The International Handbook of Student Experience in Elementary and Secondary School is the first handbook of its kind to be published. It brings together in a single volume the groundbreaking work of scholars who have conducted studies of student experiences of school in Afghanistan, Australia, Canada, England, Ghana, Ireland, Pakistan, and the United States. Drawing extensively on students’ interpretations of their experiences in school as expressed in their own words, chapter authors offer insight into how students conceptualize and approach school, how students understand and address the ongoing social opportunities for and challenges in working with other students and teachers, and the multiple ways in which students shape and contribute to school improvement. The individual chapters are framed by an opening chapter, which provides background on, bases of, and trends in research on students’ experiences of school, and a final chapter, which uses the interpretive framework translation provided to explore how researching students’ experiences of school challenges those involved to translate the qualitative research methods they use, the terms they evoke to describe and define students’ experiences of schools, and, in fact, themselves as researchers.

This collection of essays discusses and analyzes the efficacy of media education around the world, paying particular attention to whether and how it improves the critical thinking skills of students. Many books on the market describe the importance of media education and include suggestions for pedagogy, but few evaluate its effectiveness.

The contributors to this collection therefore push past arguments that simply support the need for media education by asking: Is media education effective in helping young people negotiate better with the mass media. If so, how? And if not, why?

Implicit in this anthology is a belief that without a thorough understanding of the extent to which media education achieves its aims, or fails to do so, its potential cannot truly be fulfilled. Significantly, then, the contributors offer a rich account of media education initiatives and critical analyses from their personal experience of media education in practice. Obstacles, challenges, and disappointments are discussed, as are success stories, lessons learned, and suggestions about how to bring media education closer to achieving its emancipatory goals.

This book will be of interest to anyone concerned with the social and intellectual development of young people, as well as the process and importance of teaching critical thinking.

Review essay of Teratologies: A Cultural Study of Cancer, Jackie Stacey, Routledge, London and New York, 1997 and Ien Ang, On Not Speaking Chinese: Living Between Asia and the West, Ien Ang, Routledge, London and New York, 2001. I use these books, amongst others, as a springboard to explore the phenomenon of 'personal criticism' or autobiographical academic writing.

Manet, Monet, Pissarro, Cézanne, Renoir, Degas, Sisley, Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt. Though they were often ridiculed or ignored by their contemporaries, today astonishing sums are paid for the works of these artists, whose paintings are celebrated for their ability to capture the moment, not only in the fleeting lights of a landscape but in scenes of daily life. Their dazzling pictures are familiar—but how well does the world know the Impressionists as people? The Private Lives of the Impressionists tells their story. It is the first book to offer an intimate and lively biography of the world's most popular group of artists.

In a vivid and moving narrative, biographer Sue Roe shows the Impressionists in the studios of Paris, rural lanes of Montmartre and rowdy riverside bars as Paris underwent Baron Haussmann's spectacular transformation. For more than twenty years they lived and worked together as a group, struggling to rebuild their lives after the Franco-Prussian War and supporting one another through shocked public reactions to unfamiliar canvases depicting laundresses, dancers, spring blossoms and boating scenes.

This intimate, colorful, superbly researched account takes us into their homes and studios, and describes their unconventional, volatile and precarious lives, as well as the stories behind the paintings.

This report was commissioned by Whitehawk Inn, and details the findings of a qualitative review of the work of the Whitehawk Inn community-based adult education and training hub, carried out with the management team, Gateway Project workers, community trustees, key education and employment advice providers, and with learners. The Report deals with the activity of the Whitehawk Inn between August 2006 and July 2007. Objectives of the Evaluation The purposes of this evaluation were to: Consider the management of the Project; Appraise the work of the Gateway project, its curriculum development and progression pathways; Review the information, advice and guidance work; Review partnership development and delivery; Evaluate successes, good practice and capacity issues; Make recommendations for the future direction of the Project.

This chapter uses explores the relationship between the public sphere and cultural institutions in developing, honing and disseminating an appropriate language to enable sophisticated and conceptually rigorous analysis of the visual cultures of contemporary life. Herbert Read initially used print media -including small printed booklets, books and journals (for instance The Listener) and realised the potential of the radio to enable artists and architects themselves to speak. Finally, he worked with art institutions (including most famously and successfully the ICA, London) to provide places not only for the showing of contemporary culture but, most crucially, as a public space for the discussion of ideas associated with the modern movement.

This distinguished volume of essays commemorates the work of acclaimed writer Angela Carter. Here, renowned writers and critics including Margaret Atwood, Robert Coover, Hermione Lee, and Marina Warner discuss the novels, stories and, polemics that made Carter one of the most spellbinding writers of her generation.

This essay reviews critical developments in the history of oral history and outlines four paradigm transformations in theory and practice: the postwar renaissance of memory as a source for 'people's history'; the development, from the late 1970s, of 'post-positivist' approaches to memory and subjectivity; a transformation in perceptions about the role of the oral historian as interviewer and analyst from the late 1980s; and the digital revolution of the late 1990s and early 2000s. Threaded through discussion of these paradigm shifts are reflections upon four factors that have impacted upon oral history and, in turn, been significantly influenced by oral historians: the growing significance of political and legal practices in which personal testimony is a central resource; the increasing interdisciplinarity of approaches to interviewing and the interpretation of memory; the proliferation from the 1980s of studies concerned with the relationship between history and memory; and the evolving internationalism of oral history.