Grades and grading are an accepted part of modern education. But why? Why do we accept a system that is more focused on ranking students than on learning? Why do we accept the negative effects of standard grading approaches, including turning students off from learning, increasing stress, creating winners and losers, and perpetuating racial and economic inequality? Why do we accept these things when there are better alternatives?
Wad-Ja-Get? is a unique discussion of grading and its effects on students. The book was written by three education professors who have had first-hand contact with the problems of grading in all its forms. Written in the form of a novel, the topic is explored through the eyes of students, teachers, and parents in one high school embroiled in a controversy around grading. Possible alternatives to the grading system are examined in detail and the research on grading is summarized in an appendix. This 50th anniversary edition of the book includes a new introduction by Professor Barry Fishman, updating the research and setting the original book in the context of today’s educational and societal challenges. Wad-Ja-Get? remains timely five decades after its original publication, and will be inspiring to students, parents, educators, and policymakers.
Teachers are often taught that young children are incapable of logical thought. Prone to fantasy and unruffled by inconsistency, preschool children are frequently baffled by the first lessons of early schooling. Trained to gently resist the child’s illogic, teachers sometimes create just the incomprehension and anxiety they mean to avoid. In Wally’s Stories, Vivian Paley shows that none of this need be so.
Wally’s Stories is itself a story: the story of the evolution of a kindergarten classroom in which Paley learned to stop fighting childish fantasy and instead make use of it to stimulate the very best brand of thinking her five-year-olds can muster. Stories also lie at the heart of her classroom: stories that are first told by one of the children, then transcribed by the teacher, and then acted out by the class in dramatic productions of their own design. Paley shows that in the course of creating their own dramatic world, five-year-olds are capable of thought and language far in advance of what they accomplish in traditional classroom exercises. The children’s stories also become a vehicle that they can use to explain themselves to their teacher and to one another. Together, teacher and children develop an unusual environment, one that is logical and literate, based on rules of fairness, friendship, and fantasy.
Vivian Paley’s book is as refreshing as her teaching method—a new kind of book about a new kind of classroom.
Based on years of observation at a large state university, Wannabe U tracks the dispiriting consequences of trading in traditional educational values for loyalty to the market. Aping their boardroom idols, the new corporate administrators at such universities wander from job to job and reductively view the students there as future workers in need of training. Obsessed with measurable successes, they stress auditing and accountability, which leads to policies of surveillance and control dubiously cloaked in the guise of scientific administration. In this eye-opening exposé of the modern university, Tuchman paints a candid portrait of the corporatization of higher education and its impact on students and faculty.
Like the best campus novelists, Tuchman entertains with her acidly witty observations of backstage power dynamics and faculty politics, but ultimately Wannabe U is a hard-hitting account of how higher education’s misguided pursuit of success fails us all.
An urgent reality check for America’s blinkered fixation on STEM education.
We live in an era of STEM obsession. Not only do tech companies dominate American enterprise and economic growth while complaining of STEM shortages, but we also need scientific solutions to impending crises. As a society, we have poured enormous resources—including billions of dollars—into cultivating young minds for well-paid STEM careers. Yet despite it all, we are facing a worker exodus, with as many as 70% of STEM graduates opting out of STEM work. Sociologist John D. Skrentny investigates why, and the answer, he shows, is simple: the failure of STEM jobs.
Wasted Education reveals how STEM work drives away bright graduates as a result of “burn and churn” management practices, lack of job security, constant training for a neverending stream of new—and often socially harmful—technologies, and the exclusion of women, people of color, and older workers. Wasted Education shows that if we have any hope of improving the return on our STEM education investments, we have to change the way we’re treating the workers on whom our future depends.
The fall of 1964 was an exciting time at the University of Iowa. Its fourteenth president, Howard Bowen, had just arrived, and on a sunny October afternoon he made his first speech to the faculty. This occasion was note worthy enough—former president Virgil Hancher had held the job for twenty-four years—to attract the attention of a professor of speech pathology who had previously confined his considerable energies to teaching and research. Bowen's vision of what the university could become was so intriguing, so compelling, that this professor wrote and offered to help him achieve his objectives in any way possible. This quixotic offer changed Duane Spriestersbach's life and becomes the starting point for his story of his years as a University of Iowa administrator.
Drawing upon his personal files, the university archives, and interviews with many faculty members and administrators, Spriestersbach has created both an institutional and a personal history of the university. Judged by any standard, these years were tumultuous ones for higher education. Economic pressures from the state legislature, issues surrounding grants from such agencies as the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, the civil rights movement, student and faculty protests during the Vietnam era, massive changes in the physical and administrative shape of the campus, and the computerization of all parts of campus life had far-reaching consequences. Spriestersbach was at the center of these events at the University of Iowa; his perspective is unique, refreshing, and educational.
Spriestersbach's account of the Vietnam years and of the evolution of computers at Iowa will be particularly interesting to readers. He reported to four presidents, served as acting president, managed hundreds of meetings both dramatic and mundane, and reacted to many administrative restructurings. In this story of his life at the University of Iowa, he reveals the truth behind these words from his 1964 letter to President Bowen: “I think I am an idealist, a person with imagination, and a guy in a hurry. I believe investigation will show that I am a person with competitive administrative and executive abilities.”
