This book focuses on the talk of science classrooms and in particular on the ways in which the different kinds of interactions between teachers and students contribute to meaning making and learning. Central to the text is a new analytical framework for characterising the key features of the talk of school science classrooms. This framework is based on sociocultural principles and links the work of theorists such as Vygotsky and Bakhtin to the day-to-day interactions of contemporary science classrooms.

The spectacular but unsettling reality of faster cycles of change, breakdown of traditional values and institutions, and many other symptoms of technological innovation-what makes these necessary is the subject of this thought-provoking book. All the good intentions of educators, scholars, politicians, and policymakers will fail if they do not recognize why literacy as a dominant framework of human activity is no longer adequate. The current dynamics of human activity is without precedent. It is not the result of technology, but of deeper forces of change. The answer to the failure of many seemingly eternal institutions-government, family, education-is not improvement in the traditional sense, but a fundamentally new perspective. The digital paradigm underlying the new civilization provides a basis for this perspective. But it will be misapplied unless understood within the broader framework of the driving forces behind human activity.

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Neoliberalism--the doctrine that market exchange is an ethic in itself, capable of acting as a guide for all human action--has become dominant in both thought and practice throughout much of the world since 1970 or so. Writing for a wide audience, David Harvey, author of The New Imperialism and The Condition of Postmodernity, here tells the political-economic story of where neoliberalization came from and how it proliferated on the world stage. Through critical engagement with this history, he constructs a framework, not only for analyzing the political and economic dangers that now surround us, but also for assessing the prospects for the more socially just alternatives being advocated by many oppositional movements.

Though classroom instructional strategies should clearly be based on sound science and research, knowing when to use them and with whom is more of an art. In The Art and Science of Teaching: A Comprehensive Framework for Effective Instruction, author Robert J. Marzano presents a model for ensuring quality teaching that balances the necessity of research-based data with the equally vital need to understand the strengths and weaknesses of individual students.