When children of color enter their classrooms each year, many often encounter low expectations, disconnection, and other barriers to their success. In The Innocent Classroom, Alexs Pate traces the roots of these disparities to pervasive negative stereotypes, which children are made aware of before they even walk through the school door. The cumulative weight of these stereotypes eventually takes shape as guilt, which inhibits students' engagement, learning, and relationships and hurts their prospects for the future. If guilt is the primary barrier for children of color in the classroom, then the solution, according to Pate, is to create an Innocent Classroom that neutralizes students' guilt and restores their innocence. To do so, readers will embark on a relationship "construction project" in which they will deepen their understanding of how children of color are burdened with guilt; discover students' "good," or the motivation behind their behaviors, and develop strategic responses to that good; and nurture, protect, and advocate for students' innocence. Ultimately, students will reclaim their innocence and begin to make choices that will lead to their success. Teachers will renew their commitment to their students. And the current ineffective system can give way to one that reflects a more enlightened understanding of who our children are—and what they are capable of.

There is growing pressure on teachers and other educators to understand and adopt the best ways to work with the various races, cultures, and languages that diverse learners represent in the ever-increasing culturally-diverse learning environments. Establishing sound cross-cultural pedagogy is also critical given that racial, cultural, and linguistic integration has the potential to increase academic success for all learners. To that end, there is also a need for educators to prepare graduates who will better meet the needs of culturally diverse learners as well as support their students to become successful global citizens. The Handbook of Research on Social Justice and Equity in Education highlights cross-cultural perspectives, challenges, and opportunities pertaining to promoting cultural competence, equity, and social justice in education. It also explores multiple concepts of building a bridge from a monocultural pedagogical framework to cross-cultural knowledge. Covering topics such as diversity education and global citizenship, this major reference work is ideal for academicians, researchers, practitioners, policymakers, instructors, and students.

Winner, Outstanding Book Award, Association for Theatre in Higher Education Winner, Grace Abbott Best Book Award, Society for the History of Children and Youth Winner, Book Award, Children's Literature Association Winner, Lois P. Rudnick Book Prize, New England American Studies Association Winner, IRSCL Award, International Research Society for Children's Literature Runner-Up, John Hope Franklin Publication Prize, American Studies Association Honorable Mention, Book Award, Society for the Study of American Women Writers Part of the American Literatures Initiative Series In Racial Innocence, Robin Bernstein argues that the concept of "childhood innocence" has been central to U.S. racial formation since the mid-nineteenth century. Children--white ones imbued with innocence, black ones excluded from it, and others of color erased by it--figured pivotally in sharply divergent racial agendas from slavery and abolition to antiblack violence and the early civil rights movement. Bernstein takes up a rich archive including books, toys, theatrical props, and domestic knickknacks which she analyzes as "scriptive things" that invite or prompt historically-located practices while allowing for resistance and social improvisation. Integrating performance studies with literary and visual analysis, Bernstein offers singular readings of theatrical productions from blackface minstrelsy to Uncle Tom's Cabin to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz literary works by Joel Chandler Harris, Harriet Wilson, and Frances Hodgson Burnett; material culture including Topsy pincushions, Uncle Tom and Little Eva handkerchiefs, and Raggedy Ann dolls; and visual texts ranging from fine portraiture to advertisements for lard substitute. Throughout, Bernstein shows how "innocence" gradually became the exclusive province of white children--until the Civil Rights Movement succeeded not only in legally desegregating public spaces, but in culturally desegregating the concept of childhood itself. Check out the author's blog for the book here.

In this groundbreaking book, Sheridan Blau introduces the literature workshop as the most effective approach to solving many of the classic instructional problems that perplex beginning and veteran teachers of literature. Through lively re-creations of actual workshops that he regularly conducts for students and teachers, Blau invites his readers to become active participants in workshops on such topics as: helping students read more difficult texts than they think they can read where interpretations come from the problem of background knowledge in teaching classic texts how to deal with competing and contradictory interpretations what's worth saying about a literary text balancing respect for readers with respect for texts and intellectual authority ensuring that literary discussions are lively and productive how to develop valuable and engaging writing assignments. Each workshop includes reflections on what transpired and a discussion of the workshop's rationale and outcomes in the larger context of an original and practice-based theory of literary competence and instruction.

