Focusing on issues of equity and opportunity in one urban high school, the book reveals how prominent American cultural values--in particular, students', teachers', and administrators' conceptions of educational opportunity--undermined the education that students received.

Shortlisted for the 2014 BAAL Book Prize This book explores the meaning of modernization in contemporary Chinese education. It examines the implications of the implementation of reforms in English language education for experimental-urban schools in the People’s Republic of China. Pérez-Milans sheds light on how national, linguistic, and cultural ideologies linked to modernization are being institutionally (re)produced, legitimated, and inter-personally negotiated through everyday practice in the current context of Chinese educational reforms. He places special emphasis on those reforms regarding English language education, with respect to the economic processes of globalization that are shaping (and being shaped by) the contemporary Chinese nation-state. In particular, the book analyzes the processes of institutional categorization of the "good experimental school", the "good student", and the "appropriate knowledge" that emerge from the daily discursive organization of those schools, with special attention to the related contradictions, uncertainties and dilemmas. Thus, it provides an account of the on-going cultural processes of change faced by contemporary Chinese educational institutions under conditions of late modernity. Winner of The University of Hong Kong's Faculty Early Career Research Output Award for outstanding book publication, by the Faculty of Education

This multidisciplinary overview introduces readers to the historical, sociological, anthropological, and political foundations of urban public secondary schooling and to possibilities for reform. Focused on critical and problematic elements, the text provides a comprehensive description and analyses of urban public high schooling through different yet intertwined disciplinary lenses. Students and researchers seeking to inform their work with urban high schools from social, cultural, and political perspectives will find the theoretical frameworks and practical applications useful in their own studies of, or initiatives related to, urban public high schools. Each chapter includes concept boxes with synopses of key ideas, summations, and discussion questions.

The Culture of Science Education: Its History in Person features the auto/biographies of the professional lives of 22 science educators from 11 countries situated in different places along the career ladder within an ongoing narrative of the cultural history of the field. Many contributors began to identify as science educators at about the time Sputnik was launched but others were not yet born. Hence the book articulates the making of a field with its twists and turns that define a career as a scholar in science education. Through the eyes of the contributing scholars, the development of science education is seen in the United States and its spread to all parts of the world is tracked, leading to a current situation where some universities from overseas are exporting science education to the United States through graduate programs—especially doctoral degrees. Other key issues addressed are the conceptual personae, such as Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky, who have shaped the field of science education and how publishing in English in high-impact journals and obtaining external funds from private and governmental agencies have become driving forces in science education. The Culture of Science Education: Its History in Person was written for science educators with an interest in the history of science education as it is experienced as lived culture. The book is intended as a reference book for scholars and as a text for graduate students involved in science education.

Many would argue that the state of urban science education has been static for the past several decades and that there is little to learn from it. Rather than accepting this deficit perspective, Improving Urban Science Education strives to recognize and understand the successes that exist there by systematically documenting seven years of research into issues salient to teaching and learning in urban high school science classes. Grounded in the post structuralism of William Sewell_and brought to life through the experiences of different students, teachers, and school settings in Philadelphia_this book shows how teachers and students can work together to enact meaningful science education when social and cultural differences as well as inappropriate curricula often make the challenges seem insurmountable. Chapters contain rich images of urban youth and each strives to offer insights into problems and suggestions for resolving them. Most significant, in spite of the challenges, the research offers hope and shows that fresh approaches to teaching and learning can lead students_some who have already been pronounced academic, even societal, failures_to becoming avid and deep learners of science.

Why Rural Schools Matter