A comprehensive overview of contemporary Italian pedagogy from an international perspective blends empirical research with practical strategies for teachersIn recent years, teachers of Italian, like most world languages, have faced many changes to the teaching and learning landscape, including new teaching mediums, different expectations for enrollments, and a vivid awareness of social issues in the classroom. Teachers must now navigate effective language teaching ...

Observing European debates about EuroDisney, McDonald's, Hollywood films and television programs, and other vehicles of alleged 'Americanization,' one might imagine that Europe was in serious risk of losing its distinct cultural identity in the melting pot of American pop culture. The loaded charge of 'kitsch' is a central aspect of the debate, with Disney stories, for example, branded as simplified travesties of authentic European folk tales. But the relationship between European and Amer...

Why does the city of Reggio Emilia in northern Italy feature one of the best public systems of early education in the world? This book documents the comprehensive and innovative approach that utilizes the "hundred languages of children" to support their well-being and foster their intellectual development.Educators in Reggio Emilia, Italy, use a distinctive innovative approach that supports children's well-being and fosters their intellectual development through a ...

A Financial Times Best Book of the YearA Guardian Best Architecture Book of the Year“Sharp, revealing, funny.”—The Guardian“An original and even occasionally hilarious book about losing ideals and finding them again… [De Graaf] deftly shows that architecture cannot be better or more pure than the flawed humans who make it.”—The EconomistArchitecture, we like to believe, is an elevated art form...

A global education race now pits countries, regions, and school systems against one another. The racecourse has been created by a small number of influential international testing programs, and the popular media announces winners and losers. Fear of falling behind haunts policy-makers and shapes educational priorities around the world. But are we running in the right direction? We all have a stake in education, and as informed citizens we need to understand the increasingly influential and...

Why do well-educated antiwar activists call the president of the United States “the new Hitler” and argue that the U.S. government orchestrated the September 11 attacks?Why does Al Gore believe that cars pose “a mortal threat to the security of every nation”?Why does the Princeton professor known as the father of the animal rights movement object to humans eating animals but not to humans having sex with them—and why does PETA defend that position?In other words, wh...

Design Research Through Practice: From the Lab, Field, and Showroom focuses on one type of contemporary design research known as constructive design research. It looks at three approaches to constructive design research: Lab, Field, and Showroom. The book shows how theory, research practice, and the social environment create commonalities between these approaches. It illustrates how one can successfully integrate design and research based on work carried out in industrial design and intera...

The Role of the Pedagogista in Reggio Emilia offers unparalleled insight into dialectic encounters between teachers, pedagogistas, and atelieristas in the world-renowned municipal early childhood services of the city of Reggio Emilia. It sheds light on the system and culture that cares for and sustains an enduring educational experience, for the common good.Emerging from a collaborative research project with Reggio Children and the Preschools and...

The story of how our bottomless appetite for novelty, gossip, and melodrama has turned everything—news, politics, religion, high culture—into one vast public entertainment.Neal Gabler calls them "lifies," those blockbusters written in the medium of life that dominate the media and the national conversation for weeks, months, even years: the death of Princess Diana, the trial of O.J. Simpson, Kenneth Starr vs. William Jefferson Clinton. Real Life as Entertainment is hardly a new phe...

Reggio Emilia’s educational services for 0-6 year olds are widely acclaimed as one of the best systems in the world.Now in an updated second edition, In Dialogue with Reggio Emilia offers a collection of the most important articles, lectures and interviews given by Carlina Rinaldi, who was President of Reggio Children for a decade, and pedagogical director of the Reggio Emilia Infant-toddler Centres and Preschools after working closely with Loris Malaguzzi, Reggio Children...

Proximity in Design Research explores four constituents of design: people, processes, products and philosophy, and their potential to bridge contemporary gaps through multilevel synergies.The book brings together a variety of design approaches on several scales developed in the collaboration of different agencies and within diverse contexts. Proximity prompts us to explore the challenges and opportunities for research in design, with the widening and closing of distances i...

This open access book contains observations, outlines, and analyses of educational robotics methodologies and activities, and developments in the field of educational robotics emerging from the findings presented at FabLearn Italy 2019, the international conference that brought together researchers, teachers, educators and practitioners to discuss the principles of Making and educational robotics in formal, non-formal and informal education.The editors’ analysis of these extended v...