Rousing Minds to Life: Teaching, Learning, and Schooling in Social Context [Hardcover]

Roland G. Tharp (Author), Ronald Gallimore (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0521362342 | ISBN-13: 978-0521362344 | Publication Date: January 27, 1989 | Edition: First Edition

Rousing Minds to Life is the education textbook for the '90s: A powerful synthesis of the theoretical advances in Vygotskian theory as applied to every aspect of teaching, learning, and schooling. Drawing on studies from preschool and elementary school through the university seminar, and on their own successful experience with thousands of students over two decades, this text integrates all recent work in the Vygotskian tradition with basic concepts in American and British behaviorism, cognitive science, anthropology, and sociolinguistics. Distinguished by a literate style and an extraordinarily rich content, it is appropriate for courses in educational psychology, curriculum and instruction, educational foundations, educational administration, special education, multicultural education, and any course that treats learning and cognitive development in social context.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"...perhaps the most important publication on teaching and teacher education to come out in the past five years...it forces the field to conceive of teaching in a new way." --Richard Shavelson, Past President of the American Education Research Association

"Lawrence Kohlberg wrote that American education has failed to take developmental psychology seriously. Tharp and Gallimore have taken it seriously and have demonstrated in this book not only that teaching must take account of the developmental status of the pupil but also that proper teaching, particularly the teaching of literacy, is necessary for the stimulation of the cognitive development of the pupil." Choice

"...perhaps the most important publication on teaching and teacher education to come out in the past five years...it forces the field to conceive of teaching in a new way." Richard Shavelson, Past President of the American Education Research Association

Product Details

• Hardcover: 332 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press; First Edition edition (January 27, 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521362342
• ISBN-13: 978-0521362344
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #851,583 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Winner of the 1993 Grawemeyer Award in Education, June 9, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Rousing Minds to Life: Teaching, Learning, and Schooling in Social Context (Paperback)

Two California professors who advocate changing the educational environment to improve learning have won the 1993 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Education.

Roland Tharp and Ronald Gallimore describe in their 1988 book, "Rousing Minds to Life: Teaching, Learning and Schooling in Social Context," a comprehensive approach to retooling education.

The Grawemeyer Award in Education of $150,000 is awarded annually for ideas that have potential to bring about significant improvement in educational practice and attainment.

Tharp and Gallimore suggest three keys to educational development -- activity, context and time. All human activity takes place in specific contexts; to change human activities, teachers must look first and foremost at the contexts that drive the activities; changing contexts -- and therefore human activities -- requires sustained and persistent work over time. They then give examples to back up their theories. For instance, the book focuses in part on the Kamehameha Early Education Project, a 15-year program in which an interdisciplinary team of teachers and researchers developed a literacy program for native Hawaiian children.

The successful project led to similar efforts with groups such as Latino Americans in Los Angeles and Native Americans in Arizona. It also inspired a second generation of research in the area.

Tharp and Gallimore actually were co-principal investigators for the project, which began in 1969. Gallimore participated in the program until 1979; Tharp until 1986.

Currently, Tharp is professor of education and psychology, and Director of the Center for Research on Education, Diversity & Excellence at the University of California, Santa Cruz. While in Hawaii, he founded and directed the Center for the Study of Multicultural Higher Education at the University of Hawaii and the Psychology Department's Clinical Training Program at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

Gallimore is a professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles. Gallimore taught psychology and anthropology and was a research fellow of the Social Science Research Institute at the University of Hawaii.