The melting pot is no more. Where not very long ago we sought assimilation, we now pursue multiculturalism. Nowhere has this transformation been more evident than in the public schools, where a traditional Eurocentric curriculum has yielded to diversity--and, often, to confrontation and confusion. In a book that brings clarity and reason to this highly charged issue, Nathan Glazer explores these sweeping changes. He offers an incisive account of why we all--advocates and skeptics alike--have become multiculturalists, and what this means for national unity, civil society, and the education of our youth.
Focusing particularly on the impact in public schools, Glazer dissects the four issues uppermost in the minds of people on both sides of the multicultural fence: Whose "truth" do we recognize in the curriculum? Will an emphasis on ethnic roots undermine or strengthen our national unity in the face of international disorder? Will attention to social injustice, past and present, increase or decrease civil disharmony and strife? Does a multicultural curriculum enhance learning, by engaging students' interest and by raising students' self-esteem, or does it teach irrelevance at best and fantasy at worst?
Glazer argues cogently that multiculturalism arose from the failure of mainstream society to assimilate African Americans; anger and frustration at their continuing separation gave black Americans the impetus for rejecting traditions that excluded them. But, willingly or not, "we are all multiculturalists now," Glazer asserts, and his book gives us the clearest picture yet of what there is to know, to fear, and to ask of ourselves in this new identity.
Hava Rachel Gordon compares the struggles and successes of two very different youth movements: a mostly white, middle-class youth activist network in Portland, Oregon, and a working-class network of minority youth in Oakland, California. She examines how these young activists navigate schools, families, community organizations, and the mainstream media, and employ a variety of strategies to make their voices heard on some of today's most pressing issuesùwar, school funding, the environmental crisis, the prison industrial complex, standardized testing, corporate accountability, and educational reform. We Fight to Win is one of the first books to focus on adolescence and political action and deftly explore the ways that the politics of youth activism are structured by age inequality as well as race, class, and gender.
Looking at their photo of railroad tracks, a group of preteen students in South Central Los Angeles see either "a way out of the ghetto," or a "dirty, bad environment." Such are the impressions expressed in the poignant "We Live in the Shadow": Inner-City Kids Tell Their Stories through Photographs.
In Elaine Bell Kaplan's perceptive book, at-risk youth were given five-dollar cameras to tell stories about their world. Their photos and stories show us their response to negative inner-city teen images. We follow them into their schools, and we hear about their creative coping strategies. While these kids see South Central as dangerous, they also see themselves as confident enough to not let the inner city take them down. They refuse to be labeled as "ghetto thugs," as outsiders sometimes do. These outsiders include police, teachers, and other groups representing the institutional voices governing their daily lives.
The kids in "We Live in the Shadow": Inner-City Kids Tell Their Stories through Photographs have developed a multilayered view of society. This impressive book gives voice to their resilience.
Never before have so many scholars produced so much work--and never before have they seemed to have so little to say to one another, or to the public at large. This is the dilemma of the modern university, which today sets the pattern for virtually all scholarship. In his eloquent book, David Damrosch offers a lucid, often troubling assessment of the state of scholarship in our academic institutions, a look at how these institutions acquired their present complexion, and a proposal for reforms that can promote scholarly communication and so, perhaps, broader, more relevant scholarship.
We Scholars explores an academic culture in which disciplines are vigorously isolated and then further divided into specialized fields, making for a heady mix of scholarly alienation and disciplinary territorialism, a wealth of specialized inquiry and a poverty of general discussion. This pattern, however, is not necessary and immutable; rather, it stems from decisions made a century ago, when the American university assumed its modern form. Damrosch traces the political and economic assumptions behind these decisions and reveals their persisting effects on academic structures despite dramatic changes in the larger society. We Scholars makes a compelling case for a scholarly community more reflective of and attuned to today's needs. The author's call for cooperation as the basis for intellectual endeavor, both within and outside the academy, will resonate for anyone concerned with the present complexities and future possibilities of academic work.
Students do months of research before choosing just the right college, but once theyre on campus, how many of them actually research the professors who are teaching their classes? To optimize your college education you need to find your schools best teachers but how?
What Every College Student Should Know is a guide to discovering the best teachers at your school and learning everything you can from them. Here, the unique writing combination of a professor and a student provides you with perspectives from both sides of the equation. You'll learn:
This book teaches English language learners about language learning and classroom expectations. It is a compilation of advice, experiences, suggestions, strategies, and learning theories collected over many years of teaching this population.
What Every ESL Student Should Know was written to help English language learners be successful in community college and college classrooms—specifically, how to prepare students for expectations and behavior within the classroom and how to help them to be good students, how to participate in class, what to expect from the class, and what to do to learn English. Learning strategies and language theories are presented in brief.
The author of the best-selling What the Best College Teachers Do is back with more humane, doable, and inspiring help, this time for students who want to get the most out of college—and every other educational enterprise, too.
