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Rating: 
Summary: Faults
Review: These factors lower my opinion of the book:1) This publisher has chosen to include a non-transferable password for certain parts of their webpage to be used along with typical CD, etc. This is a crass attempt to lower the resale value of used versions of the book and drive up new sales-- and should be rejected by students, teachers, and administrators. (Or else they should adopt a constructivist view they love so much and let the student pick the book they want to use.) 2) The CD lessons had small fonts and/or a small frame that are hard to read. On many screens most of the page is taken up with the frames for the title of the book and useless links. Occasionaly there were text formatting problems. Also a handful of the questions had clearly wrong answers that need proofreading, eg. matching quiz #5 for chapter 1. 3) The textbook itself has a clearly Constructivist bias (which unfortunately totally dominates educational teaching these days.) The text effectively describes the various constructivist and post-constructivists positions in detail but gives very superficial treatment of their critics. A section on the articles published by Fox and other critics of exclusive collective learning, and relativism would have been better. Or better the work of Jan Adams-Byers which implies some problems with using constructivist approaches with non-traditional students. 4) Gratuitous male bashing. A whole section is devoted to seriously teaching little boys to be more like little girls. It teaches the material of those seriously advancing androgyny as the better state of being. I'm serious! "Of special concern are adolescent boys who adopt a strong masculine role," Santrock. Of course, it also suggests that little girls should be more like little boys, but does not say whether or not they would then be of special concern. 5) In dealing with moral teaching, all theories present the idea that morality comes from people and is subjective. Accepting this is the advanced state, rejecting or not seeing it is childlike or immature. There were a few critics of the main proponents, but I saw no alternative to this basic tenet whatsoever. Down with the trite, hip, over use of group work at the expense of individual learning! Hegelian dialectics are as passe as Soviet Style communism no matter how you dress them up. That's my opinion. You can have a different opinion, but in a book that is designed to teach teachers there should be room for showing that this is not the ne plus ultra of understanding and show why opponents feel this way with more than straw men.
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