51 books match the query 'Agency' and 3 start with s

cover of Seeds of Resistance, Seeds of Hope: Place and Agency in the Conservation of Biodiversity

Seeds of Resistance, Seeds of Hope

Place and Agency in the Conservation of Biodiversity

Edited by Virginia D. Nazarea, Robert E. Rhoades, and Jenna E. Andrews-Swann

University of Arizona Press, 2013

Food is more than simple sustenance. It feeds our minds as well as our bodies. It nurtures us emotionally as well as physically. It holds memories. In fact, one of the surprising consequences of globalization and urbanization is the expanding web of emotional attachments to farmland, to food growers, and to place. And there is growing affection, too, for home gardening and its “grow your own food” ethos. Without denying the gravity of the problems of feeding the earth’s population while conserving its natural resources, Seeds of Resistance, Seeds of Hope reminds us that there are many positive movements and developments that demonstrate the power of opposition and optimism.
 
This broad collection brings to the table a bag full of tools from anthropology, sociology, genetics, plant breeding, education, advocacy, and social activism. By design, multiple voices are included. They cross or straddle disciplinary, generational, national, and political borders. Contributors demonstrate the importance of cultural memory in the persistence of traditional or heirloom crops, as well as the agency exhibited by displaced and persecuted peoples in place-making and reconstructing nostalgic landscapes (including gardens from their homelands). Contributions explore local initiatives to save native and older seeds, the use of modern technologies to conserve heirloom plants, the bioconservation efforts of indigenous people, and how genetically modified organisms (GMOs) have been successfully combated. Together they explore the conservation of biodiversity at different scales, from different perspectives, and with different theoretical and methodological approaches. Collectively, they demonstrate that there is reason for hope.
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cover of Segregation by Experience: Agency, Racism, and Learning in the Early Grades

Segregation by Experience

Agency, Racism, and Learning in the Early Grades

Jennifer Keys Adair and Kiyomi Sánchez-Suzuki Colegrove

University of Chicago Press, 2021

A groundbreaking account of how collaborative, expressive learning environments are often denied to children of color

Early childhood can be a time of rich discovery, a period when educators have an opportunity to harness their students’ fascination to create unique learning opportunities. Some teachers engage with their students’ ideas in ways that make learning collaborative--but not all students have access to these kinds of learning environments.
 
In Segregation by Experience, the authors filmed and studied a a first-grade classroom led by a Black immigrant teacher who encouraged her diverse group of students to exercise their agency. When the researchers showed the film to other schools, everyone struggled. Educators admired the teacher but didn’t think her practices would work with their own Black and brown students. Parents of color—many of them immigrants—liked many of the practices, but worried that they would compromise their children. And the young children who viewed the film thought that the kids in the film were terrible, loud, and badly behaved; they told the authors that learning was supposed to be quiet, still, and obedient. In Segregation by Experience Jennifer Keys Adair and Kiyomi Sánchez-Suzuki Colegrove show us just how much our expectations of children of color affect what and how they learn at school, and they ask us to consider which children get to have sophisticated, dynamic learning experiences at school and which children are denied such experiences because of our continued racist assumptions about them.
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cover of Stories from First-Year Composition: FYC Pedagogies that Foster Student Writing Identity and Agency

Stories from First-Year Composition

FYC Pedagogies that Foster Student Writing Identity and Agency

Jo-Anne Kerr

University Press of Colorado, 2020

The central value of first-year composition is often questioned, typically accompanied by characterizations of FYC as a “service” course. This collection counters those perceptions, sharing with readers a new FYC story, one that demonstrates a new “service” that the course provides to first-year students, a service that accommodates the realities of writing—that it is never just writing and that the writing process entails much more than plugging in the “right” words (that mean the same to everyone) in predetermined forms. The collection offers insights into effective FYC pedagogies and opportunities for readers to consider and think about their own teaching and their identities as FYC instructors. It offers prompts for reflection, suggestions for further reading, and multimedia components that can deepen and enrich our understandings of teaching FYC and instill a sense of agency for teaching FYC effectively and advocating for its value and relevance.
 
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