Ruth Wodak

P. Corson

This volume covers basic fields of Sociolinguistics and the Sociology of Language; both macro- and micro-domains are presented in the fields of language teaching, minority languages, and problems of language acquisition as well as practical issues of curricula planning and textbook writing. This book addresses students and scholars in the social sciences as well as public officials in education, language teachers and textbook writers.

Language Policy and Political Issues in Education

Encyclopedia of Language and Education

Jim Cummins

David Corson

Made up of eight volumes, the Encyclopedia of Language and Education is the first attempt at providing an overview of the subject.

Bilingual Education

Nancy H. Hornberger

This volume seeks to enable language and education practitioners and researchers to get a sense of the range of issues being pursued in language and education research and the array of methods employed to do so. It focuses on language and education in relation to society, variation, culture, and interaction. Its unity of purpose and outlook with regard to the central role of language as both vehicle and mediator of educational processes and to the need for continued and deepening research into the limits and possibilities that implies is most impressive.

Research Methods in Language and Education

Kenneth A. Leithwood

Judith Chapman

P. Hallinger

Ann Hart

EDITORS This introduction to the International Handbook of Educational Lead ership and Administration describes some of the motivation for devel oping the book and several assumptions on which is based much of the work represented in its 31 chapters. A synopsis of the contents of those chapters is also provided. SOME KEY ASSUMPTIONS It is sometimes suggested that the search for an adequate understanding of leadership is doomed to fail. After all, there is little evidence of agreement about the concept in spite of prodigious efforts dating back hundreds if not thousands of years. Such a view is captured, for exam ple, in Bennis' observation that: Of all the hazy and confounding areas in social psychology, leadership theory undoubtedly contends for top nomination. Probably more has been written and less is known about lead ership than any other topic in the behavioural sciences. (1959, page 259) We do not find this state of affairs discouraging (nor entirely accurate) and, of course, it did not prevent Bennis from proceeding either. One reason for our desire to continue in the face of such discouraging words is that a great deal of leadership research aspires to develop a general theory, a theory which applies to all or most domains of organized human activity. This aspiration inevitably produces decontextualized and, therefore, abstract categories of practice. Howard Gardner's (1995) depiction of leadership as story telling is a case in point.

P. Corson

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