The first thing they should do? Think beyond the transcript. The creative, successful people profiled in this book—college graduates who went on to change the world we live in—aimed higher than straight A’s. They used their four years to cultivate habits of thought that would enable them to grow and adapt throughout their lives.
Combining academic research on learning and motivation with insights drawn from interviews with people who have won Nobel Prizes, Emmys, fame, or the admiration of people in their field, Ken Bain identifies the key attitudes that distinguished the best college students from their peers. These individuals started out with the belief that intelligence and ability are expandable, not fixed. This led them to make connections across disciplines, to develop a “meta-cognitive” understanding of their own ways of thinking, and to find ways to negotiate ill-structured problems rather than simply looking for right answers. Intrinsically motivated by their own sense of purpose, they were not demoralized by failure nor overly impressed with conventional notions of success. These movers and shakers didn’t achieve success by making success their goal. For them, it was a byproduct of following their intellectual curiosity, solving useful problems, and taking risks in order to learn and grow.
“The ‘best’ students are curious risk-takers who make connections across disciplines. By following those instincts—rather than simply chasing ‘success’—the best students achieved it…A wonderful exploration of excellence.”—Fortune
“Skillfully weaves together some of the best research about effective learning strategies with moving stories about remarkable life-long learners. Some of them had great teachers. But most of them succeed because of what they did for themselves.”—Thomas Luxon, Dartmouth College
“We are always telling students to ‘find their passion.’ Now we have a book that looks at how that happens…Ken Bain can really tell a story…it is very rare for a book based upon research to be such a compelling read.”—José Antonio Bowen, Southern Methodist University
Combining academic research on learning and motivation with insights drawn from interviews with people who have won Nobel Prizes, Emmys, or otherwise led lives of meaning and accomplishment, Ken Bain identifies the key attitudes that distinguish the best college students from their peers. Most start out with a belief that intelligence and ability are expandable, not fixed. This leads them to make connections across disciplines and to find ways of reconceiving problems rather than simply looking for the right answer. Intrinsically motivated by their own sense of purpose, they are not overly impressed with conventional notions of success. The best students study in small bites, focus more on concept than procedure, and work collaboratively, getting friends to test them on their knowledge. They don’t achieve success by making success their goal—when it comes, it is a byproduct of following their intellectual curiosity, solving useful problems, and taking risks to learn and grow.
What makes a great teacher great? Who are the professors students remember long after graduation? This book, the conclusion of a fifteen-year study of nearly one hundred college teachers in a wide variety of fields and universities, offers valuable answers for all educators.
The short answer is—it’s not what teachers do, it’s what they understand. Lesson plans and lecture notes matter less than the special way teachers comprehend the subject and value human learning. Whether historians or physicists, in El Paso or St. Paul, the best teachers know their subjects inside and out—but they also know how to engage and challenge students and to provoke impassioned responses. Most of all, they believe two things fervently: that teaching matters and that students can learn.
In stories both humorous and touching, Ken Bain describes examples of ingenuity and compassion, of students’ discoveries of new ideas and the depth of their own potential. What the Best College Teachers Do is a treasure trove of insight and inspiration for first-year teachers and seasoned educators.
What makes a great law professor? The first study of its kind, What the Best Law Teachers Do identifies the methods, strategies, and personal traits of professors whose students achieve exceptional learning. This pioneering book will be of interest to any instructor seeking concrete, proven techniques for helping students succeed.
What the Best Law Teachers Do introduces readers to twenty-six professors from law schools across the United States. These instructors are renowned for their exacting standards: they set expectations high, while also making course requirements--and their belief that their students can meet them--clear from the outset. They demonstrate professional behavior and tell students to approach class as they would their future professional life: by being as prepared, polished, and gracious as possible. And they prepare themselves for class in depth, even when they have taught the course for years.
The best law professors understand that the little things matter. They start class on time and stay afterward to answer questions. They learn their students' names and respond promptly to emails. These instructors are all tough--but they are also committed, creative, and compassionate mentors. With its close-to-the-ground accounts of exceptional educators in action, What the Best Law Teachers Do offers insights into effective pedagogy that transcend the boundaries of legal education.
What We Really Value traces the origins of traditional rubrics within the theoretical and historical circumstances out of which they emerged, then holds rubrics up for critical scrutiny in the context of contemporary developments in the field. As an alternative to the generic character and decontextualized function of scoring guides, he offers dynamic criteria mapping, a form of qualitative inquiry by which writing programs (as well as individual instructors) can portray their rhetorical values with more ethical integrity and more pedagogical utility than rubrics allow.
To illustrate the complex and indispensable insights this method can provide, Broad details findings from his study of eighty-nine distinct and substantial criteria for evaluation at work in the introductory composition program at "City University." These chapters are filled with the voices of composition instructors debating and reflecting on the nature, interplay, and relative importance of the many criteria by which they judged students' texts. Broad concludes his book with specific strategies that can help writing instructors and programs to discover, negotiate, map, and express a more robust truth about what they value in their students' rhetorical performances.
