Excellent Books That I've Studied

Ariès, Philippe, Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life, Vintage, 1962, 450 pages (originally published in France in 1960).  Ariès was the first scholar to extensively study childhood and, more importantly, the conception of childhood in the West beginning in medieval times.  Although some of his conclusions have been criticized and revised -- such as that medieval parents avoided forming emotional attachments with their young children (see Shahar, below) -- one probably shouldn't try to understand the evolving conception of childhood without beginning with Ariès.
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Brint, Steven, Schools and Societies, Pine Forge Press, 1998, 349 pages.  This college textbook in the sociology of education is unusual -- and unusually valuable! -- in being explicitly written from an international, intercultural perspective.
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Butts, R. Freeman, The Education of the West: A Formative Chapter in the History of Civilization, McGraw-Hill, 1973, 630 pages.  I marvel at the breadth of Butts's knowledge and I wish I'd taken a course from him when I was at Teachers College!  This is an indispensible resource for someone like me who wants to find out about forces and factors in Western societies beyond what 'great men' were thinking.  Especially strong on Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and the U.S., with attention again and again to the competing trends that he calls achievement-oriented and learner-oriented.
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Cleverley, John, & D.C. Phillips, Visions of Childhood: Influential Models from Locke to Spock, Rev. Ed., Teachers College Press, 1986, 165 pages.  The authors say that, throughout history, children have been viewed through "the directive lens of theory," including popular theories as well as scholarly ones.  Each chapter examines one or two theories and the related controversies.  There is much of relevance to schooling.  Thoughtful and well-written, this book includes on pages 107-113 the most straightforward, comprehensible explanation of John Dewey that I've ever come across!

Cremin, Lawrence A, The Transformation of the School: Progressivism in American Education, 1876-1957, Knopf, 1961, 387 pages.  A thorough and balanced account from the eminent American historian of education of the gradual rise of what I term the Learner-Focused culture in the U.S.  Painstakingly researched, exhaustively footnoted.
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Cortazzi, Martin, & Lixian Jin, “Cultures of Learning: Language Classrooms in China,” in Hywel Coleman, ed., Society and the Language Classroom, Cambridge University Press, 1996, pp. 169-206.  A highly insightful examination of the practices and underlying values found in many Chinese classrooms; for example, see Table 4, “Examples of Contrasting Interpretations of ‘Active’ by Western Teachers and Chinese Students,” page 200.

Counts, George S, The American Road to Culture, John Day, 1930, 194 pages.  When he wrote this during Herbert Hoover's presidency, Counts was at the International Institute of Teachers College and had as much of a global perspective on U.S. education as anyone at that time.  He perceptively and persuasively discusses ten "controlling ideas" in U.S. education.  Unfortunately, not one footnote nor bibliographic reference.

Cuban, Larry, How Teachers Taught: Constancy and Change in American Classrooms, 1880-1990, 2nd Edition, Teachers College Press, 1993, 357 pages.  Includes a few photographs.  Through his own research as well as exploration of secondary sources, Cuban traces the extent to which progressive methodologies were adopted, modified, and resisted by U.S. elementary and secondary school teachers over 110 years.

Curti, Merle, The Social Ideas of American Educators, New Edition, Littlefield, Adams, 1978, 612 pages.  Originally published in 1959, this is a review of American educational thought through the perspectives of leading educators from Horace Mann and Henry Barnard in the 19th century through Edward Lee Thorndike and John Dewey in the 20th.

Damrosch, Leo, Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Restless Genius, Houghton Mifflin, 2005, 566 pages.  Even though Rousseau's life spanned the 18th century, an enormous amount of detail about his daily life as well as his evolving thought is readily available.  And the more one explores the roots of "liberal" Western educational thought such as progressive education, the more one finds references to Rousseau and to Émile, his tome on education.  Read this thorough and fascinating book and you'll understand why.

Delpit, Lisa, Other People's Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom, The New Press, 1995, 205 pages.  Delpit, a black professor whose Harvard Ph.D. dissertation addressed education in Papua New Guinea, and who received the MacAuthor "genius" fellowship, discusses multicultural classrooms in a way that (refreshingly!) runs counter to what we usually hear from American multicultural and bilingual educators.

Egan, Kieran, Getting it Wrong from the Beginning: Our Progressivist Inheritance from Herbert Spencer, John Dewey, and Jean Piaget, Yale University Press, 2002, 204 pages.  Witty as well as penetrating, Egan tours educational thinking in the U.S. since the 1850s, exploring the central tenets of progressivism and subjecting them to painstaking analysis in light of scientific evidence as well as the progressives' track record in the delivery of classroom learning.  Especially revealing for me was Egan's convincing portrayal of Herbert Spencer, the mid-1800s popularizer of science in Europe and the U.S., as the principal source of the progressivist mindset.

