The Sociological Imagination
C. Wright Mills - 1959
Wright Mills is best remembered for his highly acclaimed work The Sociological Imagination, in which he set forth his views on how social science should be pursued. Hailed upon publication as a cogent and hard-hitting critique, The Sociological Imagination took issue with the ascendant schools of sociology in the United States, calling for a humanist sociology connecting the social, personal, and historical dimensions of our lives. The sociological imagination Mills calls for is a sociological vision, a way of looking at the world that can see links between the apparently private problems of the individual and important social issues.
Con Respeto: Bridging the Distances Between Culturally Diverse Families and Schools: An Ethnographic Portrait
Guadalupe Valdés - 1996
Guadalupe Vald�s examines what appears to be a lack of interest in education by Mexican parents and shows, through extensive quotations and numerous anecdotes, that these families are both rich and strong in family values, and that they bring with them clear views of what constitutes success and failure. The book's conclusion questions the merit of typical family intervention programs designed to promote school success and suggests that these interventions--because they do not genuinely respect the values of diverse families--may have long-term negative consequences for children.Con Respeto will be a valuable resource in graduate courses in foundations, ethnographic research, sociology and anthropology of education, multicultural education, and child development; and will be of particular interest to professors and researchers of multicultural education, bilingual education, ethnographic research methods, and sociology and anthropology of education.
Do What You Love and Other Lies About Success and Happiness
Miya Tokumitsu - 2015
Our ideas of what the "virtues" of pursuing success in capitalism have changed dramatically over time. In the past, we believed that work undertaken with an ethos of industriousness promised financial stability and basic comfort and security for our families. Now, our working life is conflated with the pursuit of pleasure. Fantastically successful—and popular—entrepreneurs such as Steve Jobs and Oprah Winfrey command us. "You've got to love what you do," Jobs tells an audience of college grads about to enter the workforce, while Winfrey exhorts her audience to "live your best life." The promises made to today's workers seem so much larger and nobler than those of previous generations. Why settle for a 30-year fixed rate mortgage and a perfectly functional eight-year-old car when you can get rich becoming your "best" self and have a blast along the way?But workers today are doing more and more for less and less. This reality is frighteningly palpable in eroding paychecks and benefits, the rapid concentration of wealth in the hands of a tiny few, and workers' loss of control over their labor conditions. But where is the protest and anger from workers against a system that tells them to love their work and asks them to do it for less? While winner-take-all capitalism grows ever more ruthless, the rhetoric of passion for labor proliferates.In Do What You Love, Tokumitsu articulates and examines the sacrifices people make for a chance at loveable, self-actualizing, and, of course, wealth-generating work and the conditions facilitated by this pursuit. This book continues the conversation sparked by the author's earlier Slate article and provides a devastating look at the state of modern America's labor and workforce.
Adolescents at School: Perspectives on Youth, Identity, and Education
Michael Sadowski - 2003
Issues of race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexual orientation, and ability often complicate this question for youth, affecting their schoolwork and their relationships with teachers, administrators, and peers.Adolescents at School gives educators, administrators, community leaders, counselors, social workers, health-care professionals, and parents a glimpse into the complex "identities" adolescents negotiate as they manage the challenges of school. The book contains the perspectives of teachers, researchers, and administrators and adolescents themselves who explore what it means to be a middle or high school student in the United States today. Practical and jargon-free, the book suggests ways to foster the success of every student in our schools and classrooms.
All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood
Jennifer Senior - 2014
Award-winning journalist Jennifer Senior now asks: what are the effects of children on their parents?"All Joy and No Fun is an indispensable map for a journey that most of us take without one. Brilliant, funny, and brimming with insight, this is an important book that every parent should read, and then read again. Jennifer Senior is surely one of the best writers on the planet."-Daniel Gilbert, author of Stumbling on HappinessIn All Joy and No Fun, award-winning journalist Jennifer Senior isolates and analyzes the many ways in which children reshape their parents' lives, whether it's their marriages, their jobs, their habits, their hobbies, their friendships, or their internal senses of self. She argues that changes in the last half century have radically altered the roles of today's mothers and fathers, making their mandates at once more complex and far less clear. Recruiting from a wide variety of sources-in history, sociology, economics, psychology, philosophy, and anthropology-she dissects both the timeless strains of parenting and the ones that are brand new, and then brings her research to life in the homes of ordinary parents around the country. The result is an unforgettable series of family portraits, starting with parents of young children and progressing to parents of teens. Through lively and accessible storytelling, Senior follows these mothers and fathers as they wrestle with some of parenthood's deepest vexations-and luxuriate in some of its finest rewards.Meticulously researched yet imbued with emotional intelligence, All Joy and No Fun makes us reconsider some of our culture's most basic beliefs about parenthood, all while illuminating the profound ways children deepen and add purpose to our lives. By focusing on parenthood, rather than parenting, the book is original and essential reading for mothers and fathers of today-and tomorrow.
