerif, collected data in Lyn’s classroom, studying children’s talk as they worked together at computers. When this Thinking Together research revealed that the children’s discussion skills were extremely limited, Lyn devised and taught a series of Talk Lessons. These lessons reflected the research team’s interest in exploratory talk as described by Neil Mercer (University of Cambridge). After a short series of Talk Lessons, the research team recorded increased incidence of exploratory talk. This was heartening; subsequently we found that a benefit of the talk lessons and Thinking Together approach is that children not only learn better in curriculum areas, but also find out how to discuss things with others in a measured, enquiring and exploratory way – an invaluable life skill.

Lyn gained her PhD from De Montfort University in 2002. She has since taught education students at Bedford, Northampton and Cambridge University. She promotes a Talk for Learning approach in which students and children are made aware of the power and purpose of classroom discussions, taught how to conduct and value exploratory talk, and apply their developing talk skills to their curriculum learning.

With Neil Mercer, Lyn now provides in-service education courses for teachers. These establish the theoretical background for importance of teaching discussion skills, and provide practical strategies so that teachers and school managers can integrate effective talk into classrooms. Workshops have taken place in many parts of England (e.g. Coventry, Bradford, Cornwall and Newport, Gwent) as well as in European venues (e.g. Antwerp and Amsterdam). Lyn’s next course is for Museum Education Officers.

The idea of enabling children to be able to communicate better with one another motivated Lyn to write books for teachers which have been published by Routledge. Each book has a different focus but all support teachers in raising children’s awareness of ways that they can develop their thinking through talk with their peers. The books offer practical strategies based on classroom research and extensive experience.

Through research and teaching, Lyn established a novel approach to stimulating discussion, called Talking Points. Talking Points resources stimulate and sustain discussion. Listening to children as they talk about their ideas helps teachers to understand their current thinking. Listening to one another helps children to articulate and examine their own ideas, relating them to other points of view. Children find out how to question, explain and elaborate, and crucially, how to work towards a negotiated agreement. The resources are popular with children because they offer a chance to be heard, and to have ideas taken seriously. The books set out ways that teachers can generate their own talk-focused resources for particular topics or areas of the curriculum; suggest activities based on the group’s discussion; and show how it is possible to assess children by listening to their ideas.
 

Dr. Bárbara C. Cruz is Professor of Secondary Education at the University of South Florida. Her teaching and research interests include the preparation of social studies teachers, diversity issues in education, and the teaching of Latin America and the Caribbean.

Dr. Stephen J. Thornton is professor and chair of the Department of Secondary Education at the University of South Florida. Since his first days as a classroom teacher he has been intrigued by what happens to “official” curriculum in classrooms.

For the past five years, Dr. Barbara Cruz has worked closely with Dr. Stephen Thornton. Together, they have published a number of journal articles on social studies instruction and English language learners. Their book, Teaching Social Studies to English Language Learners, is now in its second edition. Many of the strategies called for in their book are evident in Gateway to Social Studies, their textbook for middle school students. They are also editors of the Routledge series, “Teaching ELLs across the Content Areas,” the first of its kind.

Starting with his Ph.D. dissertation at Stanford, which won the Association for Supervision and Curriculum award for Outstanding Dissertation in Curriculum, Dr. Thornton has explored and written about the enacted curriculum of classrooms. His Teaching Social Studies That Matters (Teachers College Press, 2005), which traces the ramifications of curricular-instructional gatekeeping, won a Choice Award from the American Library Association. He has been invited to speak about curricular-instructional gatekeeping across much of the world, including Spain, Japan, and Singapore.

In addition to scholarly works, Dr. Cruz has published a number of young adult biographies of inspirational Hispanics (such as Frida Kahlo, José Clemente Orozco, and Rubén Blades) and developed curricula on Latin America and the Caribbean. She is the author of César Chávez: A Voice for Farm Workers and Multiethnic Teens and Cultural Identity, for which she received the Carter G. Woodson Book Award.

Dr. Cruz is a frequent presenter at professional conferences, colloquia, and K-12 schools. With the goal of serving as a Latina role model and mentor as well as familiarizing people with the important contributions of Hispanics, Dr. Cruz participates in annual Hispanic Heritage celebrations. She is the recipient of numerous teaching, research and service awards.

Dr. Thornton is also, with David J. Flinders, editor of the Curriculum Studies Reader. Also with Routledge, the fourth edition of the Reader was published in November 2012.
 

This month on the Education Arena, we're focusing on Culture in Education. We have exclusive video highlights celebrating the launch of the new Centre of Race and Ethnicity Studies in Birmingham, as well as a brand new article collection based around Race, Culture and Multiculturalism for you to enjoy.
To find out more, please visit: www.educationarena.com