This text considers issues in alternative education. It looks at the issues from teaching, learning and research perspectives.

This book offers a comparative analysis of alternative education in the UK, focusing on learning spaces that cater for children and young people. It constitutes one of the first book-length explorations of alternative learning spaces outside mainstream education - including Steiner, human scale and forest schools, care farms and homeschooling.Based on original research with teachers, parents and young people at over 50 learning spaces, Geographies of alternative education demonstrates the importance of a geographical lens for understanding alternative education. In so doing, it develops contemporary theories of autonomy, emotion/affect, habit, intergenerational relations and life-itself. The book will appeal to academics and postgraduates in the fields of geography, sociology, education and youth studies. Given ongoing concerns about the state's role in providing children's education, and an increase in the number of alternative education providers in the UK and elsewhere, the book also highlights several critical questions for policy makers and practitioners.

Imagining the universities of the future. How can we re-envision the university? Too many examples of what passes for educational innovation today—MOOCs especially—focus on transactions, on questions of delivery. In Alternative Universities, David J. Staley argues that modern universities suffer from a poverty of imagination about how to reinvent themselves. Anyone seeking innovation in higher education today should concentrate instead, he says, on the kind of transformational experience universities enact. In this exercise in speculative design, Staley proposes ten models of innovation in higher education that expand our ideas of the structure and scope of the university, suggesting possibilities for what its future might look like. What if the university were designed around a curriculum of seven broad cognitive skills or as a series of global gap year experiences? What if, as a condition of matriculation, students had to major in three disparate subjects? What if the university placed the pursuit of play well above the acquisition and production of knowledge? By asking bold "What if?" questions, Staley assumes that the university is always in a state of becoming and that there is not one "idea of the university" to which all institutions must aspire. This book specifically addresses those engaged in university strategy—university presidents, faculty, policy experts, legislators, foundations, and entrepreneurs—those involved in what Simon Marginson calls "university making." Pairing a critique tempered to our current moment with an explanation of how change and disruption might contribute to a new "golden age" for higher education, Alternative Universities is an audacious and essential read.

"Alternative education encompasses a diversity of schooling types and organizations. International Perspectives on Alternative Education explores alternative forms of schooling from the position of academics, policy workers and those working and studying in such schools across the world. The first-hand accounts by those working and leading in alternative schools, and the analyses by those working at the policy level, bring alive their dilemmas and challenges. Complementing these are the academic contributions, which examine over-arching questions about social justice and the meanings of achievement, success, choice and purpose across education. The issue of alternative education and why it is relevant in today's educational landscape is an international one, and the book draws on contributions from Australia, Indonesia, Korea, Denmark, England, Germany, Scotland and the United States. The book will be of interest to all educators, teachers, academics, students, policy workers and others concerned about issues of social justice and education."--

This book is designed to give parents and teachers information on the alternative education options available in the UK. It covers three main areas: Outside the state system: small schools; Steiner Waldorf schools; Montessori schools; democratic schools and other schools with alternative philosophies Doing it yourself: setting up a small school or learning centre; educating at home; flexible schooling Alternatives within the state system: how some state schools are finding different ways of working The values, philosophies and methods of each alternative are described, including the first-hand experiences and accounts of children, teachers and parents. There are answers to common questions and useful sources of further information. This accessible and informative book is the ideal introduction for parents deciding how best to educate their children. It will be of interest to teachers looking to build their knowledge of different education philosophies.

Over the past 20 years, alternative certification for teachers has emerged as a major avenue of teacher preparation. The proliferation of new pathways has spurred heated debate over how best to recruit, prepare, and support qualified teachers. Alternative Routes to Teaching provides a thorough and dispassionate review of the research evidence on alternative certification. It takes readers beyond the simple dichotomies that have characterized the debate over alternative certification, encourages them to look carefully at the trade-offs implicit in any route into teaching, and suggests ways to “marry” the proven strengths of both traditional and alternative approaches.