This text considers issues in alternative education. It looks at the issues from teaching, learning and research perspectives.

Alternative American Schools: Ideals in Action is a book for parents and teachers, for education professors, researchers, and students--indeed, for everyone who wants to understand the daily practices and philosophies of schools where awakening interests and learning how to learn is more important than content mastery. Drawing upon years of research and personal experiences, Korn clearly discusses fundamental contemporary educational issues through an analysis of seven long-lived, open, alternative schools, preschool through high school, public and private. This clearly written book explores the cooperative (and sometimes confusing) roles of teachers, students, and parents in these schools of choice; it also discusses their philosophical, financial, and physical survival needs. Once popularly dismissed as failed dreams, today these open learning environments continue to flourish and provide educational options to many enthusiastic learners.

This is a unique collection of leading examples of education grounded in alternative philosophies and cultures – from initiatives to create more democratic schools, through Quaker, Buddhist, Islamic, Montessori and Steiner/Waldorf schools, to Maori and First Nations education in Canada and Palestinian Jewish schools in Israel.

An examination of the growth and development of alternative schools in American society and their role in the public school environment. In Alternative Schools: A Reference Handbook, educator Brenda Edgerton Conley surveys the emerging alternatives to our conventional educational system—a system that is not only costly, but ineffective for many children. In a resource aimed at a broad audience—school administrators, politicians, and, most important, parents—Conley offers both a historical and a present-day perspective on alternative educational programs. What sets the alternative education movement apart, she argues, is its acknowledgment that we all learn differently. That knowledge has given rise to an explosion of exciting alternatives—from open schools to home schooling, from charter schools to church schools. These alternative schools are smaller and less bureaucratic, more responsive to the community, and more receptive to change.

Imagining the universities of the future. How can we re-envision the university? Too many examples of what passes for educational innovation today—MOOCs especially—focus on transactions, on questions of delivery. In Alternative Universities, David J. Staley argues that modern universities suffer from a poverty of imagination about how to reinvent themselves. Anyone seeking innovation in higher education today should concentrate instead, he says, on the kind of transformational experience universities enact. In this exercise in speculative design, Staley proposes ten models of innovation in higher education that expand our ideas of the structure and scope of the university, suggesting possibilities for what its future might look like. What if the university were designed around a curriculum of seven broad cognitive skills or as a series of global gap year experiences? What if, as a condition of matriculation, students had to major in three disparate subjects? What if the university placed the pursuit of play well above the acquisition and production of knowledge? By asking bold "What if?" questions, Staley assumes that the university is always in a state of becoming and that there is not one "idea of the university" to which all institutions must aspire. This book specifically addresses those engaged in university strategy—university presidents, faculty, policy experts, legislators, foundations, and entrepreneurs—those involved in what Simon Marginson calls "university making." Pairing a critique tempered to our current moment with an explanation of how change and disruption might contribute to a new "golden age" for higher education, Alternative Universities is an audacious and essential read.

This book is designed to give parents and teachers information on the alternative education options available in the UK. It covers three main areas: Outside the state system: small schools; Steiner Waldorf schools; Montessori schools; democratic schools and other schools with alternative philosophies Doing it yourself: setting up a small school or learning centre; educating at home; flexible schooling Alternatives within the state system: how some state schools are finding different ways of working The values, philosophies and methods of each alternative are described, including the first-hand experiences and accounts of children, teachers and parents. There are answers to common questions and useful sources of further information. This accessible and informative book is the ideal introduction for parents deciding how best to educate their children. It will be of interest to teachers looking to build their knowledge of different education philosophies.

This book offers a comparative analysis of alternative education in the UK, focusing on learning spaces that cater for children and young people. It constitutes one of the first book-length explorations of alternative learning spaces outside mainstream education - including Steiner, human scale and forest schools, care farms and homeschooling.Based on original research with teachers, parents and young people at over 50 learning spaces, Geographies of alternative education demonstrates the importance of a geographical lens for understanding alternative education. In so doing, it develops contemporary theories of autonomy, emotion/affect, habit, intergenerational relations and life-itself. The book will appeal to academics and postgraduates in the fields of geography, sociology, education and youth studies. Given ongoing concerns about the state's role in providing children's education, and an increase in the number of alternative education providers in the UK and elsewhere, the book also highlights several critical questions for policy makers and practitioners.