Strengthen programs of family and community engagement to promote equity and increase student success! When schools, families, and communities collaborate and share responsibility for students′ education, more students succeed in school. Based on 30 years of research and fieldwork, the fourth edition of the bestseller School, Family, and Community Partnerships: Your Handbook for Action, presents tools and guidelines to help develop more effective and more equitable programs of family and community engagement. Written by a team of well-known experts, it provides a theory and framework of six types of involvement for action; up-to-date research on school, family, and community collaboration; and new materials for professional development and on-going technical assistance. Readers also will find: Examples of best practices on the six types of involvement from preschools, and elementary, middle, and high schools Checklists, templates, and evaluations to plan goal-linked partnership programs and assess progress CD-ROM with slides and notes for two presentations: A new awareness session to orient colleagues on the major components of a research-based partnership program, and a full One-Day Team Training Workshop to prepare school teams to develop their partnership programs. As a foundational text, this handbook demonstrates a proven approach to implement and sustain inclusive, goal-linked programs of partnership. It shows how a good partnership program is an essential component of good school organization and school improvement for student success. This book will help every district and all schools strengthen and continually improve their programs of family and community engagement.

School, Family, and Community Partnerships: Preparing Educators and Improving Schools addresses a fundamental question in education today: How will colleges and universities prepare future teachers, administrators, counselors, and other education professionals to conduct effective programs of family and community involvement that contribute to students' success in school? The work of Joyce L. Epstein has advanced theories, research, policies, and practices of family and community involvement in elementary, middle, and high schools, districts, and states nationwide. In this second edition, she shows that there are new and better ways to organize programs of family and community involvement as essential components of district leadership and school improvement. THE SECOND EDITION OFFERS EDUCATORS AND RESEARCHERS: A framework for helping rising educators to develop comprehensive, goal-linked programs of school, family, andcommunity partnerships. A clear discussion of the theory of overlapping spheres of influence, which asserts that schools, families, and communitiesshare responsibility for student success in school. A historic overview and exploration of research on the nature and effects of parent involvement. Methods for applying the theory, framework, and research on partnerships in college course assignments, classdiscussions, projects and activities, and fi eld experiences. Examples that show how research-based approaches improve policies on partnerships, district leadership, andschool programs of family and community involvement. Definitive and engaging, School, Family, and Community Partnerships can be used as a main or supplementary text in courses on foundations of education methods of teaching, educational administration, family and community relations, contemporary issues in education, sociology of education, sociology of the family, school psychology, social work, education policy, and other courses that prepare professionals to work in schools and with families and students.

In most mathematics textbooks, the most exciting part of mathematics - the process of invention and discovery - is completely hidden from the student. The aim of Knots and Surfaces is to change all that. Knots and Surfaces guides the reader through Euler's formula, one and two-sided surfaces, and knot theory using games and examples. By means of a series of carefully selected tasks, this book leads the reader on to discover some real mathematics. There are no formulas to memorize; no procedures to follow. This book is a guide to the mathematics - it starts you in the right direction and brings you back if you stray too far. Discovery is left to you. This book is aimed at undergraduates and those with little background knowledge of mathematics.

This text is a comprehensive pedagogical presentation of the theory of representation of finite and compact Lie groups. It considers both the general theory and representation of specific groups. Representation theory is discussed on the following types of groups: finite groups of rotations, permutation groups, and classical compact semisimple Lie groups. Along the way, the structure theory of the compact semisimple Lie groups is exposed. This is aimed at research mathematicians and graduate students studying group theory.

Mathematics is discovered by looking at examples, noticing patterns, making conjectures, and testing those conjectures. Once discovered, the final results get organized and put in textbooks. The details and the excitement of the discovery are lost. This book introduces the reader to the excitement of the original discovery. By means of a wide variety of tasks, readers are led to find interesting examples, notice patterns, devise rules to explain the patterns, and discover mathematics for themselves. The subject studied here is the mathematics behind the idea of symmetry, but the methods and ideas apply to all of mathematics. The only prerequisites are enthusiasm and a knowledge of basic high-school math. The book is only a guide. It will start you off in the right direction and bring you back if you stray too far. The excitement and the discovery are left to you.

From William Horton -- a world renowned expert with more than thirty-five years of hands-on experience creating networked-based educational systems -- comes the next-step resource for e-learning training professionals. Like his best-selling book Designing Web-Based Training, this book is a comprehensive resource that provides practical guidance for making the thousand and one decisions needed to design effective e-learning. e-Learning by Design includes a systematic, flexible, and rapid design process covering every phase of designing e-learning. Free of academic jargon and confusing theory, this down-to-earth, hands-on book is filled with hundreds of real-world examples and case studies from dozens of fields. "Like the book's predecessor (Designing Web-based Training), it deserves four stars and is a must read for anyone not selling an expensive solution. -- From Training Media Review, by Jon Aleckson, www.tmreview.com, 2007

By studying algebraic varieties over a field, this book demonstrates how the notion of schemes is necessary in algebraic geometry. It gives a definition of schemes and describes some of their elementary properties.