PRODUCTS

The 1954 Brown v. Board of Education landmark court case arguably changed the landscape of education, particularly for Black youth. Despite the many gains reaped from this monumental decision, what is not often discussed is how this court ruling affected Black educators, and how the disappearance of Black educators has had a long lasting effect on the performance of Black youth. Recognizing the unique obstacles that Black children and educators face in a predominantly White education system, Diversifying the Educator Pipeline explores the need to diversify the educator workforce, particularly as it pertains to expanding the presence of Black educators.

The goal of this text is to explore the need to diversify the educator workforce, particularly as it pertains to expanding the presence of Black educators. To accomplish this, the book starts with an exploration of the historical context as it pertains to Black educators in America to contextualize the discussion and recommendations that follow. The focus of the remainder of the text is on the recruitment, preparation, and retention of Black educators as a means to diversify the educator workforce in an effort to better reflect and support diverse classrooms across the country. Throughout the volume, a synthesis of research, recommendations, and Black educator voices will be skillfully woven to create a compelling argument for the need to recruit, prepare, and retain Black educators as a means to diversify the educator workforce and better support and reflect diverse classrooms of students.

Grounded with the historical context of Black educators in America as a means to contextualize the current conversation, Dr. Marks examines why efforts to diversify the educator pipeline have not yielded the desired results. This is an important book for educators across the pedagogical spectrum, especially for those wishing to create more equitable classrooms for Black students.

Improvement Science Across the Disciplines: Driving Improvement in Healthcare, Business, and Social Services examines the way improvement science is employed outside of the traditional field of business. This book provides a multidisciplinary examination from the fields of education, nursing, social work, and criminal justice—and explores the universality of improvement methodologies in fields of service. Contributing authors will use an improvement lens to describe addressing problems of practice in their respective disciplines.

Improving Together: Case Studies of Networked Improvement Science Communities examines a range of network improvement communities who are using improvement science to examine problems of practice. Operating in varying contexts, NICs provide a platform for communication and other forms of data sharing in order to create meta-findings on a particular phenomenon. The text focus on not only the use of IS in each context/node, but also processes of building and launching networks and considers how particular media and infrastructure are used to share knowledge within the network.

Improvement Science: Methods for Researchers and Program Evaluators moves beyond traditional research methods textbooks by responding to people working in improvement science and program evaluation. This book is tailored to the need for specific improvement research methodologies and frameworks collected and presented in an edited volume written by research faculty associated with or teaching in leadership programs.

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

With an alchemical verve, educators have been shaping the very direction of students' lives since time immemorial. With millions of teachers currently serving in the Tk-12 sector and millions more serving in higher education spaces, the need for quality educator development is essential.

For Tk-12 educators, while there are teacher preparation programs to help shape their teacher identities, the challenge of neatly integrating all the rich content provided into a set of actions is considerable. For college educators writ large, there is no conspicuous preparation for teaching, leaving many to flounder early in their careers. In addition, homeschooled students, whose population has nearly doubled in recent years, also need and deserve access to professional training.

While chiefly focused on Tk-12 educators, The Alchemy of Teaching supplies support for educators in all sectors and covers an array of topics germane to educators everywhere. Accordingly, this work draws on the early notions of alchemy, which is the art of transforming mundane metals into gold, to develop a template for educators to succeed while infusing essential, hard-earned wisdom along the way. Using the metals of alchemy as metaphors, the effective elements of teaching are parsed out in commonsensical and pragmatic ways, designed to give all those who educate students a template for strengthening their practice and the learning outcomes of their students.

Written by highly experienced educators, this book is made up of three sections, with each detailing some of the prominent struggles educators regularly have in particular areas. Each author also elucidates the gold practices and provides techniques for avoiding some of the early pitfalls often experienced by educators.

Each chapter of this book is dedicated to the practice of changing or transforming educator practices. It is a valuable tool for educators across the teaching spectrum to bring greater hope and success to their classrooms.

