Synopses & Reviews
Making Our High Schools Better examines how the differing perspectives of parents and teachers can be understood and negotiated to improve high schools. Even though reformers argue that parents must become more involved with schools, most parents of high school students remain outside the schoolhouse doors. Teachers, who view themselves as experts on teaching and learning, often see parents as problems or critics and are happy to keep them at a distance. This groundbreaking book uses in-depth interviews with teachers and parents to give faces and voices to both sides of the conflict, explaining why parents and teachers should work together to help all children learn.
Review
“... most remarkable in that it simultaneously gives us insights into the small picture at the level of individual parents, and links these to the big picture of the role of schools in a democratic society . . .well worth reading.” —Michael G. Fullan, Dean of the Faculty of Education, Toronto University
“The authors...make a strong case for the imperative to involve everyone—parents, educators, civic leaders, students too—in a commitment to understand how best to engage the opportunities of a new century. The text is a handbook for those who dare to break out of familiar structures—especially when those patterns are not working—a potential antidote to frustration and misunderstanding. It offers solutions for those who would rather act than complain. It points out exactly what we can do, which is a refreshing change from the incessant expose of what we supposedly cannot.” —Tampa Tribune News
Synopsis
The deep chasm between what parents want education to provide for their children and what teachers must provide for entire classrooms is one of the most vexing problems facing our nation today. Making Our High Schools Better examines how the different perspectives of parents and teachers can be understood and negotiated to improve high schools and explains why parents and teachers should work together to help all children learn. Making Our High Schools Better is an illuminating book that seeks and discovers the steps leading to solutions.
About the Author
Anne Westcott Dodd is the chair of the Education Department at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine.
Jean L. Konzal is an assistant professor in the Department of Elementary and Early Childhood Education at The College of New Jersey in Ewing, New Jersey.
Table of Contents
Part I: Crosscurrents, Crosstalk: Understanding the Often Problematic Relationships Between Parents and Schools * Cross Currents: Why Should We Focus Attention on the Relationships between Parents and Educators? * Understanding the Crosscurrents: What Might We Learn From History? * Understanding the Crosscurrents: Teachers as Professionals/Parents as Participants: What Roles Might Parents and Educators Play and How Might Their Relationships Be Defined? * What Should Be the Purpose of Education? The Goal of the School? * What Is Learning? What Is Teaching? * What and How Should Students Learn? * How Should Student Learning Be Assessed? *
Part II: Building Bridges * Improving Relationships and Finding Common Ground Among Parents and Educators: What Some Schools Have Done * Expanding the Options: Other Strategies for Opening Doors and Dialogue Between Parents and Educators * Redefining Community: From Power Sharing to Perspective Sharing