Exploring how DH shapes and is in turn shaped by the classroom
How has the field of digital humanities (DH) changed as it has moved from the corners of academic research into the classroom? And how has our DH praxis evolved through interactions with our students? This timely volume explores how DH is taught and what that reveals about the field of DH. While institutions are formally integrating DH into the curriculum and granting degrees, many instructors are still almost as new to DH as their students. As colleagues continue to ask what digital humanities is, we have the opportunity to answer them in terms of how we teach DH.
The contributors to What We Teach When We Teach DH represent a wide range of disciplines, including literary and cultural studies, history, art history, philosophy, and library science. Their essays are organized around four critical topics at the heart of DH pedagogy: teachers, students, classrooms, and collaborations. This book highlights how DH can transform learning across a vast array of curricular structures, institutions, and education levels, from high schools and small liberal arts colleges to research-intensive institutions and postgraduate professional development programs.
Contributors: Kathi Inman Berens, Portland State U; Jing Chen, Nanjing U; Lauren Coats, Louisiana State U; Scott Cohen, Stonehill College; Laquana Cooke, West Chester U; Rebecca Frost Davis, St. Edward’s U; Catherine DeRose; Quinn Dombrowski, Stanford U; Andrew Famiglietti, West Chester U; Jonathan D. Fitzgerald, Regis College; Emily Gilliland Grover, Notre Dame de Sion High School; Gabriel Hankins, Clemson U; Katherine D. Harris, San José State U; Jacob Heil, Davidson College; Elizabeth Hopwood, Loyola U Chicago; Hannah L. Jacobs, Duke U; Alix Keener, Stanford U; Alison Langmead, U of Pittsburgh; Sheila Liming, Champlain College; Emily McGinn, Princeton U; Nirmala Menon, Indian Institute of Technology; James O’Sullivan, U College Cork; Harvey Quamen, U of Alberta; Lisa Marie Rhody, CUNY Graduate Center; Kyle Roberts, Congregational Library and Archives; W. Russell Robinson, Alabama State U; Chelcie Juliet Rowell, Tufts U; Dibyadyuti Roy, U of Leeds; Asiel Sepúlveda, Simmons U; Andie Silva, York College, CUNY; Victoria Szabo, Duke U; Lik Hang Tsui, City U of Hong Kong; Annette Vee, U of Pittsburgh; Brandon Walsh, U of Virginia; Kalle Westerling, The British Library; Kathryn Wymer, North Carolina Central U; Claudia E. Zapata, UCLA; Benjun Zhu, Peking U.
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For more than twenty years, Robert Bruno has taught labor history and labor studies to union members from a wide range of occupations and demographic groups. In the class, he asked his students to finish the question “Work is—?” in six words or less. The thousands of responses he collected provide some of the rich source material behind What Work Is. Bruno draws on the thoughts and feelings experienced by workers in the present day to analyze how we might design a future of work. He breaks down perceptions of work into five categories: work and time; the space workers occupy; the impact of work on our lives; the sense of purpose that motivates workers; and the people we work for, in all senses of the term.
Far-seeing and sympathetic, What Work Is merges personal experiences with research, poetry, and other diverse sources to illuminate workers’ lives in the present and envision what work could be in the future.
Heather D. Switzer's interviews with over one hundred Kenyan Maasai schoolgirls challenge the widespread view of education as a silver bullet solution to global poverty. In their own voices, the girls offer incisive insights into their commitments, aspirations, and desires. Switzer weaves this ethnographic material into an astute analysis of historical literature, education and development documents, and theoretical literature. Maasai schoolgirls express a particular knowledge about themselves and provocative hopes for their futures. Yet, as Switzer shows, new opportunities force them to face, and navigate, new vulnerabilities and insecurities within a society that is itself in flux.
How do Black women in higher education create, experience, and understand joy? What sustains them? While scholars have long documented sexism, racism, and classism in the academy, one topic has been conspicuously absent from the literature—how Black women academics have found joy in the midst of adversity. Moving beyond questions of resilience, labor for others, and coping, When Will the Joy Come? focuses on the journeys of over thirty Black women at various stages of their careers.
Joy is a mixture of well-being, pleasure, alignment, and purpose that can be elusive for Black women scholars. With racial reckoning and a global pandemic as context, this volume brings together honest and vital essays that ponder how Black women balance fatigue and frustrations in the halls of the ivory tower, and explore where, when, and if joy enters their lives. By carefully contemplating the emotional, physical, and material consequences of their labor, this collection demonstrates that joy is a tactical and strategic component of Black women’s struggle.
Catholic institutions of higher learning are at a crossroads: How can they remain true to their roots while recognizing that many of their administrations, faculties, and student bodies have little connection with the tradition? How can these institutions remain competitive while maintaining a relationship to the Church?
During the past several years Catholic theologian John C. Haughey, SJ, has conducted groundbreaking research on these questions. He has done this in tandem with a team of Catholic scholars from around the United States. Haughey has also conducted numerous workshops with faculty at a dozen Catholic colleges and universities to learn firsthand about their research and teaching aspirations. Those relationships and conversations provide the foundation for this book’s many insights.
