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This book is a result of my childhood questions about myself as I wondered how did I appear to be myself suddenly with hardly any past recollection and I wondered about my understanding of my own experiences in my life and things of that nature. I wanted to look beyond the 'Creator's wish' part, a prevalent mode of resignation of the thought process, to find a logical and scientific explanation by myself through reading. Eventually I developed the wisdom that the answer lies in the understanding of the brain. When I realized that it is my brain that is somehow generating all my experiences for me, it led to a pretty engrossing experience trying to understand it since. Since this is a book about the brain, I thought it was necessary to discuss the fundamental aspect of its structure. However, I only laid a gross picture with broad strokes only after briefly discussing the highlights of the history of evolution of the brain. Then I tried to address some of the big questions like the consciousness and the generation of the mind and self from a neurological point of view. I went ahead and discussed the mechanism of some of the attributes of self as well. Some of the functional aspects are elucidated as how we fall in love or how we navigate directions and so forth. Computation is the basis by which the brain derives its conclusions. The plasticity of the brain enables us to learn new skills. The genetic aspect cannot be overemphasized. I have included some fascinating data that has recently been found out in these regards. Psychiatric illnesses always fascinated me. I have discussed the genetic basis and pathophysiology of a few of them, like Depression, Alzheimer's disease, etc. The whole book is written on the basis of the latest findings by dedicated professionals. Here I am like a collector who has put all this in a concise deliberation to share my own understandings regarding what it takes for each of us to be the way we are.
Transformations in Urban Education: Urban Teachers and Students Working Collaboratively addresses pressing problems in urban education, contextualized in research in New York City and nearby school districts on the Northeast Coast of the United States. The schools and institutions involved in empirical studies range from elementary through college and include public and private schools, alternative schools for dropouts, and museums. Difference is regarded as a resource for learning and equity issues are examined in terms of race, ethnicity, language proficiency, designation as special education, and gender. The contexts for research on teaching and learning involve science, mathematics, uses of technology, literacy, and writing comic books. A dual focus addresses research on teaching and learning, and learning to teach in urban schools. Collaborative activities addressed explicitly are teachers and students enacting roles of researchers in their own classrooms, cogenerative dialogues as activities to allow teachers and students to learn about one another’s cultures and express their perspectives on their experienced realities and negotiate shared recommendations for changes to enacted curricula. Coteaching is also examined as a means of learning to teach, teaching and learning, and undertaking research. The scholarship presented in the constituent chapters is diverse, reflecting multi-logicality within sociocultural frameworks that include cultural sociology, cultural historical activity theory, prosody, sense of place, and hermeneutic phenomenology. Methodologies employed in the research include narratology, interpretive, reflexive, and authentic inquiry, and multi-level inquiries of video resources combined with interpretive analyses of social artifacts selected from learning environments. This edited volume provides insights into research of places in which social life is enacted as if there were no research being undertaken. The research was intended to improve practice. Teachers and learners, as research participants, were primarily concerned with teaching and learning and, as a consequence, as we learned from research participants were made aware of what we learned—the purpose being to improve learning environments. Accordingly, research designs are contingent on what happens and emergent in that what we learned changed what happened and expanded possibilities to research and learn about transformation through heightening participants’ awareness about possibilities for change and developing interventions to improve learning.
Christopher Emdin is an assistant professor of science education and director of secondary school initiatives at the Urban Science Education Center at Teachers College, Columbia University. He holds a Ph.D. in urban education with a concentration in mathematics, science and technology; a master's degree in natural sciences; and a bachelor's degree in physical anthropology, biology, and chemistry. His book, Urban Science Education for the Hip-Hop Generation is rooted in his experiences as student, teacher, administrator, and researcher in urban schools and the deep relationship between hip-hop culture and science that he discovered at every stage of his academic and professional journey. The book utilizes autobiography, outcomes of research studies, theoretical explorations, and accounts of students' experiences in schools to shed light on the causes for the lack of educational achievement of urban youth from the hip-hop generation.
A New York Times Best Seller "Essential reading for all adults who work with black and brown young people...Filled with exceptional intellectual sophistication and necessary wisdom for the future of education."—Imani Perry, National Book Award Winner author of South To America An award-winning educator offers a much-needed antidote to traditional top-down pedagogy and promises to radically reframe the landscape of urban education for the better Drawing on his own experience of feeling undervalued and invisible in classrooms as a young man of color, Dr. Christopher Emdin has merged his experiences with more than a decade of teaching and researching in urban America. He takes to task the perception of urban youth of color as unteachable, and he challenges educators to embrace and respect each student’s culture and to reimagine the classroom as a site where roles are reversed and students become the experts in their own learning. Putting forth his theory of Reality Pedagogy, Emdin provides practical tools to unleash the brilliance and eagerness of youth and educators alike—both of whom have been typecast and stymied by outdated modes of thinking about urban education. With this fresh and engaging new pedagogical vision, Emdin demonstrates the importance of creating a family structure and building communities within the classroom, using culturally relevant strategies like hip-hop music and call-and-response, and connecting the experiences of urban youth to indigenous populations globally. Merging real stories with theory, research, and practice, Emdin demonstrates how by implementing the “Seven Cs” of reality pedagogy in their own classrooms, urban youth of color benefit from truly transformative education.
