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Reflective Practice in Early Years Education

Contributor: Third

Publisher: Fanshawe College Pressboks

License: CC BY-NC-SA

This resource will provide a context that will allow the reader to consider their obligation to reflect from their own perspective and will explore how to create a practice that best suits their professional setting. This book will bring together in one place the history, the values, the skills and disposition required to be a reflective practitioner. It is a textbook with elements of a workbook, embedded are opportunities to watch, to think, to write, and to listen allowing the reader to become a purposeful and intentional reflective practitioner.

(2 reviews)

The Asynchronous Cookbook

Publisher: Office of Digital Learning & Inquiry, Middlebury College

License: CC BY-NC-SA

Whether you're teaching mostly in person but looking for some regular, asynchronous activities to add to your course, or teaching a fully online course, this resource is for you. The activities in this cookbook draw on research and good practice in online course design to provide recipes - concise and specific instructions and examples - for adding asynchronous activities to a course. Meaningful interaction between students and instructors is a key ingredient in all of these recipes.

(5 reviews)

Teaching in the University: Learning from Graduate Students and Early Career Faculty

Contributors: Westfall-Rudd, Vengrin, and Elliott-Engel

Publisher: Virginia Tech Publishing

License: CC BY-NC

The primary objective of this book is to provide a resource for graduate teaching assistants who are looking for practical strategies and guidance as they begin their careers as postsecondary STEM educators. The text is designed to address a comprehensive list of topics to support the professional development of new faculty, recognizing that those holding academic faculty positions within a college or university are expected to be active in teaching, discovery, and outreach.

(1 review)

Mathematics Methods for Early Childhood

Contributor: Stramel

Publisher: Fort Hays State University

License: CC BY

Welcome to Early Childhood Mathematics! This course satisfies the Early Childhood Unified requirements in the state of Kansas for a teaching license Birth to Grade 3.

(2 reviews)

Teaching Early and Elementary STEM

Contributors: Lange, Robertson, Price, and Craven

Publisher: East Tennessee State University

License: CC BY-NC

This Open Access Educational textbook, "Teaching Early and Elementary STEM", was written to support pre-service early childhood and elementary teachers in their journey to become facilitators of science, technology, engineering, and math, or “STEM,” and "integrated STEM" in their future classrooms. Students who read and use this text will deepen their understanding of “STEM” and “integrated STEM,” learn what early childhood and elementary students need to know and be able to do in relation to STEM, and understand ways to create activity plans and implement current research-based approaches to teaching and pedagogy. This text arose out of our Early/Elementary STEM Collaboration project, which started in 2017 with the intention of increasing the quality of teacher preparation in STEM across early childhood and elementary education. The team is composed of math and science education professors, classroom in-service teachers, and pre-service teachers in pre-school through fifth grade. We are driven by the values of collaboration, strengths-based approaches to teaching and learning, constructivist philosophy of teaching and learning, and applied STEM experiences to increase access and equity. Our model of preparing pre-service teachers has been published elsewhere in more detail (Robertson, Nivens, & Lange, 2019). We built this open access product to include the following: 1) completely new content that includes input from our team as well as examples of integrated STEM learning experiences; 2) adaptations of existing resources, and; 3) compilations of existing free resources (e.g., Next Generation Science Standards).

(2 reviews)

Salón de Clase: Intermediate Spanish for Education Professionals

Contributors: Castro Ortiz and Zimotti

Publisher: University of Iowa

License: CC BY-NC

Salón de clase, Intermediate Spanish for Education Professionals is a comprehensive intermediate Spanish open access textbook with reading, listening, speaking, and writing practice for students who have an interest and/or intend to pursue a career in the field of Education (teachers, administrators, counselors, psychologists, social workers, support staff members, paraprofessionals, among others). This Open Education Resource (OER) aims to explore the role of Spanish language and Spanish speakers in the American education system, as well as to improve student communicative abilities in Spanish. Salón de clase integrates interactive activities (h5p), video interviews with Spanish speakers to present authentic materials, and topics related to education. Grammar is not presented as a standalone topic, but it is seemly integrated into all parts of this book.

(3 reviews)

Making and Being

Contributors: Jahoda and Woolard

Publisher: Pioneer Works Press

License: CC BY-SA

Making and Being offers a framework for teaching art that emphasizes contemplation, collaboration, and political economy. Authors Susan Jahoda and Caroline Woolard, two visual arts educators and members of the collective BFAMFAPhD*, share ideas and teaching strategies that they have adapted to spaces of learning which range widely, from self-organized workshops for professional artists to Foundations BFA and MFA thesis classes. This hands-on guide includes activities, worksheets, and assignments and is a critical resource for artists and art educators today. Making and Being is a book, a series of videos, a deck of cards, and an interactive website with freely downloadable content (click on links below to download worksheets, activities, and chapters as PDFs and editable Google Docs).

(2 reviews)

Foundations of American Education: A Critical Lens

Contributors: Wells and Clayton

Publisher: VIVA

License: CC BY-NC-SA

In this survey text, readers will explore the foundations of American education through a critical lens. Topics include the teaching profession, influences on student learning, philosophical and historical foundations, structures of schools, ethical and legal issues, curriculum, classroom environment, and the path forward.

(1 review)

Humanizing Science through STEAM Challenges

Contributors: Bahng and Hauptman

Publisher: Iowa State University

License: CC BY-NC

In a science methods course during the Covid19 pandemic, 51 future elementary teachers authored children's books and then read them aloud as part of a giving-back, service-learning activity as Open Educational Resources (OER). The 51 children's stories and their accompanying audiobooks aim to integrate STEM and the Arts to humanize science and scientific inquiry with history and philosophy of science in mind.

(1 review)

Learning in the Digital Age

Contributors: Asino, Bayeck, Brown, Francis, Kolski, Essmiller, Green, Lewis, McCabe, Shikongo, Wise, and Fulgencio

Publisher: Oklahoma State University

License: CC BY

This book is designed to serve as a textbook for classes exploring the nature of learning in the digital age. The genesis of this book is a desire to use OERs in all my teachings, coupled with the realization that the resources that I was looking for were not available and as such I needed to contribute in creating them. It is thus a small attempt to contribute to the vast repository of Open Educational Resources. When discussing learning in the digital age, most focus on the technology first. However, the emphasis made in this book is that it’s about the learner not just the technology. One of the things that is easy to lose track of when talking about learning in the digital age is the learner. Technology is important and it has significant impact but it is still about the person who is using the technology. Many people conflate learning in the digital age with technology in today’s age. This important misconception is common and results from our failure to examine our understanding of what “learning” really is. Of course, Most of this depends on a person’s epistemology. There are numerous definitions of what learning is and often they come to how a person sees the world. Some argue that learning is about a change in behavior due to experiences, others state simply that learning is being able to do something new that you were not able to do before. Regardless of what side you choose, to understand what learning in the digital age is, one has to understand what learning itself is. I am immensely thankful to the authors for sharing their ideas freely and for the reviewers who volunteered their time to give feedback.

(3 reviews)