In Where Is Knowing Going? Haughey explores what constitutes the Catholic identity of Catholic colleges and universities. Going beyond a doctrinal understanding of Catholic identity to one that engages and is engaged by the intellectual tradition of Catholicism, Haughey does not find that the issue of Catholic identity is adequately dealt with by marketing the distinctive identities of institutions in terms of their founding religious orders or saints. He provides a sure-handed process whereby the pursuits of individual faculty can be better aligned with the formal mission of the institution.
Schools are places of learning but they are also workplaces, and teachers are employees. As such, are teachers more akin to professionals or to factory workers in the amount of control they have over their work? And what difference does it make?
Drawing on large national surveys as well as wide-ranging interviews with high school teachers and administrators, Richard Ingersoll reveals the shortcomings in the two opposing viewpoints that dominate thought on this subject: that schools are too decentralized and lack adequate control and accountability; and that schools are too centralized, giving teachers too little autonomy. Both views, he shows, overlook one of the most important parts of teachers' work: schools are not simply organizations engineered to deliver academic instruction to students, as measured by test scores; schools and teachers also play a large part in the social and behavioral development of our children. As a result, both views overlook the power of implicit social controls in schools that are virtually invisible to outsiders but keenly felt by insiders. Given these blind spots, this book demonstrates that reforms from either camp begin with inaccurate premises about how schools work and so are bound not only to fail, but to exacerbate the problems they propose to solve.
When it comes to the hotly disputed topic of college admissions, the one thing everyone agrees about is that it’s unfair. But there is little agreement on what a fair process would be.
Rebecca Zwick takes a hard look at the high-stakes competition of U.S. college admissions today. Illustrating her points using analyses of survey data from applicants to the nation’s top colleges and universities, she assesses the goals of different admissions systems and the fairness of criteria—from high school grades and standardized test scores to race, socioeconomic status, and students’ academic aspirations. The demographic makeup of the class and the educational outcomes of its students can vary substantially, depending upon how an institution approaches its task. Who Gets In? considers the merits and flaws of competing approaches and demonstrates that admissions policies can sometimes fail to produce the desired results. For example, some nontraditional selection methods can hurt more than help the students they are intended to benefit.
As Zwick shows, there is no objective way to evaluate admissions systems—no universal definition of student merit or blanket entitlement to attend college. Some schools may hope to attract well-rounded students, while others will focus on specific academic strengths. What matters most is that a school’s admissions policy reflects its particular educational philosophy. Colleges should be free to include socioeconomic and racial preferences among their admissions criteria, Zwick contends, but they should strive for transparency about the factors they use to evaluate applicants.
Who owns academic work? This question is provoking political and legal battles, fought on uncertain terrain, for ever-higher stakes. The posting of faculty lecture notes on commercial Web sites is being hotly debated in multiple forums, even as faculty and university administrators square off in a battle for professorial copyright. In courtrooms throughout the country, universities find themselves embroiled in intricate and expensive patent litigation. Meanwhile, junior researchers are appearing in those same courtrooms, using intellectual property rules to challenge traditional academic hierarchies. All but forgotten in these ownership disputes is a more fundamental question: should academic work be owned at all? Once characterized as a kind of gift, academic work--and academic freedom--are now being reframed as private intellectual property.
Drawing on legal, historical, and qualitative research, Corynne McSherry explores the propertization of academic work and shows how that process is shaking the foundations of the university, the professoriate, and intellectual property law. The modern university's reason for being is inextricably tied to that of the intellectual property system. The rush of universities and scholars to defend their knowledge as property dangerously undercuts a working covenant that has sustained academic life--and intellectual property law--for a century and a half. As the value structure of the research university is replaced by the inequalities of the free market, academics risk losing a language for talking about knowledge as anything other than property. McSherry has written a book that ought to deeply trouble everyone who cares about the academy.
Will America find enough good teachers to staff its public schools? How can we ensure that all our children will be taught by skilled professionals? The policies that determine who teaches today are a confusing and often conflicting array that includes tougher licensing requirements, higher salaries, mandatory master's degrees, merit pay, and alternative routes to certification. Who Will Teach? examines these policies and separates those that work from those that backfire.
The authors present an intriguing portrait of America's teachers and reveal who they are, who they have been, and who they will be. Using innovative statistical methods to track the professional lives of more than 50,000 college graduates, the book describes, in many cases for the first time, just how prospective, current, and former teachers respond to the incentives and disincentives they face. The authors, a group of noted educators, economists, and statisticians, find cause for serious concern. Few academically talented college graduates even try teaching, and many of those who do leave quickly, never to return. Current licensing requirements stifle innovation in training and dissuade many potentially talented teachers at the outset.
But Who Will Teach? shows that we can reverse these trends if we get the incentives right. Although better salaries are essential, especially for new teachers, money is not enough. Potential teachers should be offered alternative paths into the classroom. School districts should improve their recruiting strategies. Licensing criteria should assess teaching skills, not just academic achievement and number of courses completed. The authors offer a promising strategy based on high standards and substantial rewards.
