461 books match the query 'Teaching' and 44 start with a

cover of A Bridge of Stories: Risking it All to Connect Classrooms and Culture

A Bridge of Stories

Risking it All to Connect Classrooms and Culture

Kristin Pedemonti

Parkhurst Brothers, Inc., 2017

“With openhearted generosity, Kristin shares not only the story of her amazing journey but complete lesson plans and valuable tips on inter-cultural work. She deepens our understanding of the culture and legends of Belize all the while imparting courage and a can-do philosophy that could truly change the world. Read and be inspired!”

—Diane Edgecomb, author of A Fire in My Heart: Kurdish Tales

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cover of A Brief Quadrivium

A Brief Quadrivium

Peter Ulrickson

Catholic University of America Press, 2023

Mathematics holds a central place in the traditional liberal arts. The four mathematical disciplines of the quadrivium-arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy-reveal their enduring significance in this work, which offers the first unified, textbook treatment of these four subjects. Drawing on fundamental sources including Euclid, Boethius, and Ptolemy, this presentation respects the proper character of each discipline while revealing the relations among these liberal arts, as well as their connections to later mathematical and scientific developments. This book makes the quadrivium newly accessible in a number of ways. First, the careful choice of material from ancient sources means that students receive a faithful, integral impression of the classical quadrivium without being burdened or confused by an unwieldy mass of scattered results. Second, the terminology and symbols that are used convey the real insights of older mathematical approaches without introducing needless archaism. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the book is filled with hundreds of exercises. Mathematics must be learned actively, and the exercises structured to complement the text, and proportioned to the powers of a learner to offer a clear path by which students make quadrivial knowledge their own. Many readers can profit from this introduction to the quadrivium. Students in high school will acquire a sense of the nature of mathematical proof and become confident in using mathematical language. College students can discover that mathematics is more than procedure, while also gaining insight into an intellectual current that influenced authors they are already reading: authors such as Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and Dante. All will find a practical way to grasp a body of knowledge that, if long neglected, is never out of date.
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cover of A Bright Light of Hope, Study Guide: The Elizabeth Peratrovich Story

A Bright Light of Hope, Study Guide

The Elizabeth Peratrovich Story

Annie Boochever

University of Alaska Press, 2026

This extensive study guide for A Bright Light of Hope: The Elizabeth Peratrovich Story features a scripted theatrical adaptation intended for student performance as well as a variety of classroom activities. It also includes a phonetic pronunciation guide and link to audio recordings of Lingít pronunciation, both contributed by Will Geiger and the Sealaska Heritage Foundation.

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cover of A Casebook for Second Language Teacher Education: Reflecting on the Language Classroom

A Casebook for Second Language Teacher Education

Reflecting on the Language Classroom

Amy B. Gooden and Maria N. Zlateva

University of Michigan Press, 2018

This volume offers a series of actual dilemmas within language classrooms that are designed to promote reflection and discussion.  It applies the case-based pedagogy often used in business and other fields to that of second language teacher education to encourage pre- and in-service teachers to grapple with the types of dilemmas and decisions teachers confront every day. Case-based pedagogy resists simple resolutions and easy answers; the activities that precede and follow each case are designed to stimulate analysis and discussion and allow users to draw on theoretical foundations while making critical practical connections.
 
The cases represent a range of classroom contexts: K–12 ESL/sheltered English immersion, modern foreign language, and post-secondary EAP; private, charter, and public schools; and urban and suburban settings.  The book is ideally suited to College/School of Education and MA TESOL courses but will also be useful in professional development workshops for all types of language teachers. 
 
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cover of A History of Physical Education and Athletics at Oberlin College

A History of Physical Education and Athletics at Oberlin College

Lee C. Drickamer with Fredrick D. Shults

The Ohio State University Press, 2022

Since the late nineteenth century, Oberlin College has been a leader in training physical education teachers. The skill and mentoring of founders like Delphine Hanna produced a generation of men and women who were among the most important individuals in the structuring of physical education and in the formation of professional societies in the areas of recreation, athletics, and physical education. Lee C. Drickamer and Frederick D. Shults document the full scope of Oberlin’s physical education and athletics programs, beginning with learning and labor in the mid-nineteenth century and chronicling the evolution of virtually every team, facility, curriculum, societal change, and philosophic stance thereafter. Touching on the mind-body duality, New Physical Education, and the ever-increasing emphasis on winning athletic contests, Drickamer and Shults remind readers of Oberlin’s long history of supporting societal changes and innovation. This process is brought full circle with the current emphasis on health and wellness, again focusing on the mind-body connection.
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cover of A Primer for Teaching African History: Ten Design Principles

A Primer for Teaching African History

Ten Design Principles

Trevor R. Getz

Duke University Press, 2018

A Primer for Teaching African History is a guide for college and high school teachers who are teaching African history for the first time, for experienced teachers who want to reinvigorate their courses, for those who are training future teachers to prepare their own syllabi, and for teachers who want to incorporate African history into their world history courses. Trevor R. Getz offers design principles aimed at facilitating a classroom experience that will help students navigate new knowledge, historical skills, ethical development, and worldviews. He foregrounds the importance of acknowledging and addressing student preconceptions about Africa, challenging chronological approaches to history, exploring identity and geography as ways to access historical African perspectives, and investigating the potential to engage in questions of ethics that studying African history provides. In his discussions of setting goals, pedagogy, assessment, and syllabus design, Getz draws readers into the process of thinking consciously and strategically about designing courses on African history that will challenge students to think critically about Africa and the discipline of history.
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cover of A Primer for Teaching Indian Ocean World History: Ten Design Principles

A Primer for Teaching Indian Ocean World History

Ten Design Principles

Edward A. Alpers and Thomas F. McDow

Duke University Press, 2024

A Primer for Teaching Indian Ocean World History is a guide for college and high school educators who are teaching Indian Ocean histories for the first time or who want to reinvigorate their courses. It can also serve those who are training future teachers to prepare their own syllabi, as well as those who want to incorporate Indian Ocean histories into their world history courses. Edward A. Alpers and Thomas F. McDow offer course design principles that will help students navigate topics ranging from empire, geography, slavery, and trade to mobility, disease, and the environment. In addition to exploring non-European sources and diverse historical methodologies, they discuss classroom pedagogy and provide curriculum possibilities that will help instructors at any level enrich and deepen standard approaches to world history. Alpers and McDow draw readers into strategically designing courses that will challenge students to think critically about a vast area with which many of them are almost entirely unfamiliar.
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cover of A Reflective Practitioner's Guide to (Mis)Adventures in Drama Education - or - What Was I Thinking?

