This book is motivated by our experiences in working with students and their families in urban communities. We are particularly concerned about the urgent imperative to address the endemic educational and societal challenges that pervade the lives of urban students, particularly those who live in poverty, are of minority and immigrant backgrounds, and are otherwise marginalized within the current educational discourses and practices. In spite of the fact that over the last 3 decades policy makers, educators and communities across the globe have called for in depth structural changes, this is rarely evidenced in the discourses, practices, and structures within academic and practitioner spheres. This reluctance, despite articulations to the contrary, can be directly linked to normative theoretical and practical perspectives that are defined by assumptions that constrain urban students within restrictive boundaries. These narrow outsider worldviews based on notions of what ought to be, combined with ignorance of the realties of students' lives focus on deviance and deficits. They blind prospective change agents to the strengths and richness that students bring, and they delimit the transformative potential of social justice praxis within urban environments. The resulting discourse, in the form of deficit beliefs, thoughts, actions, and dialogues shapes urban research, theory, and practice. We contend that in order to counteract the debilitating impacts of these harmful constructions of urban and social justice, it is important to clarify this terminology.

Inclusion in Urban Educational Environments: Addressing Issues of Diversity, Equity and Social Justice (Issues in the Research, Theory, Policy, and Practice of Urban Education)

Politics & Social Sciences

Armstrong, Denise E.

McMahon, Brenda J.

Sociology

Information Age Publishing

<p>This book is written for the growing number of people (teachers, administrators, support staff, parents, and community members) throughout the world who wish to face the challenges of school leadership in ways that feel right, make sense, and contribute to sustaining defensible educational practices. Using and extending the evolving core ideas of the global inviting school movement, it provides a hopeful approach to educational leadership, management, and mentorship that combines philosophical defensibility, administrative savvy, and illustrative stories. A systematic framework for examining the challenges of educational leadership, the Educational LIVES model, is used to organize the book. It is centred on the idea that leadership is fundamentally about people and the caring and ethical relationships they establish with themselves, others, values and knowledge, institutions, and the larger human and other-than-human world. Emphasized throughout the book are the special quality of relationships needed to appreciate individuals in their uniqueness and the types of messages that intentionally call forth their potential to live educational lives. We call this approach the inviting perspective and offer the experiences of educators from around the world who put imaginative acts of hope into practice daily as they lead, manage, and mentor. Leading for Educational Lives: Inviting and Sustaining Imaginative Acts of Hope in a Connected World is divided into three unequal parts. In Part 1, "Educational LIVES Seen From an Inviting Perspective," we offer two orienting chapters that look at the unique nature of education seen as a guiding ideal along with the practical nature of an inviting theory of practice for constructing relationships that call forth deepened human possibilities. The foundations of the inviting approach combined with the Educational LIVES model point to the concrete possibilities for practice in the ten chapters in Part 2, "Imaginatively Leading, Managing, and Mentoring Educational LIVES." Part 3, "Dare to Lead for Education," is made up of a convergent chapter that looks at what is involved in artfully speaking up for educational lives, personally and professionally. This book is meant to serve as a text for anyone interested in educational leadership from an inviting ethical perspective, an approach that is being used by a growing number of educators throughout the world. It can serve as a stand-alone text or in conjunction with a more traditional survey text.</p>

Leading for Educational Lives: Inviting and Sustaining Imaginative Acts of Hope in a Connected World (Critical Issues in the Future of Learning and Teaching, 10)

Education & Teaching

Novak, John M.

Browne, Brendan

Schools & Teaching

Brill Academic Pub

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