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  Intercountry Adoption: Policies, Practices, and Outcomes

  Judith L. Gibbons and Karen Smith Rotabi

  Intercountry adoption represents a significant component of international migration; in recent years, up to 45,000 children have crossed borders annually as part of the intercountry adoption boom. Proponents have touted intercountry adoption as a natural intervention for promoting child welfare. However, in cases of fraud and economic incentives, intercountry adoption has been denounced as child trafficking. The debate on intercountry adoption has been framed in terms of three perspectives: proponents who advocate intercountry adoption, abolitionists who argue for its elimination, and pragmatists who look for ways to improve both the conditions in sending countries and the procedures for intercountry transfer of children. Social workers play critical roles in intercountry adoption; they are often involved in family support services or child relinquishment in sending countries, and in evaluating potential adoptive homes, processing applications, and providing support for adoptive families in receiving countries; social workers are involved as brokers and policy makers with regard to the processes, procedures, and regulations that govern intercountry adoption. Their voice is essential in shaping practical and ethical policies of the future. Containing 25 chapters covering the following five areas: policy and regulations; sending country perspectives; outcomes for intercountry adoptees; debate between a proponent and an abolitionist; and pragmatists' guides for improving intercountry adoption practices, this book will be essential reading for social work practitioners and academics involved with intercountry adoption.

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  School Education, Pluralism and Marginality: Comparative Perspectives

  Christine Sleeter, Shashi Bhushan Upadhyay, Arvind K. Mishra, and Sanjay Kumar

  Education is an enabling factor , which facilitates not only economic betterment but also human freedom. However, for the marginalised Dalits and tribals in India, the Mapuche in Chile, the M ori in Aotearoa New Zealand, as well as women in most parts of the world basic education remains a challenge not only due to lack of access, but also because the pedagogy of mainstream education alienates the marginalised. The editors and contributors of School Education, Pluralism and Marginality argue that school education must be conceptualised keeping in mind the material, social, and life experiences of marginalised groups. They strongly argue that pluralism and social inclusion should be the core principles of the pedagogic conceptual framework, practices and processes of school education across the world. Divided into four sections, this volume brings together international perspectives on education from the USA, UK, Europe, South Africa, New Zealand and Sri Lanka, among others, with a focus on India. It probes into the realities of the formal schooling system and the hegemonies that exclude children of the marginalised communities. It also explores the relationships between school education, labour processes, and differential opportunities and their outcomes. Importantly, the contributions in this volume suggest measures for developing inclusive teaching and learning methods and practices, and present models for culturally responsive and inclusive schooling. This topical volume will be useful for students and scholars of education, culture studies, gender studies and Dalit studies. It will also be of interest to policy-makers and NGOs working in the area of education.

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  Creating Solidarity Across Diverse Communities: International Perspectives in Education

  Christine E. Sleeter and Encarnacion Soriano

  In this unique and timely volume, experts from around the globe come together to examine what solidarity in multicultural societies means and how it might be built. With a variety of analytical perspectives and findings, the authors present original research conducted in the United States, New Zealand, Spain, France, Chile, Mexico, and India. Educators will recognize similarities between the issues raised by the authors with those they face in their own places of work, helping them to better understand conflicts about diversity and take steps toward building solidarity in their own schools and communities. Demonstrating the commonality of purpose across the globe to connect schools and teachers with the communities they serve, this book offers avenues for bringing diverse understandings together to bridge antagonism and fear.

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  Rebel Dance, Renegade Stance: Timba Music and Black Identity in Cuba

  Umi Vaughan

  Rebel Dance, Renegade Stance shows how community music-makers and dancers take in all that is around them socially and globally, and publicly and bodily unfold their memories, sentiments, and raw responses within open spaces designated or commandeered for local popular dance. As an African American anthropologist, musician, dancer, and photographer who lived in Cuba, Vaughan reveals a unique perspective on contemporary Cuban society during the 1990s, the peak decade of timba, and beyond, as the Cuban leadership transferred from Fidel Castro to his brother. Simultaneously, the book reveals popular dance music in the context of a young and astutely educated Cuban generation of fierce and creative performers.

  By looking at the experiences of black Cubans and exploring the notion of “Afro Cuba,” Rebel Dance, Renegade Stance explains timba's evolution and achieved significance in the larger context of Cuban culture. Vaughan discusses a maroon aesthetic extended beyond the colonial era to the context of contemporary society; describes the dance spaces of Cuba; and examines the performance of identity and desire through the character of the “especulador.”

