Contemporary Parenting Challenges and Issues Book

Used this as my textbook for a Human Development and Learning unit for primary school teaching. The edition I read was the Australian version. I found the book had many positive points but the structure and layout of the text made it very difficult to understand the context and therefore place a lot of the books content.

First the positive points, and there are many:
1. Each chapter starts with a 'Teachers Casebook/What would you do?' which is a fictional scenario designed to get you thinking and that the chapters content should equip you to solve. The end of each chapter then has a blurb from multiple teachers on how they would approach the scenario;
2. Standard textbook fair of chapter outlines, chapter learning objectives, definitions in margins;
3. 'Check yourself' questions throughout the chapters that relate to that sections content. The answers to these questions are provided in a summary section at the end of the chapter;
4. 'Guidelines' sections which provide specific advice on how to take the theoretical content of the chapters and apply to a classroom;
5. 'Point/Counterpoint' sections that provide views to both sides of those topics that are still debated in educational psychology. Examples include 'What is good teaching?' or 'What should schools do to encourage students' self-esteem?'; and
6. The content itself is well written and interesting to read.

Negatives are the structure and outline of the book, specifically:
1. The section headings and sub-headings and are not easy to distinguish (nor numbered) and I found myself continuously flicking back to check if I was still in the same section or had moved on to a different section. This is extremely frustrating when you are trying to learn new material and place it in context; and
2. The structure of the book made it difficult to understand the underlying major theories at times. Though I'm unsure if this was partly because my course did not follow the structure of the book or that generally some concepts in educational psychology (such as contructivism) are hard to define.

Is there are better book on educational psychology? Not sure.

Did I enjoy reading this book? Yes.

Will I keep it on my shelf for reference as I move into teaching? Yes, and I think this is the best indicator of a books usefulness at times.