Education Philosophy

Civilization and Its Discontents is a book by Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis. It was written in 1929 and explores what Freud sees as the important clash between the desire for individuality and the expectations of society. The book is considered one of Freud's most important and widely read works, and one of the most influential and studied books in the field of modern psychology. This book has been carefully adapted in to modern English to allow for easy listening. Enjoy!

Blended learning has the power to reinvent education, but the transition requires a new approach to learning and a new skillset for educators. Loaded with research and examples, Blended Learning in Action demonstrates the advantages a blended model has over traditional instruction when technology is used to engage students both inside the classroom and online.

What if learning could be deeper, faster, and longer-lasting—without adding more stress or content overload? Breakthrough Learning reveals how small, science-backed teaching shifts can create powerful results in any learning environment. Rooted in cognitive psychology and real-world classroom examples, this book guides educators, learners, and lifelong thinkers through practical strategies that actually work.

All of the humans in schools—kids and adults—deserve joy. Yet, our experiences in schools, and the experiences of our students, are often far from joyful. Humans Who Teach invites listeners to explore the complicated humanity of those who teach, with a focus on how we have been socialized to accept the status quo, our very real fears in disrupting the status quo, and how we can rely on our human capacity to love to engage in teaching for social justice even in the presence of fear.

At the best of times, leadership is messy. It's about a way of being, not doing. It's nebulous, nuanced, and elusive, as much to do with feeling and energy as thinking and planning. It's contextual and responsive and can never be one size fits all. When great leaders are in balance, they are both ferocious about the moral purpose and courageously making a stand, while warmly building strong and enduring relationships.

Safe Is Not Enough illustrates how educators can support the positive development of LGBTQ students in a comprehensive way so as to create truly inclusive school communities. Using examples from classrooms, schools, and districts across the country, Michael Sadowski identifies emerging practices such as creating an LGBTQ-inclusive curriculum; fostering a whole-school climate that is supportive of LGBTQ students; providing adults who can act as mentors and role models; and initiating effective family and community outreach programs.

In this unabridged audiobook version of his acclaimed book, David Didau reignites the nature versus nurture debate around intelligence and offers research-informed guidance on how teachers can help their students acquire a robust store of knowledge and skills that is both powerful and useful.

Homeschooling: A Hope for America is a collection of articles taken from The Voluntaryist, a newsletter with a libertarian outlook which has been published since 1982. The anthology has been assembled by Carl Watner (from many of his past articles, as well as those of others), and contains an original foreword by John Taylor Gatto. This anthology argues against government education in a unique way. One who advocates voluntaryism opposes government schools, not because he opposes schooling but, because he opposes coercion, which is to be found in government taxation, compulsory attendance laws, and in the monopolization of public services. Most of us would agree that there should not be any state religion; that religion should not be supported by taxation; and that people should not be compelled to attend religious services. Why shouldn’t the principles of voluntaryism in religion apply to education?

The Teacher's Attention is a fresh take on relationships in schools. Looking beyond our obsession with raising test scores, this book recognizes that education is a key partner in raising children. Garrett Delavan contends that allowing students, educators and parents to navigate a smaller number of relationships - a concept he calls "relationship load" - provides many benefits, including a better chance at achieving equal access to a good education for all children.

If you are a young person, and you work hard enough, you can get a college degree and set yourself on the path to a good life, right? Not necessarily, says Sara Goldrick-Rab, and with Paying the Price, she shows in damning detail exactly why. Drawing on an unprecedented study of 3,000 young adults who entered public colleges and universities in Wisconsin in 2008 with the support of federal aid and Pell Grants, Goldrick-Rab reveals the devastating effect of these shortfalls.

On the surface, Riverview High School looks like the post-racial ideal. Serving an enviably affluent, diverse, and liberal district, the school is well-funded, its teachers are well-trained, and many of its students are high achieving. Yet Riverview has not escaped the same unrelenting question that plagues schools throughout America: why is it that even when all of the circumstances seem right, black and Latino students continue to lag behind their peers?

Meaningful school reform starts with your most powerful partner—your students! When you take time to listen, you’ll find that students’ aspirations can drive your school toward exciting new goals—and when students know they’re being heard, they engage meaningfully in their own academic success. Using examples drawn from student surveys, focus groups, observations, and interviews, this groundbreaking book presents a blueprint for a successful partnership between educators and students.

The Learning Progression Model (LPM) offers a flexible and effective framework focusing on improvement over time, emphasizes learning as a process rather than an endpoint, encourages academic risk-taking, and fosters positive student-teacher relationships. This model defines outcomes based on a limited number of skills, provides ample opportunities for formative assessment, and allows multiple attempts without penalty. The LPM also removes nonacademic factors from grading and uses descriptive scoring to decrease attempts to quantify performances.

In School Communities of Strength, Peter W. Cookson, Jr., lays out a blueprint for providing equitable educational opportunities for students from all socioeconomic strata, and particularly for the five million American children who live with the extreme material hardship known as deep poverty. This work issues an urgent call to action for K–12 schools to put in place the policies, practices, and programs that enable economically vulnerable students to thrive.

Take a journey through the ancient history of the Jewish people, a proud and stubborn people who desired to retain their freedom and uniqueness. They fought for this ideal for centuries with various success, but then came the mighty Roman Empire. At first, the Romans were their allies, but they eventually conquered the Jewish state into their vast realm.

Are the Mayans still around? What is the importance of Chichen Itza’s discovery? How did this mighty civilization fall? If you want answers to these intriguing questions, then pay attention....

One of the things this book will teach you is that there is no single path to creativity. You have something in common with Einstein, Michelangelo, Steve Jobs, Stephen Spielberg, and any famous thinker, inventor, or artist that ever lived. Not everyone can be an Einstein, a Michelangelo, a Jobs, or a Spielberg, but tapping into that innate creativity is something everyone can do.

Powerful reading and writing is fundamentally linked to civic education. The Civically Engaged Classroom is packed with practical guidance designed to support teachers in giving students the skills, knowledge, and tools to be active participants in society.

Exploding college prices and a flagging global economy, combined with the derring-do of a few intrepid innovators, have created a dynamic climate for a total rethinking of an industry that has remained virtually unchanged for a hundred years. In The End of College, Kevin Carey, an education researcher and writer, draws on years of in-depth reporting and cutting-edge research to paint a vivid and surprising portrait of the future of education.

In What Universities Can Be, the high-profile educator Robert J. Sternberg writes thoughtfully about the direction of higher education in this country and its potential to achieve future excellence. Sternberg presents, for the first time, his concept of the ACCEL model, in which institutions of higher education are places where students learn to become Active Concerned Citizens and Ethical Leaders.