Teaching Life Differently

Children who are sighted learn concepts and gain experience through incidental learning, the observation of events and interactions in their environment. Students with visual impairment need to be systematically, sequentially, and concretely taught through hands-on-experiences. Historically, students got this learning through channels other than schools. The teaching of recreation, adaptive sports, social life opportunities, and career education require this specific systematic approach. Individuals with vision impairment may also require specific interventions to learn independent living skills, self-advocacy, and community relationships.

ECC Essentials: Teaching the Expanded Core Curriculum to Students with Visual Impairments is the first comprehensive book for teachers of students with visual impairments to focus on the nine areas of the ECC that encompass the unique skills children and adolescents with visual impairments need to learn in order to access the core educational curriculum and become independent individuals, by providing the rationale, suggestions, and strategies necessary to implement instruction. The nine areas include compensatory access, sensory efficiency, assistive technology, orientation and mobility, independent living, social interaction, recreation and leisure, career education, and self-determination. ECC Essentials helps teachers manage time efficiently and effectively; work with students of different ages and ability levels; collaborate with parents and other members of the educational team; conduct assessments; align instruction with state standards and the general education core curriculum; and maximize planning effectiveness. The book includes learning activities that combine several areas of the ECC; information about additional resources; specific guidelines and strategies for teaching each of the nine areas of the ECC. ECC Essentials provides teachers with a road map for helping their students achieve success in school and in life.

This book is an open letter to teachers offering guidance and encouragement for nurturing students in ways that make teaching and learning meaningful. The authors promote an approach to teaching that fosters self-knowledge, creativity, curiosity, and an appreciation for our planet. Central to their philosophy is the question of what we humans need in order to live meaningful lives, and the answer lies in healthy relationships with ourselves, each other, and the world.

This is the first volume addressing the importance of teaching quality of life theory and methodology in different domains: social sciences, philosophy, sociology, political science, marketing, education, urbanism, statistics, economics, online learning, public health, sports, and constraint contexts in terms of their relationship with the Capability Approach. The chapters are written by important authors from Europe, North America, Asia, Latin America, Africa and Oceania, and present the syllabus and references of courses, making this volume important and necessary to university professors, students as well as teachers in general.

Using the practical advice from itinerant teachers within the US, each chapter develops strategies for working with students with visual impairments. It discusses the rights, expectations and demands of itinerant teaching, as well as the provision of services within a variety of environments.

Teaching Music Differently explores what music teachers do and why. It offers insightful analysis of eight in-depth studies of teachers in a range of settings – the early years, a special school, primary and secondary schools, a college, a prison, a conservatoire and a community choir – and demonstrates that pedagogy is not simply the delivery of a curriculum or an enactment of a teaching plan. Rather, a teacher’s pedagogy is complex, nuanced and influenced by a multitude of factors. Exploring the theories teachers hold about their own teaching, it reveals that, even when teachers are engaged with the same subject, their teaching varies substantially. It analyses the differences in terms of agency – the knowledge and skills that teachers bring to teaching, their expectations shaped by their life histories, the ways in which they relate to their students and the subject and their ideas about the content they teach – what is important, what is interesting, what is difficult for students to grasp. It also explores the constraints that are imposed upon the teachers – by curriculum, policy, institutions, society and the students themselves. Together with discussion of key ideas for understanding the case studies, historical influences on music pedagogy and the main discourses around music teaching, Teaching Music Differently invites all music education professionals to consider their own responses to pedagogical discourses and to use these discourses to further the development of the profession as a whole.

Designing your Teaching Life is written for student teachers and their program-based mentors. This book provides engaging and detailed guidance for making the most out of the student teaching experience and overcoming the stressful situations and challenges that can arise during student teaching in today’s fast-paced, diverse, and evidence-based classrooms. Designing your Teaching Life supports the student teacher to organize his/her experience, build positive relationships with mentors and students, design high quality plans and instruction, and use assessment data to inform teaching and learning. Filled with narratives, snapshots, examples, questions, templates, and advice from program and school-based mentors as well as former student teachers, the book will support student teachers working in a range of classrooms, including physical education. In addition, advice about the edTPA is woven throughout the chapters to support student teachers preparing for this assessment. Reading this book will provide the student teacher the guidance he or she needs to design a rewarding and successful teaching life.