A Reflective Practitioner's Guide to (Mis)Adventures in Drama Education - or - What Was I Thinking?

Edited by Peter Duffy

Intellect Books, 2015

This collection of essays from many of the world’s preeminent drama education practitioners captures the challenges and struggles of teaching with honesty, humor, openness, and integrity. Collectively the authors possess some two hundred years of shared experience in the field, and each essay investigates the mistakes of best-intentions, the lack of awareness, and the omissions that pock all of our careers. The authors ask, and answer quite honestly, a series of difficult and reflexive questions: What obscured our understanding of our students’ needs in a particular moment? What drove our professional expectations?  And how has our practice changed as a result of those experiences? Modeled on reflective practice, this book will be an essential, everyday guide to the challenges of drama education.
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cover of A Road Course in Early American Literature: Travel and Teaching from Atzlán to Amherst

A Road Course in Early American Literature

Travel and Teaching from Atzlán to Amherst

Thomas Hallock

University of Alabama Press, 2021

Essays that fuse literary scholarship and personal travelogue to explore American identity

A Road Course in Early American Literature: Travel and Teaching from Atzlán to Amherst explores a two-part question: what does travel teach us about literature, and how can reading guide us to a deeper understanding of place and identity? Thomas Hallock charts a teacher’s journey to answering these questions, framing personal experiences around the continued need for a survey course covering early American literature up to the mid-nineteenth century.

Hallock approaches literary study from the overlapping perspectives of pedagogue, scholar, unrepentant tourist, husband, father, friend, and son. Building on Ralph Waldo Emerson’s premise that there is “creative reading as well as creative writing,” Hallock turns to the vibrant and accessible tradition of American travel writing, employing the form of biblio-memoir to bridge the impasse between public and academic discourse and reintroduce the dynamic field of early American literature to wider audiences.

Hallock’s own road course begins and ends at the Low country of Georgia and South Carolina, following a circular structure of reflection. He weaves his journey through a wide swath of American literatures and authors: from Native American and African American oral traditions, to Wheatley and Equiano, through Emerson, Poe, and Dickinson, among others. A series of longer, place-oriented narratives explore familiar and lesser-known literary works from the sixteenth-century invasion of Florida through the Mexican War of 1846–1848 and the American Civil War. Shorter chapters bridge the book’s central themes—the mapping of cognitive and physical space, our personal stake in reading, the tensions that follow earlier acts of erasure, and the impossibility of ever fully shutting out the past.

Exploring complex cultural histories and contemporary landscapes filled with ghosts and new voices, this volume draws inspiration from a tradition of travel, place-oriented, and literature-based works ranging from William Carlos Williams’s In the American Grain and Jack Kerouac’s On the Road to Alice Walker’s In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens, Wendy Lesser’s Why I Read: The Serious Pleasure of Books, and Rebecca Mead’s My Life in Middlemarch.
 
An accompanying bibliographic essay is periodically updated and available at Hallock’s website:
www.roadcourse.us.
 

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cover of A Sourcebook for Ancient Greek: Grammar, Poetry, and Prose

A Sourcebook for Ancient Greek

Grammar, Poetry, and Prose

John Tomarchio

Catholic University of America Press, 2022

This book was designed for students transitioning from the study of Greek grammar to translation of texts. It was developed in classroom use for classroom use, in the context of an integrated Great Books program in liberal arts and sciences. It is meant for students not only of Classics, but more, for students of Humanities interested in direct engagement of primary sources. Each Greek text offered for translation was chosen for its theoretical interest as well as the interest of its Greek. The selections of Greek literature offered in this Sourcebook are wide-ranging. The indisputable standard of excellence for classicists is of course the Attic dialect of Athens in its glory. However, this Sourcebook is meant for students of liberal arts and sciences whose interests range far more widely. Thus, it does not hesitate to extend not only backward to the archaic Greek of Homer, but also forward to the koine Greek of the Alexandrian and Roman empires. Greek works were chosen for being seminal to Western thinking today, chosen to give students of Western arts and sciences introductions to its Greek sources Naturally, Greek grammar is taught to the newcomer analytically and sequentially, but the continuing student needs to synthesize these distended enumerations of elements and principles. Accordingly, grammatical synopses are not appended as reference tables but placed front and center as objects of study. The grammar tables offer synoptic views of integral parts of Greek grammar to show the form and logic of the whole part of speech or part of a sentence. On the basis of these tables, detailed grammatical notes and commentary appended to Greek selections that follow are tailored for continuing students.
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cover of A Sourcebook for Classical Rhetoric

A Sourcebook for Classical Rhetoric

John Tomarchio

Catholic University of America Press, 2023

This Sourcebook is intended for students of liberal arts and great books. It treats such books as primary sources for inquiring into the nature of human speech because they clarify the terms and stakes of perennial questions thinking human beings ask themselves about persuasive speaking. By crystallizing viable claims about the nature of what we confront in politics and society—live claims for us to confront in our own, with the stakes of that confrontation being live as well—they originate a dialectic with one another and with us their readers. Cicero called rhetoric a liberal art necessary for every citizen of a free republic. In the polities of ancient Greece and Rome, rhetoric was politically potent because oratory was the regular means of political decision. Words were decisive, often a matter of life and death, not merely for individuals but for peoples. In human milieux where human speech is so politically decisive, reflection upon its nature became keen. The selections of this sourcebook have been arranged in three sequences. The first two sequences comprise philosophical dialogues on the ends of rhetoric. Selections from Plato’s Gorgias, Phaedrus, and Apology examine the rhetorician or teacher of rhetoric, and then Cicero’s De oratore offers us a dialectic among practitioners about its practice. The philosophical dialogues on the art’s intended ends and causative effects provide the theoretical and ethical context for examining its means. These philosophical dialogues are thus propaedeutic to the third sequence, which focusses on the art itself with selections from Aristotle’s treatise On Rhetoric, paired with orations from Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War.
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cover of A Sourcebook for English Lyric Poetry

