“Multiple modernities” is not a novel theme, as the editors and contributors amply concede in the volume. At its best, the conception is an invitation to ever more openness to the possibilities of...

__Preparing Teachers to Educate Whole Students_ offers a wide-ranging comparative account of how innovative professional development programs in a number of countries guide and support teachers in their efforts to promote cognitive and socio-emotional growth in their students._ The book focuses on holistic educational outcomes in an effort to better serve students in the twenty-first century and examines seven programs in all—in Chile, China, Colombia, India, Mexico, the United States, and Singapore. Fernando M. Reimers, Connie K. Chung, and their (...) contributors focus on a pair of issues of great significance to educators throughout the world: the need to identify and promote a full range of competencies in students as they prepare for work and life in the twenty-first century, and the need to create and enhance professional development programs for teachers that will help them cultivate these competencies in their students. _Preparing Teachers to Educate Whole Students_ offers a unique and helpful contribution to our understanding of fundamental educational goals and the professional development programs for teachers that aim to further those goals. (shrink)

This book describes how different nations have defined the core competencies and skills that young people will need in order to thrive in twenty-first-century jobs, and how those nations have fashioned educational policies and curricula meant to promote those skills. The book examines six countries--Chile, China, India, Mexico, Singapore, and the United States--exploring how each one defines, supports, and cultivates those competencies that students will need in order to succeed in the current century. Teaching and Learning for the Twenty-First Century (...) appears at a time of heightened attention to comparative studies of national education systems, and to international student assessments such as those that have come out of PISA (the Program for International Student Assessment), led by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. This book's crucial contribution to the burgeoning field of international education arises out of its special attention to first principles--and thus to first questions: As Reimers and Chung explain, "much can be gained by an explicit investigation of the intended purposes of education, in what they attempt to teach students, and in the related questions of why those purposes and how they are achieved." These questions are crucial to education practice and reform at a time when educators (and the students they serve) face unique, pressing challenges. The book's detailed attention to such questions signals its indispensable value for policy makers, scholars, and education leaders today. (shrink)

In this essay I discuss Abraham Joshua Heschel’s influence in the Chinese-reading world by focusing on the growing list of publications about, and translations of, his works in Chinese. By examinin...

Using multi–sources: archeaology, history, geography, anthropology, wildlife, zoology, biology, oral tradition and archival material, the article examines the history of the elephant in Ghana, highlighting the various methods employed in hunting as well as the cultural and economic use values of the elephant in Ghana.