This is a highly current and engaging, multicultural, introduction to education and teaching -- both its challenges and its joys. Jeannie Oakes is a leading education researcher and director of the UCLA teacher education program. Martin Lipton is an education writer and consultant and has taught in public schools for 31 years. Together, they bring an excellent blend of theory and applications to the text. This ground-breaking text responds to the current national crisis in teaching and teacher education, considers the values and politics that pervade education, and asks critical questions about how conventional thinking and practice came to be and who benefits from them. The text takes the position that a hopeful, democratic future depends on whether all students learn, and pays particular attention to inequalities associated with race, social class, language, gender, and other social categories and looks for alternatives to the inequalities.

The text provides a solid research base and practical treatment of essential topics that locates these topics within cognitive, sociocultural, and constructivist perspectives on learning, and within democratic values. The text infuses issues of diversity throughout its discussion of traditional elements of schools and teaching -- learning, curriculum, instruction, etc. It presents educational foundations and history as alive and active in today?s schools, and treats them as useful concepts for students to use as they think about and respond to more transitory, current ?headline? issues, such as charter schools, vouchers, standards, and bilingual education.

Central to the book is the belief that schools can and must be places of extraordinary educational quality and institutions for social justice. The authors explore the tensions between the democratic aims of schools and competition for always-scarce high quality opportunities. Throughout the chapters are boxed personal observations of a diverse group of first-year teachers who voice their analyses and personal anecdotes about their own struggles to transform theory into practice. ?Digging Deeper? sections that end each chapter feature scholars who are working on issues raised in the chapter. An innovative Instructor?s Manual provides ways to teach the course consistent with cognitive and sociocultural learning theory, culturally diverse pedagogy, and authentic assessment.