Innocence, Knowledge and the Construction of Childhood provides a critical examination of the way we regulate children’s access to certain knowledge and explores how this regulation contributes to the construction of childhood, to children’s vulnerability and to the constitution of the ‘good’ future citizen in developed countries. Through this controversial analysis, Kerry H. Robinson critically engages with the relationships between childhood, sexuality, innocence, moral panic, censorship and notions of citizenship. This book highlights how the strict regulation of children’s knowledge, often in the name of protection or in the child’s best interest, can ironically, increase children’s prejudice around difference, increase their vulnerability to exploitation and abuse, and undermine their abilities to become competent adolescents and adults. Within her work Robinson draws upon empirical research to: provide an overview of the regulation and governance of children’s access to ‘difficult knowledge’, particularly knowledge of sexuality explore and develop Foucault’s work on the relationship between childhood and sexuality identify the impact of these discourses on adults’ understanding of childhood, and the tension that exists between their own perceptions of sexual knowledge, and the perceptions of children reconceptualise children’s education around sexuality. Innocence, Knowledge and the Construction of Childhood is essential reading for both undergraduate and postgraduate students undertaking courses in education, particularly with a focus on early childhood or primary teaching, as well as in other disciplines such as sociology, gender and sexuality studies, and cultural studies.

How are children—and their parents—affected by the world's most influential corporation? Henry A. Giroux explores the surprisingly diverse ways in which Disney, while hiding behind a cloak of innocence and entertainment, strives to dominate global media and shape the desires, needs, and futures of today's children.

Controversies in Innocence Cases in America brings together leading experts on the investigation, litigation, and scholarly analysis of innocence cases in America, from legal, political and ethical perspectives. The contributors, many of whom work on these cases daily, investigate contemporary issues presented by innocence cases and the exoneration movement as a whole. These issues include the challenges faced by the movement, causes of wrongful convictions, problems associated with investigating, proving, and defining 'innocence', and theories of reform. Each issue is placed within a multi-disciplinary perspective to provide cogent observations and recommendations for the effective handling of these cases, and for what changes should be adopted in order to improve the American criminal justice system when it is faced with its most harrowing sight: an innocent defendant.

Innocence Lost sweeps the reader up into the adventures of a boy who, from an unknown entity, manages to become his junior high's supreme leader, followed by a small transitional period of limited conflicts with the regime's Secret Service and culminates with the struggles of freedom out into the streets of Bucharest Romania in late December 1989. The book describes in detail every single thing that the author has experienced during the last six years of socialism of one of the most brutal dictatorships in Eastern Europe. Every aspect of schooling, education, military training, battlegrounds, and personal private life of the author has been described in order to let the readers know what could happen or could have happened if they were to live in socialism. The book also describes Romania's history, economics, cultural, and social life along with some of the author's favorite vacation spots. Robert V. Angel-Little gets elected to lead the masses of pioneers (students) and works tirelessly to consolidate his position not only as a feared leader, but also as a trustworthy person within his community. After he resigns his duties as junior high leader, he enrolls into the country's National Guard program and takes his admission tests at the high school of his choice. At both institutions, he comes into an open conflict with the elite forces of the Secret Service, who plays its part similarly to Nazi Germany's state police, the Gestapo. As both good and unfortunate events take their courses, the author and his friends manage to survive both institutions at great costs: the disappearances of some friends and also expulsions from both institutions. The latter, along with all the other mishaps that took place in the past, has been the trigger point of revenge of both the author and his friends which culminates with their actions during the late December 1989 Romanian Revolution. Innocence Lost is a boy's testament to the world and is dedicated to all those who have lived and died fighting for freedoms from the clutches of socialist and communist oppression.

How did the wife of a prominent surgeon find herself at the death chamber battling the American justice system with the Pope and Mother Teresa in her corner? Lori St John's firebrand, fearless personality is behind this true story of a woman's unwavering determination to expose the truth in a dangerous game of judicial power. In a volunteer position reviewing cases of wrongful conviction, Lori's world is turned upside down when she is assigned the death row case of Joseph O'Dell. Joe is scheduled to die for the brutal rape and murder of a Virginia Beach secretary. But Lori's investigation uncovers lies, the intimidation of witnesses and a trial by am- bush in a system so corrupt she begins to fear for her own life. Her story of turmoil and dangerous choices brings her face-to- face with the jailhouse snitch and Joe's alibi witness. She's determined to find the real killer. Undeterred by the government, Lori brings the world to stand witness to the in- justice she's unearthed, and drives her mission to become a cause c