Please Stop Laughing at Us... One Woman's Extraordinary Quest to Prevent School Bullying
Jodee Blanco - 2008
Far more than a memoir, the book offers specific solutions to specific problems. Listeners learn how to identify and help a bullied child, how to distinguish between different types of bullying -- what's innocuous and what's dangerous, why adult logic doesn't work with teenagers, new disciplinary methods, and much more.
Public Administration and Public Affairs
Nicholas Henry - 1980
For introductory courses in public administration, public affairs, and public policy.Public Administration and Public Affairs examines the realities underlying the stereotypes that are brought out by both phrases. Public Administration and Public Affairs is about both the means used to fulfill the public interest, and the human panoply that is the public interest. It keeps up with the tumultuous world of public administration and public affairs and it reports that tumult in an engaging manner.
Interactions: Collaboration Skills for School Professionals
Marilyn Friend - 2000
Collaboration is the foundation on which successful contemporary public schools are based, as well as the most effective means to provide services to students with disabilities and other special needs. Interactions presents this idea with an ideal blend of theory and practical applications. Following an overview of collaboration in schools and across society, the authors introduce essential communication skills that form the foundation for successful collaboration; show a focus on problem solving and its common collaborative applications; and look at such critical topics as teaming, the key principles of co-teaching, consulting, coaching, mentoring, and conflict and resistance. Every chapter features numerous opportunities to learn new material, reinforce what's been learned, and think critically about topics. The 9th Edition reflects the continued changes in the priorities for education based on federal mandates as well as practitioner trends, and it is grounded in the real-life experiences of school professionals. It has been thoroughly revised and updated, featuring new information on working with diverse families and paraeducators, plus over 400 new references. This title is also available digitally as a standalone Pearson eText.
Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms
Diane Ravitch - 2000
Some have charged that students were not learning enough, while others have complained that the schools were not in the forefront of social progress. In this authoritative history of education in the twentieth century, historian Diane Ravitch describes this ongoing battle of ideas and explains why school reform has so often failed. "Left Back" recounts grandiose efforts by education reformers to use the schools to promote social and political goals, even when they diminished the schools' ability to educate children. It shows how generations of reformers have engaged in social engineering, advocating such innovations as industrial education, intelligence testing, curricular differentiation, and life-adjustment education. These reformers, she demonstrates, simultaneously mounted vigorous campaigns against academic studies."Left Back" charges that American schools have been damaged by three misconceptions. The first is the belief that the schools can solve any social or political problem. The second is the belief that only a portion of youngsters are capable of benefiting from a high-quality education. The third is that imparting knowledge is relatively unimportant, compared to engaging students in activities and experiences.These grave errors, Ravitch contends, have unnecessarily restricted equality of educational opportunity. They have dumbed down the schools by encouraging a general lowering of academic expectations. They have produced a diluted and bloated curriculum and pressure to enlarge individual schools so that they can offer multiple tracks to children withdifferent occupational goals. As a result, the typical American high school is too big, too anonymous, and lacks intellectual coherence.Ravitch identifies several heroic educators -- such as William T. Harris, William C. Bagley, and Isaac Kandel -- who challenged these dominant and wrong-headed ideas. These men, dissidents in their own times, are usually left out of standard histories of education or treated derisively because they believed that all children deserved the opportunity to meet high standards of learning.In describing the wars between competing traditions of education, Ravitch points the way to reviving American education. She argues that all students have the capacity to learn and that all are equally deserving of a solid liberal arts education. "Left Back" addresses issues of the utmost importance and urgency. It is a large work of history that by recovering the past illuminates a future.
