Search results for Kenneth Jones

Advancing Special Education Through Improvement Science: A Practical Guide offers a comprehensive and accessible resource for educators, administrators, and policymakers committed to enhancing equity and effectiveness in special education. It bridges the gap between theory and practice by providing a structured approach to applying improvement science within the unique context of special education services. Grounded in the principles of continuous improvement, the book introduces a methodical process for identifying, testing, and refining practices to achieve better outcomes for students with disabilities. It emphasizes the importance of understanding educational systems' complexities and using data-driven strategies to foster lasting change.A key strength of this guide is its focus on the role of data in driving improvement. Readers are guided through practical methods for collecting, analyzing, and using data to inform decisions, along with solutions to common challenges in the process. By centering evidence-based decision-making, the book empowers educators to make meaningful changes that positively impact student outcomes. Collaboration is another major theme. The text highlights the importance of engaging teachers, administrators, families, and students in improvement efforts. Strategies for building strong teams, fostering trust, and ensuring inclusive stakeholder participation are woven throughout, reinforcing the idea that sustainable improvement depends on shared responsibility.Real-world case studies illustrate successful applications of improvement science in diverse school settings. These examples provide readers with insights into implementation challenges and successes, offering practical takeaways that can be adapted for their own contexts. To support day-to-day implementation, the book includes a variety of tools and resources such as data collection templates, PDSA (Plan-Do-Study-Act) cycle checklists, and facilitation guides for collaborative meetings. These practical assets make it easier for educators to incorporate improvement science into their routines.Finally, the guide addresses the critical need for sustainability and scalability. It offers strategies for embedding improvement practices into school and district operations so that gains can be maintained and expanded over time. By focusing on long-term change, the book helps ensure that students with disabilities benefit from ongoing, systemic improvements.Whether you're a classroom teacher, school leader, or policymaker, this guide provides the knowledge and tools needed to drive meaningful progress in special education through improvement science.Perfect for courses such as: Introduction to Special Education; Exceptional Children; Foundations of Special Education; Special Education Leadership; School Improvement and Reform

Promoting a growth mindset in PreK-12 schools is a valuable educational trend, based on the idea that students who believe they can grow and improve will succeed more easily. However, when students struggle academically, there’s often an undergirded assumption that they—and sometimes their families—are not trying hard enough or they just need to fit into a standardized mold. This deficit thinking places blame on students’ perceived limitations and can lead to lower expectations or biases toward students who come from diversified backgrounds, encompassing ability, socioeconomic status, race, language, gender, or culture. As an alternative approach, this book promotes the universal adoption of Asset-Based Practices (ABPs). ABPs encourage educators to see and honor the strengths in each student’s identity. ABPs shift our focus to the assets that students and families bring into the classroom, viewing differences as resources rather than obstacles. This means recognizing and building on students’ cultural, linguistic, and community-based knowledge to make learning richer and more inclusive for everyone.Implementing an asset-based approach can transform our classrooms. Research shows that students perform better and feel more motivated when they’re recognized and valued for who they are. Bringing students’ lived experiences into the curriculum can help them develop positive identities and a stronger sense of belonging, which boosts their academic and social growth. Instead of focusing on “fixing” students, ABPs ask us to adapt our teaching to connect with students’ cultural backgrounds and experiences, coupled with recognizing the wealth of knowledge that students bring from their families and communities.Switching to an asset-based approach helps us move away from simply encouraging perseverance or grit in students. Instead, it invites us to take responsibility for creating an environment where every student feels they belong and can succeed. With ABPs, we’re able to create more inclusive and affirming classrooms for all students, where their identities are seen as strengths, not obstacles, and where their cultural, linguistic, and community knowledge is a foundation for learning.Innovative and creative methodologies and practices that aspiring and practicing educators can use right away are the primary focus of this book. Because the editors and contributors are former or current PreK-12 practitioners, and many are also educational scholars, this book is written for a broad educational audience. Moving from Growth to Asset-Based Mindsets is for both preservice and practicing teachers across PreK-12 grade levels, school types, and geographic regions looking to improve their practice. To accomplish this, the editors and contributors provide entry points for transforming the educational landscape in favor of liberatory, asset-based practices in PreK-12 schools.Additionally, this book is ideal for teacher and administrator preparation programs, as well as PreK-12 professional development, because it guides readers through theoretical and empirical discussions, supported by hands-on applications that enable real-time application, and concludes with interactive features, like case studies, extension activities, and discussion prompts.Perfect for courses such as: Introduction to Educating For Equity And Social Justice; Introduction to Cultivating Culturally Responsive Classrooms; Foundations Of Culturally And Linguistically Responsive Practice; Introduction to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Schools; Introduction To School Improvement, Introduction to Teacher Leadership And School Improvement; Introduction to Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment; Principles of Teaching Diverse Learners; Introduction to Multiculturalism in Education