Grove, Cornelius, Cross-Cultural and Other Problems Affecting the Education of Immigrant Portuguese Students in a Program of Transitional Bilingual Education: A Descriptive Case Study, Ed.D. dissertation, Teachers College, Columbia University, 1977, 400 pages.  University Microfilms 77-14,722.  The beginning of my enduring fascination with this topic....
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Henderson, Harold, Let's Kill Dick & Jane, St. Augustine's Press, 2006, 160 pages.  Subtitled "How the Open Court Publishing Company Fought the Culture of American Education," this book is loaded with penetrating insights into the culture of education and educational publishing in the U.S.
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Henry, Jules, “A Cross-Cultural Outline of Education,” Chapter 5 of Jules Henry on Education, Random House, 1966, pp. 72-183.  An exhaustive and revealing parsing of the myriad ways in which classroom objectives and activities can vary across time and space.  Originally published in Current Anthropology, Vol. 1, No. 4, July 1960.
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Ho, Irene, “Are Chinese Teachers Authoritarian?,” in David A. Watkins & John B. Biggs, eds., Teaching the Chinese Learner: Psychological and Pedagogical Perspectives, Comparative Education Research Centre, The University of Hong Kong, 2001, pp. 99-114.  In this outstanding analysis, Ho answers the title’s question with both a “yes” because the teachers are directive, and a “no” because they are simultaneously supportive.

Hofstadter, Richard, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, Knopf, 1970, 434 pages.  A fascinating, insightful, and award-winning historical exploration of our American deëmphasis on the life of the mind, which is very useful in helping one understand the underpinnings of the culture of the American school and training classroom. 
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Holliday, Adrian, “Large- and Small-Class Cultures in Egyptian University Classrooms: A Cultural Justification for Curriculum Change, in Hywel Coleman, ed., Society and the Language Classroom, Cambridge University Press, 1996, pp. 86-104.  Holliday reports that in classes of fewer than 50 students, traditional Knowledge-Focused methods were preserved, while in larger classes Learner-Focused methods were more likely to be employed.
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Hunt, Lynn, Inventing Human Rights, W.W. Norton, 2007, 270 pages.  Very revealing in terms of the sudden and substantial impact on Western popular thought, including especially the capacity to empathize with unrelated others, of the introduction in mid-Enlightenment of the epistolary (letter) form of the novel such as Jean Jacque Rousseau's Julie, or the new Hélöise.  Another chapter discusses the growing concensus, at about the same time, against judicially sanctioned torture, also related to growth in people's capacity for empathy.
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Kainzbauer, Astrid, “Management Training Across Cultures: The German Versus the British Perspective,” Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration, Center for International Studies, n.d. (2001?), 19-page monograph.  Kainzbauer offers one of the few cross-cultural studies of business training, revealing that British training rooms are relatively Learner-Focused while German training rooms are relatively Knowledge-Focused.  Kainzbauer is my co-author on a book now underway with the working title, Tactics for Training Adults from Other Nations.

Kozulin, Alex, Psychological Tools: A Sociocultural Approach to Education, Harvard University Press, 1998, 182 pages.  This exceptionally thoughtful book explores the role of "psychological tools" in cognitive development and learning (including classroom learning), based on the sociocultural theories of Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934).  Among many other insights, Vygotsky noted (1) that human psychological operations are not individual in origin and use, but rather sociocultural; and (2) that the tools in critical use in modern societies are rarely learned spontaneously and never ontologically and thus need to be taught, and taught explicitly, in schools. 
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Lawton, Denis L, & Peter Gordon, A History of Western Educational Ideals, Woburn Press, 2002, 250 pages.  A good short overview with increasing emphasis on British educational history as the story moves ever closer to the present.  The authors say in their first sentence that they want to move the history of education away from an approach based on 'great men'; they don't succeed as well as I would like, but this remains a useful book.
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LeVine, Robert A, & Merry I White, Human Conditions: The Cultural Basis of Educational Developments, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986, 245 pages.  Critical background reading for everyone who is deeply interested in classroom cultures worldwide.

