Problematising ‘who’ is recognised in widening participation and equalities policy, Samuel Dent presents an Institutional Ethnographic study, involving 16 students at a research-intensive UK University, and collected over two years, to gain further insight into the institutional experiences of students who care for children while studying.

Improve student outcomes with a new approach to relationships and networks Relationships matter. Who You Know explores this simple idea to give teachers and school administrators a fresh perspective on how to break the pattern of inequality in American classrooms. It reveals how schools can invest in the power of relationships to increase social mobility for their students. Discussions about inequality often focus on achievement gaps. But opportunity is about more than just test scores. Opportunity gaps are a function of not just what students know, but who they know. This book explores the central role that relationships play in young people’s lives, and provides guidance for a path forward. Schools can: Integrate student support models that increase access to caring adults in students’ lives Invest in learning models that strengthen teacher-student relationships Deploy emerging technologies that expand students’ networks to experts and mentors from around world Exploring the latest tools, data, and real-world examples, this book provides evidence-based guidance for educators looking to level the playing field and expert analysis on how policymakers and entrepreneurs can help. Networks need no longer be limited by geography or circumstance. By making room for relationships, K-12 schools can transform themselves into hubs of next-generation learning and connecting. Who You Know explains how.

Children are already learning at birth, and they develop and learn at a rapid pace in their early years. This provides a critical foundation for lifelong progress, and the adults who provide for the care and the education of young children bear a great responsibility for their health, development, and learning. Despite the fact that they share the same objective - to nurture young children and secure their future success - the various practitioners who contribute to the care and the education of children from birth through age 8 are not acknowledged as a workforce unified by the common knowledge and competencies needed to do their jobs well. Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8 explores the science of child development, particularly looking at implications for the professionals who work with children. This report examines the current capacities and practices of the workforce, the settings in which they work, the policies and infrastructure that set qualifications and provide professional learning, and the government agencies and other funders who support and oversee these systems. This book then makes recommendations to improve the quality of professional practice and the practice environment for care and education professionals. These detailed recommendations create a blueprint for action that builds on a unifying foundation of child development and early learning, shared knowledge and competencies for care and education professionals, and principles for effective professional learning. Young children thrive and learn best when they have secure, positive relationships with adults who are knowledgeable about how to support their development and learning and are responsive to their individual progress. Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8 offers guidance on system changes to improve the quality of professional practice, specific actions to improve professional learning systems and workforce development, and research to continue to build the knowledge base in ways that will directly advance and inform future actions. The recommendations of this book provide an opportunity to improve the quality of the care and the education that children receive, and ultimately improve outcomes for children.

Selected as a "Favorite Book for Parents in 2019" by Greater Good. Young children can surprise us with tough questions. Tominey’s essential guide teaches us how to answer them and foster compassion along the way. If you had to choose one word to describe the world you want children to grow up in, what would it be? Safe? Understanding? Resilient? Compassionate? As parents and caregivers of young children, we know what we want for our children, but not always how to get there. Many children today are stressed by academic demands, anxious about relationships at school, confused by messages they hear in the media, and overwhelmed by challenges at home. Young children look to the adults in their lives for everything. Sometimes we’re prepared... sometimes we’re not. In this book, Shauna Tominey guides parents and caregivers through how to have conversations with young children about a range of topics-from what makes us who we are (e.g., race, gender) to tackling challenges (e.g., peer pressure, divorce, stress) to showing compassion (e.g., making friends, recognizing privilege, being a helper). Talking through these topics in an age-appropriate manner—rather than telling children they are too young to understand—helps children recognize how they feel and how they fit in with the world around them. This book provides sample conversations, discussion prompts, storybook recommendations, and family activities. Dr. Tominey's research-based strategies and practical advice creates dialogues that teach self-esteem, resilience, and empathy: the building blocks for a more compassionate world.

Revised ed. of: Comprehension & collaboration.

Decades of research have demonstrated that the parent-child dyad and the environment of the familyâ€"which includes all primary caregiversâ€"are at the foundation of children's well- being and healthy development. From birth, children are learning and rely on parents and the other caregivers in their lives to protect and care for them. The impact of parents may never be greater than during the earliest years of life, when a child's brain is rapidly developing and when nearly all of her or his experiences are created and shaped by parents and the family environment. Parents help children build and refine their knowledge and skills, charting a trajectory for their health and well-being during childhood and beyond. The experience of parenting also impacts parents themselves. For instance, parenting can enrich and give focus to parents' lives; generate stress or calm; and create any number of emotions, including feelings of happiness, sadness, fulfillment, and anger. Parenting of young children today takes place in the context of significant ongoing developments. These include: a rapidly growing body of science on early childhood, increases in funding for programs and services for families, changing demographics of the U.S. population, and greater diversity of family structure. Additionally, parenting is increasingly being shaped by technology and increased access to information about parenting. Parenting Matters identifies parenting knowledge, attitudes, and practices associated with positive developmental outcomes in children ages 0-8; universal/preventive and targeted strategies used in a variety of settings that have been effective with parents of young children and that support the identified knowledge, attitudes, and practices; and barriers to and facilitators for parents' use of practices that lead to healthy child outcomes as well as their participation in effective programs and services. This report makes recommendations directed at an array of stakeholders, for promoting the wide-scale adoption of effective programs and services for parents and on areas that warrant further research to inform policy and practice. It is meant to serve as a roadmap for the future of parenting policy, research, and practice in the United States.

