IAP BOOK SERIES
Transforming Education for the Future
Humanity is facing unprecedented challenges. Critical issues, such as world conflicts, global warming, energy crises, and moral decay, if not dealt with, can bring a total breakdown of human civilization. We currently have all the tools to destroy our planet, either slowly by continuing to injure the physical environment or rapidly through nuclear warfare. We can annihilate not only our enemies but the whole human race and other species on Earth.
In the U.S. and many other countries, educational systems are bogged down by structural problems and old philosophies. Education is supposed to prepare citizens who have the ability, awareness, and wisdom to deal with crises and continually learn and grow, but it still operates on an almost purely mechanistic, rationalistic, capitalistic, and highly competitive paradigm.
The U.S. needs a new educational paradigm based on a different, far richer, more insightful understanding of human possibility. This paradigm must be strong enough to transform current educational thinking and practice. It must be creative and expansive enough to transform the world.
What kinds of schools and universities do we need to transform the world? To answer this, we need to address a number of other questions. For instance, what types of skills will people, both young and old, require in order to contribute to the common good? What can education do to motivate people toward cooperation and harmony? What is our deepest, most heartfelt hope for a compassionate human race, and how can education help manifest this hope? Can Enlightenment rationality, individualism, and rigor share a berth with wisdom, universality, and compassion in the education of the future? Can education develop a humanity that is not just intelligent but wise? Can education, which is often viewed as a very conservative cultural institution, become a means for transforming values, not just transmitting them?
We are looking to publish books that:
• Are forward-looking and provide positive, transformative, and innovative ideas to propel education as an agent of social change for a peaceful, sustainable, and equitable world;
• Propose new paradigms for social and global changes that promote the integration of science and religion, and the unity of body, mind, and spirit;
• Address critical challenges that face humanity in areas such as peace, the environment, and social morality;
• Critically examine historical hierarchies of power and privilege around the world, including the hierarchy between humans and nature, and the structural inequalities they create, to provide us with the kind of clarity we need to imagine a more equitable, love-based future;
• Offer new ways of learning that educate wise and global citizens, and are based on ecological/interconnected frameworks.
How to Submit a Book Proposal:
Begin your proposal by explaining the overall objectives and significance of the book project in a detailed statement of purpose (1-3 pages). Please include info on:
• Who is/are the author(s)/editor(s)?
• If this is an edited volume, include a list of contributors/affiliations.
• Who is your audience for this book? (e.g., academic or professional, adoption potential, or reference work)?
• How do you expect readers to make use of this book?
• How does the book extend current knowledge in your field of study?
• How does the project explore previously unrecognized or infrequently considered topics in the literature?
• The length of the project
• Your schedule for delivery of the final draft
An outline of the book that provides a short narrative description of each chapter. For edited volumes, provide a list of the chapter titles or topics that will be covered as well as the names and backgrounds of authors (a couple of sentences).
Provide a sample chapter and curriculum vitae for the authors(s) or editor(s).
The proposal should be emailed to:
jinglin@umd.edu, millervw@appstate.edu, and amandajanefiore@gmail.com

Inclusion, Exclusion, Agency, and Advocacy
Experiences of Women With Physical Disabilities in China, With Worldwide Implications
2024Luanjiao Hu, Brandeis University

Fallow Lands of Plenty
Public Schools as Leaders in Rural Food System Relocalization
2023Eric Klein, University of North Carolina Asheville

Hope for the Embattled Language Classroom
Pedagogies for Well-Being and Trauma Healing
2023Olivia Kanna, Language College of the Immigrant Services Society of BC (ISSofBC)

The Wisdom Way of Teaching
Educating for Social Conscience and Inner Awakening in the High School Classroom
2022Martin E. Schmidt, Hong Kong International School

Contemplative Pedagogies for Transformative Teaching, Learning, and Being
2019
Jing Lin, University of Maryland; Tom E. Culham, City University in Canada and Simon Fraser University; Sachi Edwards, University of Tokyo

Apocalyptic Leadership in Education
Facing an Unsustainable World from Where We Stand
2017Vachel W. Miller, Appalachian State University

Critical Conversations about Religion
Promises and Pitfalls of a Social Justice Approach to Interfaith Dialogue
2016Sachi Edwards, University of Maryland, College Park

Toward a Spiritual Research Paradigm
Exploring New Ways of Knowing, Researching and Being
2016Jing Lin, University of Maryland; Rebecca L. Oxford, University of Maryland; Tom E. Culham, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

Re-Envisioning Higher Education
Embodied Pathways to Wisdom and Social Transformation
2013Jing Lin, University of Maryland; Rebecca L. Oxford, University of Maryland; Edward J. Brantmeier, James Madison University
- Jing Lin
University of Maryland - Rebecca L. Oxford
University of Maryland - Vachel W. Miller
Appalachian State University - Amanda Jane Fiore
State Department
- Community Schools: Voices From the Field
- Conducting Research in Education Finance: Methods, Measurement, and Policy Perspectives
- Contemporary Perspectives on Educational Politics and the Law
- Contemporary Perspectives on School Turnaround and Reform
- Current Issues in Out-of-School Time
- Current Perspectives in Demography
- Current Perspectives on School/University/Community Research
- Education Policy in Practice: Critical Cultural Studies
- Educational Policy and Law
- Educational Policy in the 21st Century: Opportunities, Challenges and Solutions
- Excursions in Criticality: Education, Cultural Studies and Politics
- Innovation in Human Centered Sustainability
- International Education Inquiries: People, Places, and Perspectives of Education 2030
- International Perspectives on Educational Policy, Research and Practice
- Issues in the Research, Theory, Policy, and Practice of Urban Education
- Leadership for School Improvement
- Marxist, Socialist, and Communist Studies in Education
- Opportunity and Performance
- Politics of Education Book Series
- Research in Education Fiscal Policy and Practice