Preparing For Life

A life skills guide for individuals with autism and Asperger's syndrome discusses social skills and strategies needed for success in the adult world, including discussion of perspective-taking, nonverbal communication skills, and stress management.

Teacher-pupil planning means teachers and students working in a partnership to articulate a problem/concern, develop objectives, locate materials/resources, and evaluate progress. The intent of this volume of Middle Level Education and the Self-Enhancing School titled, “School is Life, Not a Preparation for Life”-John Dewey: Democratic Practices in Middle Grades Education, is to take the thoughts about the middle grades school curriculum presented in volume one (Middle Grades Curriculum: Voices and Visions of the Self-Enhancing School) and demonstrate the efforts taking place in teacher education programs and middle grades classrooms today. Volume two is organized into two parts, efforts within teacher education programs and efforts of practitioners in the middle grades classrooms. We asked authors in both contexts to address the following questions: 1. Antecedents: What knowledge, skills and dispositions must be in place in all stakeholders to have teacher-pupil planning serve a central role in the middle grades teacher education program or middle grades classroom? 2. Implementation: What does the teacher-pupil planning process look like within your teacher education program or middle grades classroom? 3. Outcomes: What benefits (knowledge, skills, and dispositions) are derived from the implementation of teacher-pupil planning in your teacher education program or your middle grades classroom?

This Open Access book summarizes the key findings from the second cycle of IEA’s International Computer and Information Literacy Study (ICILS), conducted in 2018. ICILS seeks to establish how well schools around the globe are responding to the need to provide young people with the necessary digital participatory competencies. Effective use of information and communication technologies (ICT) is an imperative for successful participation in an increasingly digital world. ICILS 2018 explores international differences in students’ computer and information literacy (CIL), namely their ability to use computers to investigate, create, and communicate at home, at school, in the workplace, and in the community. Participating countries also had an option to administer an assessment of students’ computational thinking (CT), focused on their ability to recognize aspects of real-world problems appropriate for computational formulation, and to evaluate and develop algorithmic solutions to those problems, so that the solutions could be operationalized with a computer. The data collected by ICILS 2018 show how digital competencies can be assessed using instruments representing authentic contexts for ICT use, and how students’ CIL and CT skills relate to school learning experiences, out-of-school contexts, and student characteristics. Those data also show how learning technologies are used in classrooms around the world. Background questionnaires asked students about their use of ICT, and collected information from teachers, schools, and national education systems about the resourcing and teaching of CIL (and CT) within their countries. The results of ICILS 2018 will enable policymakers and education systems to develop a better understanding of the contexts and outcomes of CIL (and CT) education programs.

Ability to use information and communication technologies (ICT) is an imperative for effective participation in today’s digital age. Schools worldwide are responding to the need to provide young people with that ability. But how effective are they in this regard? The IEA International Computer and Information Literacy Study (ICILS) responded to this question by studying the extent to which young people have developed computer and information literacy (CIL), which is defined as the ability to use computers to investigate, create and communicate with others at home, school, the workplace and in society. The study was conducted under the auspices of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) and builds on a series of earlier IEA studies focusing on ICT in education. Data were gathered from almost 60,000 Grade 8 students in more than 3,300 schools from 21 education systems. This information was augmented by data from almost 35,000 teachers in those schools and by contextual data collected from school ICT-coordinators, school principals and the ICILS national research centers. The IEA ICILS team systematically investigated differences among the participating countries in students’ CIL outcomes, how participating countries were providing CIL-related education and how confident teachers were in using ICT in their pedagogical practice. The team also explored differences within and across countries with respect to relationships between CIL education outcomes and student characteristics and school contexts. In general, the study findings presented in this international report challenge the notion of young people as “digital natives” with a self-developed capacity to use digital technology. The large variations in CIL proficiency within and across the ICILS countries suggest it is naive to expect young people to develop CIL in the absence of coherent learning programs. Findings also indicate that system- and school-level planning needs to focus on increasing teacher expertise in using ICT for pedagogical purposes if such programs are to have the desired effect. The report furthermore presents an empirically derived scale and description of CIL learning that educational stakeholders can reference when deliberating about CIL education and use to monitor change in CIL over time.

Developing directly from Fuller's recent book Humanity 2.0, this is the first book to seriously consider what a 'post-' or 'trans'-' human state of being might mean for who we think we are, how we live, what we believe and what we aim to be.

Preparing Students for Life and Work: Policies and Reforms Affecting Higher Education’s Principal Mission raises important aspects of higher education that affect the lives and work prospects of students, discussing them in the context of different countries and over time.

Rev. ed. of: Building life skills / by Louise A. Liddell, Yvonne S. Gentzler.

A visionary guide for the future of learning and work Long Life Learning: Preparing for Jobs That Don’t Even Exist Yet offers readers a fascinating glimpse into a near-future where careers last 100 years, and education lasts a lifetime. The book makes the case that learners of the future are going to repeatedly seek out educational opportunities throughout the course of their working lives — which will no longer have a beginning, middle, and end. Long Life Learning focuses on the disruptive and burgeoning innovations that are laying the foundation for a new learning model that includes clear navigation, wraparound and funding supports, targeted education, and clear connections to more transparent hiring processes. Written by the former chief innovation officer of Strada Education Network’s Institute for the Future of Work, the book examines: How will a dramatically extended lifespan affect our careers? How will more time in the workforce shape our educational demands? Will a four-year degree earned at the start of a 100-year career adequately prepare us for the challenges ahead? Perfect for anyone with an interest in the future of education and Clayton Christensen’s theories of disruptive innovation, Long Life Learning provides an invaluable glimpse into a future that many of us have not even begun to imagine.