About the Book
This book explores the international landscape of educational scholarship, policy, and practice. Tucker argues there is a fundamental aim for world education. It is to educate complete human beings in all their dimensions, such that they become the best persons they can be, and participate fully in ‘the human story’.
Tucker asks: What is the world of education for? What is it that early childhood centers, schools and local communities are meant to do for children and their learning? Representing a decade of research, the text examines the most common concepts of the purposes of education, human nature and learning offered by scholars, international authorities and pedagogies, nations, education organizations, neuroscience, early childhood educators, and individual schools. To ‘educate for humanity’, Tucker provides a complete concept of holistic education – of whole child and holistic learning for a whole world.
The book is an essential resource for those involved in the world of education – teachers, university administrators, school authorities, policy makers, and educational organizations. Parents and community members with a strong interest in the education of all children will also find much that is informative and challenging to think about.
Table of Contents:
Introduction
1. Aims and Purposes for World Education: Scholars and Authorities
2. Aims and Purposes for Education: International Pedagogies, Early Childhood, Schools
3. Human Nature and Being: Concepts and Principles
4. Human Learning: Six Principles of Learning
Intermission: A Whole Approach to Human Being and Learning
5. Whole Child: A Model Conceived in Terms of Domains
6. Whole Child: A Model Conceived in Terms of Contexts
7. Holistic learning of the Human Brain: Language, Number, Arts, Movement, Feeling
8. Holistic learning for Self-direction, Spirituality: Examples of Holistic Practice in All Domains
9. Holistic Education: A Complete Concept
10. Educating for Humanity: The Holistic Principle
Conclusion
About the Author :
Dr Neil Tucker is an educator and leader with 50 years of direct involvement in school K-12 education (teacher, Principal, Chair, consultant) and some 20 years in education research. Neil has also led mature adult community education. He has studied at seven universities and visited 200 schools internationally.
Review :
"Neil Tucker has written a very comprehensive and useful study of the literature and thinking around whole-child education. He writes with admirable clarity and logic. The summarising dot points are clear and useful to readers in signposting the argument. The book is a great resource for all higher education students and teachers."
Sue Kossew, FAHA, Author, Emeritus Professor at Monash University, Australia
"I congratulate the author on such detail, and the broad and excellent research and theory. The concept and argument of educating for humanity is very inspiring. The book is so well written."
Dr Kathy Walker (OAM), Founder of Walker Learning, former academic, Swinburne University of Technology, Australia
"One of the enduring lessons from our research into values education was the need for holism in teaching and learning contexts if the optimal effects of education are to be realised. Understanding cognition as inseparable from the whole student, their emotional, social, moral, spiritual and aesthetic selves, is the indispensable key. Tucker demonstrates the nexus."
Terence Lovat, Author, International Research Fellow, Emeritus Professor at University of Newcastle, Australia
"Neil Tucker has written a very important book based on extensive research and rich experience in the leadership and governance of schools. He has given us a clarion call to the importance of holistic education, a concept which he compares to the web of life and to the interconnectedness of a jigsaw. This is a fine book which should become a standard text in teacher education. It deserves to be read closely and carefully by current educators."
Dr John Collier, Author, Headmaster of Shore School; Dean of Education, Morling College, Australia
"It's a colossal work, infused with little anecdotes from the coal face. I thoroughly enjoyed its passionate discourse and arguments, the bringing together of science, spirituality, consciousness, philosophy and the wisdom of the indigenous. It was both moving and troubling. The book speaks to our collective selves, and the well-being of the planet."
David Bryson, Author, Consultant, Mediator, Principal at David Bryson and Associates
