Concise, accessible, and current, this text provides outstanding applications, real-life stories, and effective pedagogical features for those contemplating the teaching profession. Farris is also a children's book author and tells the true story of teaching in her own, easy-to-digest style. This is only fully customizable text for introduction to education. Instructors can pick and choose whatever chapters they want in whatever order they prefer. Students receive a re-ordered, repaginated softcover textbook. The text is distinguished by current coverage of multicultural issues woven throughout the text.
Each chapter begins with a new feature, a discussion with a teacher, either beginning or experienced, covering the chapter's focus. Point/Counterpoint presents different sides to important educational issues. A second new feature, Talking It Over, an informal chat with the author reviewing important chapter elements, concludes each chapter. The second edition has been extensively revised to reflect the most current issues in teaching and Education today. While the overall organization of the text has been re-arranged and expanded to provide full-coverage of the material, the proven features of the text have remained. Farris covers all current topics of interest to Education majors, including in-depth and updated information on International and American History of Education, Ethical Issues and Legal Issues.
The most current data in Education are outlined and then described and supported by charts and tables. Information on computers and how the teacher can use them is integrated throughout the book. Web sites now are listed at the end of each chapter and throughout the text to point the student towards more information. Responding to user and reviewer feedback, the Historical Foundations in Education chapter in the first edition has been expanded into two chapters, Historical Foundations of Education: International Influences, and Historical Foundations of American Education. The popular Student Resource Guide has been added as a final chapter. This reorganization and the addition of two more chapters allow for a smoother transition between core topics.
About the Author
Dr. Pamela J. Farris is a presidential teaching professor in the College of Education at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Illinois. A professor of curriculum and instruction, Farris has been at NIU since achieving her doctorate at Indiana State University in 1980. Prior to receiving her doctorate in elementary education with a focus on reading, Farris was a Research Fellow at Indiana State. She began her teaching career as an instructor in the South Putnam School District in Greencastle, Indiana. Farris' B.S. and M.S. degrees are also from Indiana State, where she graduated Magna Cum Laude.
Pamela Farris is actively involved in numerous professional associations, including the Association for Curriculum and Supervision, the Children's Literature Assembly, Delta Kappa Gamma, the International Reading Association, the National Council of Teachers of English, Phi Delta Kappa, and the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators. The latter association is especially significant to Farris who recently published her first children's book, Young Mouse and Elephant, An East African Folktale, a picture book illustrated by Valeri Gorbachev (1996, Houghton Mifflin).
