Education

Drawing from his own remarkable experience as a veteran classroom teacher (still in the classroom), Ron Berger gives us a vision of educational reform that transcends standards, curriculum, and instructional strategies. He argues for a paradigm shift - a school wide embrace of an "ethic of excellence." A master carpenter as well as a gifted teacher, Berger is guided by a craftsman's passion for quality, describing what's possible when teachers, students, and parents commit to nothing less than the best. Berger's not just idealistic, he's realistic - he tells exactly how this can be done, from the blackboard to the blacktop to the school boardroom.

There is a trend to have universities make a stronger commitment to community engagement. This book offers a how-to resource for campus leaders who want to take a strategic approach to creating change within the university and in relation to the community. It emphasizes what to do to expand community engagement at the university, and explains how to minimize the risks that can accompany this work. The authors provide a clear path to creating an engaged university and institutionalizing change so that it becomes integrated into the fabric of the university.

After decades of marginalization in the secularized twentieth-century academy, moral education has enjoyed a recent resurgence in American higher education, with the establishment of more than 100 ethics centers and programs on campuses across the country. Yet the idea that the university has a civic responsibility to teach its undergraduate students ethics and morality has been met with skepticism, suspicion, and even outright rejection from both inside and outside the academy. In this collection, renowned scholars of philosophy, politics, and religion debate the role of ethics in the university, investigating whether universities should proactively cultivate morality and ethics, what teaching ethics entails, and what moral education should accomplish. The essays quickly open up to broader questions regarding the very purpose of a university education in modern society.

In Earth in Mind, noted environmental educator David W. Orr focuses not on problems in education, but on the problem of education. Much of what has gone wrong with the world, he argues, is the result of inadequate and misdirected education that: alienates us from life in the name of human domination; causes students to worry about how to make a living before they know who they are; overemphasizes success and careers; separates feeling from intellect and the practical from the theoretical; deadens the sense of wonder for the created world. The crisis we face, Orr explains, is one of mind, perception, and values. It is, first and foremost, an educational challenge.

Educating for Democracy reports the results of the Political Engagement Project, a study of educational practices at the college level that prepare students for responsible democratic participation. In this book, coauthors Anne Colby, Elizabeth Beaumont, Thomas Ehrlich, and Josh Corngold show that education for political development can increase students’ political understanding, skill, motivation, and involvement while contributing to many aspects of general academic learning.

In this collection of essential essays, Nel Noddings examines alternatives to prevailing models of character education—a sympathetic approach based on an ethic of care. Covering both stories in the classroom and controversial issues in education, Noddings describes the similarities and differences between character education and care ethics...examines how moral education might be infused throughout the curriculum...and calls for greater cooperation across fields and more attention to the practical problems of everyday teaching.

This book seeks to outline and defend an approach to moral education based on the promotion of moral virtues. Starting from a critical appreciation of such past philosophers as Plato, Aristotle and Kant and of more recent developments in moral philosophy, it proceeds, by way of a survey of the social scientific perspectives on moral life of such theorists as Durkheim, Freud, Piaget and Kohlberg, to a full discussion of the nature and educational implications of the idea of a moral virtue. The third section of the work critically examines certain theses about moral virtue - that virtue may be explicated largely in terms of self-control, that all genuine virtues have the character of other-regarding obligations and that the main role of practical reason is to establish the basic principles of moral life. The combined conclusions of these discussions present a challenge to prevailing concepts of moral education. The virtues have begun to reclaim a central place in moral philosophy, and the author has written a work which will interest those concerned with problems of moral education, whether they are academic specialists in universities and colleges or educationalists.

This volume emerged from a two year ethics across the curriculum project at Marquette University. Faculty were selected to take part in a summer institute which sought to give them some background in teaching ethical theory and assistance in developing ways to include ethics into courses within their own departments. The volume includes a series of essays that discuss some techniques and best practices for integrating ethics education into university courses from philosophers and participants in Marquette's summer institutes.