What do America’s children learn about American history, American values, and human decency? Who decides? In this absorbing book, Jonathan Zimmerman tells the dramatic story of conflict, compromise, and more conflict over the teaching of history and morality in twentieth-century America.
In history, whose stories are told, and how? As Zimmerman reveals, multiculturalism began long ago. Starting in the 1920s, various immigrant groups—the Irish, the Germans, the Italians, even the newly arrived Eastern European Jews—urged school systems and textbook publishers to include their stories in the teaching of American history. The civil rights movement of the 1960s and ’70s brought similar criticism of the white version of American history, and in the end, textbooks and curricula have offered a more inclusive account of American progress in freedom and justice.
But moral and religious education, Zimmerman argues, will remain on much thornier ground. In battles over school prayer or sex education, each side argues from such deeply held beliefs that they rarely understand one another’s reasoning, let alone find a middle ground for compromise. Here there have been no resolutions to calm the teaching of history. All the same, Zimmerman argues, the strong American tradition of pluralism has softened the edges of the most rigorous moral and religious absolutism.
Ever since Horace Mann promoted state supported schooling in the 1850s, the aims of U.S. public education have been the subject of heated national debate. Whose Goals? Whose Aspirations? joins this debate by exploring clashing educational aims in a discipline-based university classroom and the consequences of these clashes for "underprepared" writers.
In this close-up look at a White middle-class teacher and his ethnically diverse students, Fishman and McCarthy examine not only the role of Standard English in college writing instruction but also the underlying and highly charged issues of multiculturalism, race cognizance, and social class.
Whose School Is It?: Women, Children, Memory, and Practice in the City is a success story with roadblocks, crashes, and detours. Rhoda Halperin uses feminist theorist and activist Gloria Anzaldúa's ideas about borderlands created by colliding cultures to deconstruct the creation and advancement of a public community charter school in a diverse, long-lived urban neighborhood on the Ohio River. Class, race, and gender mix with age, local knowledge, and place authenticity to create a page-turning story of grit, humor, and sheer stubbornness. The school has grown and flourished in the face of daunting market forces, class discrimination, and an increasingly unfavorable national climate for charter schools. Borderlands are tense spaces. The school is a microcosm of the global city.
Many theoretical strands converge in this book—feminist theory, ideas about globalization, class analysis, and accessible narrative writing—to present some new approaches in urban anthropology. The book is multi-voiced and nuanced in ways that provide authenticity and texture to the real circumstances of urban lives. At the same time, identities are threatened as community practices clash with rules and regulations imposed by outsiders.
Since it is based on fifteen years of ethnographic fieldwork in the community and the city, Whose School Is It? brings unique long-term perspectives on continuities and disjunctures in cities. Halperin's work as researcher and advocate also provides insider perspectives that are rare in the literature of urban anthropology.
Some observers see American academia as a bastion of leftist groupthink that indoctrinates students and silences conservative voices. Others see a protected enclave that naturally produces free-thinking, progressive intellectuals. Both views are self-serving, says Neil Gross, but neither is correct. Why Are Professors Liberal and Why Do Conservatives Care? explains how academic liberalism became a self-reproducing phenomenon, and why Americans on both the left and right should take notice.
Academia employs a higher percentage of liberals than nearly any other profession. But the usual explanations—hiring bias against conservatives, correlations of liberal ideology with high intelligence—do not hold up to scrutiny. Drawing on a range of original research, statistics, and interviews, Gross argues that “political typing” plays an overlooked role in shaping academic liberalism. For historical reasons, the professoriate developed a reputation for liberal politics early in the twentieth century. As this perception spread, it exerted a self-selecting influence on bright young liberals, while deterring equally promising conservatives. Most professors’ political views formed well before they stepped behind the lectern for the first time.
Why Are Professors Liberal and Why Do Conservatives Care? shows how studying the political sympathies of professors and their critics can shed light not only on academic life but on American politics, where the modern conservative movement was built in no small part around opposition to the “liberal elite” in higher education. This divide between academic liberals and nonacademic conservatives makes accord on issues as diverse as climate change, immigration, and foreign policy more difficult.
Governments around the world spend millions on art and cultural institutions, evidence of a basic human need for what the author refers to as “creating aesthetic significance.” Yet what function or purpose does art satisfy in today’s society? In this thorough and accessible text, Richard Hickman rejects the current vogue for social and cultural accounts of the nature of art-making in favor of a largely psychological approach aimed at addressing contemporary developmental issues in art education. Bringing to bear current ideas about evolutionary psychology, this second edition will be an important resource for anyone interested in arts education.