A Sourcebook for English Lyric Poetry

John Tomarchio

Catholic University of America Press, 2023

This Sourcebook is not a survey of English lyric poems but rather a florilegium. It singles out great poems of the last five centuries worthy of study in liberal education—in Great Books programs, Core curricula, and the Humanities generally. The poems were selected not as representative of the author’s time or oeuvre, but rather as addressed to the reader and the reader’s time by virtue of their representing the nature of things. That is what makes a poem great and worthy of inquiry, in John Tomarchio’s judgement. The capacities, needs, and interests of students of such great poetry were the principles of selection. To arrange the great poems selected Tomarchio looked to their meters as a formal measure intrinsic to them, rather than to epochal divisions. The paradigmatic example of this is the classical English sonnet. Many an English poet has submitted themselves to the self-discipline of this poetic form born in the classical period of English poetry in Tudor England. But what of such historical context? When Robert Frost chooses to write a sonnet in the 20th century, why associate it more with the free verse of e.e. cummings than of the quincentenary sonnet tradition his chosen form invokes for context? The Sourcebook arranges poems according to five such metrical modes, however along with an Index by poet as well . Tomarchio’s enumeration of poetic modes does not presume to be either exhaustive or normative, but rather interpretative of poetic practices and hopefully more elucidative than historical considerations. Further, as understanding great poetry’s means deepens interpretation of ends, the Sourcebook begins with a propaedeutic “grammar” that introduces students to such devices of poetic art as meter, rhyme, and trope.
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cover of A Writer Reforms (the Teaching of) Writing: Donald Murray and the Writing Process Movement, 1963–1987

A Writer Reforms (the Teaching of) Writing

Donald Murray and the Writing Process Movement, 1963–1987

Michael J. Michaud

University Press of Colorado, 2024

In this archival investigation, Michael J. Michaud examines the life and work of Donald M. Murray, an important disciplinary and educational reformer who has for too long been misunderstood, caricatured, and dismissed by many writing studies theorists and historians. Focusing on Murray’s work at the University of New Hampshire from the 1960s to the 1980s, Michaud offers a corrective intended to establish a new legacy for Murray. Grounded in an understanding of the significance of his personal backstory to his reform efforts and narrated through the lens of a close reading of the day-to-day details of his work during the heady years of the writing process movement, A Writer Reforms (the Teaching of) Writing recounts the numerous innovations Murray contributed to composition pedagogy and traces the impact of his work on the growth of the field during a critical period in its development.
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cover of ABC Learning Design: Active, Blended, Connected and Beyond

ABC Learning Design

Active, Blended, Connected and Beyond

Edited by Clive Young, Nataša Perovic, Leo Havemann, and Karen Shackleford-Cesare

University College London, 2026

A practical, step-by-step guide to the ABC Learning Design method, designed for local adaptation and readily transferable across institutions committed to educational reform. 

ABC Learning Design is a popular and effective rapid design method for developing educational programs, modules, and short courses that has been widely adopted across the UK and Europe. This book introduces ABC Learning Design to a new audience, adding insights from institutions that have localised and implemented the method in diverse contexts.

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cover of Ab Initio Language Teaching in British Higher Education: The Case of German

Ab Initio Language Teaching in British Higher Education

The Case of German

Edited by Ulrike Bavendiek, Silke Mentchen, Christian Mossmann, and Dagmar Paulus

University College London, 2022

Practical guidance for teaching languages from scratch in higher education, using German as a case study.

As entries for UK school exams in modern foreign languages decrease, this book serves the urgent need for research and guidance on ab initio learning and teaching in higher education. Drawing extensively on the expertise of teachers of German in universities across the UK, the volume offers an overview of recent trends, new pedagogical approaches, and practical guidance for teaching languages at the beginners’ level in the higher education classroom that will be useful for teachers of both German and other languages.

The first chapters assess the role of ab initio provision within the wider context of modern language departments and language centers. They are followed by sections on teaching methods and approaches in the ab initio classroom, including the use of music, textbook evaluation, effective use of flipped classrooms, and the contribution of language apps. Finally, the book focuses on the learner in the ab initio context and explores issues around autonomy and learner strengths.
 
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cover of Academic Languaging and Historical Thinking: Cultivating Students' Language Skills for Argument Writing

Academic Languaging and Historical Thinking

Cultivating Students' Language Skills for Argument Writing

Undarmaa Maamuujav and Jacob Steiss

University of Michigan Press, 2026

Academic Languaging and Historical Thinking prepares teachers to assess where students are in their written and critical thinking skills and to develop the art of teaching historical argumentative writing to students. The use of effective language to communicate historical, social, and civic arguments is a key competence future citizens need, and teaching writing through history is especially effective because of the grounded nature of historical documentation and the balance between clear facts and blurrier areas of interpretation. 

Starting with a pedagogical approach, the book takes readers through research on the relationship between language and writing, the ways that historians make claims and the kinds of evidence they use, and how to successfully find and evaluate sources. It then offers instructional activities and strategies that center around key disciplinary practices in historical argumentation: making claims, sourcing and integrating evidence, presenting reasoning, and addressing counterarguments. These activities can be easily modified for different teaching and learning contexts, including supporting multilingual learners of English. Whether readers are practicing teachers, pre-service teachers, or instructional coaches, this book will help them learn how to integrate academic language skills with argument writing instruction in history to teach students to be confident academic writers and competent language users.
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cover of Academic Skills for Interdisciplinary Studies

Academic Skills for Interdisciplinary Studies

Ger Post, Vincent Visser, and Joris Buis

Amsterdam University Press, 2016

Academic skills are the tools that enable you to gain, develop and critically discuss new knowledge during and after your Bachelor's and Master's programme. This handbook offers practical instructions, tips, and tricks that help undergraduate students to develop the skills needed for an interdisciplinary curriculum.
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cover of Academic Skills for Interdisciplinary Studies: Revised Edition

Academic Skills for Interdisciplinary Studies

Revised Edition

Koen van der Gaast

Amsterdam University Press, 2019

What's a theoretical framework for? How do you effectively present your data in a figure? What's the secret to a good presentation?

As an interdisciplinary student, you delve into theories and research methods from a whole range of disciplines. Academic skills are the tools that you can use to take in, develop, integrate and question knowledge. This guide provides specific instructions, tips and examples to help students develop these skills, both during and after their studies.

As academic education focuses on research, the empirical cycle forms a key theme of the book, including when discussing the following skills:
- Searching for, critically reading and analysing scholarly texts
- Formulating research questions
- Making concepts measurable, qualitatively and quantitatively
- Organizing literature and data
- Analysing and formulating an argument
- Academic writing
- Collaborating
- Reflecting
- Presenting
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cover of Activity-Based Teaching in the Art Museum: Movement, Embodiment, Emotion

Activity-Based Teaching in the Art Museum

Movement, Embodiment, Emotion

Elliott Kai-Kee

J. Paul Getty Trust, The, 2020

This groundbreaking book explores why and how to encourage physical and sensory engagement with works of art.
 
