Teaching Tolerance

This open access thematic report identifies factors and conditions that can help schools and education systems promote tolerance in a globalized world. The IEA’s International Civic and Citizenship Study (ICCS) is a comparative research program designed to investigate the ways in which young people are prepared to undertake their roles as citizens, and provides a wealth of data permitting not only comparison between countries but also comparisons between schools within countries, and students within countries. Advanced analytical methods provide insights into relationships between students’ attitudes towards cultural diversity and the characteristics of the students themselves, their families, their teachers and school principals. The rich diversity of educational and cultural contexts in the 38 countries who participated in ICCS 2009 are also acknowledged and addressed. Readers interested in civic education and adolescents’ attitudes towards cultural diversity will find the theoretical perspectives explored engaging. For readers interested in methodology, the advanced analytical methods employed present textbook examples of how to address cross-cultural comparability of measurement instruments and multilevel data structures in international large-scale assessments (ILSA). Meanwhile, those interested in educational policy should find the identification and comparison of malleable factors across education systems that contribute to positive student attitudes towards cultural diversity a useful and thought-provoking resource.

A New York Times Bestseller For Lady Gaga, kindness is the driving force behind everything she says and does. The quiet power of kindness can change the way we view one another, our communities, and even ourselves. She embodies this mission, and through her work, brings more kindness into our world every single day. Lady Gaga has always believed in the importance of being yourself, being kind to yourself, and being kind to others, no matter who they are or where they come from. With that sentiment in mind, she and her mother, Cynthia Germanotta, founded Born This Way Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to making the world a kinder and braver place. Through the years, they've collected stories of kindness, bravery and resilience from young people all over the world, proving that kindness truly is the universal language. And now, we invite you to read these stories and follow along as each and every young author finds their voice just as Lady Gaga has found hers. Within these pages, you’ll meet young changemakers who found their inner strength, who prevailed in the face of bullies, who started their own social movements, who decided to break through the mental health stigma and share how they felt, who created safe spaces for LGBTQ+ youth, and who have embraced kindness with every fiber of their being by helping others without the expectation of anything in return. In one story, you’ll read about a young person with an autoimmune disease, who after being bullied at school, learned how to practice self-love and started an organization with the mission of educating others about the importance of self-love, too; and in another story, you’ll meet a young person who decided to start a movement to help eliminate the stigma surrounding mental health and encouraged others to talk about their feelings openly and honestly, a reminder that kindness and mental wellness go hand in hand. Not only were we moved by these individual acts of kindness, but we were also touched by the many stories of organizations, neighborhoods, and entire communities that fully dedicated themselves to helping those in need and found new, innovative ways to make our world a kinder and braver place. Individually and collectively, these stories prove that kindness not only saves lives but builds community. Kindness is inclusion, it is pride, it is empathy, it is compassion, it is self-respect and it is the guiding light to love. Kindness is always transformational, and its never-ending ripples result in even more kind acts that can change our lives, our communities, and our world.

Over the past three decades, American higher education has witnessed a shift in demographics that has created a more diverse student body. However, many university campuses remain unsupportive or even hostile to minority faculty and students. This anthology introduces readers to the Difference, Power, and Discrimination (DPD) Program, a fifteen-year-old curricular model at Oregon State University. DPD is concerned with helping students understand the complex dynamics of difference, power, and discrimination and how these dynamics influence institutions, with the goal of empowering students to alleviate oppression and other negative outcomes. Teaching for Change addresses the needs of those who are engaged in diversity training and curricular reforms both in higher education and public schools. It will serve as a useful guide for administrators as well as teaching faculty who are interested in initiating similar programs. Book jacket.

This book offers easily implemented strategies for use with secondary and undergraduate students to promote greater engagement with the realities of diversity and commitment to social justice within their classrooms. Defining diversity broadly, the book provides effective pedagogical techniques to help students question their own assumptions, think critically, and discuss issues within race, religion, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, and ability. The K-12 student population is increasingly diverse in terms of race, ethnicity, language, religion, socio-economic status, and family structure. However, the overwhelming majority of teachers continues to come from White, non-urban, middle class backgrounds (Fletcher, 2014; Hughes et al., 2011) These differences can have serious repercussions for student learning. Non-majority students who feel that their culture or background is not acknowledged or accepted at school are likely to disengage from expected academic and social activities (Hughes et al., 2011). Concurrently, the majority students remain unaware of privilege and ignorant of societal systemic discrimination. In order to teach for social justice, ideas regarding power structure, privilege, and oppression need to be discussed openly. Fear of upsetting students or not knowing how to handle the issue of social justice are commonly heard reasons for not discussing “difficult” subjects (Marks, Binkley, & Daly, 2014). However, when teachers choose not to discuss topics within diversity, students assume that the topics are taboo, dangerous, or unimportant. These assumptions impede students’ abilities to ask important questions, learn how to speak about issues effectively and comprehend the complex challenges woven into current national conversations.

