This brief text is for teachers who will carry out research and produce persuasive answers to educational questions they encounter in their classrooms. 
 Observant teachers, from their daily experiences in the classroom, compile a wealth of educational problems to solve, topics to investigate, and issues to ponder. From those experiences, they also gain valuable insights into potential solutions to such problems, various methods of investigating topics, and ways to settle issues. Some teachers are not satisfied to ponder such matters in a casual, cursory fashion. Instead, they yearn to investigate issues in a systematic manner that qualifies them to share the outcomes of their study with other people-with fellow teachers, administrators, readers of professional books, educators who subscribe to professional journals, and the general public. These teachers wish to “do research” on significant educational matters and to disseminate the outcomes of their investigations to broader audiences. However, they often feel poorly prepared to tackle the task and that is why this book was written. Its purpose is to prepare teachers to be efficient classroom researchers and to produce persuasive answers to educational questions. The book performs that task by describing typical steps in the conduct of research on schooling topics, with each step accompanied by a host of specific examples of what the step entails in the study a wide variety of questions about life in elementary and secondary schools.

Teachers Doing Research: An Introductory Guidebook

Education & Teaching

Thomas, R. Murray

Schools & Teaching

Pearson

The 1990s opened with dramatic readjustments in the world. Nations that had been governed for decades by single-party socialist regimes were suddenly rejecting their traditional systems of socioeconomic development, and new leaders were searching for modes of planning and management that could bring their people economic prosperity and political freedom. These events are of particular concern to educators who have been concerned over the past four decades with the effectiveness of the educational provisions inserted into national development programs. Such interest is not limited to Eastern bloc communist countries, but extends as well to other nations, socialist and capitalist alike, that have adopted centralized national planning.
This book identifies the place that education has been assigned in the national development programs of a varied selection of nations--large and small, capitalist and socialist, industrialized and agrarian, Eastern and Western, Northern and Southern. The authors consider the problems these nations (Soviet Union, German Democratic Republic, Pakistan, Egypt, People's Republic of China, South Korea, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Tanzania, and Zaire) have encountered in managing educational components, and assess the effectiveness of the plans and of the measures adopted for solving the educational problems.

Education's Role in National Development Plans: Ten Country Cases

Praeger

Many Americans may believe that religion in the schools is a controversial subject only in the United States. But around the world, the subject has gained widespread notoriety, media coverage, and attention from governing bodies, school administrations, and individuals. In France, conflict erupted when a young girl wore a headscarf to her public school; the government there got involved to reassert the rule that no outward display of religion will be tolerated. In India, a panel was appointed to remove Hindu religious beliefs from high-school textbooks. In Pakistan, the government passed a law to make the curriculum of Islamic religious schools more secular in its approach. Here in the United States, debates abound regarding the Pledge of Allegiance, the posting of the Ten Commandments, prayer in school, and other familiar arguments. But why do these controversies exist? What prompts them? Why do particular conflicts arise, and what attempts are made to deal with them? How have solutions fared? How are the controversies in one country similar to or different from those in another?
In Religion in Schools, R. Murray Thomas uses case examples from twelve countries around the world, covering all regions of the world and all the major religions, to examine and answer these questions. He reveals the complexities of the conflicts, and shows what brought them about. For example, in France, the conflicts often arise out of that nation's desire to remain intensely secular. Using case examples and applying a uniform approach to analyzing each country's particular focus on religion and education, he is able to show what these conflicts have in common, how well solutions have worked, and what may lie ahead.

Religion in Schools: Controversies around the World

History

World

God in the Classroom: Religion and America's Public Schools

To help readers gain a better understanding of conflicts over the proper role of religion in American public schools, this book focuses on the seven major types of conflicts that have become particularly confrontational. Thomas does not take sides; rather, he lays out the arguments, their historical and cultural contexts, and the groups that debate them and their goals. Anyone wishing to gain a better understanding of the controversies surrounding religion in American schools will find here not just a review of the issues, but a deeper consideration of the causes, consequences, and future of the debates.
Conflicts over the proper role of religion in schools-and particularly in public schools supported by tax monies-are frequently featured in news reports. For example, in the United States there currently are conflicts over the teaching of evolution, inserting the word God in the pledge of allegiance, conducting school holiday celebrations, posting the biblical Ten Commandments in schools, and praying at school functions. People who are interested in such controversies often-or, perhaps, usually-fail to understand the historical backgrounds to the conflicts and therefore do not recognize the very complex factors that affect why the controversies become so heated. To help readers gain a better understanding of such matters, this book focuses on the seven major types of conflicts that have become particularly confrontational during the first decade of the twenty-first century.
The cases on which the chapters focus concern issues that currently are being hotly debated in America. Controversies are described in relation to their historical origins and the author shows how the history affects current understanding of the issues. Thomas does not take sides in the arguments; rather, he lays out the arguments, their historical and cultural contexts, and the groups that debate them and their goals. Anyone wishing to gain a better understanding of the controversies surrounding religion in American schools will be happy to find here not just a review of the issues, but a deeper consideration of the causes, consequences, and future of the debates and the role of religion in our public schools.