Wallace Stegner called its stacks “enchanted.” Barbara Tuchman called it “my Archimedes bathtub, my burning bush.” But to Thomas Wolfe, it was a place of “wilderment and despair.” Since its opening in 1915, the Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library has led a spirited life as Harvard’s physical and, in a sense, its spiritual heart. Originally intended as the memorial to one man, it quickly grew into a symbol of the life of the mind with few equals anywhere—and like all symbols, it has enjoyed its share of contest and contradiction. At the unlikely intersection of such disparate episodes as the sinking of the Titanic, the social upheavals of the 1960s, and the shifting meaning of books and libraries in the information age, Widener is at once the storehouse and the focus of rich and ever-growing hoards of memory.
With copious illustrations and wide-ranging narrative, Widener: Biography of a Library is not only a record of benefactors and collections; it is the tale of the students, scholars, and staff who give a great library its life.
When most people think of wikis, the first---and usually the only---thing that comes to mind is Wikipedia. The editors of Wiki Writing: Collaborative Learning in the College Classroom, Robert E. Cummings and Matt Barton, have assembled a collection of essays that challenges this common misconception, providing an engaging and helpful array of perspectives on the many pressing theoretical and practical issues that wikis raise. Written in an engaging and accessible manner that will appeal to specialists and novices alike, Wiki Writing draws on a wealth of practical classroom experiences with wikis to offer a series of richly detailed and concrete suggestions to help educators realize the potential of these new writing environments.
Robert E. Cummings began work at Columbus State University in August 2006 as Assistant Professor of English and Director of First-Year Composition. Currently he also serves as the Writing Specialist for CSU's Quality Enhancement Plan, assisting teachers across campus in their efforts to maximize student writing in their curriculum. He recently concluded a three-year research study with the Inter/National Coalition for Electronic Portfolio Research and continues to research in the fields of computers and writing, writing across the curriculum, writing in the disciplines, and curricular reform in higher education.
Matt Barton is Assistant Professor, St. Cloud State University, Department of English-Rhetoric and Applied Writing Program. His research interests are rhetoric, new media, and computers and writing. He is the author of Dungeons and Desktops: A History of Computer Role-Playing Games and has published in the journals Text and Technology, Computers and Composition, Game Studies, and Kairos. He is currently serving as Associate Editor of Kairosnews and Managing Editor of Armchair Arcade.
"Wiki Writing will quickly become the standard resource for using wikis in the classroom."
---Jim Kalmbach, Illinois State University
digitalculturebooks is an imprint of the University of Michigan Press and the Scholarly Publishing Office of the University of Michigan Library dedicated to publishing innovative and accessible work exploring new media and their impact on society, culture, and scholarly communication. Visit the website at www.digitalculture.org.
"I'm embarrassed to say I thought I knew anything substantial about Wisconsin agriculture or its history before I read this book. 'Wisconsin Agriculture' should be required reading in history classes from high school to the collegiate level. It makes me thankful that Jerry Apps has such a sense of commitment to Wisconsin's agricultural heritage--and to getting the story right." --Pam Jahnke, Farm Director, Wisconsin Farm Report Radio
Wisconsin has been a farming state from its very beginnings. And though it's long been known as "the Dairy State," it produces much more than cows, milk, and cheese. In fact, Wisconsin is one of the most diverse agricultural states in the nation.
The story of farming in Wisconsin is rich and diverse as well, and the threads of that story are related and intertwined. In this long-awaited volume, celebrated rural historian Jerry Apps examines everything from the fundamental influences of landscape and weather to complex matters of ethnic and pioneer settlement patterns, changing technology, agricultural research and education, and government regulations and policies. Along with expected topics, such as the cranberry industry and artisan cheesemaking, "Wisconsin Agriculture" delves into beef cattle and dairy goats, fur farming and Christmas trees, maple syrup and honey, and other specialty crops, including ginseng, hemp, cherries, sugar beets, mint, sphagnum moss, flax, and hops. Apps also explores new and rediscovered farming endeavors, from aquaculture to urban farming to beekeeping, and discusses recent political developments, such as the 2014 Farm Bill and its ramifications. And he looks to the future of farming, contemplating questions of ethical growing practices, food safety, sustainability, and the potential effects of climate change.
Featuring first-person accounts from the settlement era to today, along with more than 200 captivating photographs, "Wisconsin Agriculture" breathes life into the facts and figures of 150 years of farming history and provides compelling insights into the state's agricultural past, present, and future.
Classroom set includes 25 copies of the Spanish textbook (978-0-87020-512-5) PLUS 1 copy of the Teacher's Edition in English (978-0-87020-379-4) and 1 copy of the Student Activity Guide DVD in Spanish (978-0-87020-688-7)
"Wisconsin: Our State, Our Story" brings history to life! Thinking Like a Historian questions in each chapter encourage critical thinking. Scores of artifacts and documents invite students to become eyewitnesses to the past.
Lively, classroom-tested text will engross students. The rich content aligns with relevant, cross-curricular Wisconsin Model Academic Standards. The specially designed Teacher's Edition and Student Activity Guide provide additional tools to reach all learners.
Classroom set includes:
25 Student Textbooks,
1 Teacher’s Edition, and
1 Student Activity Guide disc
"Wisconsin: Our State, Our Story" brings history to life! Thinking Like a Historian questions in each chapter encourage critical thinking. Scores of artifacts and documents invite students to become eyewitnesses to the past.