Ethics and the University brings together two closely related topics, the practice of ethics in the university ("academic ethics") and the teaching of practical or applied ethics in the university.
This volume is divided into four parts:
* A survey of practical ethics, offering an explanation of its recent emergence as a university subject, situating that subject into a wider social and historical context and identifying some problems that the subject generates for universities
* An examination of research ethics, including the problem of plagiarism
* A discussion of the teaching of practical ethics. Michael Davis explores how ethics can be integrated into the university curriculum and what part particular cases should play in the teaching of ethics
* An exploration of sexual ethics

When parents are asked what they want for their children, they usually answer that they want their children to be happy. Why, then, is happiness rarely mentioned as a goal of education? This book explores what we might teach if we were to take happiness seriously as a goal of education. It asks, first, what it means to be happy and, second, how we can help children to understand it. It notes that we have to develop a capacity for unhappiness and a willingness to alleviate the suffering of others to be truly happy. Criticizing our current almost exclusive emphasis on economic well-being and pleasure, Nel Noddings discusses the contributions of making a home, parenting, cherishing a place, the development of character, interpersonal growth, finding work that one loves, and participating in a democratic way of life. Finally, she explores ways in which to make schools and classrooms cheerful places.

This volume provides an original and powerful contribution to debates about the civic purpose of higher education. It suggests that universities can best realize their civic mission by making it central to their policy and practice. Bringing together researchers from three continents, the book offers an international perspective based primarily upon first-hand pedagogical experience. A transatlantic overview of the purpose, place and practice of one such pedagogy (service learning) is provided and its potential as a foundation for civic engagement assessed. In its last section, the book moves from the theory of citizenship to practical considerations. In doing so, the book offers advice on establishing civic engagement to all those involved in teaching and learning within higher education.

Moral Education: A Teacher-Oriented Approach reveals the richness of moral education, as well as its centrality and pervasiveness, and provides an instructional approach that respects the diversity of viewpoints. This book describes the ordinary moral questions that arise in every classroom, every day. Through the voices of children, teachers, administrators, and parents, it presents and analyzes the conflicting assumptions and priorities of those interested in moral education.

This book consists of fourteen original essays by noted American philosophers critically investigating crucial moral issues generated by academic life. The authors ask: What are the standards of conduct appropriate in class-rooms, departmental meetings, and faculty meetings, in grading students, evaluating colleagues, and engaging in research? "The need for appropriate, sustained, philosophical analyses and examinations of practical ethics dilemmas in academic life undoubtedly is required since the reporting of questionable conduct alone does little to resolve the problem.

Ethics can seem like a slippery topic to tackle for any institution, yet, ethics pervade every layer of higher education? from strategic planning to codes of ethics, to curricular integration of ethics, to actual courses and professional standards of practice for faculty, staff and students (to include as future professionals). This issue discusses a range of topics such as: social responsibility as the foundation for strategic planning, sustainability on campus and related service learning, ethics across the curriculum, institutional codes of ethics, professional codes of ethics and implications for student-teacher relationships, design and delivery of a course on ethics, the ethical obligations of institutions to provide a quality education to athletes.

Proceeding with the conviction that open communications between teacher and student before, during, and after the teaching experience is vital, Sims identifies key teaching processes, gives practical advice on designing and planning the curriculum, and offers guidance on how to develop a climate conducive to effective learning. He highlights the importance of creating a classroom climate that encourages open dialogue, good moral conversation, and conversational learning. Throughout he emphasizes that learning styles and experiential learning theory are cornerstones of teaching business ethics, thus taking an approach unlike any in the literature. An important guide for those who are new to teaching this essential subject, Sims' book will also be helpful for more experienced teachers who are wondering why their own methods do not always work, or do not work as well as they believe they should.

Tenth in the Service-Learning in the Disciplines Series, this book shows how both peace studies and service-learning have been developing new ideas of how social learning takes place as a community process in conflict situations and what the dynamics of peace building are. The process has created a new niche in academia for preparing students to become social change agents. The enthusiasm of the contributors in this book gives the reader a new vision of what is possible on college campuses in community-based peace and service-learning at a time when there is a critical need for peace-building skills.

The Moral University examines the ways that universities act morally toward students, faculty, their communities and the nation. It considers the effectiveness of moral reasoning courses in the curriculum and the growth of leadership courses. The book deals with the myriad ways in which universities act positively toward their communities. It also examines the involvement of universities in national projects. Moreover, the Berubes examine how students and faculty are treated, especially in terms of gender bias. The book concludes on a positive note with a model moral university.