An essential resource for museum professionals, teachers, and students, the award winning Teaching in the Art Museum (Getty Publications, 2011) set a new standard in the field of gallery education. This follow-up book blends theory and practice to help educators—from teachers and docents to curators and parents—create meaningful interpretive activities for children and adults.
 
Written by a team of veteran museum educators, Activity-Based Teaching in the Art Museum offers diverse perspectives on embodiment, emotions, empathy, and mindfulness to inspire imaginative, spontaneous interactions that are firmly grounded in history and theory. The authors begin by surveying the emergence of activity-based teaching in the 1960s and 1970s and move on to articulate a theory of play as the cornerstone of their innovative methodology. The volume is replete with sidebars describing activities facilitated with museum visitors of all ages.

Table of Contents
Introduction
 
Part I History
 
1 The Modern History of Presence and Meaning
A philosophical shift from a language-based understanding of the world to direct, physical interaction with it.
 
2 A New Age in Museum Education: The 1960s and 1970s
A brief history of some of the innovative museum education programs developed in the United States in the late 1960s and 1970s. The sudden and widespread adoption of nondiscursive gallery activities during this period, especially but not exclusively in programs designed for younger students and school groups, expressed the spirit of the times.
 
Part II Theory
 
3 Starts and Stops
Two attempts by American museum educators to articulate a theory for their new, nondiscursive programs: the first deriving from the early work of Project Zero, the Harvard Graduate School of Education program founded by the philosopher Nelson Goodman to study arts learning as a cognitive activity; the second stemming from the work of Viola Spolin, the acclaimed theater educator and coach whose teaching methods, embodied in a series of “theater games,” were detailed in her well-known book Improvisation for the Theater (1963).
 
4 A Theory of Play in the Museum
A theory of play that posits activities in the museum as forms of play that take place in spaces (or “playgrounds”) temporarily designated as such by educators and their adult visitors or students. Play is defined essentially as movement—both physical and imaginary (metaphorical)—toward and away from, around, and inside and outside the works of art that are foregrounded within those spaces. Gallery activities conceived in this way respond to the possibilities that the objects themselves offer for the visitor to explore and engage with them. The particular movements characterizing an activity are crucially conditioned by the object in question; they constitute a process of discovery and learning conceptually distinct from, but supportive of, traditional dialogue-based modes of museum education, which they supplement rather than supplant.
 
Part III Aspects of Play
 
5 Embodiment, Affordances
The idea of embodiment adopted here recognizes that both mind and body are joined in their interactions with things. Investigating works of art thus involves apprehending them physically as well as intellectually—in the sense of responding to the ways in which a particular work allows and even solicits the viewer’s physical grasp of it.
 
6 Skills
Ways in which objects present themselves to us, as viewers, and what we might do in response as they fit with the bodily skills we have developed over the course of our lives. Such skills might be as simple as getting dressed, washing, or eating; or as specialized as doing one’s hair, dancing, playing an instrument, or acting—all of which may allow us to “grasp” and even feel that we inhabit particular works of art.
 
7 Movement
Embodied looking is always looking from somewhere. We apprehend objects as we physically move around and in front of them; they reveal themselves differently as we approach them from different viewpoints. Viewers orient themselves spatially to both the surfaces of objects and to the things and spaces depicte4d in or suggested by representational works of art. Activity-based teaching gets visitors and students to move among the objects—away from them, close to them, and even into them.
 
8 The Senses
Both adult visitors and younger students come to the museum expecting to use their eyes, yet “visual” art appeals to several of the senses at once, though rarely to the same degree. Sculpture, for example, almost always appeals to touch (whether or not that is actually possible or allowed) as well as sight. A painting depicting a scene in which people appear to be talking may induce viewers to not only look but also “listen” to what the figures might be saying.
 
9 Drawing in the Museum
Looking at art with a pencil in hand amplifies viewers’ ability to imaginatively touch and feel their way across and around an artwork. Contour drawing by its nature requires participants to imagine that they are touching the contours of an object beneath the tips of their pencils. Other types of drawing allow viewers to feel their way around objects through observation and movement.
 
10 Emotion
Visitors’ emotional responses to art represent a complex process with many components, from physiological to cognitive, and a particular work of art may elicit a wide range of emotional reactions. This chapter describes specific ways in which museum educators can go well beyond merely asking visitors how a work of art makes them feel.
 
11 Empathy and Intersubjectivity
One aspect of viewers’ emotional responses to art that is often taken for granted, if not neglected altogether: the empathetic connections that human beings make to images of other people. This chapter advocates an approach that prompts viewers to physically engage with the representations of people they see.
 
12 Mindful Looking
Mindfulness involves awareness and attention, both as a conscious practice and as an attitude that gallery teachers can encourage in museum visitors. This is not solely a matter of cultivating the mind, however; it is also a matter of cultivating the body, since mindfulness is only possible when mind and body are in a state of harmonious, relaxed attentiveness. Mindfulness practice in the art museum actively directs the viewer’s focus on the object itself and insists on returning to it over and over; yet it also balances activity with conscious stillness.
 
Afterword
 
Acknowledgments
 
 
 
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cover of Adequate: Rewriting the Logics of Success in Rhetoric and Composition

Adequate

Rewriting the Logics of Success in Rhetoric and Composition

Timothy Oleksiak

Utah State University Press, 2025

Adequate: Rewriting the Logics of Success in Rhetoric and Composition proposes a fresh approach to teaching rhetoric and composition—a field awash with unrealistic labor expectations and untenable and often unattainable requirements for both the educator and the educated—that takes “success” and “failure” out of the equation and advocates for the concept of adequacy over that of perfection.
 
Fourteen essays from established scholars, ranging from deeply personal, to darkly humorous, to impassioned and blunt, offer theoretical and pragmatic resources for responding to unjust labor extraction and the discipline’s demands that teachers do it all. Drawing on an array of intellectual traditions including labor studies, feminist rhetoric, disability studies, Jewish rhetoric, and theories of writing program administrations, authors assert the reasonable position of being enough and thriving outside of work in the face of growing demands for professional excellence and even perfection.
 
Adequate reimagines what the concept of adequacy holds for the future of academic work. An invaluable resource for scholars, graduate students, and advanced undergraduate students in the rhetoric and composition field, this volume covers the realities of teaching rhetoric and composition in the modern college environment, as well as potential paths forward for educators in need of a better work-life balance.
 
