Review
"Engaging Troubled Children is the first book for preservice teachers in special education that is substantial enough to be a primary course textbook that does not objectify troubled students by delineating a host of degrading labels and distancing and alienating technical interventions." -- Ellen Brantlinger, Professor, Special Education and Curriculum "Danforth and Smith have written an exceptional book on educating 'troubling' students. It is a clear alternative to current books on educating children with emotional and behavioral disorders, most of which are based on behavioral theories. They offer practical guidance, well illustrated with stories from their own experiences on collaboration, working with families, conflict resolution, social support for students, providing a caring pedagogy, and teacher development." -- James L. Paul, Professor, Special Education Those educators who wish to transform their classroom into a creative, cooperative setting, who wish to enable their students to construct personal and social meaning in their lives, who wish to develop a meaningful and lasting relationship with their students, and who wish to change not only those troubling students but the teachers' own lives will not find better reading or a more useful resource and practical guide. -- Education Review, April 2005
About the Author
Dr. Scot Danforth is well-known leader in the growing area of Disability Studies in Education, a multidisciplinary field of educational research exploring disabilities as sociopolitical constructions and construing the disabled community as an oppressed minority group. He is co-founder of the Disability Studies in Education Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association (http://ced.ncsu.edu/2/dse/). His research has explored the roles of professional and layperson discourses in the social and political construction of disability. Additionally, his publications have analyzed the historical and philosophical development of the field of special education. He has written a wide range of books and articles in the areas of special education teacher preparation, working with students with social and emotional difficulties, and classroom management. He is Associate Professor and Department Chair in the Division of Teaching of Learning, University of Missouri-St. Louis. Terry Jo Smith is an Associate Professor of Special Education at National Louis-University in Chicago. She has extensive experience teaching students labeled emotionally/behaviorally disordered in inner-city schools. She has an abiding interest in teacher research, particularly in relationship to the social, cultural and political dimensions of schooling and how these are enacted in school relationships and curriculum. She has worked with a group of teacher/researchers for several years, researching the impact of constructivist pedagogy in a broad range of educational settings. Currently, she is engaging in research at a school in a youth detention center where she is developing constructivist curriculum with teachers and students. Smith's teaching, research and scholarship spring from a passionate commitment to social justice.