Politics & Social Sciences

Sociology

Violence in America's Schools: Understanding, Prevention, and Responses

The problem of violence in schools has not gone away despite radical reductions in violent crimes throughout the country over the last decade. Students continue to harrass, haze, and harm each other in a variety of ways, disrupting classrooms and whole schools. In the wake of the Columbine massacre, many focused on the worst kind of school violence: deadly assaults with dangerous weapons. But other forms of violence are more persistent, common, and just as destructive in many ways: fighting, sexual abuse, carrying weapons to school, vandalism, and assorted other crimes that happen behind the closed doors of elementary, middle, and high schools across the country. The consequences range from violent victimization and death, to the disruption of learning and fear among student bodies and teaching staffs. Here, Thomas provides a foundation for understanding why the violence occurs, preventing it from happening, and treating both offenders and victims after it happens.
Using scores of case descriptions to illustrate the types of school violence and their treatment in recent years, the author skillfully shows readers how the problem of violence and crime in schools is an insidious issue that cannot go untreated. He offers both tested and proposed methods for dealing with a host of violence issues and a guide to planning treatment of the problem and its associated consequences. He answers the questions: What are prominent types of violence in American schools? What conditions contribute to those types of violence? What methods can be applied in an effort to reduce school violence? Readers will come away from this book with a greater understanding of the scope of violence in America's schools, and the myriad ways of addressing it.

This study analyzes the reasoning process through which individuals determine what consequences are appropriate for those who do wrong. The authors presented six cases of wrongdoing to a large number of teenagers and young adults. This sample was asked what consequences would be appropriate for the wrongdoers and why those proposed consequences would be appropriate. On the basis of the data obtained from the participants, the authors constructed a taxonomy to use in categorizing features of moral reasoning. The authors then applied the taxonomy to compare group and individual modes of moral decision making. The study is significant in its reliance on original data and on its analysis of the thought processes involved in moral decision making.

What Wrongdoers Deserve: The Moral Reasoning Behind Responses to Misconduct (Contributions in Psychology)

Diver-Stamnes, Ann

Philosophy

While conducting research into crimes, the treatment of crimes and the aim of these treatments, Thomas was frustrated by the lack of an available classification system that organized this material. This book was written to end that frustration. By looking at existing and potential misdeeds, sanctions and the stated goals of these sanctions, Thomas discovered a method to organize this information. Classifying Reactions to Wrongdoing provides three comprehensive taxonomies for categorizing (1) crimes, sins, breaches of custom, and other misdeeds, (2) sanctions and treatments which people recommend perpetrators of misdeeds should experience, and (3) the aims of such sanctions and treatments. This unique book would be of interest to psychologists, sociologists, criminologists, philosophers, and others interested in ethics, law, and moral development.

Classifying Reactions to Wrongdoing: Taxonomies of Misdeeds, Sanctions, and Aims of Sanctions (International Contributions in Psychology)

Prevent, Repent, Reform, Revenge is a study of the aims that people intend to achieve by the sanctions and treatments they recommend for wrongdoers. The book is designed to answer two main questions: What kind of analytical scheme can profitably reveal the nature of people's reasoning about the aims of sanctions they propose for perpetrators of crimes and misdeeds? In the aims that people express what changes in overt moral reasoning patterns appear between later childhood and the early adult years? The authors conducted interviews with 136 youths between the ages of 9 and 21 to find out what sanctions and aims they felt were appropriate in three cases of wrongdoing. The resulting information provides an important insight into adolescent moral development.

Prevent, Repent, Reform, Revenge: A Study in Adolescent Moral Development (Contributions in Psychology) (International Contributions in Psychology)

This book is the framework for a new theory of moral development that combines components from a variety of existing theories of human development with the author's original research. The detailed description of the theory is divided into five sections: (1) foundations of development, (2) long-term memory, (3) the influence of environments, (4) working memory, and (5) progressions and stages of development. Each chapter concludes with an exercise demonstrating the application of the new theory, and the final section of the book employs the theory as a lens through which the moral development of four historic figures can be viewed afresh.

An Integrated Theory of Moral Development (Contributions to the Study of Education)

Moral Development Theories―Secular and Religious introduces readers to 13 secular models and 13d religious theories in a wide-ranging comparative study of the roots of moral development. The secular models include attribution theory, cognitive-structural views, social-learning and social-cognition approaches, Freud's psychoanalysis (plus Erikson and Fromm), Marxist beliefs, a composite theory, Hoffman's conception of empathy, Anderson's information-integration view, Gilligan's gender distinction, Sutherland and Cressey's explanation of delinquency, and Lovinger on ego development. Religious theories represent the Judaic-Christian-Islamic line, Hinduism and derivatives (Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism), Confucianism, Shinto, and four minor theories drawn from the belief systems of the Navajo, Zulus, Vodou adherents, and Okinawans.The description of each theory is designed to answer a common set of questions introduced in Chapter 1. The closing section of each chapter evaluates that chapter's theories in terms of a series of assessment standards described in Chapter 2. The book's final chapter inspects all of the theories from the viewpoint of five desires that people often hold in relation to their conceptions of moral development. The desires are: (a) for immanent justice; (b) to understand the causes of the consequences that result from people's behavior in moral situations; (c) to become immortal; (d) to enjoy a happy life, and (e) to understand the moral-development process in order to help others who need moral guidance.

Moral Development Theories -- Secular and Religious: A Comparative Study (Contributions to the Study of Education)

Religion & Spirituality

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