Lively, classroom-tested text will engross students. The rich content aligns with relevant, cross-curricular Wisconsin Model Academic Standards. The specially designed Teacher's Edition and Student Activity Guide provide additional tools to reach all learners.
"Wisconsin: Our State, Our Story" brings history to life! Thinking Like a Historian questions in each chapter encourage critical thinking. Scores of artifacts and documents invite students to become eyewitnesses to the past.
Lively, classroom-tested text will engross students. The rich content aligns with relevant, cross-curricular Wisconsin Model Academic Standards. The specially designed Teacher's Edition and Student Activity Guide provide additional tools to reach all learners.
The Teacher's Edition provides educators with the background, literacy, and other skill-building strategies to teach "Wisconsin: Our State, Our Story" in both social studies and literacy classes.
"Wisconsin: Our State, Our Story" textbook promotes content-focused reading to address both social studies and language arts standards for the state of Wisconsin.
The Teacher's Edition draws on the research-based pedagogy in both literacy developmnent and in historical inquiry to help reach the many different levels of learners in today's classrooms.
The Teacher's Edition provides educators with the background, literacy, and other skill-building strategies to teach "Wisconsin: Our State, Our Story" in both social studies and literacy classes.
"Wisconsin: Our State, Our Story" textbook promotes content-focused reading to address both social studies and language arts standards for the state of Wisconsin.
The Teacher's Edition draws on the research-based pedagogy in both literacy development and in historical inquiry to help reach the many different levels of learners in today's classrooms.
"Wisconsin: Our State, Our Story" brings history to life! Thinking Like a Historian questions in each chapter encourage critical thinking. Scores of artifacts and documents invite students to become eyewitnesses to the past.
Lively, classroom-tested text will engross students. The rich content aligns with relevant, cross-curricular Wisconsin Model Academic Standards. The specially designed Teacher's Edition and Student Activity Guide provide additional tools to reach all learners.
"Wisconsin: Our State, Our Story" brings history to life! Thinking Like a Historian questions in each chapter encourage critical thinking. Scores of artifacts and documents invite students to become eyewitnesses to the past.
Lively, classroom-tested text will engross students. The rich content aligns with relevant, cross-curricular Wisconsin Model Academic Standards. The specially designed Teacher's Edition and Student Activity Guide provide additional tools to reach all learners.
"Wisconsin: Our State, Our Story" brings history to life! Thinking Like a Historian questions in each chapter encourage critical thinking. Scores of artifacts and documents invite students to become eyewitnesses to the past.
Lively, classroom-tested text will engross students. The rich content aligns with relevant, cross-curricular Wisconsin Model Academic Standards. The specially designed Teacher's Edition and Student Activity Guide provide additional tools to reach all learners.
"Wisconsin: Our State, Our Story" brings history to life! Thinking Like a Historian questions in each chapter encourage critical thinking. Scores of artifacts and documents invite students to become eyewitnesses to the past.
Lively, classroom-tested text will engross students. The rich content aligns with relevant, cross-curricular Wisconsin Model Academic Standards. The specially designed Teacher's Edition and Student Activity Guide provide additional tools to reach all learners.
How do students develop a personal style from their instruction in a visual arts program? Women Artists on the Leading Edge explores this question as it describes the emergence of an important group of young women artists from an innovative post-war visual arts program at Douglass College.
The women who studied with avant-garde artists at Douglas were among the first students in the nation to be introduced to performance art, conceptual art, Fluxus, and Pop Art. These young artists were among the first to experience new approaches to artmaking that rejected the predominant style of the 1950s: Abstract Expressionism. The New Art espoused by faculty including Robert Watts, Allan Kaprow, Roy Lichtenstein, Geoffrey Hendricks, and others advocated that art should be based on everyday life. The phrase “anything can be art” was frequently repeated in the creation of Happenings, multi-media installations, and video art. Experimental approaches to methods of creation using a remarkable range of materials were investigated by these young women. Interdisciplinary aspects of the Douglass curriculum became the basis for performances, videos, photography, and constructions. Sculpture was created using new technologies and industrial materials. The Douglass women artists included in this book were among the first to implement the message and direction of their instructors.
Ultimately, the artistic careers of these young women have reflected the successful interaction of students with a cutting-edge faculty. From this BA and MFA program in the Visual Arts emerged women such as Alice Aycock. Rita Myers, Joan Snyder, Mimi Smith, and Jackie Winsor, who went on to become lifelong innovators. Camaraderie was important among the Douglass art students, and many continue to be instructors within a close circle of associates from their college years. Even before the inception of the women’s art movement of the 1970s, these women students were encouraged to pursue professional careers, and to remain independent in their approach to making art. The message of the New Art was to relate one’s art production to life itself and to personal experiences. From these directions emerged a “proto-feminist” art of great originality identified with women’s issues. The legacy of these artists can be found in radical changes in art instruction since the 1950s, the promotion of non-hierarchical approaches to media, and acceptance of conceptual art as a viable art form.
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