Challenges Bequeathed

In this thoughtful and provocative collection of essays, a group of scholars from varied backgrounds and interests have each taken up the educational challenges bequeathed by Dwayne Huebner in his 1996 essay, “Challenges Bequeathed”. Huebner encouraged educators to surpass the technical foundations of education, affirm the significance of the imagination, use the world’s intellectual traditions and achievements, engage in public discourse about education, and speak out for children and youth. Each author has extended, and in some ways transcended, the discussion of these five challenges yet still draw upon the considerable contribution Dwayne Huebner has made to the field of education. The writers in this volume grapple with the complexities of teaching and learning as always in process and as always relational; of schools as sites of creative and imaginative acts of knowing and being. The book begins with Huebner’s 1996 essay wherein he delineates the challenges for educators, as he perceived them. Readers are invited to begin with this chapter. However, after taking in Professor Huebner’s “prescience, his ability to see, years in advance of everyone else, what is deeply at work in present times, where it is headed, and what needs to be done about it...” (Smith, this volume) we encourage readers to dip into this volume randomly rather than in sequential order. While doing so, it is important to be mindful that “these challenges do not exist in isolation of each other; rather they are inextricably linked in myriad ways. Each one of these challenges requires consideration of classroom spaces, the individuals who occupy these spaces, and how these spaces are influenced by external forces” (Tupper, this volume). We invite you to take up a challenge.

In this thoughtful and provocative collection of essays, a group of scholars from varied backgrounds and interests have each taken up the educational challenges bequeathed by Dwayne Huebner in his 1996 essay, "Challenges Bequeathed". Huebner encouraged educators to surpass the technical foundations of education, affirm the significance of the imagination, use the world's intellectual traditions and achievements, engage in public discourse about education, and speak out for children and youth. Each author has extended, and in some ways transcended, the discussion of these five challenges yet still draw upon the considerable contribution Dwayne Huebner has made to the field of education. The writers in this volume grapple with the complexities of teaching and learning as always in process and as always relational; of schools as sites of creative and imaginative acts of knowing and being. The book begins with Huebner's 1996 essay wherein he delineates the challenges for educators, as he perceived them. Readers are invited to begin with this chapter. However, after taking in Professor Huebner's "prescience, his ability to see, years in advance of everyone else, what is deeply at work in present times, where it is headed, and what needs to be done about it..." (Smith, this volume) we encourage readers to dip into this volume randomly rather than in sequential order. While doing so, it is important to be mindful that "these challenges do not exist in isolation of each other; rather they are inextricably linked in myriad ways. Each one of these challenges requires consideration of classroom spaces, the individuals who occupy these spaces, and how these spaces are influenced by external forces" (Tupper, this volume). We invite you to take up a challenge.

Drawing on hundreds of interviews with top Chinese officials, parliamentarians, scholars, and businessmen, Willy Lam, a renowned journalist and writer on Chinese affairs, presents a first-hand, multi-dimensional account of twenty-first century China and the impact of fourth generation leaders, including President Hu Jinato and Premier Wen Jiabao. Lam goes behind the glitzy facade of nouveau-riche Beijing and Shanghai to examine how the Hu leadership has tried to extend the Communist Party's "mandate of heaven" by tackling an array of daunting problems: the weakening legitimacy of the Party's leadership; restive peasants; angry workers; political stagnation over the lack of reform; foreign relations difficulties; unreliable energy supplies; resurgent nationalism; and the increasingly dubious "Chinese model" of development. The author assesses possible contributions that the new classes of private businessmen, professionals, and intellectuals - as well as new ideas such as nationalism, globalization, and federalism - will make to economic prosperity and political liberalization. The book also includes a chapter on foreign policy, which contains an insightful account of Beijing's evolving and sometimes difficult relations with the United States, Europe, Japan, and other major countries and blocs, as well as the role of the People's Liberation Army.

This volume of plenary addresses and other key presentations from the 2014 International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry highlights the politics of research in the neoliberal state and the role of qualitative researchers in that debate. Marginalized by an increasingly top-down, assessment-driven university system, the fifteen contributors from a variety of disciplines show the responses of qualitative scholars in their research, writing, advocacy, and teaching, both inside the university and in the broader society. Sponsored by the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry.

"The Early Advantage 2--Building Systems That Work for Young Children: International Insights from Innovative Early Childhood Systems is a timely and modern resource for policy makers and practitioners that conceptualizes ECEC as a manifestation of country values and social science, while seeking to understand it broadly, scientifically, and systemically"--

For school professionals seeking to work in emotionally focused ways with children, this book offers a wide range of essays illustrating how psychodynamic ideas can be used to validate children, respect the contexts of their communities, and create nonauthoritarian classrooms in which such children might develop to their fullest potential.

David Hilbert was arguably the leading mathematician of his generation. He was among the few mathematicians who could reshape mathematics, and was able to because he brought together an impressive technical power and mastery of detail with a vision of where the subject was going and how it should get there. This was the unique combination which he brought to the setting of his famous 23 Problems. Few problems in mathematics have the status of those posed by David Hilbert in 1900. Mathematicians have made their reputations by solving individual ones such as Fermat's last theorem, and several remain unsolved including the Riemann hypotheses, which has eluded all the great minds of this century. A hundred years on, it is timely to take a fresh look at the problems, the man who set them, and the reasons for their lasting impact on the mathematics of the twentieth century. In this fascinating new book, Jeremy Gray and David Rowe consider what has made this the pre-eminent collection of problems in mathematics, what they tell us about what drives mathematicians, and the nature of reputation, influence and power in the world of modern mathematics. The book is written in a clear and lively manner and will appeal both to the general reader with an interest in mathematics and to mathematicians themselves.