Examines pedagogy as a toolkit for social change, and the urgent need for cross-cultural collaborative teaching methods

This book is largely a collection of the papers presented at the symposium Olympism, Olympic Education and Learning Legacies, organised by the Comité Internationale Pierre de Coubertin (CIPC). It was held during the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games at Canterbury Christ Church University in Kent, United Kingdom. The symposium drew together presenters and audience members from twenty-five nations on four continents to discuss current and future challenges of education and the Olympic Movement. While most books on the Olympics focus on economic issues or on aspects related to the management of the Games (such as legacies and impacts), this book remains faithful to Coubertin’s original vision about youth, sport and education. Olympism as a philosophical and educational idea is analysed in particular detail. Coubertin’s thoughts play a central role in many of the contributions of leading academics in the field, while historical perspectives unveil new insights. Young researchers are given a platform to publish their own accounts in interpreting the Olympics. The different insights of the book have something to offer to anyone with an interest in sport, education, and the Olympic Movement, either as a student, teacher, academic, athlete, coach or spectator.

Examines pedagogy as a toolkit for social change, and the urgent need for cross-cultural collaborative teaching methods

Because spiritual life and religious participation are widespread human and cultural phenomena, these experiences unsurprisingly find their way into English language arts curriculum, learning, teaching, and teacher education work. Yet many public school literacy teachers and secondary teacher educators feel unsure how to engage religious and spiritual topics and responses in their classrooms. This volume responds to this challenge with an in-depth exploration of diverse experiences and perspectives on Christianity within American education. Authors not only examine how Christianity – the historically dominant religion in American society – shapes languaging and literacies in schooling and other educational spaces, but they also imagine how these relations might be reconfigured. From curricula to classroom practice, from narratives of teacher education to youth coming-to-faith, chapters vivify how spiritual lives, beliefs, practices, communities, and religious traditions interact with linguistic and literate practices and pedagogies. In relating legacies of Christian languaging and literacies to urgent issues including White supremacy, sexism and homophobia, and the politics of exclusion, the volume enacts and invites inclusive relational configurations within and across the myriad American Christian sub-cultures coming to bear on English language arts curriculum, teaching, and learning. This courageous collection contributes to an emerging scholarly literature at the intersection of language and literacy teaching and learning, religious literacy, curriculum studies, teacher education, and youth studies. It will speak to teacher educators, scholars, secondary school teachers, and graduate and postgraduate students, among others.

Learning Legacies explores the history of cross-cultural teaching approaches, to highlight how women writer-educators used stories about their collaborations to promote community-building. Robbins demonstrates how educators used stories that resisted dominant conventions and expectations about learners to navigate cultural differences. Using case studies of educational initiatives on behalf of African American women, Native American children, and the urban poor, Learning Legacies promotes the importance of knowledge grounded in the histories and cultures of the many racial and ethnic groups that have always comprised America’s populace, underscoring the value of rich cultural knowledge in pedagogy by illustrating how creative teachers still draw on these learning legacies today.