First released in the Spring of 1999, How People Learn has been expanded to show how the theories and insights from the original book can translate into actions and practice, now making a real connection between classroom activities and learning behavior. This edition includes far-reaching suggestions for research that could increase the impact that classroom teaching has on actual learning. Like the original edition, this book offers exciting new research about the mind and the brain that provides answers to a number of compelling questions. When do infants begin to learn? How do experts learn and how is this different from non-experts? What can teachers and schools do-with curricula, classroom settings, and teaching methodsâ€"to help children learn most effectively? New evidence from many branches of science has significantly added to our understanding of what it means to know, from the neural processes that occur during learning to the influence of culture on what people see and absorb. How People Learn examines these findings and their implications for what we teach, how we teach it, and how we assess what our children learn. The book uses exemplary teaching to illustrate how approaches based on what we now know result in in-depth learning. This new knowledge calls into question concepts and practices firmly entrenched in our current education system. Topics include: How learning actually changes the physical structure of the brain. How existing knowledge affects what people notice and how they learn. What the thought processes of experts tell us about how to teach. The amazing learning potential of infants. The relationship of classroom learning and everyday settings of community and workplace. Learning needs and opportunities for teachers. A realistic look at the role of technology in education.

Confident Parents, Confident Kids lays out an approach for helping parents—and the kids they love—hone their emotional intelligence so that they can make wise choices, connect and communicate well with others (even when patience is thin), and become socially conscious and confident human beings. How do we raise a happy, confident kid? And how can we be confident that our parenting is preparing our child for success? Our confidence develops from understanding and having a mastery over our emotions (aka emotional intelligence)—and helping our children do the same. Like learning to play a musical instrument, we can fine-tune our ability to skillfully react to those crazy, wonderful, big feelings that naturally arise from our child’s constant growth and changes, moving from chaos to harmony. We want our children to trust that they can conquer any challenge with hard work and persistence; that they can love boundlessly; that they will find their unique sense of purpose; and they will act wisely in a complex world. This book shows you how. With author and educator Jennifer Miller as your supportive guide, you'll learn: the lies we’ve been told about emotions, how they shape our choices, and how we can reshape our parenting decisions in better alignment with our deepest values. how to identify the temperaments your child was born with so you can support those tendencies rather than fight them. how to align your biggest hopes and dreams for your kids with specific skills that can be practiced, along with new research to support those powerful connections. about each age and stage your child goes through and the range of learning opportunities available. how to identify and manage those big emotions (that only the parenting process can bring out in us!) and how to model emotional intelligence for your children. how to deal with the emotions and influences of your choir—the many outside individuals and communities who directly impact your child’s life, including school, the digital world, extended family, neighbors, and friends. Raising confident, centered, happy kids—while feeling the same way about yourself—is possible with Confident Parents, Confident Kids.

They're hallmarks of childhood. The endless "why" questions. The desire to touch and taste everything. The curiosity and the observations. It can't be denied-children have an inherent desire to know. Teachers and parents can either encourage this natural inquisitiveness or squelch it. There is joy in the classroom when children learn-not to take a test, not to get a grade, not to compete with each other, and not to please their parents or their teachers-but because they want to know about the world around them! Both Christian educators and parents will find proven help in creating a positive learning atmosphere through methods pioneered by Charlotte Mason that show how to develop a child's natural love of learning. The professional educators, administrators, and Mason supporters contributing to this volume give useful applications that work in a variety of educational settings, from Christian schools to homeschools. A practical follow-up to Crossway's For the Children's Sake, this book follows a tradition of giving serious thought to what education is, so that children will be learning for life and for everlasting life.

The concept of "funds of knowledge" is based on a simple premise: people are competent and have knowledge, and their life experiences have given them that knowledge. The claim in this book is that first-hand research experiences with families allow one to document this competence and knowledge, and that such engagement provides many possibilities for positive pedagogical actions. Drawing from both Vygotskian and neo-sociocultural perspectives in designing a methodology that views the everyday practices of language and action as constructing knowledge, the funds of knowledge approach facilitates a systematic and powerful way to represent communities in terms of the resources they possess and how to harness them for classroom teaching. This book accomplishes three objectives: It gives readers the basic methodology and techniques followed in the contributors' funds of knowledge research; it extends the boundaries of what these researchers have done; and it explores the applications to classroom practice that can result from teachers knowing the communities in which they work. In a time when national educational discourses focus on system reform and wholesale replicability across school sites, this book offers a counter-perspective stating that instruction must be linked to students' lives, and that details of effective pedagogy should be linked to local histories and community contexts. This approach should not be confused with parent participation programs, although that is often a fortuitous consequence of the work described. It is also not an attempt to teach parents "how to do school" although that could certainly be an outcome if the parents so desired. Instead, the funds of knowledge approach attempts to accomplish something that may be even more challenging: to alter the perceptions of working-class or poor communities by viewing their households primarily in terms of their strengths and resources, their defining pedagogical characteristics. Funds of Knowledge: Theorizing Practices in Households, Communities, and Classrooms is a critically important volume for all teachers and teachers-to-be, and for researchers and graduate students of language, culture, and education.