LibGuides: Education: Books

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Open Textbook Library

The Open Textbook Library provides a growing catalog of free, peer-reviewed, and openly-licensed textbooks. Listed below, you will find just a few of the many education textbooks that are available. Click on the link above to see other available subjects.

Introduction to Curriculum for Early Childhood Education Welcome to learning about how to effectively plan curriculum for young children.
Creating Online Learning Experiences This book provides an updated look at issues that comprise the online learning experience creation process. As online learning evolves, the lines and distinctions between various classifications of courses has blurred and often vanished. Classic elements of instructional design remain relevant at the same time that newer concepts of learning experience are growing in importance. However, problematic issues new and old still have to be addressed. This handbook explores many of these topics for new and experienced designers alike, whether creating traditional online courses, open learning experiences, or anything in between.
Mathematics for Elementary Teachers This book will help you to understand elementary mathematics more deeply, gain facility with creating and using mathematical notation, develop a habit of looking for reasons and creating mathematical explanations, and become more comfortable exploring unfamiliar mathematical situations.
The Changing Story: digital stories that participate in transforming teaching & learning The Changing Story gives you assignments, resources, and examples to use in your teaching and learning. It will also help you think of ways digital stories can be used in your teaching, and help students harness the power of visual storytelling.
Educational Psychology Chapters in the text can be assigned either from beginning to end, as with a conventional printed book, or they can be selected in some other sequence to meet the needs of particular students or classes. In general the first half of the book focuses on broader questions and principles taken from psychology per se, and the second half focuses on somewhat more practical issues of teaching. But the division between “theory” and “practice” is only approximate; all parts of the book draw on research, theory, and practical wisdom wherever appropriate. Chapter 2 is about learning theory, and Chapter 3 is about development; but as we point out, these topics overlap with each other as well as with the concerns of daily teaching. Chapter 4 is about several forms of student diversity (what might be called individual differences in another context), and Chapter 5 is about one form of diversity that has become prominent in schools recently—students with disabilities. Chapter 6 is about motivation, a topic that is heavily studied by psychological researchers, but that also poses perennial challenges to classroom teachers. Following these somewhat more basic psychological chapters, we turn to several lasting challenges of classroom life—challenges that seem to be an intrinsic part of the job. Chapter 7 offers ideas about classroom management; Chapter 8, ideas about communicating with students; Chapter 9, about ways to assist students' complex forms of thinking; and Chapter 10, about planning instruction systematically. The book closes with two chapters about assessment of learning: Chapter 11 focuses on teachers' own efforts to assess students, and Chapter 12 focuses on standardized measures of assessment. We have organized material and features in ways that we hope will allow for a variety of students, instructors, and institutions to use the book. For instructors and courses that seek a strong focus on research and the research process, for example, we have included an extra “chapter” on research methods—Appendix C, “The Reflective Practitioner”—that discusses the nature of research and the research process. We have also included a set of research-related case studies in Appendix B, “Deciding for yourself about the research”, that describe a number of particular educational research programs or topics in detail and that invite students to reflect on the quality and implications of the research. Whether or not a strong focus on research is a priority in your particular course, there are additional features of the book that are intended to help students in learning about educational psychology. In particular, each chapter ends with a “Chapter summary”, a list of “Key terms”, and links to Internet sites (called “Further resources”) relevant to the themes of the chapter. One of the sites that is cited frequently and that may be particularly helpful to instructors is the teachingedpsych wiki (http://teachingedpsych.wikispaces.com/), an archive of hundreds of teaching and learning materials that supports the teaching of introductory educational psychology. Teachingedpsych is a project of the Special Interest Group on the Teaching of Educational Psychology (TEP SIG), affiliated with the American Educational Research Association. All in all, we hope that you find Educational Psychology a useful and accessible part of your education. If you are preparing to be a teacher, good luck with your studies and your future! If you are an instructor, good luck with helping your students learn about this subject!
Trauma-Informed School Practices: Building Expertise To Transform Schools This textbook represents the combined insight and experience of Morton, a k12 educator, and Berardi, a psychotherapist, both of whom are also university educators with extensive work experience serving districts and their teachers seeking to incorporate trauma-informed principles into their school culture and classroom. The authors identify that the field of education is now ready to deepen its level of response to the paradigm shift created by advances in neuroscience and traumatology. Hence, the primary focus is on identifying and applying trauma-informed educator competencies needed to transform districts, schools, educators, classrooms, and the field of education itself, while also including community members such as parents and board members in these processes - a total system makeover. At the conclusion of this text, the student, educator, or mental health professional will have a deeper understanding of what trauma-informed practice requires of them. This includes practical strategies on how to transform our learning communities in response to the devastating effect of unmitigated stress and trauma on our student's ability to learn and thrive throughout the lifespan.