Bad Boys: Public Schools in the Making of Black Masculinity
Ann Arnett Ferguson - 2000
Based on three years of participant observation research at an elementary school, Bad Boys offers a richly textured account of daily interactions between teachers and students to understand this serious problem. Ann Arnett Ferguson demonstrates how a group of eleven- and twelve-year-old males are identified by school personnel as "bound for jail" and how the youth construct a sense of self under such adverse circumstances. The author focuses on the perspective and voices of pre-adolescent African American boys. How does it feel to be labeled "unsalvageable" by your teacher? How does one endure school when the educators predict one's future as "a jail cell with your name on it?" Through interviews and participation with these youth in classrooms, playgrounds, movie theaters, and video arcades, the author explores what "getting into trouble" means for the boys themselves. She argues that rather than simply internalizing these labels, the boys look critically at schooling as they dispute and evaluate the meaning and motivation behind the labels that have been attached to them. Supplementing the perspectives of the boys with interviews with teachers, principals, truant officers, and relatives of the students, the author constructs a disturbing picture of how educators' beliefs in a "natural difference" of black children and the "criminal inclination" of black males shapes decisions that disproportionately single out black males as being "at risk" for failure and punishment.Bad Boys is a powerful challenge to prevailing views on the problem of black males in our schools today. It will be of interest to educators, parents, and youth, and to all professionals and students in the fields of African-American studies, childhood studies, gender studies, juvenile studies, social work, and sociology, as well as anyone who is concerned about the way our schools are shaping the next generation of African American boys.Anne Arnett Ferguson is Assistant Professor of Afro-American Studies and Women's Studies, Smith College.
Haralambos and Holborn – Sociology Themes and Perspectives
Michael Haralambos - 2013
It’s fully updated to match the latest sociology teaching, research and developments to support your learning about sociology today.Brought to you by a team of experts, Collins Sociology Themes and Perspectives is written by Michael Haralambos and Martin Holborn and has supported over one million sociology students worldwide.Build your understanding through clear and comprehensive explanations and apply your knowledge with contextualised examples and research. Stay relevant with the most up-to-date developments, empirical studies and theories while consolidating your learning with quick-reference conclusions and summaries at the end of each chapter. Bring sociology alive with full-colour explanations and photos.New topics covered in this sociology book include globalisation, the Arab Spring, the possible decline of US power, UK Coalition policies, environmental sociology, new media, the financial crash and recession, network society, crime and deviance sociology, victimology – and many more! For additional resources, try the Haralambos and Holborn AQA A-level Sociology Themes and Perspectives Year 1 and AS (9780008242770) and Year 2 (9780008242787) sociology textbooks written specifically for the 2015 AQA specification.Contents:• Chapter 1: Stratification, class and inequality• Chapter 2: Sex and gender• Chapter 3: ‘Race’, ethnicity and nationality• Chapter 4: Poverty, social exclusion and the welfare state• Chapter 5: Health, medicine and the body• Chapter 6: Crime and deviance• Chapter 7: Religion• Chapter 8: Families, households and personal life• Chapter 9: Power, politics and the state• Chapter 10: Education• Chapter 11: Culture, socialisation and identity• Chapter 12: The mass media• Chapter 13: Age and the life course• Chapter 14: Methodology• Chapter 15: Sociological theory
Pocket Guide to APA Style
Robert Perrin - 2006
In addition to step-by-step coverage of documentation, the book includes an overview of the research-writing process entitled "Writing Scholarly Papers" and three useful appendices. Thorough and practical, this convenient reference guide is also less expensive and easier for undergraduates to use than the APA Manual. The Second Edition features expanded coverage of electronic sources to keep students up-to-date on using and evaluating Internet references in their research. In addition, this new edition provides more guidance on avoiding plagiarism. The two sample APA-style papers--one argumentative and one experimental--are carefully annotated to give students extra support as they master the elements of manuscript preparation and documentation principles.
Bootstraps: From an American Academic of Color
Victor Villanueva - 1993
At another level, Villanueva ponders his experiences in light of the history of rhetoric, the English Only movement, current socio- and psycholinguistic theory, and the writings of Gramsci and Freire, among others.Winner of the David H. Russell Award for Distinguished Research in the Teaching of English.
Survey Methodology
Robert M. Groves - 2004
Survey Methodology describes the basic principles of survey design discovered in methodological research over recent years and offers guidance for making successful decisions in the design and execution of high quality surveys. Written by six nationally recognized experts in the field, this book covers the major considerations in designing and conducting a sample survey. Topical, accessible, and succinct, this book represents the state of the science in survey methodology. Employing the "total survey error" paradigm as an organizing framework, it merges the science of surveys with state-of-the-art practices. End-of-chapter terms, references, and exercises enhance its value as a reference for practitioners and as a text for advanced students.
When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor
William Julius Wilson - 1996
Marshaling a vast array of data and the personal stories of hundreds of men and women, Wilson persuasively argues that problems endemic to America's inner cities;from fatherless households to drugs and violent crime.Wilson's achievement is to portray this crisis as one that affects all Americans, and to propose solutions whose benefits would be felt across our society. At a time when welfare is ending and our country's racial dialectic is more strained than ever.