Books about Democratically from Amazon.com

In Working the Planning Table, Ronald M. Cervero and Arthur L. Wilson offer a theory that accounts for planners’ lived experience and provides a guide for developing effective educational programs for adults.  The book presents three planning case studies that illustrate how power, interests, ethical commitment, and negotiation are central to planners’ everyday work.  These stories offer guidance on how to respond to the realities of practice and clearly point out that the technical work of planning is always political. Working the Planning Table reveals how people work to negotiate educational and political outcomes for multiple stakeholders..
Price: $30.90 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Study circles are groups which manage their own learning, embody democratic practice, and employ procedures that develop participants' capacity to become confident as both learners and citizens, better able to act and take charge of their own destinies. This book shows how study circles offer an alternative to a narrow skills-based approach to learning and argues that their potential should be recognised by both practitioners and policy-makers. It contains a wide-ranging set of case studies of how study circles are already developing in adult education, voluntary organisations, self-help groups, faith communities and community development, with examples for comparison from Norway and Slovenia. This practical guide to creating and managing study circles, exploring their contemporary resonance and drawing on both Nordic and English experience, will appeal to those involved in adult learning as advisers, organisers, tutors, study circle leaders and voluntary activists, and also to learners themselves..
Price: $51.27 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Traditional interpretations of Plato regard him either as an enemy of the imagination in his views of philosophic discussion, or as a purveyor of imaginative lies in his authoritarian and anti-democratic view of politics. This thesis challenges both these interpretations. It argues that the imagination is both philosophical and democratically political. In the Republic images and stories balance and enrich rational argumentation. Socrates, Glaucon and Adeimantus found a city in speech together. Image-making thus contains important democratic aspects. In support of this argument I firstly analyze the founding of the imaginary city. Secondly, I look more closely to the role of images in education and poetry by focusing on the distinction between good and bad images. Thirdly, I discuss the role of images in relation to the ideal and to democracy. I propose that images are crucial in crafting and acquiring a vision of the ideal in speech. Finally, I end by stressing that philosophic discussion, and its use of images, not only contains democratic elements but that it also is more likely to thrive in a democratic space and context, marked by freedom of speech and pluralism..
Price: $60.74 [Notify me when price goes down.]