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cover of After Plato: Rhetoric, Ethics, and the Teaching of Writing

After Plato

Rhetoric, Ethics, and the Teaching of Writing

John Duffy

Utah State University Press, 2020

After Plato redefines the relationships of rhetoric for scholars, teachers, and students of rhetoric and writing in the twenty-first century. Featuring essays by some of the most accomplished scholars in the field, the book explores the diversity of ethical perspectives animating contemporary writing studies—including feminist, postmodern, transnational, non-Western, and virtue ethics—and examines the place of ethics in writing classrooms, writing centers, writing across the curriculum programs, prison education classes, and other settings.

When truth is subverted, reason is mocked, racism is promoted, and nationalism takes center stage, teachers and scholars of writing are challenged to articulate the place of rhetorical ethics in the writing classroom and throughout the field more broadly. After Plato demonstrates the integral place of ethics in writing studies and provides a roadmap for future conversations about ethical rhetoric that will play an essential role in the vitality of the field.
 

Contributors: Fred Antczak, Patrick W. Berry, Vicki Tolar Burton, Rasha Diab, William Duffy, Norbert Elliot, Gesa E. Kirsch, Don J. Kraemer, Paula Mathieu, Robert J. Mislevy, Michael A. Pemberton, James E. Porter, Jacqueline Jones Royster, Xiaoye You, Bo Wang

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cover of Agile Faculty: Practical Strategies for Managing Research, Service, and Teaching

Agile Faculty

Practical Strategies for Managing Research, Service, and Teaching

Rebecca Pope-Ruark

University of Chicago Press, 2017

Digital tools have long been a transformative part of academia, enhancing the classroom and changing the way we teach. Yet there is a way that academia may be able to benefit more from the digital revolution: by adopting the project management techniques used by software developers.

Agile work strategies are a staple of the software development world, developed out of the need to be flexible and responsive to fast-paced change at times when “business as usual” could not work. These techniques call for breaking projects into phases and short-term goals, managing assignments collectively, and tracking progress openly.

Agile Faculty is a comprehensive roadmap for scholars who want to incorporate Agile practices into all aspects of their academic careers, be it research, service, or teaching. Rebecca Pope-Ruark covers the basic principles of Scrum, one of the most widely used models, and then through individual chapters shows how to apply that framework to everything from individual research to running faculty committees to overseeing student class work. Practical and forward-thinking, Agile Faculty will help readers not only manage their time and projects but also foster productivity, balance, and personal and professional growth.
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cover of Alternative Models of Sports Development in America: Solutions to a Crisis in Education and Public Health

Alternative Models of Sports Development in America

Solutions to a Crisis in Education and Public Health

B. David Ridpath

Ohio University Press, 2017

In the United States, the entanglement of sports and education has persisted for over a century. Multimillion-dollar high school football stadiums, college coaches whose salaries are many times those of their institutions’ presidents, psychological and educational tolls on student-athletes, and high-profile academic scandals are just symptoms of a system that has come under increasing fire. Institutions large and small face persistent quandaries: which do they value more, academic integrity or athletic success? Which takes precedence: prioritizing elite teams and athletes, or making it possible for all students to participate in sports? How do we create opportunities for academic—not just athletic—development for players?

In Alternative Models of Sports Development in America, B. David Ridpath—a leading sports development researcher who has studied both the US system and the European club model—offers clear steps toward creating a new status quo. He lays out four possible alternative models that draw various elements from academic, athletic, and European approaches. His proposals will help increase access of all young people to the benefits of sports and exercise, allow athletes to also thrive as students, and improve competitiveness. The result is a book that will resonate with sports development professionals, academic administrators, and parents.

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cover of American Conservatism: Thinking It, Teaching It

American Conservatism

Thinking It, Teaching It

Paul Lyons

Vanderbilt University Press, 2009

This book offers a rare opportunity to read about how a scholar's teaching informs his research, in this case an examination of the nature of American conservatism. It is based on an interdisciplinary senior seminar Lyons taught in Spring 2006. His teaching log, including student comments from an electronic conferencing system, gives a vivid sense of the daily frustrations and triumphs. Lyons reflects on some of the most difficult issues in higher education today, such as how to handle racism and political passions in the classroom, as well as how a teacher presents his own political convictions.

Lyons begins with the premise that most universities have been negligent in helping undergraduates understand a movement that has shaped the political landscape for half a century. In addition, in a series of essays that frame the teaching log, he makes the case that conservatives have too often failed to adhere to basic, Burkean principles, and that the best of conservatism has often appeared as a form of liberalism from thinkers such as Hannah Arendt, Reinhold Niebuhr, and George Kennan. The essays also cover the history of conservatism, conservative use of the city-on-a-hill metaphor, and an examination of how the promise of Camelot sophistication was subverted by a resurgence of right-wing populism.

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cover of An Arkansas History for Young People: Fourth Edition

An Arkansas History for Young People

Fourth Edition

Shay E. Hopper

University of Arkansas Press, 2008

Adopted by the State of Arkansas for 2008 Once again, the State of Arkansas has adopted An Arkansas History for Young People as an official textbook for middle-level and/or junior-high-school Arkansas-history classes. This fourth edition incorporates new research done after extensive consultations with middle-level and junior-high teachers from across the state, curriculum coordinators, literacy coaches, university professors, and students themselves. It includes a multitude of new features and is now full color throughout. This edition has been completely redesigned and now features a modern format and new graphics suitable for many levels of student readers. The completely revised fourth edition includes new unit, chapter, and section divisions as well as five brand-new chapters: an introductory chapter with information on the symbols, flag, and songs of Arkansas; chapter 2, which covers the geography of Arkansas; chapter 3, on state and local government; chapter four, on economics and tourism; and a “modern” chapter on the Arkansas of today and the future, which completes the learning adventure. This edition also has two “special features”: one on the Central High School crisis of 1957 and another on the William J. Clinton Presidential Library. It also has new and interesting features for students like the “Guide to Reading” (at the beginning of each chapter, there is a list of important terms, people, places and events for the student to keep in mind as he or she reads [corresponding to blue vocabulary words in the text, which are define in the margin]), “County Quest,” “I Am an Arkansan,” “Did You Know?” “Only in Arkansas,” “A Day in the Life,” “Chapter Reflection” questions and activities, over forty-five new content maps, and a comprehensive new map atlas.
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An Athletic Director’s Story and the Future of College Sports in America

Robert E. Mulcahy

Rutgers University Press, 2020

Robert Mulcahy’s chronicle of his decade leading Rutgers University athletics is an intriguing story about fulfilling a vision.  The goal was to expand pride in intercollegiate athletics.  Redirecting a program with clearer direction and strategic purpose brought encouraging results.  Advocating for finer coaching and improved facilities, he and Rutgers achieved national honors in Division I sports.  Unprecedented alumni interest and support for athletics swelled across the Rutgers community.
His words and actions were prominent during a nationally-reported incident involving student athletes.  When the Rutgers Women’s Basketball team players were slandered by racist remarks from a popular radio talk show host, Mulcahy met it head on.  With the coach and players, he set an inspiring example for defending character and values.
Though Mr. Mulcahy left Rutgers in 2009, his memoir reflects continued devotion to intercollegiate athletics and student athletes.  His insights for addressing several leading issues confronting Division I sports today offer guidelines for present and future athletic directors to follow.
 
