A collection of short stories, thematically related in that they all have to do with Teachers. Not all classroom stories, they do concern grownups on the edge of something risky, often a bit mad, sometimes mighty mad. While some stories are "light," others are "dark," yet there is a good deal of whimsey involved.

"This book is an exceptional introduction to some difficult ideas. It is full of downright good advice for every academic who wants to do something practical to improve his or hers students’ learning." Paul Ramsden, Brisbane, Australia "Biggs and Tang present a unified view of university teaching that is both grounded in research and theory and replete with guidance for novice and expert instructors. The book will inspire, challenge, unsettle, and in places annoy and even infuriate its readers, but it will succeed in helping them think about how high quality teaching can contribute to high quality learning." John Kirby, Queens University, Ontario, Canada This best-selling book explains the concept of constructive alignment used in implementing outcomes-based education. Constructive alignment identifies the desired learning outcomes and helps teachers design the teaching and learning activities that will help students to achieve those outcomes, and to assess how well those outcomes have been achieved. Each chapter includes tasks that offer a 'how-to' manual to implement constructive alignment in your own teaching practices. This new edition draws on the authors' experience of consulting on the implementation of constructive alignment in Australia, Hong Kong, Ireland and Malaysia including a wider range of disciplines and teaching contexts. There is also a new section on the evaluation of constructive alignment, which is now used worldwide as a framework for good teaching and assessment, as it has been shown to: Assist university teachers who wish to improve the quality of their own teaching, their students' learning and their assessment of learning outcomes Aid staff developers in providing support for departments in line with institutional policies Provide a framework for administrators interested in quality assurance and enhancement of teaching across the whole university. The authors have also included useful web links to further material. Teaching for Quality Learning at University will be of particular interest to teachers, staff developers and administrators.

In an era in which the teaching enterprise is freighted with tactics, techniques, and methods, M. Robert Gardner guides us back to the spirit of teaching. He writes especially about the dilemmas and challenges of teaching, about how it feels to be trying to teach. Gardner's provocative, often iconoclastic musings will goad teachers of all subjects to reflect anew on their calling. Clinical readers will take special pleasure in the humane psychoanalytic sensibility that not only infuses Gardner's own teaching, but shapes his approach to the most basic questions about teaching and learning in general.

Warning! 'But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.' Matthew 8:6 (KJV) Take heed, all of you unbelieving miscreants in the public school system bent on programming kids for the deceitful New World Order. That warning is from the King of kings! School Daze is written with a satirical bite and is tempered with comic relief. Its author, Lucia Jones, a teacher in the public school system, gives an up-close and personal look at the biggest issues plaguing the System today. Among these issues are school zoning that forces students to move schools (and sometimes neighborhoods) often, a lax teaching curriculum, incompetent school officials, sex education (starting in kindergarten), ditching the basics and the 3 Rs for cuddly, feely programs loaded with political correctness and the two faces of multiculturalism. Christian values no longer play a role in public schools. Some public schools have taken God out of the Pledge of Allegiance and have even gone so far as pledging allegiance to the Earth. Prayer is not allowed, and the Ten Commandments are no longer displayed. Christmas parties are now winter holiday parties. Even the treats for these parties are at the mercy of the System—no more candy and ice cream, but tofu smoothies and yogurt cups. Lucia Jones is a devout Christian, mother of four, grandmother of eleven, and a veteran elementary school teacher in the public school system of twenty-five-plus years. She has spent eighteen of those years teaching at a small public elementary school on an Indian reservation. Lucia lives in Northern Nevada with her husband, Tom.