2018 Frederic W. Ness Book Award, AAC&U How can educators ensure that young people who attain a postsecondary credential are adequately prepared for the future? Matthew T. Hora and his colleagues explain that the answer is not simply that students need more specialized technical training to meet narrowly defined employment opportunities. Beyond the Skills Gap challenges this conception of the “skills gap,” highlighting instead the value of broader twenty-first-century skills in postsecondary education. They advocate for a system in which employers share responsibility along with the education sector to serve the collective needs of the economy, society, and students. Drawing on interviews with educators in two- and four-year institutions and employers in the manufacturing and biotechnology sectors, the authors demonstrate the critical importance of habits of mind such as problem solving, teamwork, and communication. They go on to show how faculty and program administrators can create active learning experiences that develop students’ skills across a range of domains. The book includes in-depth descriptions of eight educators whose classrooms exemplify the effort to blend technical learning with the cultivation of twenty-first-century habits of mind. The study, set in Wisconsin, takes place against the backdrop of heated political debates over the role of public higher education. This thoughtful and nuanced account, enriched by keen observations of postsecondary instructional practice, promises to contribute new insights to the rich literature on workforce development and to provide valuable guidance for postsecondary faculty and administrators.

Why do children do the things they do? What can teachers do to manage it all? While there is not a simple method for understanding and managing all behaviors or all children, teachers can give young children the social and emotional tools needed to grow and thrive on their own. Developed and tested in the classroom, Beyond Behavior Management, is a strength-based approach to guiding and managing young children's behavior by helping them build and use essential life skills—attachment, collaboration, self-regulation, adaptability, contribution, and belonging—into the daily life of the early childhood classroom. As a result, children will learn to exhibit more pro-social behaviors, work better as a community, and become excited and active learners. This edition includes two new chapters and content reflecting early learning standards, new research, cultural diversity, and strategies to strengthen the home-school connection. Discussion and reflection questions, exercises, journal assignments, child profile templates, a planning worksheet, and sample scripts are also included. Jenna Bilmes is an early childhood consultant and an instructional designer for WestEd Child and Family Services. She is a frequent presenter to teachers, administrators, and counselors nationally and internationally.

Featuring contributed chapters written by experts within the field, Learning Critical Thinking Skills Beyond the 21st Century for Multidisciplinary Courses: A Human Rights Perspective in Education provides readers with various perspectives regarding the intersection of education, human rights, and critical thinking. The text integrates strategies and best practices that support equitable education, elevate human rights, and pave the way for a better future. The text is divided into four modules. In Module 1, readers learn about the history and evolution of human rights, how students can integrate language arts and human rights into STEM/STEAM subjects, and how critical teaching and social justice teaching can increase students' involvement and understanding. Module 2 features scholarship on leadership and inclusion in cross-cultural and multidisciplinary critical thinking, field theory as a means to analyze the social world critically, and the need across the disciplines for high-quality critical thinking. In Module 3, chapters speak to the critical nature of cultural learning and individual life experience in the quest for sustainability, the dynamics of cultural encounters, the correlation between art and mathematics from an instructional aspect, and how digital storytelling can foster greater academic literacy. The final module features chapters on humanistic literacy, strategies to enhance global literacy, and critical and cultural literacy.

Describes in pictures the proper responses to real-life situations that youth with social communication challenges face on a daily basis.