Schools for an Information Age

This provocative and accessible text is addressed to prospective and practicing teachers who believe schools must be fundamentally reformed to meet student needs in an information age. Drawing on interviews with frontline educators, the authors integrate descriptive accounts of learning and teaching in schools today with emerging multicultural curricula, information technologies, organizational structures that support innovations, and democratic dialogue. Jones and Maloy offer analytic perspectives for rethinking the social, historical, and philosophical foundations of education along with strategies for teacher renewal and organizational change.

Adopting a constructivist-developmental approach to learning, the authors identify endemic dilemmas that increasingly handicap industrial-era schools. A stagnant economy heightens tensions due to class, race, and gender inequities. Hierarchically structured corporations and representative politics perpetuate business domination. Computers offer possibilities for more open communication, flexible organizations, and democratic discourse. Alternative visions of the future that engage students can renew cooperation, collaboration, and community in schools and society.

BYRD L. JONES is Professor of Education at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He teaches urban education, economics of education, staff development, and the impact of computers on schools and society as well as multicultural issues. He is currently coeditor of the journal Equity and Excellence in Education and codirector of the Eastern Regional Information Center on Community Service Learning in K-12 Schools. He is coauthor with Robert Maloy of Partnerships for Improving Schools (Greenwood, 1988).

ROBERT W. MALOY is a lecturer in the School of Education at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He coordinates History and Social Studies Teacher Education and codirects the TEAMS Project, a tutoring program serving culturally diverse students in local elementary and secondary schools. He is coauthor with Sharon Edwards of Kids Have All the Write Stuff: Inspiring Your Children to Put Pencil to Paper (1992).