John Smyth’s remarkable body of writing, research and scholarship has spanned four decades, and the urgency of our times makes it imperative to look in some depth at the breadth of his research and its trajectory, in order to see how we can connect, extend, build and enrich our understandings from it. Possibly the single most unique aspect to Smyth’s version of critical research is his passion for living and ‘doing’ what it means to be a critical pedagogue. For him, ‘doing’ is a verb that ...

Living on the Edge: Rethinking Poverty, Class and Schooling, Second Edition confronts one of the most enduring and controversial issues in education—the nexus between poverty and underachievement. This topic stubbornly remains a key contemporary battleground in the struggle to raise standards. Living on the Edge maps and compares a number of competing explanations, critiques inadequate and deficit accounts and offers a more convincing and useful theory. The authors challe...

Becoming Educated examines the education of young people, especially those from the most ‘disadvantaged’ contexts. The book argues that because the focus has been obdurately and willfully on the wrong things – blaming students; measuring, testing and comparing them; and treating families and communities in demeaning ways that convert them into mere ‘consumers’ – that the resulting misdiagnoses have produced a damaging ensemble of faulty ‘solutions.’ By shifting the emphasis to loo...

This book explores schools and how they can function as social institutions that advance the interests and life chances of all young people, especially those who are already the most marginalized and at an educational disadvantage. Social justice is a key theme as the book examines the needs of youth, the concept of school culture, school/community relations, socially critical pedagogy, curriculum and leadership and a socially critical approach to work. The Socially Just School is based up...

The New York Times bestselling The Wild Robot series returns, taking Roz on an action-packed under-the-ocean journey to save her beloved island!Life for Roz and the animals on their island is perfect. But when mysterious, dangerous waters surround the island, the animals are forced inland to fight over dwindling resources.Roz calms and organizes the animals, but the poison tide takes a terrible toll on the island. So the wild robot sets ou...

The sequel to thebestselling The Wild Robot, by award-winning author Peter BrownShipwrecked on a remote, wild island, Robot Roz learned from the unwelcoming animal inhabitants and adapted to her surroundings--but can she survive the challenges of the civilized world and find her way home to Brightbill and the island?From bestselling and award-winning author and illustrator Peter Brown comes a heartwarming and action-packed sequel to his New Yor...

This ebook includes audio narration.Three-time Caldecott Honoree Peter Sis rides the rising tide of soccer enthusiasm to score another winner.Madlenka—that cosmopolitan little girl whose city block is a world of its own—is back and ready to play! When she dribbles her brand new soccer ball out the door and around the corner, it seems that everyone wants to get in the game—the mailbox, a dog, even a parking meter, but especially all the neighborhood cats, an...

This gorgeously illustrated picture book brings to full color the adventures of the #1 New York Times bestselling novel The Wild Robot.Roz is not where she’s supposed to be.You see, the robot wasn’t designed to live in the wilderness. But when she washes up on an island, she must learn from the animal inhabitants and adapt to her new, natural surroundings, and before long, the island begins to feel like home.Filled with bestselling...

A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, The Plague of Doves—the first part of a loose trilogy that includes the National Book Award-winning The Round House and LaRose—is a gripping novel about a long-unsolved crime in a small North Dakota town and how, years later, the consequences are still being felt by the community and a nearby Native American reservation.Though generations have passed, the town of Pluto continues to be haunted by the murder of a farm fami...