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An Illinois Sampler

Teaching and Research on the Prairie

Edited by Mary-Ann Winkelmes and Antoinette Burton with Kyle Mays

University of Illinois Press, 2014

An Illinois Sampler presents personal accounts from faculty members at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and other contributors about their research and how it enriches and energizes their teaching. Contributors from the humanities, engineering, social and natural sciences, and other disciplines explore how ideas, methods, and materials merge to lead their students down life-changing paths to creativity, discovery, and solutions. Faculty introduce their classes to work conducted from the Illinois prairie to Caribbean coral reefs to African farms, and from densely populated cities to dense computer coding. In so doing they generate an atmosphere where research, teaching, and learning thrive inside a feedback loop of education across disciplines.

Aimed at alumni and prospective students interested in the university's ongoing mission, as well as current faculty and students wishing to stay up to date on the work being done around them, An Illinois Sampler showcases the best, the most ambitious, and the most effective teaching practices developed and nurtured at one of the world's premier research universities.

Contributors are Nancy Abelmann, Flavia C. D. Andrade, Jayadev Athreya, Betty Jo Barrett, Thomas J. Bassett, Hugh Bishop, Antoinette Burton, Lauren A. Denofrio-Corrales, Lizanne DeStefano, Karen Flynn, Bruce W. Fouke, Rebecca Ginsburg, Julie Jordan Gunn, Geoffrey Herman, Laurie Johnson, Kyle T. Mays, Rebecca Nettl-Fiol, Audrey Petty, Anke Pinkert, Raymond Price, Luisa-Maria Rosu, D. Fairchild Ruggles, Carol Spindel, Mark D. Steinberg, William Sullivan, Richard I. Tapping, Bradley Tober, Agniezska Tuszynska, Bryan Wilcox, Kate Williams, Mary-Ann Winkelmes, and Yi Lu.

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Analysis and Argument in First-Year Writing and Beyond

A Functional Perspective

Silvia Pessoa, Thomas D. Mitchell, & Maria Pía Gómez-Laich

University of Michigan Press, 2024

In an increasingly wider range of disciplines college students are expected to write arguments throughout their undergraduate studies. While most instructors know good writing when they see it, they are not always able to articulate the finer details of how language is used to compose the strong arguments they expect from their students. Analysis and Argument in First-Year Writing and Beyond provides a common language to talk about and teach argument writing.

The authors harness over ten years of research on analyzing, scaffolding, and assessing argumentative writing in university classrooms to offer research-based tools for first-year writing and disciplinary instructors to make their expectations explicit to students. To articulate the linguistic resources of argumentation, the authors rely on genre-based pedagogy, informed by systemic functional linguistics (SFL). By leveraging their expertise , the authors offer practical tools for scaffolding writing in key genres across broader fields, such as writing studies, business administration, and information systems.

Each chapter focuses on a single tool, explaining it with mentor texts, sample texts, and visualizations, and provides guided classroom activities that teachers can adapt to fit their own contexts. With these tools, instructors and students will better understand how to: 
  • distinguish between descriptive and argumentative writing;
  • write argumentative claims; 
  • apply an analytical framework in a written text; 
  • maintain a consistent position in an argumentative text while incorporating outside sources; 
  • argue for one position in favor of viable alternatives.
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Analyzing Syntax & Semantics Textbook

Virginia Heidinger

Gallaudet University Press, 1984

This 22-chapter text explores the structure of language and the meaning of words within a given structure. The text/workbook combination gives students both the theory and practice they need to understand this complex topic.

       Analyzing Syntax and Semantics features the Personalized System of Instruction (PSI) approach. This method uses student performance objectives, practice, feedback, individualization of pace, and repeatable testing as instructional strategies.
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cover of Analyzing Syntax & Semantics Workbook

Analyzing Syntax & Semantics Workbook

Virginia Heidinger

Gallaudet University Press, 1984

This 22-chapter text explores the structure of language and the meaning of words within a given structure. The text/workbook combination gives students both the theory and practice they need to understand this complex topic.

       Analyzing Syntax and Semantics features the Personalized System of Instruction (PSI) approach. This method uses student performance objectives, practice, feedback, individualization of pace, and repeatable testing as instructional strategies.
[more]
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Applied Motor Learning in Physical Education and Sports

Jin Wang

FiT Publishing, 2014

The importance of the study of the scientific principles of learning human motor skills is evident in that motor learning is a required core course as set forth by the NASPE standards. Applied Motor Learning in Physical Education and Sports goes further than simply providing valuable scientific theories. Authors Jin Wang and Shihui Chen transform those theories into practice in an understandable approach by incorporating case studies and practitioners’ implications, making this a comprehensive authority on the topic of motor learning.

Written for undergraduate students, PE teachers, coaches, athletes and practitioners, each chapter includes:

  • an introduction to the imperative theoretical models of motor learning

  • case studies and life examples that illustrate theoretical concepts that can be effectively applied to practical teaching, coaching, or motor learning settings

  • project topics that integrate theory with practice

  • clear illustrations, diagrams, and key components of concepts depicting the main ideas

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cover of Arkansas: A Concise History

Arkansas

A Concise History

Jeannie M. Whayne

University of Arkansas Press, 2019

Distilled from Arkansas: A Narrative History, the definitive work on the subject since its original publication in 2002, Arkansas: A Concise History is a succinct one-volume history of the state from the prehistory period to the present. Featuring four historians, each bringing his or her expertise to a range of topics, this volume introduces readers to the major issues that have confronted the state and traces the evolution of those issues across time.

