Synopses & Reviews
This provocative and accessible text is addressed to prospective and practicing teachers who believe schools must be fundamentally reformed to meet student needs in an information age. Drawing on interviews with frontline educators, the authors integrate descriptive accounts of learning and teaching in schools today with emerging multicultural curricula, information technologies, organizational structures that support innovations, and democratic dialogue. Jones and Maloy offer analytic perspectives for rethinking the social, historical, and philosophical foundations of education along with strategies for teacher renewal and organizational change.
Adopting a constructivist-developmental approach to learning, the authors identify endemic dilemmas that increasingly handicap industrial-era schools. A stagnant economy heightens tensions due to class, race, and gender inequities. Hierarchically structured corporations and representative politics perpetuate business domination. Computers offer possibilities for more open communication, flexible organizations, and democratic discourse. Alternative visions of the future that engage students can renew cooperation, collaboration, and community in schools and society.
Review
...A penetrating analysis of the changes in American society and the American economy and how our schools might be a force for equity and democrary in an information age.Robert L. Woodbury, Director McCormick Institute, UMass/Boston
Review
...A unique, engrossing, professional resource. The reader is given a keen understanding of the multiple realities present in a society in transition.Susan D. Savitt, Ed.D. Superintendent of Schools, North Babylon Union Free School District
Synopsis
This thought-provoking text deals with critical issues and perspectives connected to future schools, presenting the views of historians, economists, sociologists, and educators on how multicultural communities can achieve democratic process and social justice.
Synopsis
This provocative and accessible text is addressed to prospective and practicing teachers who believe schools must be fundamentally reformed to meet student needs in an information age. Drawing on interviews with frontline educators, the authors integrate descriptive accounts of learning and teaching in schools today with emerging multicultural curricula, information technologies, organizational structures that support innovations, and democratic dialogue. Jones and Maloy offer analytic perspectives for rethinking the social, historical, and philosophical foundations of education along with strategies for teacher renewal and organizational change. Adopting a constructivist-developmental approach to learning, the authors identify endemic dilemmas that increasingly handicap industrial-era schools. A stagnant economy heightens tensions due to class, race, and gender inequities. Hierarchically structured corporations and representative politics perpetuate business domination. Computers offer possibilities for more open communication, flexible organizations, and democratic discourse. Alternative visions of the future that engage students can renew cooperation, collaboration, and community in schools and society.
About the Author
BYRD L. JONES is Professor of Education at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.ROBERT W. MALOY is a lecturer in the School of Education at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.