Continuum Publishing Group

Dyspraxia, 2d ed.

New Zealander Brooks, who is the Deputy Head of the Cefn Hengoed School in Swansea, has written this study of dyspraxia for teachers who may be in charge of students with this learning disability. Dyspraxia, which is a neurological disorder that causes disruptions in perceptions, motor activities and thought processes, is often misdiagnosed and misunderstood. Children who suffer from this condition are often thought to be lazy, unmotivated and unintelligent. Part of Continuum's The SEN Series, this book focuses on educating teachers on how to diagnose the condition and help children overcome its limitations through therapy and guidance. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Dyslexia, 2d ed.

Reid (University of Edinburgh) describes the characteristics of dyslexia, explains different assessment strategies and teaching approaches, and offers guidance on planning curricular materials, presenting tasks, and making subject content dyslexia-friendly. The second edition adds chapters on learning and study skills, specific learning difficulties, and the role of parents. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Education and community.

Practitioner Gereluk, whose experience includes teaching in multicultural and multilingual settings examines the characteristics of communities, develops a philosophical conception of community based upon Rawls's liberal theory, and describes how the resulting normative practices are applicable to schooling. She describes her perceptions and theories about life in an ethnic or minority culture community, community directives for schooling, including communities with special interests, and how those communities should figure the curriculum, the tensions inherent in community and how they should be integrated without exclusiveness or dominance, and ways of teaching children to respect their community. Gereluk describes the liberal conception of community, including its ideas about liberty, equality and fairness, and analyzes "permissible" communities in liberal education, adds with commentary on how communities, societies and schools relate in a changing educational environment, and closes with ways of envisioning liberal communities and the resulting schools. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Educational attainment and society.

Kettley (education, Cambridge U., UK) presents findings from a study of differential educational attainment, based on data gathered from September 1999 to October 2001 at three sixth form colleges in England. Drawing on principles of the Cambridge school of sociology, the study offers a new look at the social conditions of learning and provides an inclusive analysis of gender, social stratification, and attainment. While gender has a relatively modest and declining impact on educational practices and attainment, the impact of social background is more substantial and persistent. Students usually accept existing stratification arrangements as a factual condition of social life; generally both students — and their instructors — do not understand the potential of personal conduct or collective action to transform the academic consequences of social stratification. The research has important implications for British educational policy, in the areas of boys' underachievement and participation in higher education. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Education, policy, and social justice; learning and skills.

Avis (post-compulsory education and training, U. of Huddersfield, UK) examines the connections between education, the economy and social justice favored by policy makers, in particular the role played by post-compulsory education and training (PCET) in the ongoing development of national competitiveness in the global market. Coverage includes how employment and education are conceived in education policy, based on the notion of settlement, Fordism and post-Fordism, and constructions of the knowledge/information society; work-based learning and notions of knowledge and social capital; the learner's experience in PCET; the social and economic context of teaching within PCET; the construction of knowledge and the curriculum in PCET, and their relation to power; tensions between social justice and the ongoing improvement of practice in PCET; and recommendations for change in PCET. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Eighteenth-century literature and culture.

Goring (no affiliation given) does not focus on a particular author or genre but provides the foundations for all who wrote from the Glorious Revolution to the advent of the French Revolution. He describes the era's politics and society, the role of religion and science, the influence of Continental and British philosophy, and perceptions of how culture and the arts fit within the intellectual framework. He describes the ways genres such as periodicals and their essays, poetry, drama and prose fiction worked together and apart, and how participation in literary groups influenced both content and sales. Goring also gives advice on critical approaches, giving an historical overview and current issues and debates, and provides resources for independent study, including a chronology, glossary and lists of resources. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

The enduring significance of Parmenides; unthinkable thought.

It is not because he was right, admits Tallis, that the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher remains significant, but because of how he posed questions and applied logic to them. Tallis's attention was first drawn to Parmenides when he read Nietzsche's Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks; after three decades, a medical career, and a series of philosophical books, he picks up the thread he had left hanging. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

English as a lingua franca; a corpus-based analysis.

There is a disagreement within the English as a Foreign Language community, explains Prodromou (Leeds Metropolitan U., England). On one side are corpus linguists, who can identify elements of idiomatic English that only native speakers use fluently, and argue that these elements should be taught to learners of English as a second language. On the other side are teachers who advocate the use of English as a near-universal second language around the world, who argue that teaching idioms used only by native speakers is counterproductive. He sets out the background of the debate, details some of the specific points of contention, and ponders the implications for teaching English. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Eugenics, race, and intelligence in education.

Chitty (education policy and management, U. of London) traces the history of the intertwined science and movement in Britain to improve the human race through selective breeding, and its use and impact in schools. Among his topics are the origins of the eugenics movement, eugenics and the intellectuals, intelligence testing challenged, and the durability of eugenic theories. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

The fold; Leibniz and the Baroque, rev. ed.

Gilles Deluze was a French philosopher in the tradition of Pascal, a poet, and a mathematician as well as a student of perception and ideas. He used his understanding of the work of Leibniz to explore the art of the Baroque and how our ways of perceiving existence can flow from one level to another; and he saw calculus as a door to a new point of view, and another, and another, on to infinity. Conley (romance languages and literature, Harvard) has translated Deluze's The Fold with the same rhythm and delicacy of the original. Endnotes explain some references but the excellent translation doesn't really require them. This is a revised edition of the 2001 publication. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Francis Bacon and the limits of scientific knowledge.