Lingenfelter, Judith E, & Sherwood G Lingenfelter, Teaching Cross-Culturally: An Incarnational Model for Learning and Teaching, Baker Academic, 2003, 134 pages.  The authors, working missionaries with Ph.D. degrees, have extensive first-hand experience in classrooms far removed from western culture, and they are well acquainted with the literature of cultural differences in classrooms.  They never make facile generalizations about classrooms based on a framework (such as Hofstede's) that wasn’t originally derived with classrooms in mind. 

Metz, Mary Haywood, Classrooms and Corridors: The Crisis of Authority in Desegretated Secondary Schools, University of California Press, 1978, 275 pages.  A work of sociology based on naturalistic research in eighth grade classrooms at two schools during 1967-68, this book thoughtfully explicates the essential uses, and the abuses, of authority in the context of American classrooms.
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Nisbett, Richard E, The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently...and Why, The Free Press, 2003, 263 pages.  Insightful and revealing, this volume explores underlying differences in the characteristic patterns of thought and persuasion in the West (inherited largely from the Greeks) and in Asia (inherited largely from the Chinese).  Many contemporary laboratory experiments and other types of data are explored as well.  Critical background reading for all interested in instructional styles worldwide.
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Outram, Dorinda, Panorama of the Enlightenment, Thames & Hudson (London) and Getty Publications (U.S.), 2006, 320 pages (large format).  This is a lavishly illustrated "coffee table book" and -- guess what -- the text is the broadest treatment of social, cultural, and intellectual forces during the Enlightenment that I've found yet.  A great aid to my understanding.
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Ravitch, Diane, Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms, Simon & Schuster, 2000, 555 pages.  Another distinguished historian of American education covers much of the same ground as Cremin (see above), differing primarily in that (a) she covers the second half of the 20th century, (b) her work is a little more accessible to the general reader, and (c) she's more upset than Cremin about the outcomes of progressive education.

Reagan, Timothy, Non-Western Educational Traditions: Indigenous Approaches to Educational Thought and Practice, 3rd Edition, Lawrence Erlbaum, 2005, 307 pages.  A very broad and learned review across time and space of numerous educational traditions, some of which did not make use of classrooms.  "Education" in this book is addressed according to its fundamental meaning, not merely in the sense of instruction.
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Shahar, Shulamith, Childhood in the Middle Ages, Routledge, 1990, 340 pages.  Israeli scholar Shahar sets out to correct what she perceives as certain misperceptions introduced by Philippe Ariès (see above).  She shows that as early as the 13th century small children were perceived as weak, tender, vulnerable, "too-soft wax" requiring special conditions for growth.  Chapter 9 of this book includes the most extensive description that I've been able to find (still, not much!) of school classrooms in medieval times.
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Stevenson, Harold W, & James W Stigler, The Learning Gap: Why Our Schools Are Failing and What We Can Learn from Japanese and Chinese Education, Simon & Schuster, 1992, 236 pages.  Essentially a plea for reform directed at the American public, this book carefully documents revealing contrasts at the elementary school level.

Stigler, James W, & James Hiebert, The Teaching Gap: Best ideas from the World's Teachers for Improving Education in the Classroom, Free Press, 1999, 208 pages.  This book is one outcome of the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS, an international study of school achievement), and particularly of careful study of video recordings of classroom teaching of eighth-grade mathematics in Germany, Japan, and the U.S.  The authors conclude that "American teaching methods [are] severely limited" (page x).

Tyack, David, & Elisabeth Hansot, Managers of Virtue: Public School Leadership in America, 1820-1980, Basic Books, 1982, 312 pages.  By focusing on public school leadership instead of classroom activities, Tyack & Hansot are able to capture the core presuppositions, the ethical certainties, and the millennial visions that characterized American education thinking across more than 150 formative years.
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Watkins, David A, & John B Biggs, The Chinese Learner: Cultural, Psychological, and Contextual Influences, Comparative Education Research Centre, The University of Hong Kong, 1996, 285 pages.  See especially pages 25 through 106, in which four authors – Lee Wing On, John Biggs, Gerence Marton et al., and Farideh Salili – offer a series of highly insightful articles on “The Paradox of the Chinese Learner,” namely that learners in China perform extremely well even though most of their classroom conditions would seem to be detrimental to learning.
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Watkins, Cathy L, Project Follow Through: A Case Study of Contingencies Influencing Instructional Practices of the Educational Establishment, Cambridge [Mass] Center for Behavioral Studies, 1997, 100 pages.  A massive research project in the U.S. during the 1970s showed that a Knowledge-Focused approach, “Direct Instruction,” was superior to some twenty other approaches, which were Learner-Focused.  Watkins's fascinating monograph details how these findings were discredited and buried by the American establishment, including the Ford Foundation.
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