Educating Adolescent Girls Around The Globe

While many initial education benchmarks are being met, new and continuing challenges exist for adolescent girls in the developing world. Discrimination, violence, marginalization, and health-related issues prevail, making proper education at the middle school level crucial during this unique development time. As we continue to see the expectations for girls grow, education for girls must also find a new place within the evolving norms of political, economic, cultural and social life. This volume takes a global look at the obstacles and enablers in girls’ education that can have lasting institutional, psychological and social consequences. It looks at many complex issues affecting education for adolescent girls around the world, including the underlying global demands for women in the formal workforce and the universal impact of gender-based violence, and provides a critical framework through which researchers may explore and critique these complexities.

While many initial education benchmarks are being met, new and continuing challenges exist for adolescent girls in the developing world. Discrimination, violence, marginalization, and health-related issues prevail, making proper education at the middle school level crucial during this unique development time. As we continue to see the expectations for girls grow, education for girls must also find a new place within the evolving norms of political, economic, cultural and social life. This volume takes a global look at the obstacles and enablers in girls’ education that can have lasting institutional, psychological and social consequences. It looks at many complex issues affecting education for adolescent girls around the world, including the underlying global demands for women in the formal workforce and the universal impact of gender-based violence, and provides a critical framework through which researchers may explore and critique these complexities.

By traveling to different parts of the world, this book provides a multidisciplinary perspective on the current state of adolescent education and demonstrates how education systems are formed by and closely tied to culture. After establishing a theoretical background, the book delves into the particulars of adolescent education and its associated challenges in six countries (India, Kenya, Germany, Brazil, Japan, and Denmark). In tandem with the discussion of institutions, the stories of those who are all too often underserved or left behind are told. Despite the diversity of each education system, the investigation reveals several unifying themes that transcend the specific contexts. The lessons from each example are woven together to demonstrate how the individualized needs of students can best be met, in a vision for the future of educating adolescents."

Hard-headed evidence on why the returns from investing in girls are so high that no nation or family can afford not to educate their girls. Gene Sperling, author of the seminal 2004 report published by the Council on Foreign Relations, and Rebecca Winthrop, director of the Center for Universal Education, have written this definitive book on the importance of girls’ education. As Malala Yousafzai expresses in her foreword, the idea that any child could be denied an education due to poverty, custom, the law, or terrorist threats is just wrong and unimaginable. More than 1,000 studies have provided evidence that high-quality girls’ education around the world leads to wide-ranging returns: Better outcomes in economic areas of growth and incomes Reduced rates of infant and maternal mortality Reduced rates of child marriage Reduced rates of the incidence of HIV/AIDS and malaria Increased agricultural productivity Increased resilience to natural disasters Women’s empowerment What Works in Girls’ Education is a compelling work for both concerned global citizens, and any academic, expert, nongovernmental organization (NGO) staff member, policymaker, or journalist seeking to dive into the evidence and policies on girls’ education.

This text for preservice and in-service teacher education courses shows how schools can educate girls and promote their positive self-esteem at the same time. Its purpose is to help teachers facilitate the development of gender-equitable schools and classrooms. Taking a feminist developmental approach, the text draws on an interdisciplinary knowledge base, synthesizing research from psychology, anthropology, sociology, and education. While it is rooted in scholarly research, the focus is on clarifying the connection between theory and practice, with an emphasis on practical applications. The text is organized in two sections--"Growth and Development" and "Teaching and Learning"--and includes a variety of engaging pedagogical features. Underscoring the need for teachers, school administrators, and parents to become aware of the intersection of development and education, Educating Young Adolescent Girls: *combines gender, growth, and development; *demonstrates how schooling can facilitate the total development of young adolescent girls; and *addresses a multiplicity of issues, including adolescent girls of color and young adolescents girls' sexuality.

A particular problem associated with international research in the field of spirituality and education is the reluctance of scholars to agree on what spirituality means, with numerous descriptions increasing ambiguity and reducing the impact of research in the discipline. This book argues that it is important to understand spirituality as a unifying concept that has the potential to be meaningful in its application to the lives of children and young people in areas of learning and wellbeing. Chapters show why and how spiritual learning should be addressed across the curriculum, with implications for the design of learning programs and environments.