Perfect for courses such as: Teacher Education; Classroom Management; Teacher Education; Education Psychology; Teacher Education; Social Justice; Foundational Courses in Teacher Education; Courses in Differentiation Methods Courses in Mathematics

In schools, a Code Red alert indicates a potential or immediate threat within a building or on a campus and is the signal for a full-scale lockdown of all classrooms. This book, Code Red: Conversations and Solutions for an Educational System in Crisis, presents a variety of voices from teachers, administrators, teacher preparation faculty, college supervisors, and pre-service teacher candidates. These voices are crying “Code Red” because they want a broken system repaired. For them, the system is bleeding, cancerous, and in turmoil, with the expectation that they work under arduous and often dangerous conditions; teachers are underpaid, devalued, exhausted, voiceless, and abused. They face an environment in which politics has replaced learning, students are failing and, in extreme circumstances, walking away from schools or even committing suicide. The political discourse is wrestling control from teachers in certain states. Neurodivergent students are being pushed aside. The altruistic profession of teaching is being reduced to factory work, in which teachers—especially those in their first five years of service—are leaving the profession at staggering rates. The profession itself is at risk of becoming obsolete.

The contributors to Code Red believe that the American educational system has entered a moment of crisis. Their voices need to be heard, and their stories and lived experiences should be recognized. The adage is true: the answer to any problem resides with those who own the problem. We cannot create solutions without owning that these issues exist, and all of America owns the education of our children. Therefore, this book provides a dialogic space where everyone involved in the American educational system can reimagine the possibilities of our system and, through this process, begin creating positive and sustainable changes to bring our system out of crisis. In addition to providing a vivid picture of the current state of public schools, the book offers real solutions that can be used to produce healthier, more successful classrooms. It is an invaluable tool for instructors, pre-service teachers, and Colleges of Education administrators.

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.

What Do We Mean by That?: Interrogating Familiar Expressions in Education is a collection of essays that opens a space for all educational workers—teachers, teacher educators, administrators, politicians, and others—to unpack commonly used educational phrases and ideas.

The idea is to carefully examine what we say to one another when we talk about schools, curriculum, students, and other educational problems or issues—when we say things like “We have to meet students where they are,” and “All children can learn,” or “What does the data say?” What Do We Mean by That? challenges and clarifies such phrases and the how, and why, that they shape educational policies and practices.

The influential curricular theorist Dwayne Huebner charged us to always be aware of our “man-made tools,” such as language, and said that since “all educators attempt to shape the world; theorists should call attention to the tools used for the shaping in order that the world being shaped can be more beautiful and just.”

Language is a tool in educational practice in myriad ways: between administrators and teachers, teachers and students, teachers and parents, and students and students, as examples. A scripted curriculum is a tool intended to provide fixed language to teachers. It is normal for phrases to make their way into our everyday practices and get lodged there. But we need opportunities to interrupt ourselves and study our language tools to ensure they help create beauty and justice.

This collection of thoughtful essays seeks to be this interruption. It is an invaluable tool for improving the educational experience of students and schools.

Perfect for courses such as: Foundations of Education; Curriculum Studies; Diversity in Education; Educational Rhetoric and Policy

The Importance of the Dissertation in Practice (DiP): A Resource Guide for EdD Students, Their Committee Members and Advisors, and Departmental and University Leaders Involved with EdD Programs is the first book-length study that looks at the elements of high-quality Dissertations in Practice (DiPs). It serves as a resource for EdD students, their committee members, their advisors, and departmental or university leaders involved with EdD programs. The book can be used to improve support from key stakeholders within EdD programs for the implementation of the DiP in the development of practitioner-scholars.

The first section of the book discusses the difference between the DiP and traditional dissertations, the history of the DiP, and how the practitioner-scholar is developed through the DiP process. Next, the book describes the elements that are reflective of a high-quality DiP. Finally, it addresses a few of the unique formats that are sometimes used with the DiP, some of the practical issues with implementing the DiP, and issues of the future including the use of artificial intelligence.

The ultimate goal of The Importance of the Dissertation in Practice is to serve as a practical guide for all those involved with the DiP, reflecting the editors’ and authors’ experiences working with students within a variety of higher education institutions.

Perfect for courses such as: Introduction to Research Methods (doctoral level); Improvement Science; Applied Research Methods; Advanced Research Methods; Introduction to the Dissertation; Educational Evaluation; Theory of Change in Education; Educational Policy