Handbook of Prosocial Education

Book excerpt: Handbook of Prosocial Education is the definitive theoretical, practical, and policy guide to the prosocial side of education, the necessary second side of the educational coin. Academic teaching and learning are the first side of education; however, academic success depends upon the structures and support of prosocial educational efforts from promoting positive school climate to fostering student and teacher development to civic literacy and responsible and critical citizenship participation. The Handbook of Prosocial Education chapters, written by highly-respected researchers and outstanding educators, represent the wide range of research-based prosocial interventions from pre-school through high school. The chapters explore and explain how prosocial education helps teachers create effective classroom learning environments to support the development of the whole student, principals encourage positive school climate, and superintendents work to improve the health and well-being of their systems. As readers will learn, when done well, prosocial education develops the capacities and competencies of students, teachers, and school administrators that lead to a more autonomous, positive self-concept, greater sense of purpose, more socially responsible behaviors, and increased connections between families, schools, and communities. This book pulls together in one place for the first time the various threads that create the prosocial education tapestry, making a compelling case for the necessity of changing national educational policy that continues to be ever-more oriented to only the academic side of the educational coin, thus jeopardizing the foundational and historic purpose of educating our children for their full human development and participation in our democracy.