Alternatives In Education

Using critical theory as a foundation, Alternatives in Education posits psychology's role in educating at-risk youth as the number one ingredient for student success. To reach and teach disaffected youth, the best psychological practices must be wedded to modern, multicultural perspectives. Alternatives in Education brings free choice and opportunity to a milieu of students and teachers alienated by competitive and hegemonic school models. Blending critical theory into the actual stories of the Wonalancet Alternative School, Alternatives in Education speaks to practicing educators of at-risk youth.

This book provokes a conversation about what supportive schooling contexts for both students and teachers might look like, and considers how schooling can contribute to a more socially-just society. It takes as its starting point the position of the most marginalised students, many of whom have either been rejected by or have rejected mainstream schooling, and argues that the experiences of these students suggest that it is time for schools to be reimagined for all young people. Utilizing both theory and data, the volume critiques many of the issues in conventional schools that work against education, and presents evidence ‘from the field’ in the form of data from unconventional schooling sites, which demonstrates some of the structural, relational, curricular and pedagogical changes that appear to be enabling schooling for education for their students. It will be essential reading for students and researchers in the fields of education, sociology and social work, and will also be of great interest to practising teachers.

This book explores the unique phenomenon of public alternative schools in Toronto, Canada and other large urban areas. Although schools of this kind have existed for more than a century, very little has been written about the alternative school movement. These alternatives focus more on child-centered instruction, give many students (and teachers) opportunities to organize the school differently, provide a greater voice for teachers, students, and parents, and engage students far more with experiential learning. When traditional school structures are failing to meet the needs of many children and youth, there is a rapidly growing need for information and discussion about alternatives that will encourage their talents and serve their needs. This book draws attention to the issue of alternative schooling to help make it more accessible to a wider audience.

Alternative education caters and cares for students whose regular schools have failed and excluded them. Fifty years of international research reports that alternative settings are characterised by close and powerful staff–student relationships, a curriculum which is relevant, engaging and meaningful, and the strong sense of agency afforded young people by the opportunity to make decisions. Together, these three practices produce increased life chances for alternative education participants. However, despite these apparent successes, alternative education seems to have had little impact on mainstream schools. This collection of papers addresses the important question – what might regular schools and teachers learn about socially just pedagogies from alternative education practices? In providing answers to this question, authors interrogate the taken-for-granted wisdom about alternative education while also taking account of ongoing policy shifts, differing locations and populations, and persistent and intersecting patterns of raced, classed and gendered inequalities. They draw on a range of theoretical and methodological approaches to interrogate the ways in which alternative schools and alternative education both challenge and legitimate the kinds of schooling most of us expect for our own and other people's children. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Critical Studies in Education.

World Bank and Education: Book Blurb For more than three decades, the World Bank has been proposing global policies for education. Presented as research-based, validated by experience, and broadly applicable, these policies are ideologically driven, insensitive to local contexts, and treat education as independent of international dynamics and national and local economies and cultures. Target countries, needing resources and unable to generate comparable research, find it difficult to challenge World Bank recommendations. The World Bank and Education: Critiques and Alternatives represents a powerful challenge to World Bank proposals. Probing core issues—equity, quality, finance, privatization, teaching and learning, gender, and human rights—highlights the disabilities of neoliberal globalization. The authors demonstrate the ideological nature of the evidence marshaled by the World Bank and the accompanying policy advice. Addressing key education issues in developing countries, the authors’ analyses provide tools for resisting and rejecting generic policy prescriptions as well as alternative directions to consider. Robert Arnove, in his preface, says, “whether the Bank is responsive to the critiques and alternatives brilliantly offered by the present authors, the book is certain to influence development and education scholars, policymakers, and practitioners around the globe.”

This state-of-the-art, comprehensive Handbook fully explores the field of alternative education on an international scale. Alternatives to mainstream schooling and education are becoming increasingly recognised as pertinent and urgent for better understanding what really works in successfully educating children and adults today, especially in light of the increased performance driven and managerially organised economic modelling of education that dominates. For too long we have wondered what “exactly” education done otherwise might look like and here we meet individual examples as well as seeing what alternative education is when a collection becomes greater than the sum of parts. The Handbook profiles numerous empirical examples from around the world of education being done in innovative and excitingly democratic and autonomous ways from Forest Schools and Home Education through to new technologies, neuroscience and the importance of solitude. The book also sets out important theoretical perspectives to inform us why seeing education through an alternative lens is useful as well as urgently needed. Global in its perspective and definitive in content, this one-stop volume will be an indispensable reference resource for a wide range of academics, students and researchers in the fields of Education, Education Policy, Sociology and Philosophy as well as educational practitioners.