Resisting Divide-and-Conquer Strategies in Education: Pathways and Possibilities examines the ways in which divide-and-conquer strategies operate in the American public education system. In U.S. education, these mechanisms are endemic and enduring, if not always evident. Coordinated, strategic, well-funded, politically-viable campaigns continue to stoke fear, othering, villainization, and dehumanization of minoritized groups, pushing false and problematic narratives that inhibit progress toward social justice. Weaponizing hegemony and leveraging misinformation, reactionary agents and institutions seek to suppress truth, block access to democratic participation, and dismantle education and other sites of emancipatory possibility through the strength of divide-and-conquer mechanisms, pitting relatively disempowered groups against one another to preserve the dominant social order. Readers of this book will encounter conceptual and critical interrogations of divide and conquer. The text will help facilitate inquiry and engagement into how divide and conquer operates and how it can be resisted. It looks at the history of the phenomenon, as well as its current state, especially as it relates to education. What insights and lessons might we learn from a focused examination of divide and conquer, and what strategies of resistance are both possible and necessary for challenging it? This text is designed for undergraduate and graduate classrooms in education and social sciences. Part I, Ideology and Sociopolitical Contexts, dissects how divide-and-conquer mechanisms operate ideologically and sociopolitically. Part II, Policies and Practices, focuses on how divide-and-conquer mechanisms shape exclusionary U.S. educational policies and practices. Part III, Resistance and Liberation, documents efforts of liberatory communicative, curricular, and pedagogical possibilities. Each chapter concludes with a set of critical questions for reflection and engagement.Perfect for courses such as: Foundations of Education; Schools and Society; Schooling in America; History of Education; Philosophy of Education; Sociology of Education; Social Studies; Critical Theory in Education

Traditionally, educator preparation programs only provide classes related to content, practical pedagogy, and classroom management. If we hope to see any level of justice in the education system, preparation programs must include courses that take an honest and deep dive into the ways in which racism shows up in schools and communities. Aspiring educators are craving and demanding the tools and resources to be the best educators they can be for our students in this country. They know the importance of advocating for and enacting anti-racism in their pedagogical practices, in school policy and culture, and in their community. The authors of this book will offer first-hand testimony of how deep racism permeates public education, an institution that, since its founding, was never meant for Black and brown students, as well as solutions to create truly just and equitable school communities. The ultimate mission of Practicing Restorative Justice is to show readers the effectiveness of restorative justice practices in addressing a number of issues that impact Black and brown students. It takes a deep dive into the School-to-Prison Pipeline, in which failed education policies push students of color out of schools and into the penal system, dooming them for life. Other topics include policing in schools, systemic racism’s impact on classrooms and learners at all grade levels, and ways in which to decolonize the education system. The book provides classroom instructors, college of education faculty, and preservice teachers the concrete means to improve the learning experience of students of color in our public education system.

Critical Transformative Educational Leadership and Policy Studies - A Reader is a comprehensive collection of critical contributions from most of the leading voices in the fields of educational leadership and educational policy studies, pushing back against the current neoliberal authoritarian environment. The volume offers alternative ways to perceive and to formulate education leadership and policy from a critical transformative perspective. Individual chapters discuss such topics as social justice in education; poverty, race and public education; counter-hegemonic education movements; the privatization of schools; and school reform and advocacy leadership, among others, all from a critical perspective. It is a crucial and timely volume for educators, school administrators, educational leaders, social activists, and union leaders concerned with the current state of our universities and our education system.Perfect for courses such as: Political Economy of Urban Education | Leadership and Policy Studies | Educational Policy and Reform | Politics of Education | Cultural Studies | Curriculum Theory and Development | Socio Historical Foundations | Indigenous Knowledges and Methodologies | Cultural Studies and Education

