What Your Kindergartner Needs to Know

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Connie Malamed

Within every picture is a hidden language that conveys a message, whether it is intended or not. This language is based on the ways people perceive and process visual information. In a time of unprecedented competition for audience attention and with an increasing demand for complex graphics, Visual Language for Designers explains how to achieve quick and effective communications. It presents ways to design for the strengths of our innate mental capacities and to compensate for our cognitive limitations.

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Mick Manning & Brita Granström

Uses illustrations, text, projects and experiments to introduce children to art techniques, drama, nature study and simple science topics.

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[by] Arthur W. Chickering

This completely revised and updated edition of Arthur W. Chickering's classic work presents new findings from the last twenty-five years and describes policies and practices in higher education that will foster the broad-based development of human talent essential to our society in the twenty-first century. Education and Identity offers a framework for human development that includes seven "vectors" - such as developing competence, managing emotions, moving through autonomy toward interdependence, and others - critical to the needs of every college student. Drawing on the latest research, including recent findings on gender and multicultural differences, the authors show how institutions can strengthen development along these vectors. They examine such factors as institutional objectives, size, curriculum, student programs and services, and student-faculty relationships that contribute to educationally powerful environments. More important, Education and Identity provides a framework for thinking systematically about students' developmental patterns and makes concrete suggestions for fostering growth in areas such as interpersonal relationships, identity, purpose, and integrity.

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Stuart Buck

Commentators from Bill Cosby to Barack Obama have observed the phenomenon of black schoolchildren accusing studious classmates of "acting white." How did this contentious phrase, with roots in Jim Crow era racial discord, become a part of the schoolyard lexicon, and what does it say about the state of racial identity in the American system of education? The answer, writes the author in this frank and thoroughly researched book, lies in the complex history of desegregation. Although it arose from noble impulses and was to the overall benefit of the nation, racial desegegration was often implemented in a way that was devastating to black communities. It frequently destroyed black schools, reduced the numbers of black principals who could serve as role models, and made school a strange and uncomfortable environment for black children, a place many viewed as quintessentially "white." Drawing on research in education, history, and sociology as well as articles, interviews, and personal testimony, the author reveals the unexpected result of desegregation and suggests practical solutions for making racial identification a positive force in the classroom.