Exploring Education: An Introduction to the Foundations of Education

This text offers an alternative to traditional foundations texts by combining a point-of-view analysis with primary source readings. Pre- and in-service teachers will find a solid introduction to the foundations disciplines---history, philosophy, politics, and sociology of education---and their application to educational issues including school organization and teaching, curriculum and pedagogic practices, education and inequality, and school reform and improvement. At a time when foundations of education are marginalized in many teacher education programs and teacher education reform pushes scripted approaches to curriculum and instruction, Exploring Education helps teachers to think critically about the "what" and "why" behind the most pressing issues in contemporary education.

Table of Contents:
Preface Acknowledgments Chapter 1 The Limits and Promises of Education: Toward Reflective Practitioners Chapter 2 The Politics of Education: Conservative, Liberal, Radical, and Neo-liberal Perspectives HIJACKED! How the Standards Movement Turned into the Testing Movement, Diane Ravitch What "Counts" as Educational Policy? Notes toward a New Paradigm, Jean Anyon Chapter 3 The History of Education Popular Schooling, Lawrence A. Cremin Capital Accumulation, Class Conflict, And Educational Change, Samuel Bowles And Herbert Gintis Chapter 4 The Sociology of Education The Contribution of Schooling to the Learning of Norms, Robert Dreeben On Understanding the Processes of Schooling: The Contributions of Labeling Theory, Ray C. Rist The Politics of Culture: Understanding Local Political Resistance to Detracking in Racially Mixed Schools, Amy Stuart Wells and Irene Sena Chapter 5 The Philosophy of Education and Its Significance for Teachers My Pedagogic Creed, John Dewey Wide-Awakeness and the Moral Life, Maxine Greene The Ideal of the Educated Person, Jane Roland Martin Chapter 6 Schools as Organizations and Teacher Professionalization Contradictions of Reform, Linda M. McNeil Rich Land, Poor Schools, David Baker And Gerald Letendre Is The Supply Of Mathematics And Science Teachers Sufficient? Richard M. Ingersoll And David Perda Chapter 7 Curriculum, Pedagogy, and the Transmission of Knowledge The Politics of a National Curriculum, Michael W. Apple The Mimetic and the Transformative: Alternative Outlooks on Teaching, Philip W. Jackson The Silenced Dialogue: Power and Pedagogy in Educating Other People’s Children, Lisa D. Delpit Chapter 8 Equality of Opportunity and Educational Outcomes Class and the Classroom: Even the Best Schools Can’t Close the Race Achievement Gap, Richard Rothstein Chartering and Bartering: Elite Education and Social Reproduction, Caroline Hodges Persell and Peter W. Cookson, Jr. College-for-All: Do Students Understand What College Demands? James E. Rosenbaum Chapter 9 Explanations of Educational Inequality It's Not "a Black Thing": Understanding the Burden of Acting White and Other Dilemmas of High Achievement, Karolyn Tyson, William Darity, and Domini Castellino Gender Inequalities in Education, Claudia Buchman, Thomas A. Diprete, and Anne McDaniel From social ties to social capital: Class differences in the relations between schools and parents networks, Erin McNamar Horvat, Elliot B. Weininger, and Annette Lareau A Black Student’s Reflection on Public and Private Schools, Imani Perry Chapter 10 Educational Reform and School Improvement A Few Thoughts on Making This Work, Frederick Hess Education and Poverty: Confronting the Evidence, Helen F. Ladd The Politics of School Reform: A Broader and Bolder Approach for Newark, Pedro Noguera and Lauren Wells Appendix: Suggested Resources References Index

About the Author :
Alan R. Sadovnik is Board of Governors Distinguished Service Professor of Education, Sociology, and Public Administration and Affairs at Rutgers University, USA. Peter W. Cookson, Jr. teaches at Teachers College, Columbia University, USA, and is President of Ideas without Borders in Washington, DC, USA. Susan F. Semel is Professor of Education and Chair of the Department of Secondary Education at the City College of New York, USA.