Teaching Tough Topics

Teaching Tough Topics shows teachers how to lead students to become caring citizens as they read and respond to quality children’s literature. It focuses on topics that can be challenging or sensitive, yet are significant in order to build understanding of social justice, diversity, and equity. Racism, Homophobia, Bullying, Religious Intolerance, Poverty, and Physical and Mental Challenges are just some of the themes explored. The book is rooted in the belief that by using picture books, novels, poetry, and nonfiction, teachers can enrich learning with compassion and empathy as students make connections to texts, to others, and to the world.

With considerations for students, faculty members, librarians, and researchers, this book will explain and help to mitigate plagiarism in higher education contexts. Plagiarism is a complex issue that affects many stakeholders in higher education, but it isn't always well understood. This text provides an in-depth, evidence-based understanding of plagiarism with the goal of engaging campus communities in informed conversations about proactive approaches to plagiarism. Offering practical suggestions for addressing plagiarism campus-wide, this book tackles such messy topics as self-plagiarism, plagiarism among international students, essay mills, and contract cheating. It also answers such tough questions as: Why do students plagiarize, and why don't faculty always report it? Why are plagiarism cases so hard to manage? What if researchers themselves plagiarize? How can we design better learning assessments to prevent plagiarism? When should we choose human detection versus text-matching software? This nonjudgmental book focuses on academic integrity from a teaching and learning perspective, offering comprehensive insights into various aspects of plagiarism with a particular lens on higher education to benefit the entire campus community.

How can you really make a difference for your students? Teaching Tough Kids delivers a refreshing collection of realistic ideas to sustain the organisational and behavioural transformations of all students, particularly those who 'do it tough'; who learn and react differently. They are complex kids who find life tougher than most. Managing their emotion and behaviour presents educators with a spectacular challenge in schools today, and numbers are on the rise. Filled with inspirational case studies, this book focuses on building improved relationships, structures and behaviours, rather than seeing the student as 'the problem' that must be fixed. Highlighting the value of promoting positive connections with students of all ages, the author presents ways to incorporate inclusive ideas into everyday practice and construct pathways for students to become engaged in their learning and achieve success. This stimulating book shows teachers how to: build student connectedness to learning; set achievable goals for each individual child; support emotional stability; strengthen organisation patterns; address behavioural issues; improve homework planning; create friendships and deal with bullying. Teaching Tough Kids takes a particularly close focus on students identified with Learning Disability, Attention Deficit Disorder, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Oppositional Defiant Disorder and Asperger Syndrome. Another group of students with executive functioning difficulties are emerging in schools. These are the kids who have endured neglect or too much stress and uncertainty in their lives and as a result display classic symptoms of hyperactivity, hyper vigilance and impulsivity. Teaching Tough Kids will be of immense interest to teachers, student teachers, staff in Pupil Referral Units, SENCos and all those involved with Behaviour Support work.

Teaching controversial issues in the classroom is now more urgent and fraught than ever as we face up to rising authoritarianism, racial and economic injustice, and looming environmental disaster. Despite evidence that teaching controversy is critical, educators often avoid it. How then can we prepare and support teachers to undertake this essential but difficult work? Hard Questions: Learning to Teach Controversial Issues, based on a cross-national qualitative study, examines teacher educators’ efforts to prepare preservice teachers for teaching controversial issues that matter for democracy, justice, and human rights. It presents four detailed cases of teacher preparation in three politically divided societies: Northern Ireland, England, and the United States. The book traces graduate students’ learning from university coursework into the classrooms where they work to put what they have learned into practice. It explores their application of pedagogical tools and the factors that facilitated or hindered their efforts to teach controversy. The book’s cross-national perspective is compelling to a broad and diverse audience, raising critical questions about teaching controversial issues and providing educators, researchers, and policymakers tools to help them fulfill this essential democratic mission of education.

Will there be sex in heaven? Are miraculous gifts for today? Does God ever change His mind? Such difficult questions often intrigue us, readily confuse us, and sometimes disturb us. Drawing on nearly 40 years of teaching and ministry experience, pastor-scholar Sam Storms answers 25 challenging questions Christians are often too afraid to ask, addressing thorny issues ranging from the eternal destiny of infants to the roles of demons and angels. The robust, thoughtful answers provided in this book offer a helpful alternative to relying on simplistic explanations, and will encourage you in the search for truth and clarity on such tough topics.

Discussions of gender and sexuality have become part of mainstream conversations and are being reflected in the work of more and more writers of fiction, particularly in literature aimed at young adult audiences. But young readers, regardless of their sexual orientation, don’t always know what books offer well-rounded portrayals of queer characters and situations. Fortunately, finding positive role models in fiction that features LGBTQ+ themes has become less problematic, though not without its challenges. In Representing the Rainbow in Young Adult Literature: LGBTQ+ Content since 1969, Christine Jenkins and Michael Cart provide an overview of the literary landscape. An expanded version of The Heart Has Its Reasons, this volume charts the evolution of YA literature that features characters and themes which resonate not only with LGBTQ+ readers but with their allies as well. In this resource, Jenkins and Cart identify titles that are notable either for their excellence—accurate, thoughtful, and tactful depictions—or deficiencies—books that are wrongheaded, stereotypical, or outdated. Each chapter has been significantly updated, and this edition also includes new chapters on bisexual, transgender, and intersex issues and characters, as well as chapters on comics, graphic novels, and works of nonfiction. This book also features an annotated bibliography and a number of author-title lists of books discussed in the text that will aid teachers, librarians, parents, and teen readers. Encompassing a wider array of sexual identities, Representing the Rainbow in Young Adult Literature is an invaluable resource for young people eager to read about books relevant to them and their lives.