What Do We Mean by That?: Interrogating Familiar Expressions in Education is a collection of essays that opens a space for all educational workers—teachers, teacher educators, administrators, politicians, and others—to unpack commonly used educational phrases and ideas. The idea is to carefully examine what we say to one another when we talk about schools, curriculum, students, and other educational problems or issues—when we say things like “We have to meet students where they are,” and “All children can learn,” or “What does the data say?” What Do We Mean by That? challenges and clarifies such phrases and the how, and why, that they shape educational policies and practices. The influential curricular theorist Dwayne Huebner charged us to always be aware of our “man-made tools,” such as language, and said that since “all educators attempt to shape the world; theorists should call attention to the tools used for the shaping in order that the world being shaped can be more beautiful and just.” Language is a tool in educational practice in myriad ways: between administrators and teachers, teachers and students, teachers and parents, and students and students, as examples. A scripted curriculum is a tool intended to provide fixed language to teachers. It is normal for phrases to make their way into our everyday practices and get lodged there. But we need opportunities to interrupt ourselves and study our language tools to ensure they help create beauty and justice. This collection of thoughtful essays seeks to be this interruption. It is an invaluable tool for improving the educational experience of students and schools. Perfect for courses such as: Foundations of Education; Curriculum Studies; Diversity in Education; Educational Rhetoric and Policy

Language about God is something like the language of poetry—intended not to increase our information about the world—we know facts about the world already—but to evoke in us a certain attitude or way of looking at things or feeling about things. What sort of view of the world, then, is language about God trying to convey? Keith Ward suggests it is that the world is an expression of a reality beyond it. In this book, he unpacks the meaning of the word God and explains why we need to get rid of the crude and unhelpful assumptions that still abound. This is a book for all who are curious about how God, and God’s actions, can be understood today.

"This book explores the word meaning as it is used in such expressions as "the meaning of life," "the search for meaning," "ultimate meaning." In many of the "metaphysical" contexts where we find the word meaning, it appears to mean "purpose," "value," "goal," "direction," and even "God." The book answers the following questions: How did the English word meaning come to carry these various sub-senses, given that its original sense has to do with signifying? When did the notion of a "meaning of life" arise in English and other languages? How does the English word meaning, which is a verbal noun, differ in these usages from the roughly equivalent words in other European languages? How did the word evolve in usage over time? How has it been used in recent decades? The book's chapters show that the usage is relatively recent, arising in the late eighteenth century in German romanticism and passing into English in the early nineteenth century; that the English word functions differently from the way its European near-equivalents do, thanks to its ability to suggest signifying and hence interpretation; that it is seldom defined and hence ambiguous and polyvalent; that it functions today in a wide variety of contexts, including psychotherapy and the continuing conversation between secularism and religion; and that ambiguity and polyvalence are actually the source of its power, since those qualities allow for flexibility in the way the word is understood"--

This 4-hour free course explored the many attempts at defining 'family' and why these complex and contradictory meanings are important to us.

Abstract: Subsidy policies on public urban transport have been adopted ubiquitously. In both developed and developing countries, subsidies are implemented to make transport more affordable. Despite their widespread implementation, there are virtually no quantitative assessments of their distributional incidence, making it impossible to determine if these instruments are pro-poor. This paper reviews the arguments used to justify subsidy policies in public urban transport. Using different tools to quantitatively evaluate the incidence and distributive impacts of subsidy policy options, the paper analyzes the findings of a series of research papers that study urban public transport subsidy policies in developed and developing countries. The available evidence indicates that current public urban transport subsidy policies do not make the poorest better off. Supply-side subsidies are, for the most part, neutral or regressive; while demand-side subsidies perform better-although many of them do not improve income distribution. Considering that the policy objective is to improve the welfare of the poorest, it is imperative to move away from supply-side subsidies towards demand-side subsidies and to integrate transport social concerns into wider poverty alleviation efforts, which include the possibility of channeling subsidies through monetary transfer systems or through other transfer instruments (food subsidies, health services and education for the poor). The general conclusion of the paper is that more effort should be devoted to improve the targeting properties of public urban transport subsidies using means-testing procedures to ensure a more pro-poor incidence of subsidies.