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  Carlos Aldama's Life in Batá: Cuba, Diaspora, and the Drum

  Umi Vaughan and Carlos Aldama

  Batá identifies both the two-headed, hourglass-shaped drum of the Yoruba people and the culture and style of drumming, singing, and dancing associated with it. This book recounts the life story of Carlos Aldama, one of the masters of the batá drum, and through that story traces the history of batá culture as it traveled from Africa to Cuba and then to the United States. For the enslaved Yoruba, batá rhythms helped sustain the religious and cultural practices of a people that had been torn from its roots. Aldama, as guardian of Afro-Cuban music and as a Santería priest, maintains the link with this tradition forged through his mentor Jesus Pérez (Oba Ilu), who was himself the connection to the preserved oral heritage of the older generation. By sharing his stories, Aldama and his student Umi Vaughan bring to light the techniques and principles of batá in all its aspects and document the tensions of maintaining a tradition between generations and worlds, old and new. The book includes rare photographs and access to downloadable audio tracks.

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  Introduction to Quantitative Statistical Analyses

  William P. Wallace and Jill Yamashita

  Introduction to Quantitative Statistical Analyses is designed for beginning statistics courses that focus on the statistical procedures commonly used in experimental and correlational research. Following an approach taken by Keppel and his associates, the text seeks to familiarize students with the statistical tests most often encountered in the literature. Doing calculations by hand is important for understanding statistical operations, while using computer software (e.g., SPSS) is important for future statistical work. This text emphasizes both approaches, helping students develop a deeper understanding of the application of statistical analyses.

  The book also explores some limitations of the null-hypothesis approach, which dominates traditional statistical analyses of psychology experiments. This is done by introducing procedures for estimating effect size and power, as well as introducing confidence intervals as a more informative test of the difference between two means. Analytical comparisons are detailed throughout the book to emphasize the importance of gaining as much information as possible from one’s data. Introduction to Quantitative Statistical Analyses delivers a representative and readable account of statistical procedures commonly described in journal articles. This is an ideal text for students preparing for advanced psychology classes and other social science courses that use readings with complex statistical analysis.

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  Doing Multicultural Education for Achievement and Equity

  Carl A. Grant and Christine E. Sleeter

  Doing Multicultural Education for Achievement and Equity, a hands-on, reader-friendly multicultural education textbook, actively engages education students in critical reflection and self-examination as they prepare to teach in increasingly diverse classrooms. In this engaging text, Carl A. Grant and Christine E. Sleeter, two of the most eminent scholars of multicultural teacher education, help pre-service teachers develop the tools they will need to learn about their students and their students’ communities and contexts, about themselves, and about the social relations in which schools are embedded. Doing Multicultural Education for Achievement and Equity challenges readers to take a truly active and ongoing role in promoting equity within education and helps to guide them in becoming highly qualified and fantastic teachers.

  Features and updates to this much-anticipated second edition include:

  • Reflection boxes that encourage students to actively engage with the text and concepts, along with downloadable templates available on Routledge.com
  • "Putting It into Practice" activities that offer concrete suggestions for really "doing" multicultural work in the classroom
  • Fictional vignettes that illustrate the real issues teacher education students face and the ways their own cultural attitudes can impact their response
  • New coverage of issues pertaining to student achievement, federal and state policy, and socioeconomic connections between the current economy and educational funding
  • A more comprehensive discussion about the different social movements that have affected education in the past and present

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  Corporate Governance Failures: The Role of Institutional Investors in the Global Financial Crisis

  James P. Hawley, Shyam J. Kamath, and Andrew T. Williams

  Corporate governance, the internal policies and leadership that guide the actions of corporations, played a major part in the recent global financial crisis. While much blame has been targeted at compensation arrangements that rewarded extreme risk-taking but did not punish failure, the performance of large, supposedly sophisticated institutional investors in this crisis has gone for the most part unexamined. Shareholding organizations, such as pension funds and mutual funds, hold considerable sway over the financial industry from Wall Street to the City of London. Corporate Governance Failures: The Role of Institutional Investors in the Global Financial Crisis exposes the misdeeds and lapses of these institutional investors leading up to the recent economic meltdown.