Argues that teachers and schools should create hybrid third spaces--neither classroom nor home--in which underserved students can merge their personal worlds with those of math and science.
Since its beginnings, science education has been under the influence of psychological theories of knowing and learning, while in more recent years, social constructivist and sociological frameworks have also begun to emerge. With little work being done on showing how the perspectives of these separate approaches might be integrated, this work aims to plug the gap. The book helps lay the groundwork for reuniting sociological and psychological perspectives on the knowing, learning, and teaching of science. Featuring a range of integrative efforts beginning with simple conversation, the chapters here include not only articles but also commentaries that engage with other papers, as well as a useful running narrative that, from the introduction to the epilogue, contextualizes the book and its sections. Specific attention is given to cultural-historical activity theory, which already offers an integration of psychological and cultural-historical (sociological) perspectives on collectively motivated human activities. A number of chapters, as well as the contextualizing narrative, explicitly use this theory as a framework for rethinking science education to achieve the reunification that is the goal of this work. All the contributors to this volume have produced texts that contribute to the effort of overcoming the extant divide between sociological and psychological approaches to science education research and practice. From very different positions—gender, culture, race—they provide valuable insights to reuniting approaches in both theory and method in the field. As an ensemble, the contributions constitute a rich menu of ideas from which new forms of science education can emerge.
Science Teaching/Science Learning, based on a model professional development program, gives powerful proof that urban teachers can ignite curiosity and promote deep understanding in children when provided with the necessary intellectual infrastructure, including a complex balance of increased science knowledge, a safe environment for professional experimentation, and a long-term interaction with colleagues. The ensuing invigoration and renewed dedication of program participants belies the inevitability of the projected national science teacher shortage. Harcombe breaks new ground demonstrating that when professional teacher development is based on constructivist learning theory and framed in the knowledge domain of the sciences, it empowers teachers to dramatically change what they know, how they teach, and what their students learn.
The mission of the Knowles Science Teaching Foundation (KSTF), to increase the quantity of high quality high school science and mathematics teachers in United States High Schools, calls for a deeper understanding of what it takes to prepare and support successful teachers. On September 21, 2006, KSTF convened a group of 41 individuals with a broad range of perspectives and expertise to address three essential questions with regard to secondary science teacher preparation: What do we know, what do we need to find out, and what research will help us fill in the gaps? Participants were intentionally selected from a diverse cross section of the education community and included teachers, educational researchers, teacher educators, policy specialists and scientists. The 41 participants formed 12 working groups and spent two and a half days addressing the following aspects of teacher preparation: · recruitment and retention; · models of secondary science teacher preparation; · pedagogic preparation including field-based experiences, methods courses, and preparing teachers for diverse populations; · content preparation in biology, chemistry, Earth science, and physics as well as the nature of science in general; · induction; · mentoring. Each working group was tasked with synthesizing their discussions and conclusions for the entire group of conference participants and in a written document. This volume represents the final outcome of that conference; 12 chapters that reflect the work of 40 dedicated scholars and practitioners who share a deep commitment to the pursuit of excellence in the preparation of secondary science teachers.
A revolutionary new educational model that encourages educators to provide spaces for students to display their academic brilliance without sacrificing their identities Building on the ideas introduced in his New York Times best-selling book, For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood, Christopher Emdin introduces an alternative educational model that will help students (and teachers) celebrate ratchet identity in the classroom. Ratchetdemic advocates for a new kind of student identity—one that bridges the seemingly disparate worlds of the ivory tower and the urban classroom. Because modern schooling often centers whiteness, Emdin argues, it dismisses ratchet identity (the embodying of “negative” characteristics associated with lowbrow culture, often thought to be possessed by people of a particular ethnic, racial, or socioeconomic status) as anti-intellectual and punishes young people for straying from these alleged “academic norms,” leaving young people in classrooms frustrated and uninspired. These deviations, Emdin explains, include so-called “disruptive behavior” and a celebration of hip-hop music and culture. Emdin argues that being “ratchetdemic,” or both ratchet and academic (like having rap battles about science, for example), can empower students to embrace themselves, their backgrounds, and their education as parts of a whole, not disparate identities. This means celebrating protest, disrupting the status quo, and reclaiming the genius of youth in the classroom.
This book explores what happens as beginning urban teachers transition through their first few years in the classroom. It captures one teacher's journey through the first three years of teaching science and mathematics in a large urban district in the US. Combining narrative with critical analysis, the authors focus on Ian's agency as a beginning teacher and explore his success in working with diverse students.