Teachers and school leaders are confronted by various issues pertaining to social justice every day. This volume will help school leaders to handle these issues ethically, and is intended to be used by administrators for the professional development of teachers, teacher leaders, and aspiring principals. This volume can be also be used in the higher education classroom in order to prepare current and aspiring administrators to lead for social justice. This volume utilizes the case study approach, which has been found to “sharpen problem-solving skills and to improve the ability to think and reason rigorously” (Harvard Graduate School of Education, 2013). This volume includes cases pertaining to race, class, gender, sexual orientation, discrimination and harassment, culturally responsive pedagogy, et cetera. Each case requires the reader to look beyond the facts, by providing guidance on current research and policy guidelines. Each case provides the reader with additional information that will assist them in making informed decisions. Additionally, each case provides facilitators with guiding questions to assist them in their pedagogy and for subsequent class discussion.

What will you do to promote multilingual learners’ equity? Our nation’s moment of reckoning with the deficit view of multilingual learners has arrived. The COVID-19 pandemic has further exposed and exacerbated long-standing inequities that stand in the way of MLs’ access to effective instruction. Recent events have also caused us to reflect on our place as educators within the intersection of race and language. In this innovative book, Sydney Snyder and Diane Staehr Fenner share practical, replicable ways you can draw from students’ strengths and promote multilingual learners′ success within and beyond your own classroom walls. In this book you’ll find • Practical and printable, research-based tools that guide you on how to implement culturally responsive teaching in your context • Case studies and reflection exercises to help identify implicit bias in your work and mitigate deficit-based thinking • Authentic classroom video clips in each chapter to show you what culturally responsive teaching actually looks like in practice • Hand-drawn sketch note graphics that spotlight key concepts, reinforce central themes, and engage you with eye-catching and memorable illustrations There is no time like the present for you to reflect on your role in culturally responsive teaching and use new tools to build an even stronger school community that is inclusive of MLs. No matter your role or where you are in your journey, you can confront injustice by taking action steps to develop a climate in which all students’ backgrounds, experiences, and cultures are honored and educators, families, and communities work collaboratively to help MLs thrive. We owe it to our students. On-demand book study-Available now! Authors, Snyder and Staehr Fenner have created an on-demand LMS book study for readers of Culturally Responsive Teaching for Multilingual Learners: Tools for Equity available now from their company SupportEd. The self-paced book study works around your schedule and when you′re done, you’ll earn a certificate for 20 hours of PD. SupportEd can also customize the book study for specific district timelines, cohorts and/or needs upon request.

Handbook of Prosocial Education is the definitive theoretical, practical, and policy guide to the prosocial side of education, the necessary second side of the educational coin. Academic teaching and learning are the first side of education; however, academic success depends upon the structures and support of prosocial educational efforts from promoting positive school climate to fostering student and teacher development to civic literacy and responsible and critical citizenship participation. The Handbook of Prosocial Education chapters, written by highly-respected researchers and outstanding educators, represent the wide range of research-based prosocial interventions from pre-school through high school. The chapters explore and explain how prosocial education helps teachers create effective classroom learning environments to support the development of the whole student, principals encourage positive school climate, and superintendents work to improve the health and well-being of their systems. As readers will learn, when done well, prosocial education develops the capacities and competencies of students, teachers, and school administrators that lead to a more autonomous, positive self-concept, greater sense of purpose, more socially responsible behaviors, and increased connections between families, schools, and communities. This book pulls together in one place for the first time the various threads that create the prosocial education tapestry, making a compelling case for the necessity of changing national educational policy that continues to be ever-more oriented to only the academic side of the educational coin, thus jeopardizing the foundational and historic purpose of educating our children for their full human development and participation in our democracy.