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Exploring how Black youth are reshaping game design to dismantle stereotypes and spark social change 

In the early 2000s, digital gaming rose to cultural and economic prominence. Communities of color, however, and especially Black youth, were largely excluded from gaming culture. The rare Black character in games tended to reinforce stereotypes, while racial bias was often surreptitiously embedded in game design platforms—what decolonial scholars call “whitestream” computing. Progressive game design education initiatives and new technologies have recently begun to dismantle these barriers. Yet, because biases remain, historically excluded young people still need to actively reconfigure these digital spaces to fully develop and convey their own perspectives. 

In Meta-Tuning Justice, digital rhetoric scholar Laquana Cooke explores how Black youth express cultural identity and challenge dominant narratives through innovative game design. Cooke introduces the Transformative Constructionist Learning (TCL) paradigm and its core theory of “meta-tuning”—the idea that students are better able to adjust to new challenges through trial-and-error and experimentation in educational environments that correspondingly adjust to their evolving learning needs. In contrast to traditional education practices, which assume the neutrality of technology, Cooke approaches it as a tool for social transformation. Drawing on the TCL paradigm, she explores how the unique cultural algorithms and expressions (like popping and locking dance forms) that inform the programming and designs of Black youth represent a powerful form of resistance and creation. 

Through rich ethnographic case studies across multiple educational settings, and with gaming as its experimental center, this book presents a compelling vision of how TCL and meta-tuning can help make technologies more equitable. Cooke’s innovative study offers insights crucial to scholars and practitioners in game studies, Science and Technology Studies, STEM education, and racial equity in digital learning. 

John Fedynsky documents in narrative and photos every county courthouse of Michigan's eighty-three counties, as well as the Michigan Hall of Justice. These buildings are symbols: physically they stand, but figuratively they speak. They embody the purposes for which they were created: law, order, justice, and the promise of a better tomorrow.

Fedynsky tells the story of each building. For Michigan, the typical evolution begins in the cabin, tavern, or hotel of a prominent local settler and progresses through incarnations of simple log or wooden clapboard, and then opulent stone or brick, before the structure arrives in modern and utilitarian form. But there are myriad exceptions to this rule, and they add to the diversity of Michigan's county courthouses.

In Fedynsky's descriptions, verifiable facts and local lore weave together in dramatic tales of outrageous crime, courtroom intrigue, backroom dealing, jury determination, and judicial prerogative. Released jail inmates assist with evacuating and extinguishing a courthouse fire, residents during a natural disaster seek and find physical refuge behind the sure walls of the courthouse, and vigilant legions of homebound defenders are stationed in wartime throughout the courthouse towers scanning the skies for signs of foreign aircraft.

Then there are the homey touches that emphasize the "house" half of Michigan's courthouses: local folks dropping off plants in the courthouse atrium to use it as a winter greenhouse, cows grazing on the public square, county fairs in or near the courthouse, and locally made artwork hanging in public hallways. The courthouses bear within their walls a richness of soul endowed by the good people who make each one special.

Cover design by Heidi Dailey

Cover photos: John Fedynsky

What happens to teaching when you consider the whole body (and not just “brains on sticks”)?

Starting from new research on the body—aptly summarized as “sitting is the new smoking”—Minding Bodies aims to help instructors improve their students’ knowledge and skills through physical movement, attention to the spatial environment, and sensitivity to humans as more than “brains on sticks.” It shifts the focus of adult learning from an exclusively mental effort toward an embodied, sensory-rich experience, offering new strategies to maximize the effectiveness of time spent learning together on campus as well as remotely.

Minding Bodies draws from a wide range of body/mind research in cognitive psychology, kinesiology, and phenomenology to bring a holistic perspective to teaching and learning. The embodied learning approaches described by Susan Hrach are inclusive, low-tech, low-cost strategies that deepen the development of disciplinary knowledge and skills. Campus change-makers will also find recommendations for supporting a transformational mission through an attention to students’ embodied learning experiences.

An insider’s guide to university finances, for non-insiders.

The finances of higher education have never been more challenging. From two-year institutions to the Ivy Leagues, from department chairs to provosts, administrators face revenue shortfalls and financial insecurity. A fundamental understanding of financial management is more essential than ever for university leaders at every level—as is a true partnership between academic leaders and their CFOs.

In Margin and Mission, Daniel Diermeier and Brett Sweet distill the principles for successful financial management in higher education, based on their work together at Vanderbilt University. Their concise, practical guide develops the reader’s understanding step-by-logical-step with the help of real-world examples. Margin and Mission aims to give university leaders, from board members to department chairs, the knowledge to make sound economic decisions that preserve their institutions’ purpose—even in the face of uncertainty. 

