College in the Schools - CI 3901/CI3902: Exploring the Teaching Profession

This timely book presents a data-driven approach to preventing and responding to school violence. As school violence receives increasing attention across the nation, the application of scientific knowledge is critical. For maximum effectiveness, transdisciplinary teams should use school data, logic models, and theories of change to design, implement, and evaluate interventions. Collaboration among key stakeholders is also necessary to address both structural and systemic barriers to success with violence prevention. With concrete methods for promoting safety in primary and secondary educational settings, this book will engage and enable school faculty, counselors, administrators, and other partners to better understand areas of common interest and learn how to work together more effectively.

Schools across the U.S. look very different today than they did a generation ago. Police officers, drug-sniffing dogs, surveillance cameras, and high suspension rates have become commonplace. The Real School Safety Problem uncovers the unintended but far-reaching effects of harsh school discipline climates. Evidence shows that current school security practices may do more harm than good by broadly affecting the entire family, encouraging less civic participation in adulthood, and garnering future financial costs in the form of high rates of arrests, incarceration, and unemployment. This text presents a blueprint for reform that emphasizes problem-solving and accountability while encouraging the need to implement smarter school policies. 

This co-authored book critically reviews existing literature on school resource officer (SRO) programs and presents a thorough evaluation of an SRO program offered by Peel Regional Police in Ontario, Canada. The implementation of a SRO program is a controversial response to school violence and safety issues. While some call for an increased use of police in schools, others are pushing to remove police from schools, or at least to end their involvement in routine discipline. Though many SRO programs exist around the world, little systematic research has been conducted on the topic. The study reported in this book represents the largest and most comprehensive assessment of such programs to date. The research by Duxbury and Bennell indicates that SRO programs can provide real value for students, school staff, policing organizations, and society, but benefits rely on having programs that are well-designed, that the right officers are selected for SRO roles, and that the initiative has support from major stakeholders. Given the current conversations regarding the costs and benefits of having police officers in schools, there is a clear need to determine the value that investment in these types of proactive policing programs creates. The book provides researchers, SROs, police agencies, school boards, school administrators, teachers, parents, and students with information about: the activities that SROs are involved in, how SROs can collaborate with schools to create safe learning environments, and whether (and how) such programs benefit the police, schools, students, and society. Easy-to-digest charts facilitate understanding, and anonymized reflections from SROs, school staff, and students are presented throughout the book to provide context.

This volume contributes to debates about the teaching profession by reviewing international and national reports on its status, as well as on reforms of various education systems. It proposes a global approach to the quality of the teaching profession as a decisive ingredient of education quality, including a conception of its identity and a vision of its future. Moreover, it is suggested that professional self-regulation may be the best way to achieve higher professional and social status for teachers, since it allows educators collectively to assume the culture of the values that comprise the uniqueness and fullness of the teaching profession.

As teachers, we share experiences with one another. It is a way to make sense of our teaching lives and teaching selves. Ways of Being in Teaching is that kind of sharing; it is a scholarly conversation that will appeal to teachers who are tired of the tips and tricks, and want to talk more deeply about how to flourish in this profession. Most of us know ways to strengthen and sustain self, soul, heart, identity, and how these key touchstones also strengthen teaching. This book recognizes that who we are, where we are, and why, is as much a social process as a personal one. Attending to life purpose is a way of attending to teaching. Chapters in this text are insightfully forthright, challenging us to undertake the rigourous work of discovering who we are as human beings and how this impacts who we are with our students.

Clearing the Path for First-Generation College Students comprises a wide range of studies that explore the multidimensional social processes and meanings germane to the experiences of first-generation college students before and during their matriculation into institutions of higher education. The chapters offer timely, empirical examinations of the ways that these students negotiate experiences shaped by structural inequities in higher education institutions and the pathways that lead to them. This volume provides insight into the dilemmas that arise from the transformation of students' class identities in pursuit of upward mobility, as well as their quest for community and a sense of "belonging" on college campuses that have not been historically designed for them. While centering first-generation status, this collection also critically engages the ways in which other dimensions of social identity intersect to inform students' educational experiences in relation to dynamics of race, ethnicity, socioeconomic class, gender, and immigration. Additionally, this book takes a holistic approach by exploring the ways in which first-generation college students are influenced by, and engage with, their families and communities of origin as they undertake their educational careers.

From distinguished educators, this book imagines what our schools could look like if an authentic vision of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) were put in place, and thoughtfully critiques how and why implementation has faltered. The authors outline a curriculum framework that focuses on student-based inquiry and the use of formative assessment to monitor and guide student learning. They provide workable, innovative alternatives to the packaged instructional programs and summative tests that have come to be associated with the English language arts (ELA) standards. Vignettes of diverse schools and districts highlight a range of successful approaches to making the CCSS work.