  In this collection of original essays, edited by pioneers in the field of fiduciary capitalism, top legal and financial practitioners and researchers discuss detrimental actions and inaction of institutional investors. Corporate Governance Failures reveals how these organizations exposed themselves and their clientele to extremely complex financial instruments, such as credit default swaps, through investments in hedge and private equity funds as well as more traditional equity investments in large financial institutions. The book's contributors critique fund executives for tolerating the "pursuit of alpha" culture that led managers to pursue risky financial strategies in hopes of outperforming the market. The volume also points out how and why institutional investors failed to effectively monitor such volatile investments, ignoring relatively well-established corporate governance principles and best practices.

  Along with detailed investigations of institutional investor missteps, Corporate Governance Failures offers nuanced and realistic proposals to mitigate future financial pitfalls. This volume provides fresh perspectives on ways institutional investors can best act as gatekeepers and promote responsible investment.

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  Research in Business and Marketing (with SPSS and Excel Tutorials)

  Murray Millson

  Research in Business and Marketing sets out to provide readers with an overview of the entire research process in an abbreviated and concise format. It provides examples of quantitative analytical techniques based on SPSS and Excel to give readers the opportunity to execute research processes. It also gives readers the capability to analyze, gather, and interpret data to arrive at answers to research questions. This text takes a path which leads to an understanding of the development, use, and meaning of selected statistics, which will be primarily developed though the execution and analysis of SPSS and Excel statistical functions as they relate to a specified dataset.

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  Professional Development for Culturally Responsive and Relationship-Based Pedagogy

  Christine Sleeter

  This book presents a large-scale evaluation of a theory-driven school reform project for relationship-based, culturally responsive pedagogy. The project, iin New Zealand, focuses on improving the educational achievement of Indigenous Māori students in public secondary schools. The project's conceptual underpinnings are based on Kaupapa Māori research, culturally responsive teaching, student voice, and relationship-based pedagogy. Data were produced by a research team who conducted a three-year external evaluation of the project in 22 of the 33 schools implementing its professional development initiative. The book shows the extent to which a well-conceptualized and culturally grounded program in culturally responsive pedagogy, supported by a well-conceptualized professional development program, can shift teacher practices and understandings. These shifts lead to a reduction in the achievement disparities of minoritized students, as well as support for the students as culturally located human beings. While the professional development project in this book addresses Māori students' educational achievement, the study's findings and messages are applicable far beyond New Zealand, because the educational experiences of Māori people are common to many Indigenous and other minoritized peoples in countries around the world.

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  Teaching with Vision: Culturally Responsive Teaching in Standards-Based Classrooms

  Christine E. Sleeter and Catherine Cornbleth

  In Teaching with Vision, two respected scholars in teaching for social justice have gathered teachers from across the country to describe rich examples of extraordinary practice. This collection showcases the professional experience and wisdom of classroom teachers who have been navigating standards- and test-driven teaching environments in California and New York while maintaining their vision of what teaching can be. Representing diverse backgrounds, schools, grade levels, subject areas, and specialties, these teachers talk personally about their practice, their challenges, and how they learned to maintain a social and pedagogical vision for their work. This book is essential reading for new teachers who are struggling to make their teaching inspiring, creative, and culturally responsive, especially those who are working in less than supportive environments.

  This practical resource for pre- and inservice teachers:

  • Examines the struggle between grassroots, culturally responsive teaching and a top-down, teach-by-the-numbers approach.
  • Shows teachers constructing math curriculum, history units, and writing projects grounded in their students’ lives and the world beyond the classroom.
  • Offers both an antidote to standardization and a source of inspiration for public school teachers, teacher educators, students, and parents.

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  Citizen and Soldier: A Sourcebook on Military Service and National Defense from Colonial America to the Present

  Henry C. Dethloff and Gerald Shenk

  Americans grow up expecting that in a time of need, their country can depend on its people for volunteer service to the military. Indeed, this has been a social and at times legal expectation for the citizenship of this country since 1776. Yet, since the end of World War II United States forces have been caught up in many long term military engagements, and the military aspect of citizenship has become an increasingly marginalized one in a world where only a minority of citizens even vote.

  Citizen and Soldier: A Sourcebook on Military Service and National Defense from Colonial America to the Present provides a useful framework and supporting documentary evidence for an informed discussion of the development of the American ideal of the "Citizen Soldier". Presented with insightful introductions and useful discussion questions, this concise collection of 27 primary documents takes a close look at the United States military and shows how it became entwined with the rise of American national identity.