After a brief review of Arkansas’s natural history, readers will learn about the state’s native populations before exploring the colonial and plantation eras, early statehood, Arkansas’s entry into and role in the Civil War, and significant moments in national and global history, including Reconstruction, the Gilded Age, the Progressive Era, the Elaine race massacre, the Great Depression, both world wars, and the Civil Rights Movement. Linking these events together, Arkansas: A Concise History offers both an understanding of the state’s history and a perspective on that history’s implications for the political, economic, and social realities of today.

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Arkansas

A Narrative History

Jeannie M. Whayne

University of Arkansas Press, 2013

Arkansas: A Narrative History is a comprehensive history of the state that has been invaluable to students and the general public since its original publication. Four distinguished scholars cover prehistoric Arkansas, the colonial period, and the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and incorporate the newest historiography to bring the book up to date for 2012.

A new chapter on Arkansas geography, new material on the civil rights movement and the struggle over integration, and an examination of the state’s transition from a colonial economic model to participation in the global political economy are included. Maps are also dramatically enhanced, and supplemental teaching materials are available.

“No less than the first edition, this revision of Arkansas: A Narrative History is a compelling introduction for those who know little about the state and an insightful survey for others who wish to enrich their acquaintance with the Arkansas past.”
—Ben Johnson, from the Foreword

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Arousing Sense

Recipes for Workshopping Sensory Experience

Tomie Hahn

University of Illinois Press, 2021

Engaging with sensory experience provides a gateway to the contemplation and cultivation of creativity and ideas. Tomie Hahn's workshopping recipes encourage us to incorporate sensory-rich experiences into our research, creative processes, and understanding of people. The exercises recognize that playfulness allows for a loosening of self while increasing empathy and vulnerability. Their ability to spark sensory endeavors that reach into our deepest core offers potentially profound impacts on art making, research, ethnographic fieldwork, contemplation, philosophical or personal introspections, and many other activities. Designed to be flexible, these living recipes provide an avenue for performative adventures that invite us to improvise in ways suited to our own purposes or settings. Leaders and practitioners enjoy limitless arenas for using the senses for explorations that range from personally transformative to professionally productive to profoundly moving.

User-friendly and practical, Arousing Sense is a guide to how teaching through sensory experience can lead to positive, transformative impact in the classroom and everyday life.

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cover of Art, Sustainability and Learning Communities: Call to Action

Art, Sustainability and Learning Communities

Call to Action

Edited by Raphael Vella and Victoria Pavlou

Intellect Books, 2024

Presents a case for strong learning communities that take a clear political stand in favor of socially engaged art pedagogies.

The main aim of Art, Sustainability and Learning Communities is to show how shared spaces for exchange in the fields of art education and continuous professional development can reflect, inspire, and integrate sustainability principles that are becoming crucial in today’s world. The authors propose the idea that coordinated action can lead to a more sustainable future by promoting a sense of community, lifelong learning, and confidence in the possibility of changing current conditions.

Its three parts combine expertise in visual arts education, education for sustainable development, contemporary art practice, and sustainability activism. While Part I focuses on literature in the field and the interrelation of different disciplines, Part II provides concrete examples of professional learning communities and pedagogies that can be used to enrich the field of art education. Finally, Part III presents brief case studies illustrating international projects by contemporary artists, curators, environmentalists, and others, providing educators with several inspirational models of concrete and creative action.
 
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cover of Artificial Intelligence, Real Teaching: A Guide to AI in ELT

Artificial Intelligence, Real Teaching

A Guide to AI in ELT

Joshua M. Paiz, Rachel Toncelli, and Ilka Kostka

University of Michigan Press, 2025

Artificial Intelligence, Real Teaching provides an accessible overview of AI and its uses so English language teachers across the globe can feel confident joining conversations about AI and integrating it into their practice. Grounded in current understanding of second language acquisition theory, translanguaging, and the science of learning, as well as the first-hand AI-integration experiences of the authors, this book offers teachers time-saving and personalized backend strategies for curriculum development, lesson planning, scaffolding, and assessment. Through inclusive front-end strategies for use with students in class and “make it your own” exercises, readers are encouraged to adapt AI enhancements to their particular teaching contexts and to reflect on the benefits and challenges of ethical AI integration. In short, this book serves as a teacher’s AI toolkit, offering English language teachers detailed resources to continue engaging with AI. Artificial Intelligence, Real Teaching sets the stage for teachers to innovate their practices with productive AI enhancements while continuing to center human interaction in language education amid the changing landscape of an AI-rich world.
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cover of Artist-Teacher: A Philosophy for Creating and Teaching

Artist-Teacher

A Philosophy for Creating and Teaching

G. James Daichendt

Intellect Books, 2010

Is an artist-teacher a mere professional who balances a career—or does the duality of making and teaching art merit a more profound investigation? Rejecting a conventional understanding of the artist-teacher, this book sets out to present a robust history from the classical era to the twenty-first century. Particular pedagogical portraits—featuring George Wallis, Walter Gropius, Johannes Itten, Victor Pashmore, Richard Hamilton, Arthur Wesley Dow, and Hans Hofmann—illustrate the artist-teacher in various contexts. This book offers a revelation of the complex thinking processes artists utilize when teaching, and a reconciliation of the artistic and educational enterprises as complimentary partners.

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cover of Arts Education in Action: Collaborative Pedagogies for Social Justice

Arts Education in Action

Collaborative Pedagogies for Social Justice

Edited by Sarah Travis, Jody Stokes-Casey, and Seoyeon Kim

University of Illinois Press, 2020

Arts educators have adopted social justice themes as part of a larger vision of transforming society. Social justice arts education confronts oppression and inequality arising from factors related to race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, class, ability, gender, and sexuality.

This edition of Common Threads investigates the intersection of social justice work with education in the visual arts, music, theatre, dance, and literature. Weaving together resources from a range of University of Illinois Press journals, the editors offer articles on the scholarly inquiry, theory, and practice of social justice arts education. Selections from the past three decades reflect the synergy of the diverse scholars, educators, and artists actively engaged in such projects. Together, the contributors bring awareness to the importance of critically reflective and inclusive pedagogy in arts educational contexts. They also provide pedagogical theory and practical tools for building a social justice orientation through the arts.