Case studies serve as powerful tools because they bridge theory and practice, enhance decision-making skills, and prepare individuals for real-world challenges. There is a shortage of case study resources specifically focused on the ongoing development of leaders for positions in higher education. Sticky Cases in Higher Education Leadership provides invaluable insights and lessons to help aspiring higher education leaders and experienced administrators navigate the complex landscape of academic leadership. Authored by faculty and administrators in various roles, the cases represent real-world incidents and situations that are faced by higher education leaders. Each case discusses a real-world conflict or challenge presented in an open-ended format to encourage thoughtful, independent, or collaborative analysis. Readers, individually or collaboratively, consider the situation or incident and propose solutions or alternative approaches. The primary purpose of the book is to serve as a valuable teaching tool for universities offering programs in higher education leadership development. It can be used in doctoral and master's degree programs focused on higher education leadership and management. It will also benefit colleges and universities that have or are planning to initiate leadership development programs to prepare faculty for advancement into administrative roles. Additionally, the book will have utility for institutions engaged in succession planning. The cases enrich the experience of program participants and are easily aligned with desired learning outcomes. With a focus on planning and institutional renewal by national accreditors, such as the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, this book fills a critical need for case-based resources to support the development of higher education leaders.Perfect for courses such as: Leading Across Cultures; Leadership in Educational Contexts and Systems; Contemporary Issues in Higher Education; Leadership, Management, and Supervision in Higher Education; Leading Change; and Education Policy and Planning

The history of presidential politics reached a new and significant milestone with the election of Barack Obama in 2008. It sparked great hope in America for greater racial equity and social justice. A Paradise to Regain: Post-Obama Insights from Women Educators of the Black Diaspora seeks to avert the likelihood of erasure of President Obama’s legacy of hope and possibility that every child, regardless of race, faith, and gender affiliation, can dream big and live to see his/her dream turn into reality. As women educators of color, we all agree that the socio-political climate prevailing in the United States of America, since the aftermath of the 2016 election, requires unprecedented agency. The book provides space for Black women educators–African Americans, Naturalized Black Americans, and Foreign-born Blacks from Africa, the Caribbean Islands and South America (e.g., Guyana)–to have a candid conversation with their young children—sons and daughters, nephews and nieces—about the roadblocks they are likely to face as minority youth of color in their pursuit of greatness and the reminder that they have a role model in President Obama to look up to in moments of extreme frustration and exasperation. Voices of engaged educators of color are indispensable to make sure that children understand that that despite a 360-degree turn from eight consecutive years of a reassuring message that “change had come,” that paradise had been gained, into the threatening message of “making America white again,” we count on them to regain the paradise. Perfect for courses such as: Racism and Education Inequality in the Lives of African-American Youth, Introduction to the African Diaspora, Equity and Diversity in Schools, Place, Language, Power and Knowledge, Global and Multicultural Education in the Secondary School, Issues in Urban Education, Culture Power and Education, Social Class Education and Pedagogy, Language, Culture, and Education, The Politics of Literacy and Race in Schools, Race and Racism in Education and Society, Race, Ethnicity and Linguistic Diversity in Classrooms and Communities, and Education and Society.

This is a collection of interdisciplinary and logically interconnected papers from nationally and internationally acclaimed researchers in philosophy, psychology, history of education, teacher training, educational leaders and practitioners, child advocates, and educators who have been motivated by the philosophy and pedagogy of Dr. Janusz Korczak (1878-1942), a world famous moral exemplar and champion of children’s rights. The book provides answers to timely questions of how to respect children’s rights in K-12 schools, community centers, summer camps, and colleges; how to create an atmosphere of trust and safety, and provide social-emotional learning in the classroom; how to become a genuine child advocate; and how to support growing child agency. It also tells the story of Korczak, his life, and the lives of the children in his charge. Nurture, Care, Respect, and Trust details how Korczak’s legacy encourages and stimulates new projects and spreads around the world. The volume serves as a rich resource of practical materials for teachers and university instructors, introducing a number of innovative lesson plans, examples of students’ works, and school projects inspired by Korczak’s pedagogy.