For 25 years, Maxine Greene has been the philosopher-in-residence at the innovative Lincoln Center Institute, where her work forms the foundation of the Institute's aesthetic education practice. Each summer she addresses teachers from across the country, representing all grade levels, through LCI's intensive professional development sessions. Variations on a Blue Guitar contains a selection of these never-before-published lectures touching on the topics of aesthetic education, imagination and transformation, educational renewal and reform, excellence, standards, and cultural diversity, powerful ideas for today's educators.

"This remarkable set of essays defines the role of imagination in general education, arts education, aesthetics, literature, and the social and multicultural context.... The author argues for schools to be restructured as places where students reach out for meanings and where the previously silenced or unheard may have a voice. She invites readers to develop processes to enhance and cultivate their own visions through the application of imagination and the arts. Releasing the Imagination should be required reading for all educators, particularly those in teacher education, and for general and academic readers." —Choice "Maxine Greene, with her customary eloquence, makes an impassioned argument for using the arts as a tool for opening minds and for breaking down the barriers to imagining the realities of worlds other than our own familiar cultures.... There is a strong rhythm to the thoughts, the arguments, and the entire sequence of essays presented here." —American Journal of Education "Releasing the Imagination gives us a vivid portrait of the possibilities of human experience and education's role in its realization. It is a welcome corrective to current pressures for educational conformity." —Elliot W. Eisner, professor of education and art, Stanford University "Releasing the Imagination challenges all the cant and cliché littering the field of education today. It breaks through the routine, the frozen, the numbing, the unexamined; it shocks the reader into new awareness." —William Ayers, associate professor, College of Education, University of Illinois, Chicago

The Necessity of Aesthetic Education is a manifesto. That which is experienced through engagement with art, through the many various and diverse art forms and media, is uniquely and essentially valuable to the lives of human beings. In order to fully appreciate and gain the most out of the arts, which offer a variety of aesthetic experience, there are concepts, skills and techniques integral to such understanding. In this book, Laura D'Olimpio argues that aesthetic education ought to be a compulsory part of education for all school-aged students, from pre-primary to high school, on the basis of its distinctive value. Such an argument is timely, given the so-called crisis in the arts and humanities, with declining student numbers in subjects that do not have a direct vocational correlative, and increased focus on science, engineering, technology and mathematics (STEM) subjects. As funding cuts increasingly slash the support for the arts, there is a need to argue for why the arts and arts education is valuable, for their own sake, as well as for the positive contributions they can and do make to society. Through critical engagement with a range of thinkers including Maxine Greene, John Dewey and Elliot Eisner, D'Olimpio offers a unique and important contribution to aesthetic education, and to research within philosophy of education.

The artist/educators in this book invite you to come with them on a journey of discovery into the meaning of teaching for aesthetic experience. With learning as their art, they create educational encounters with passion and feeling, and leave their students with vivid impressions, growth, and change. Each author engages in aesthetic experience from an individual perspective - as poet, dancer, visual artist, or musician - and each of them engages as an educator who brings art into his or her classroom, no matter what the subject. Inspired by the words of philosopher Maxine Greene, the contributors transform the theoretical into the practical, urging students to look to the arts and nature for simple beauty, and awaken their minds to new possibilities of creative learning.

What values should form the foundation of music education? And once we decide on those values, how do we ensure we are acting on them? In Values and Music Education, esteemed author Estelle R. Jorgensen explores how values apply to the practice of music education. We may declare values, but they can be hard to see in action. Jorgensen examines nine quartets of related values and offers readers a roadmap for thinking constructively and critically about the values they hold. In doing so, she takes a broad view of both music and education while drawing on a wide sweep of multidisciplinary literature. Not only does Jorgensen demonstrate an analytical and dialectical philosophical approach to examining values, but she also seeks to show how theoretical and practical issues are interconnected. An important addition to the field of music education, Values and Music Education highlights values that have been forgotten or marginalized, underscores those that seem perennial, and illustrates how values can be double-edged swords.

Revised and updated guide for prospective teachers with increased detail about the realities of teaching in a changing demographic society, post-pandemic life, societal changes brought about by technology, and the current political moment in education. Real challenges. Real choices. And very real consequences. That’s what today’s classrooms are about. That’s why Marleen Pugach’s Because Teaching Matters, Third Edition depicts today’s classrooms as they truly are, while highlighting the enormous impact teachers have on students’ lives. The book is organized around five professional commitments— learning from multiple sources of knowledge, using the curriculum responsibly, practicing equity-minded teaching, meeting the needs of individual students in the context of the classroom and school community, and contributing actively to the profession. The third edition focuses on: The current landscape and challenges of supporting multi-racial, multi-ethnic, multi-lingual and multi-ability classrooms across socio-economic levels, and the relationships among students, families, communities, and educators The latest academic approaches for teaching students who have disabilities, leveraging modern classroom technology, the role of legislation and funding, and updates on the current context of teaching and teacher preparation New post-pandemic societal and educational contexts Classroom and school reflections on practice, written by current teachers and teacher leaders in real classrooms and real schools, showing authentic best practices in action. Ideal for Foundations of Education and Introduction to Teaching courses designed to provide preservice teachers with an overview of the profession, Because Teaching Matters, Third Edition tells the story of today’s complex classrooms. It also drives home that, though the decision to teach is a serious one, it is one that can be extremely rewarding.