Contributors: Joni Boyd Acuff, Seema Bahl, Elizabeth Delacruz, Elizabeth Garber, Elizabeth Gould, Kirstin Hotelling, Tuulikki Laes, Monica Prendergast, Elizabeth Saccá, Alexandra Schulteis, Amritjit Singh, and Stephanie Springgay

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cover of Assessing the Teaching of Writing: Twenty-First Century Trends and Technologies

Assessing the Teaching of Writing

Twenty-First Century Trends and Technologies

Amy E. Dayton

Utah State University Press, 2015

Although fraught with politics and other perils, teacher evaluation can contribute in important, positive ways to faculty development at both the individual and the departmental levels. Yet the logistics of creating a valid assessment are complicated. Inconsistent methods, rater bias, and overreliance on student evaluation forms have proven problematic. The essays in Assessing the Teaching of Writing demonstrate constructive ways of evaluating teacher performance, taking into consideration the immense number of variables involved.

Contributors to the volume examine a range of fundamental issues, including the political context of declining state funds in education; growing public critique of the professoriate and demands for accountability resulting from federal policy initiatives like No Child Left Behind; the increasing sophistication of assessment methods and technologies; and the continuing interest in the scholarship of teaching. The first section addresses concerns and advances in assessment methodologies, and the second takes a closer look at unique individual sites and models of assessment. Chapters collectively argue for viewing teacher assessment as a rhetorical practice.

Fostering new ways of thinking about teacher evaluation, Assessing the Teaching of Writing will be of great interest not only to writing program administrators but also to those concerned with faculty development and teacher assessment outside the writing program. 

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Assessment Myths

Applying Second Language Research to Classroom Teaching

Lia Plakans and Atta Gebril

University of Michigan Press, 2015

This volume was conceived as a "best practices" resource for assessment in the way that Vocabulary Myths by Keith S. Folse is one for reading and vocabulary teachers. Like others in the Myths series, this book combines research with good pedagogical practices.
 
The book opens with an introduction that reviews many key assessment terms and concepts.
 
The myths examined in this book are:
  • Assessment is just writing tests and using statistics.
  • A comprehensive final exam is the best way to evaluate students.
  • Scores on performance assessments are preferable because of their accuracy and authenticity.
  • Multiple choice tests are inaccurate measures of language but are easy to write.
  • We should test only one skill at a time.
  • A test’s validity can be determined by looking at it.
  • Issues of fairness are not a concern with standardized testing.
  • Teachers should never be involved in preparing students for tests.
Implications for teaching and an agenda for research are discussed in a conclusion. 
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Assessment in the Second Language Writing Classroom

Deborah Crusan

University of Michigan Press, 2010

Assessment in the Second Language Writing Classroom is a teacher and prospective teacher-friendly book, uncomplicated by the language of statistics. The book is for those who teach and assess second language writing in several different contexts: the IEP, the developmental writing classroom, and the sheltered composition classroom. In addition, teachers who experience a mixed population or teach cross-cultural composition will find the book a valuable resource. Other books have thoroughly covered the theoretical aspects of writing assessment, but none have focused as heavily as this book does on pragmatic classroom aspects of writing assessment. Further, no book to date has included an in-depth examination of the machine scoring of writing and its effects on second language writers.

Crusan not only makes a compelling case for becoming knowledgeable about L2 writing assessment but offers the means to do so. Her highly accessible, thought-provoking presentation of the conceptual and practical dimensions of writing assessment, both for the classroom and on a larger scale, promises to engage readers who have previously found the technical detail of other works on assessment off-putting, as well as those who have had no previous exposure to the study of assessment at all.

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cover of Assignments across the Curriculum: A National Study of College Writing

Assignments across the Curriculum

A National Study of College Writing

Dan Melzer

Utah State University Press, 2014

In Assignments across the Curriculum, Dan Melzer analyzes the rhetorical features and genres of writing assignments through the writing-to-learn and writing-in-the-disciplines perspectives. Presenting the results of his study of 2,101 writing assignments from undergraduate courses in the natural sciences, social sciences, business, and humanities in 100 postsecondary institutions in the United States, Assignments across the Curriculum is unique in its cross-institutional breadth and its focus on writing assignments.

The results provide a panoramic view of college writing in the United States. Melzer's framework begins with the rhetorical situations of the assignments—the purposes and audiences—and broadens to include the assignments' genres and discourse community contexts. Among his conclusions is that courses connected to a writing-across-the-curriculum (WAC) initiative ask students to write more often, in a greater variety of genres, and for a greater variety of purposes and audiences than non-WAC courses do, making a compelling case for the influence of the WAC movement.

Melzer's work also reveals patterns in the rhetorical situations, genres, and discourse communities of college writing in the United States. These larger patterns are of interest to WAC practitioners working with faculty across disciplines, to writing center coordinators and tutors working with students who bring assignments from a variety of fields, to composition program administrators, to first-year writing instructors interested in preparing students for college writing, and to high school teachers attempting to bridge the gap between high school and college writing.

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cover of Audience Expectations and Teacher Demands

Audience Expectations and Teacher Demands

Robert Brooke and John Hendricks

Southern Illinois University Press, 1989

The audience—the community of readers who will use the texts a writer produces—must be an important influence on the writer for his or her work to be effective.

Robert Brooke and John Hendricks examine the difficult task of teaching "writing for an audience" in a classroom where students know that the teacher, not the addressed audience, assigns the grade.

The authors describe in detail a particular writing class, taught by Brooke and observed by Hendricks, that attempted to teach writing for an audience. By combining the experiences from their study with student reactions to the class, they draw some conclusions about the dynamics of teaching writing and about learning in general.

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cover of Authentic Materials Myths: Applying Second Language Research to Classroom Teaching

Authentic Materials Myths

Applying Second Language Research to Classroom Teaching

Eve Zyzik and Charlene Polio

University of Michigan Press, 2017

The use of authentic materials in language classrooms is sometimes discussed as a reliable way to expose students to the target language, but there is also disagreement regarding what kinds of authentic materials should be used, when they should be used, and how much of the curriculum should revolve around them. This volume in the Myths series explores the research related to the use of authentic materials and the ways that  authentic materials may be used successfully in the classroom. Like others in the Myths series, this book combines research with good pedagogical practices.
 
The myths examined in this book are:
  • Authentic texts are inaccessible to beginners.
  • Authentic texts cannot be used to teach grammar.
  • Shorter texts are more beneficial for language learners.
  • Activating background knowledge or making a word list is sufficient to prepare students for authentic texts.
  • Authentic texts can be used to teach only listening and reading.
  • Modifying or simplifying authentic texts always helps language learners.
  • For learners to benefit from using authentic texts, the associated tasks must also be authentic.
The Epilogue explores the challenges of using authentic texts in the classroom and calls for more research. 
 
 

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