Patricia Ruggiano Schmidt

Mary Beth Combs

Transforming Ourselves, Transforming the World is an insightful collection that articulates how Jesuit colleges and universities create an educational community energized to transform the lives of its students, faculty, and administrators and to equip them to transform a broken world. The essays are rooted in Pedro Arrupe’s ideal of forming men and women for others and inspired by Peter-Hans Kolvenbach’s October 2000 address at Santa Clara in which he identified three areas where the promotion of justice may be manifested in our institutions: formation and learning, research and teaching, and our way of proceeding. Using the three areas laid out in Fr. Kolvenbach’s address as its organizing structure, this stimulating volume addresses the following challenges: How do we promote student life experiences and service? How does interdisciplinary collaborative research promote teaching and reflection? How do our institutions exemplify justice in their daily practices? Introductory pieces by internationally acclaimed authors such as Rev. Dean Brackley, S.J.; David J. O’Brien; Lisa Sowle Cahill; and Rev. Stephen A. Privett, S.J., pave the way for a range of smart and highly creative essays that illustrate and honor the scholarship, teaching, and service that have developed out of a commitment to the ideals of Jesuit higher education. The topics covered span disciplines and fields from the arts to engineering, from nursing to political science and law. The essays offer numerous examples of engaged pedagogy, which as Rev. Brackley points out fits squarely with Jesuit pedagogy: insertion programs, community-based learning, study abroad, internships, clinical placements, and other forms of interacting with the poor and with cultures other than our own. This book not only illustrates the dynamic growth of Jesuit education but critically identifies key challenges for educators, such as: How can we better address issues of race in our teaching and learning? Are we educating in nonviolence? How can we make the college or university “greener”? How can we evoke a desire for the faith that does justice? Transforming Ourselves, Transforming the World is an indispensable volume that has the potential to act as an academic facilitator for the promotion of justice within not only Jesuit schools but all schools of higher education.

Justice in Jesuit Higher Education

Transforming Ourselves, Transforming the World

Claudia Finkbeiner

This book is a valuable one for teacher educators and teacher education programs in the United States and Europe, since it is organized around numerous data sources. It contains national and international adaptations of the ABC’s of Cultural Understanding and Communication. Authors for this book represent many languages and cultures and know, first hand, the socially constructed issues related to language, culture, and ethnicity. This book promises to make a significant contribution to preparing teachers to work with families and children. It should be read by all teacher educators as well as preservice and inservice teachers. In the new millennium teachers must redefine their responsibilities to ensure that ALL children have the opportunity to succeed. ABC’s of Cultural Understanding and Communication: National and International Adaptations is a perfect place to start.

National and International Adaptations

ABC's of Cultural Understanding and Communication

Peter B. Mosenthal

This book offers a array of essays with challenging ideas and provoking new analyses of power asymmetries, multiple epistemologies and vital con-cerns for the education of a different America, the America of new immi-grants, people of color with other cultures, languages and values. The new American that many want to ignore and is becoming the only America. This book also forces us to reflect on the educational challenges we must face, especially in teacher education and the preparation of intellectual leaders. None of the major agenda items associated with a new era of social justice can be either comprehended or accomplished without a profound understanding of multicultural literacy, and of its relationship to ethnic, racial, cultural and linguistic diversity. While in previous decades we used frequently a rhetoric of multiculturalism (at a safe distance), today we are living multiculturalism and practicing ethnic, cultural and racial diversity in our daily lives as we seek a marriage partner, a business associate, a friend, a church. Most of all, we must live multiculturalism as we go school and see children’s faces. There is no way to escape the reality of ethnic, racial and linguistic diversity as it comes entangled with many other cul-tural and class differences between and within each group we encounter. Suddenly, an abrupt awakening for many mainstream educators, what was peculiar of some areas in the Southwest, has become common scenario in most metropolis and large cities. The present volume brings us face to face with issues and challenges we can no longer sweep under the rug. This outstanding volume lays down a solid general conceptual foundation that permits us to link our theoretical past with the post-modern era. It also provides a clear context for the dis-cussion of contrasting notions of monocultural literacy and the relation-ship of literacy and power. The volume goes on to deal with the relationship of literacy and culture (actually to specific cultures, especially African American). At this point the discourse turns to strategies for incor-porating minority perspectives into the literacy curriculum and including the home cultures of disenfranchised peoples. The last section of the book offers help on the practical issues of teacher education for student popula-tions often ignored, and linkages between schools and homes in order to empower the disenfranchised and isolated.

Reconceptualizing Literacy in the New Age of Multiculturalism and Pluralism

Ann Watts Pailliotet

Exploring Values Through Multimedia, Literature and Literacy Events was written by teachers and educational researchers for classrooms and schools interested in developing learning communities that develop critical and compassionate future citizens. Through the use of specific multimedia, literature and literacy events, this book presents numerous ways for classroom teachers and schools to promote respectful, responsible, caring, and sharing students in a democratic society. Beginning with Plato’s message that we cannot let the formation of good citizens to chance, Exploring Values Through Multimedia, Literature and Literacy Events takes the reader through a brief history of character education and moral development and a summary of multimedia’s impact on our lives. The chapters that follow are devoted to teacher tested classroom and school programs, activities, and resources for the understanding of diverse human perspectives. Included in several chapters are the unique ways classes might analyze how and why information is presented in the media. Due to the constant media bombardment on our lives, the goal if this volume is to support our students as they discern the meanings of truth and justice.

Making Connections

Exploring Values Through Literature, Multimedia, and Literacy Events

Althier Lazar

The 2nd Edition of Reconceptualizing Literacy in the New Age of Multiculturalism and Pluralism honors the genius of Dr. Peter Mosenthal. His contributions to the field of literacy were unprecedented. Many described him as a superb researcher who never lost sight of the purpose of education. He made us laugh as he led us in a nursery rhyme song during his National Reading Conference (LRA) Presidential Address and made us think as he explained the significance of educational implications in all research articles. He also mentored and taught graduate students in gentle and carefully attentive ways, showing his respect and appreciation for the work of each individual in the field. He was a remarkable person. The second edition of this book includes many experienced and new scholars from around the world. Qualitative and quantitative research methodologies are scattered throughout and the practical and theoretical are well represented. New Literacies and Global Perspectives are added sections in this volume. In this era of the “Common Core”, Reconceptualizing Literacy in the New Age of Multiculturalism and Pluralism, presents a rational educational balance for literacy development across the curriculum.

Patricia Ruggiano Schmidt

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