Curriculum and Instruction: Books

What year are you preparing your students for? 1973? 1995? Can you honestly say that your school's curriculum and the program you use are preparing your students for 2015 or 2020? Are you even preparing them for today? With those provocative questions, author and educator Heidi Hayes Jacobs launches a powerful case for overhauling, updating, and injecting life into the K-12 curriculum.

Curriculum As Meditative Inquiry provides a detailed analysis of the relationship among consciousness, meditative inquiry, and education by engaging with three key questions: In what ways do the characteristic features of human consciousness—fear, conditioning, becoming, and fragmentation—undermine self-awareness in educational experience? What is meditative inquiry, and how can it help in cultivating awareness, which, in turn, can help in the understanding and transformation of human consciousness? In what ways can we re-imagine curriculum as a space for meditative inquiry that may provide transformative educational experiences for teachers and their students?

Curriculum at Your Core is a practical guide to designing curriculum that meets standards, serves personal and institutional values, and intentionally leads to successful student learning. Identifying which understandings, knowledge, and skills are most important for students to learn is always a question of values, so getting clear on values gives teachers a starting place to design cohesive units, courses, and programs. Written by a teacher for teachers, Curriculum at Your Core includes stories, examples, and case studies from across grade levels and subjects, as well as exercises, protocols, and templates teachers can use when writing values-congruent curriculum.

The second edition of the current leading nursing text in curriculum development and evaluation continues to serve nurse educators in academic settings as well as in the practice arena. It is a practical guide for developing, revising, and evaluating nursing curricula and educational programs, complete with case studies and details on conducting a needs assessment to determine the extent of revision necessary within current curricula. This text focuses on evidence-based practice, safety and quality assurance concepts, and the role of creative and critical-thinking aspects. It highlights NLN and AACN core competencies in developing and evaluating curricula in all levels of nursing programs. Additionally, it includes a comprehensive list of critical evaluation and accreditation tips, directions on how to prepare for an accreditation visit, and two proposed curricula for nurse educators to consider adapting into educational materials.

This landmark text was one of the first to introduce and analyze contemporary concepts of curriculum that emerged from the Reconceptualization of curriculum studies in the 1970s and 1980s. This new edition brings readers up to date on the major research themes (postmodernism,ecological, hermeneutics, aesthetics and arts-based research, race, class, gender, sexuality, and classroom practices) within the historical development of the field from the 1950s to the present.

Curriculum scholars and teachers working for social justice and equity have been caught up in acrimonious and polarizing political debates over content, ideology, and disciplinary knowledge. At the forefront in cutting through these debates and addressing the practical questions involved, this book is distinctive in looking to the technical form of the curriculum rather than its content for solutions.

The empirically based Parallel Curriculum Model shows teachers how to create meaningful, emotive, and engaging curriculum that challenges all learners according to their interests and abilities.

Award-winning educator Joe Crawford describes how to use Power Standards to build an effective standards-based curriculum and integrate them into instruction to achieve student success.

Now in an updated second edition How to Teach Writing Across the Curriculum: Ages 6-8 provides a range of practical suggestions for teaching non-fiction writing skills and linking them to children's learning across the entire curriculum. Providing a number of suggestions for teachers and putting emphasis on creative approaches to teaching children writing in diverse and innovative ways, it provides: techniques for using speaking and listening, drama and games to prepare for writing suggestions for the use of cross-curricular learning as a basis for writing planning frameworks and 'skeletons' to promote thinking skills information on key language features of non-fiction texts examples of non-fiction writing guidance on the process of creating writing from note-making. With new hints and tips for teachers and suggestions for reflective practice, How to Teach Writing Across the Curriculum: Ages 6-8 will equip teachers with all the skills and materials needed to create enthusiastic non-fiction writers in their primary classroom.

Most of the scholarship on learner-centeredness is focused on individual classroom pedagogy, but this book takes learner-centeredness beyond the classroom and asks academic leaders to consider the broader implications of making their institutions fully learner-centered. Systemic change is needed, and curriculum is at the heart of what higher education does. To truly effect change, the curriculum needs to be examined and aligned with learner-centered practices. In this book the authors offer both design specifications for a learner-centered approach to curriculum as well as practical recommendations for implementation and assessment.

Although ideas about digital media and learning have become an important area for educational research, little attention has been given to the practical and conceptual implications for the school curriculum. In this book, Ben Williamson examines a series of contemporary curriculum innovations in the United States, Great Britain, and Australia that reflect the social and technological changes of the digital age. Arguing that the curriculum is always both forward- and rearward-looking, Williamson considers how each of these innovations represents a certain way of understanding the past while also promoting a particular vision of the future.

The new Pre-K-Grade 12 Gifted Education Programming Standards should be part of every school district's repertoire of standards to ensure that the learning needs of advanced students are being met. NAGC Pre-K-Grade 12 Gifted Education Programming Standards: A Guide to Planning and Implementing High-Quality Services details six standards that address the areas critical to effective teaching and learning, along with suggestions for implementing each one.The gifted education programming standards are focused on student outcomes that address both cognitive and affective areas. Aligned to each of the outcomes are research- and practice-based strategies known to be effective for this special population of students. The book includes sample assessments of student products and performances, which will assist schools in developing program and service evaluation benchmarks. This book is a must-have for school leaders and gifted education professionalswho want to offer the most effective services for gifted and advanced students.

"Collaborative Units that Work: TEAMS Award Winners" is a compilation of some of the best collaborative lessons taught by elementary, middle, and high school media specialists and teachers. In this idea-rich volume, the TEAMS winners share their award-winning projects with you--in a format that makes it easy to adapt to your own students and programs. "Collaborative Units that Work: TEAMS Award Winners" offers detailed unit plans for projects at the elementary school, middle school, and high school levels--projects singled out for their clearly demonstrated collaborative nature, positive impact on student learning and achievement, support from school leadership, and the ability for others to replicate the project. Projects come with their creators' expert advice, examples, and strategies that will help you get staff and students excited and involved in true all-school learning. Innovative, classroom-proven, and imminently workable, these are the projects that show just how effective and captivating creative collaboration can be.