The Education Continuum

Born to Learn

A source of constant frustration for many teachers, are the reams of guidelines, inspection criteria and advice which lapse into lengthy, indecipherable discourse. Information is more available now than in has ever been – the latest research is disseminated within minutes via online newspapers and comment is free. How are we to devise and implement an effective model for education amidst so many conflicting findings and views?

This was the question on John Abbott’s mind when looking back over 20 years worth of research from the 21st Century Learning Initiative into the relationship between format schooling and informal learning outside of the school gates. The answer has come in the form of a series of short, thought-provoking animations, narrated by British actor Damian Lewis and aimed, quite simply, at getting straight to the point on educational issues.

For John Abbott, the “crisis” of education has not arisen simply from bad teaching, but from the failure of the wider community to engage and nurture the imaginations of young people. It is rather more a crisis of society’s committment to young people and their individual idiosyncracies and spiritual needs. The result is an education system in desperate need of finding ways to ensure creative energy is nurtured, and young people come out with confidence, a forward-thinking attitude and the ability to think outside the box and adapt to an ever-changing world in which following in the footsteps of your parents and teachers might just leave you floundering.

But John Abbott needs little help in stating his claim. Born to Learn - http://www.born-to-learn.org/ - takes the theories behind Abbott’s best-selling book Overschooled but Undereducated: How the crisis in education is jeopardizing our adolescents, and turns them into short and accessible nuggets of thought. No legislative provision, he argues, which is not fully understood by the people, will ever effectively reform an outdated system. The animations are aimed at summing up years of research and turning them into a Call to Action – a creative solution for unlocking the creative potential of future generations.

Rosie Pattinson

Editorial Assistant

Guest post from David Scott, co-author of Researching Education

Researching Education: Data, Methods and Theory in Educational Enquiry is a second edition of a book first published in 2000. This new version includes a substantially rewritten account of philosophical issues relating to educational research, a new chapter on judgemental criteria for educational research, and a detailed account of feminist approaches to research. The focus and substantive content of the book is the same as it was when it was first published. It sets out to examine the theory and practice of researching education, focusing on the philosophical, historical, political and social contexts in which such research is conducted, and the implications of these contexts for the collection and analysis of data. The point is that everyone thinks that they know what research is and how to do it; whereas in fact most research is poorly constructed, inadequately conceptualised and over-claiming of its results. In part, this is because those ontological and epistemological frameworks within which all research is located are rarely surfaced for attention and the methods and approaches used to collect and analyse data are subsequently misconceived. So, this book serves as a corrective to research studies which deny the sociality of the research process and the implicit power relations that underpin these works. In short, it seeks to problematise the practice of research and examine how power is ever present in the construction of research texts, not in a partisan sense nor indeed so that it is deliberately biased and distorted, but rather in the sense that it imposes a closure of the world, when openness is to be preferred.

Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain

I'm heading to New College, Oxford, for the Philosophy of Eduaction Society of Great Britain conference this weekend.  If you are attending, please come and see me at the stand to say hello, to take advantage of the conference discount on lots of our recently published books or to talk about new book project ideas.

I look forward to seeing some of you there.

Alison Baker
Commissioning Editor (Academic Education)

The Education Show 2010

    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s been a while since my last post but I’ve been dying to tell you all about our experience of the Education Show in Birmingham earlier in the month. Above is a picture of Jenny, Ania and I on the stand (I'm so interested in the books I haven't even noticed that Anna's taking a picture of us!

It was lovely to meet some of you there and for those that didn’t make it to the stand; you missed out on the most talked-about giveaway at the Show this year – the But Why? teddy bear! People came from far and wide to beg for a teddy, and in return for an email address we made many people’s dreams come true!  

 

 

We were really pleased to be able to talk about the blog and give out our beautiful new professional catalogue to people, and we all really enjoyed being able to meet some of the people who the books we publish help to make their careers most fulfilling, more fun or just more organised!

Ally Clark will be at the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain (PESGB) conference this weekend, so do go and introduce yourself if you are attending. Continuum are sponsoring the drinks reception, so she’ll be the one by the bar!

Melanie Wilson

Commissioning Editor

 

 

 

Exciting New Book Day!

After a quiet few days in the Education department at Continuum (most of the team are at the Education Show in Birmingham), I’ve had a very exciting day today - not only is it Friday but I’ve also just received a bumper set of books from our production department!

Copies of the first two titles in our exciting Key Debates in Educational Policy have arrived, Teaching Thinking Skills and Educational Equality.  We are hosting the drinks reception at the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain later this month, where copies of these two titles along with Special Educational Needs will be available for sale. 

I’ve also received copies of Rethinking Children’s Rights, which is the second title in our refreshing New Childhoods series.  Look out for Rethinking Children and Research which will be coming soon.

Finally, but by no means least, Justice and Equality in Education has just arrived in paperback.  It’s great to have this text available for individual purchase.

If you think that any of these look like something you'd be interested in using as essential/recommended reading on a course you teach on then get in touch with Jenny (jtighe@continuumbooks.com) for an inspection copy.

Alison Clark

Commissioning Editor

 

Philosophy of Education: An Introduction

A grey and rainy but exciting day; my first post, but also, and much more excitingly, copies of this fantastic new textbook have landed on my desk, hot off the press!

A sneak preview is available here. If you think that this looks like something you'd be interested in using as essential/recommended reading on a course you teach on then get in touch with Jenny (jtighe@continuumbooks.com) for an inspection copy.

Edited by Richard Bailey, this text weaves together a fantastic set of contributions from Harry Brighouse, James C Conroy, Dianne Gereluk, John Gingell, Michael Hand, Roger Marples, Paula McAvoy, Tristan McCowan, Richard Pring, Richard Smith, Paul Standish, Judith Suissa and Carrie Winstanley.

The Philosophy of Education: An Introduction encourages the reader to actively engage with the philosophy of education and the carefully selected contributors bring the philosophy of education to life for the reader.

Each chapter:
• focuses on a particular area of debate and explains the main concepts
• includes extracts from philosophical writing, followed by questions that guide the reader to critically and actively with the text
• guides the reader towards further reading and suggests nexts steps and more challenging sources or counter-pointed arguments.

The Philosophy of Education: An Introduction is essential reading for education students and for trainee teachers on undergraduate and postgraduate programmes.  It will also appeal to practicing teachers and educationalists who wish to engage with philosophical approaches to contemporary educational issues.

Alison Clark
Commissioning Editor

Educational Inequality Starts Young

A major new study hitting the headlines this week has reported that the language skills of children from poorer backgrounds lag a year behind those of children from middle class backgrounds before they even start school. Children from the richest backgrounds are a further five months ahead of their peers. This kind of a gap is hard to close, and can lead to a lifetime of underachievement for kids who find themselves falling behind at such a young age.

 

Next month we are publishing an exciting new book called Educational Equality (edited by Graham Haydon) which wrestles with this very issue. Harry Brighouse has updated his short work, Educational Equality and the New Selective Schooling, which inspired a lively debate when it was first published in 2000. The new book provides counter-arguments by Kenneth R. Howe and James Tooley which take the debate further, and look at the situation in both the UK and the US.

 

The book begins with a quotation from the Panel of Fair Access to the Professions, published in July 2009:

 

‘It has long been recognised that the UK is a higly unequal society in which class background still too often determines life chances.’

 

A depressing statement, no doubt, but one worth engaging with. We hope Educational Equality will get people thinking and talking about this complex and important educational issue.

 

Ania Leslie-Wujastyk

Editorial Assistant