New publications

The author chronicles one year as a teacher in a program for disruptive students in the USA. Landsman canvasses the students, their home and street situations, and how their stories develop over the year. In doing so, she shows the complexity and individuality of young people. This second edition is about kids in trouble and their resiliency. Landsman has added a foreword, afterword, and an extensive Resource Guide revolving around how to create a community in the classroom and including ideas for each week of the school year.  (Adapted from publisher's description).

Teachers are often the first point of contact for a child who has problems, whether they be related to drugs, physical and sexual abuse, bullying, bereavement or divorce. Yet teachers are seldom specially trained to deal with these situations. This book is an introductory guide on counselling skills and strategies for teachers. It also provides advice on handling distraught parents who are seeking a listening ear, and for whom the teacher is the only contact. (Available from DA Information).

This book is a comparative study of social mobility based on qualitative interviews with middle-class parents in America and Britain. It addresses the stability of class relations and middle-class reproduction, drawing on parents' accounts of how they mobilised economic, cultural and social resources to increase their children’s chances of educational success and occupational advancement. Middle-class parents may try to secure their children’s social position, but it is not an easy or straightforward endeavour. With the decline of the quality of state education and increased job insecurity in the labour market since the 1970s and 1980s, the reproduction of advantage is more difficult than in the affluent decades of the 1950s and 1960s. The implications for public policy, especially public investment in higher education, are considered. Topics include financial choices and sacrifices for children, expectations for educational success, and networking in school and beyond.

The Inquiry reports on its investigation of teacher education in Victoria. It has found that newly trained teachers, while grounded in theoretical knowledge, frequently lack the practical skills required to be effective teachers. It identified wide variations in standard between teacher training institutions and courses, and found that institutions have widely varying interpretations of the standards set out by the Victorian Institute of Teaching and the guidelines of the Department of Education and Training. The report makes a range of recommendations. The traditional lecture/tutorial format of teacher training should be replaced by a range of pathways, including accelerated courses and employment-based training. A wider range of applicants should be encouraged, including career change professionals. The Victorian Institute of Teaching should substantially upgrade its accreditation standards and make teacher education faculties more strictly accountable for the practical skills base of their graduates. (See also review article, ‘Victoria beats Commonwealth to the punch’, Education Review 16 March 2005 – fee-based access online)

In this author's view of education, teachers move away from the culture of standards and accountability, and function like a shaman to 'change the world view of an apprentice'. Using this shaman metaphor, Rigoni examines how the most important learning in a professional program takes place between the lines of the formal curriculum. He argues that what is implicit and unconscious in modern education needs to be made explicit and conscious, and that what is currently viewed as the end-product is simply an intermediate step in the journey of learning. The book then looks at educators throughout history who worked with their students with a total focus on changing their world views. (Available from DA Information).