The lives of America s students, educators, and parents are being significantly touched by the current standards and accountability reform. The Standards Primer explores the historical development of this reform, and compares two different views of educational standards and accountability technical standards and standards of complexity. How each view impacts curriculum, instruction, and assessment is discussed, and implications of these views for teachers, administrators, school boards, parents, community, and students are presented, along with a discussion of related issues involving...

Persistent resistance to the teaching of evolution has so drastically impacted science curricula that many students finish school without a basic understanding of a theory that is a fundamental component of scientific literacy. This -evolution/creationism controversy- has crippled biological education in the United States and has begun to spread to other parts of the world. This book takes an educational point of view that respects both the teaching of evolution and religious beliefs. Authors from different academic traditions contribute to a collection of perspectives that begin to dismantle...

Lament, a natural, healthy response to unfair suffering and death, has largely disappeared from modern life and thought. This book reaffirms ancient Greek and Hebrew conceptions of lament as a protest against death as fate. Richard A. Hughes finds lament to be basic in the Bible, and he traces the decline of lament, beginning with Plato s antifeminist critique and early Christian theodicy, through the church fathers and the Protestant reformers. He shows that lament was displaced by classical doctrines of providence but recaptured in the modern existentialist revolt against unjust suffering....

The Literacy Primer is devoted to the most recent topics in literacy studies, such as the meanings of literacy, the invention of alphabetic writing, a history of reading, the consequences of literacy, teaching the two modes of knowing literary and informational and literacy for diverse learners. Each chapter includes a glossary of key terms for students new to the field. A list of selected resources and further readings is provided at the end of the volume. The book is written in a refreshingly straightforward style that is inviting to undergraduate students who might otherwise have...

This book is a collection of essays by prominent North American and European experts in Austrian literature concerning the Austrian playwright and author Franz Grillparzer, his relationship to various literary traditions, and his reception from the nineteenth century to the present. The chapters originated at a symposium held in February of 2003 at the University of Alberta sponsored by the University of Alberta s Wirth Institute for Austrian and Central European Studies."

The sturm-und-drang quality of educational reforms in the United States and England has prompted educators to ask how curriculum changes will affect teaching and learning. Central government in England and state agencies in the United States increasingly control curriculum development by writing the standards, monitoring teaching, and assessing standards impact on students achievements. But how does increasing government regulation of education impact teachers professionalism and morale? In arguing that teachers need to retain significant control over what and how they teach, Quiet...

Early Christianity and Ancient Astrology explores a variety of responses to astrology, the most popular form of divination among early Christians in Greco-Roman antiquity. After a brief overview of ancient astrological theory and a survey of polemical responses to it, this book documents instances in which early Christian writers and communities incorporated astrology positively into their beliefs and practices. This study is of interest to students of early Christianity and of Greco-Roman religion and to those concerned with interfaith relations or with issues of Christian unity and...

The Boom is the socio-literary movement that brought the Latin American writers Mario Vargas Llosa, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Carlos Fuentes, and Julio Cortazar and the Spanish writer Juan Goytisolo to fame during the 1960s. Prior studies of the Boom have essentially focused on the characteristics of the movement in Latin America and have been interested mainly in the originality or literary experimentalism of the Boom, in which these studies mirrored the ideals of the Cuban revolution.
This groundbreaking book presents a history of the Boom in Spain as well as in Latin America and...

In this hard-hitting, thoroughly researched, and crisply argued book, award-winning historian Robert P. Newman offers a fresh perspective on the dispute over President Truman s decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan in World War II. Newman s argument centers on the controversy that erupted around the National Air and Space Museum s (NASM) exhibit of Enola Gay in 1995.
Newman explores the tremendous challenges that NASM faced when trying to construct a narrative that would satisfy American veterans and the Japanese, as well as accurately reflect the current historical research on both...

The multidisciplinary essays in Configuring History describe how teachers can use virtual reality technology to teach the Harlem Renaissance. Describing in detail the construction of Virtual Harlem, Bronzeville, and Montmartre all important sites in African American cultural history the essays delineate the technologies employed in the construction of these cityscapes and the learning theory configuring history that informs the project. The book provides a model of a collaborative learning network, linking classrooms at universities in the United States and in Europe, and demonstrates...