The final section examines some of the intellectual forces shaping current arguments, and offers critical appraisals of some influential figures in the field: Herbert Read, Peter Fuller and David Holbrook.

The New Imperatives of Educational Change is a clarion call to move beyond the standardized testing and marketplace competition that have become pervasive in school systems to focus instead on creating the conditions that will encourage all students to become critical and independent thinkers. Dennis Shirley presents five new imperatives to guide educators and policymakers towards a re-thinking of what it means to teach effectively and to learn in depth. The evidentiary imperative requires educators to attain a better grasp of what data actually reveal about international trends in student learning. The interpretive imperative encourages mindful deliberation before acting on evidence in order to promote the integrity of a school community. The professional imperative describes new international research findings on promising pedagogies and curricula that propel learning in new directions. The global imperative argues that we all must look beyond our national boundaries to improve the flourishing of all young people, wherever they may be found. Finally, the existential imperative reminds us that students look to their teachers as role models who can dignify learning with meaning and embellish life with joy. Visionary in its scope and practical in its details, The New Imperatives of Educational Change is an indispensable road map for all teachers, principals, and system leaders.

What is the role of politics in the classroom? How does the desire of the teacher shape the pedagogical process? Is teaching possible? Is learning possible? Pedagogy as Encounter engages with such larger issues. The majority of discussions, workshops, conference panels, articles, and books avoid meta-pedagogical issues by focusing on technique. Such “technique talk” examines schemes, methods, and procedures that do and do not work in the classroom. It answers the “how” question at the cost of ignoring these bigger queries. Pedagogy as Encounter consists of 120 vignettes arranged in eight chapters. Most of these are first person autobiographical stories that describe encounters with students and colleagues. They portray a teacher whose classroom disappointments lead him to radical experimentation. But there are also a few theoretical sections, as well as segments that are epigrammatic in nature. All of it is grounded in a Lacanian political psychology and in a critical global political economy. The theory, however, remains largely implicit and is confined to the footnotes. The body of the text is free of jargon and presented in a conversational voice.

Written with both the cultural and moral crisis and the challenge of the future in mind, Peter Abbs's book charts an open, clear, and positive way forward for education. Divided into four sections, the first examines the true and fitting ends of education and outlines a positive conception of education as an initiation into critical enquiry and the personal art of learning. The two middle sections consider aesthetic education. Abbs confronts government approaches to arts teaching and offers an alternative dynamic paradigm within which the creativity of the culture transmitted down the ages and the creativity of the individual seen as biologically given must be combined. The outcome of this is explored, in detail, in relation to the teaching of literature, creative writing and drama. The final section offers critical appraisals of influential figures in the arts field:; Herbert Reid, the late Peter Fuller and David Holbrook.

Achieve system wide progress --

The author has championed the cause of ecological literacy in higher education, helping to establish and shape the field of ecological design, and working to raise awareness of the threats to future generations posed by humanity's current unsustainable trajectory.This volume brings together his most important works.