Desroches (St. Thomas U., New Brunswick, Canada) says that Bacon (1561-1626) is today considered a kind of father of modernity, or else considered a figure perhaps interesting to historians, but misguided and irrelevant to modernity. Both are wrong, he proclaims, and argues that he is as contemporary now as he ever was, is indeed in the very process of fathering history despite being somewhat dead these past four centuries. He shows how modern scientific practices are fundamentally indistinguishable from those Bacon articulated. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Frankenstein; character studies.

Higgins (English literature, U. of Leeds) provides a critical examination of the elements of characterization in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and also an examination of her sources and influences. The author also introduces and provides critical commentary on some of the most stimulating and worthy criticism previously written on Shelley's novel. In his text, Higgins offers an overview of the novel and discussions of characters Robert Walton, Frankenstein, and the Creature and its evolution into a being. The author also includes a guide to further reading and an extensive bibliography. The book is extremely informative and clearly written. While it will interest students and professionals in literary criticism, it also provides a depth of background to the novel that lay readers will find interesting. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

George Herbert's "holy patterns"; reforming individuals in community.

Miller (English, Millsap College, Mississippi) explores British poet Herbert's (1593-1633) commitment to the development of individuals within community, as exemplified by the Anglican church. He argues that he was more skeptical than many of his contemporaries of the autonomous, self-fashioning individual because of his experiences in the court of James I, Parliament, and the larger aristocratic world into which he was born. He also highlights Herbert's formative friendship with Francis Bacon. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Getting the buggers motivated in FE.

Wallace (post-compulsory education, Nottingham Trent U., UK) offers thoughtful advice for teachers in "further education" (ages 14 to adult in the UK) who need advice on motivating unmotivated learners. She frames the advice in narrative vignettes followed by bulleted lists of steps and strategies. Characterizing the four major "demotivators" as fear, boredom, previous negative experience, and loss of hope, the author takes on specific populations (e.g. 14-16 year olds, English as a second language students) and discusses strategies that include reward as motivation, the use of entertainment, the motivating power of positive relationship-building, and exercises in self-respect in terms of each of the four concerns. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Getting the buggers to learn.

Despite the title, this is a serious guide for teaching students to learn. An educational consultant/veteran teacher offers advice on traditional, computer-assisted, and flexible learning methods. Emphasizing information literacy from a UK national curriculum perspective, the still relevant book includes reflection questions, results of a survey of secondary students on how they spend their classroom time, and WebQuest resources. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Godless Shakespeare.

In a somewhat loose but scholarly discussion, author Mallin proposes the possibility that Shakespeare's beliefs, where they can be ascertained, fell outside the realm of orthodox Christianity. He notes that while a public admission of godlessness during the Renaissance may have been suicidal, Shakespeare's "expansive and unpredictable" ethics seem to indicate a creative mind working outside the bounds of orthodoxy. As an example, he cites the playwright's tendency toward bestowing heroic and other positive qualities on the impotent or immoral character, and negative traits such as infamy or depravity on the fortunate, gifted character. The author imagines several of Shakespeare's characters in an afterlife patterned after Dante's Divine Comedy, but with the playwright as the controlling intelligence. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

God's troublemakers; how women of faith are changing the world.

Presbyterian minister Henderson (Auburn Theological Seminary, New York City) has interviewed women from various faiths who are breaking the silence that the religious Left since the 1960s and are practicing new forms of ethical and religious leadership. Her perspectives include the treasure in the dark, bearing religion, living a seamless life, and a palimpsest of forces. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

The governance of education; how neo-liberalism is transforming policy and practice.

After constructing a sociological analysis of neoliberalism that shows how it is totalizing and instrumentalist and therefore leads to an impoverished view of education, Harris (education, U. of Sheffield) argues that a more philosophical critique is required in order to find a richer and bolder response to neoliberal thinking. Drawing on the work of Hannah Arendt and Jan Masschelein, her philosophical critique finds that neoliberalism is essentially typified by zoe, or the mere preservation of life, as opposed to bios, an authentically human life. She then goes on to examine how being governed by zoe impoverishes the domains of the community, the school, and the university, drawing most of her concrete examples from the UK. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

The great city academy fraud.

British writer and journalist Beckett was education correspondent of the New from 1997 to 2005. He currently writes on education for the Guardian and has written ten books on British politics and policies. In his latest text, he assesses the British government's academies project, initiated in 2000 in an effort to promote greater diversity and address failing inner city schools. The first academies opened in September 2002 and there are currently 46 open throughout the UK. Beckett examines the origins of the initiative, the politics of its implementation, the murky world of the links between sponsors and political honors, and the disturbing evidence of the religious agendas of some of the academies' sponsors. He argues that the project is flawed, educationally destructive, and inherently corrupt. Academic but accessible to the general reader. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Guide to teaching 14-19.

Ogunleye (education, U. of Middlesex, UK) considers issues specific to teaching 14-19 year-olds in the UK's further education (FE) colleges. Along with behavior management tips the chapters summarize the policy context for teaching teens in FE, vocational and educational opportunities for that age group, professional development strategies, and insight into teaching in mixed age classrooms. Personal vignettes support the text. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

A guide to vocational education and training.

Hyland (post compulsory education and training, U. of Bolton) and Winch (educational philosophy, London U., both UK) are concerned here with the longtime gap between academic and vocational training in the UK in terms of quality, parity of value, and the policies involved. They discuss the history of vocational education and training (VET) in both England and Europe at large, describe how behaviorist reductionism influences the current VET curriculum, analyze the structure of its funding, and recommend policies to raise the value of VET to that of scholarly education. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)