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  Critical Multiculturalism: Theory and Praxis

  Stephen May and Christine E. Sleeter

  Critical multiculturalism has emerged over the last decade as a direct challenge to liberal or benevolent forms of multicultural education. By integrating and advancing various critical theoretical threads such as anti-racist education, critical race theory, and critical pedagogy, critical multiculturalism has offered a fuller analysis of oppression and institutionalization of unequal power relations in education. But what do these powerful theories really mean for classroom practice and specific disciplines?

  Edited by two leading authorities on multicultural education, Critical Multiculturalism: Theory and Praxis brings together international scholars of critical multiculturalism to directly and illustratively address what a transformed critical multicultural approach to education might mean for teacher education and classroom practice. Providing both contextual background and curriculum specific subject coverage ranging from language arts and mathematics to science and technology, each chapter shows how critical multiculturalism relates to praxis. As a watershed in the further development of critical multicultural approaches to education, this timely collection will be required reading for all scholars, educators and practitioners of multicultural education.

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  Pathways to Teaching Series: Assessment Throughout the Year

  Mark O'Shea

  Schools have undergone enormous change in the last ten years in response to the standards movement. New teachers will face the challenge of meeting state curriculum standards and new forms of assessment that derive in part from the No Child Left Behind policy. As part of the “Pathways to Teaching Series”, Assessment Throughout the Year offers a brief, practical, and accessible text for teachers who need help mastering the skills of standards-based assessment and collaborative planning for this new teaching environment.

  This book on classroom-based assessment can help teachers, especially those new to the classroom, to plan their instruction at the beginning of the school year based on the standards assessment data, find alternative forms of cumulative assessment to evaluate student achievement as described in the state or district standards, and to design teaching practices to meet the curriculum pacing and benchmark assessments of the school year. Learning objectives, chapter introductions, graphic organizers, and essential vocabulary at the beginning of each chapter prepare the reader for the content to follow.

  This text is intended to help teachers prepare for the assessment experiences they will encounter throughout the school year. In this climate of school reform, it can also reinforce conventional instruction in the principles of testing and measurement and provide new approaches to assessment practices.

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  Fire and Ink: An Anthology of Social Action Writing

  Frances Payne Adler, Debra Busman, and Diana García

  Fire and Ink is a powerful and impassioned anthology of stories, poems, interviews, and essays that confront some of the most pressing social issues of our day. Designed to inspire and inform, this collection embodies the concepts of “breaking silence,” “bearing witness,” resistance, and resilience. Beyond students and teachers, the book will appeal to all readers with a commitment to social justice.
  
  Fire and Ink brings together, for the first time in one volume, politically engaged writing by poets, fiction writers, and essayists. Including many of our finest writers—Martín Espada, Adrienne Rich, June Jordan, Patricia Smith, Gloria Anzaldúa, Sharon Olds, Arundhati Roy, Sonia Sanchez, Carolyn Forche, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Alice Walker, Linda Hogan, Gary Soto, Kim Blaeser, Minnie Bruce Pratt, Li-Young Lee, and Jimmy Santiago Baca, among others—this is an indispensable collection.
  
  This groundbreaking anthology marks the emergence of social action writing as a distinct field within creative writing and literature. Featuring never-before-published pieces, as well as reprinted material, Fire and Ink is divided into ten sections focused on significant social issues, including identity, sexuality and gender, the environment, social justice, work, war, and peace. The pieces can often be gripping, such as “Frame,” in which Adrienne Rich confronts government and police brutality, or Chris Abani’s “Ode to Joy,” which documents great courage in the face of mortal danger.
  
  Fire and Ink serves as a wonderful reader for a wide range of courses, from composition and rhetoric classes to courses in ethnic studies, gender studies, American studies, and even political science, by facing a past that was often accompanied by injustice and suffering. But beyond that, this collection teaches us that we all have the power to create a more equitable and just future.

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  Internet in Schools: An Innovation Challenge: A Comparative Study: California, England and Singapore

  Marylou Shockley

  The Internet in schools presents challenges to education. This book looks at the issues of technology-based transformation from the perspectives of teachers and policy makers. Educational institutions in California, England, and Singapore were the research venues. From a teacher's perspective, embedding the Internet or any technological tool into their classroom is based on a time for value assessment. In all three venues, the research found that teachers use the Internet as a tool for administrative tasks; however, they found it difficult to integrate this technology into their classrooms because the Internet's time investment for value received did not fully meet most teachers' expectations. Policy makers face a challenge of shaping a complex technology like the Internet to effectively fit into the social, physical and pedagogical parameters of classrooms. As technologies such as the Internet continue to morph, the ongoing dilemma of fit to classroom environments will continue to pose challenges to education.