Month: April 2008

juz received the latest installment of preview book list from sensepublisher, here’s 2 of the books that i thought are interesting to read. 2 chapters of each book can be downloaded via the provided URL:
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RETHINKING EDUCATION WITH ICT: New Directions for Effective Practices
Nicola Yelland, Greg A. Neal and Eva Dakich, Victoria University, Australia
This book brings together a number of academics who have conducted research and written about effective practices and pedagogies that incorporate the use of information and communications technologies (ICT). The book is intended for graduate and undergraduate students in Teacher Education programmes, as well as teachers and those who are interested in contemporary educational issues. The authors in this book have been engaged in rethinking education with ICT. Implicit in this, is the view that we need to reconceptualise our pedagogies and practices in order to make schools relevant to the lives of the young people who inhabit them. The chapters in this book are based on empirically grounded research work. The chapters illustrate the various dimensions of innovative practices with ICT that can extend teachers’ pedagogies and engage learners so that they are able to extend their potential for knowledge building in new and dynamic ways.
Preview URL

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CRITICAL READINGS IN TEACHER EDUCATION: Provoking Absences
Anne Phelan, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada and Jennifer Sumsion, Charles Sturt University, Bathurst, Australia(Eds.)
Like other fields of study, teacher education defines itself both by what it includes and by what it excludes. Teacher educators and researchers have spent a great deal of time seeking and attempting to eradicate the flaws in existing structures and practices, but significantly less time learning to perceive the absences. The premise of this book is that until we can identify and begin to address what is absent, teacher education will be constrained by a perennial recycling of concerns that have characterized so much of research, policy and practice to date. If teacher education is to have a different future, we need to ask different and difficult questions. This book, with contributions from theorists in Australia, Canada and the United States, addresses the challenges we face in establishing a more hopeful future for teacher education. The authors’ provocative contributions identify what is ‘missing’ in teacher education while providing critical counterpoints to existing frames of reference in the field. In writing ‘against the grain’ they open up new conceptual spaces and exciting trajectories for a different teacher education.
Preview URL
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