Pointing to the disparities between wealthy and impoverished school districts in areas where revenue depends primarily upon local taxes, reformers repeatedly call for the centralization of school funding. Their proposals meet resistance from citizens, elected officials, and school administrators who fear the loss of local autonomy.

Bryan Shelly finds, however, that local autonomy has already been compromised by federal and state governments, which exercise a tremendous amount of control over public education despite their small contribution to a school system's funding. This disproportionate relationship between funding and control allows state and federal officials to pass education policy yet excuses them from supplying adequate funding for new programs. The resulting unfunded and underfunded mandates and regulations, Shelly insists, are the true cause of the loss of community control over public education.

Shelly outlines the effects of the most infamous of underfunded federal mandates, the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB), and explores why schools implemented it despite its unpopularity and out-of-pocket costs. Shelly's findings hold significant implications for school finance reform, NCLB, and the future of intergovernmental relations.

Moral Problems in Higher Education brings together key essays that explore ethical issues in academia. The editor and contributors-all noted philosophers and educators-consider such topics as academic freedom and tenure, free speech on campus, sexual harassment, preferential student admissions, affirmative action in faculty appointments, and the ideal of a politically neutral university. Chapters address possible restrictions on research because of moral concerns, the structure of peer review, telling the truth to colleagues and students, and concerns raised by intercollegiate athletics.

Cahn selects two key readings in each area to offer a readable introductory guide to these critical subjects for students studying academic ethics and higher education policy. In addition to the selections and a general introduction, Cahn provides study questions for use in the classroom.

Contributors include Scott F. Aikin, Derek Bok, William G. Bowen, Myles Brand, Richard T. DeGeorge, Paul D. Eisenberg, Leslie Pickering Francis, Martin P. Golding, Philip Kitcher, Charles R. Lawrence III, David Lewis, Paul J. Olscamp, Nancy Tuana, David Shatz, George Sher, Robert L. Simon, Robert B. Talisse, Stephan Thernstrom, Abigail Thernstrom, Laurence Thomas, Robert Paul Wolff, and the editor.

Multimodal Transfer Pedagogy provides practical methods and materials for composition teachers and directors to facilitate multimodal transfer. This rich collection of resources presents new ways of incorporating digital texts, exploring modes of meaning beyond traditional print and encouraging students to think about rhetorical approaches to meaning making.

Together with its online companion materials, the book delivers a distinctive synthesis of multimodal composing practices, writing transfer research, and theory to provide clear, actionable guidance to teachers and directors to apply multimodal composition pedagogy effectively. Twenty-three chapters cover multimodal transfer pedagogy—including social media, composing with AI, visual rhetoric and design, public advocacy, tabletop games, podcasting, and more.

Multimodal Transfer Pedagogy is built from contextualized pedagogical approaches and course materials—syllabi, assignments, assessment documents—that specifically direct pedagogical application toward multimodal transfer in a range of contexts, from first-year writing to the science writing classroom and writing center. A natural follow-up to Multimodal Composition and Writing Transfer, the book introduces a unique practical-pedagogical model for implementing multimodal work in the classroom.

Understanding the entanglement of language education with ethnicity and racialization

Who has the “right” to learn Mandarin Chinese? In Multiracial Mandarin, author David Shuang Song examines how matters of race and privilege shape US Mandarin language education and who has access to it. Through a two-year ethnographic study of two Bay Area high schools where diasporic and heritage speakers learn Mandarin alongside Black and Latinx students, Song advances a sociological and educational–linguistic inquiry into how language interacts with our understanding of identity and equity.

Comparing classroom activities in two public schools, Song investigates teachers who seek to make Mandarin accessible while detaching it from its cultural roots. As he explores the difficulties of limited resources, racial inequality, and pedagogical practices inherent in multiracial Mandarin instruction, Song shows how language education complicates how educators understand Asian American students and troubles conventional conversations around race and racial equity in schools.

Arguing that language practice and instruction must always be considered in relation to diaspora, ethnicity, and racialization, Multiracial Mandarin offers a frank analysis of the risks and benefits of teaching a diasporic language and asks if this practice ought to be replicated in more schools. As he applies innovative conceptual frameworks for talking about language among Asian Americans, Song’s timely and theoretically sophisticated analysis has wide-ranging implications for how students, teachers, and administrators approach essential questions around education, privilege, and language survival.

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Exploring the ideas, innovations, and challenges shaping the future of music education.

This solid collection of essays, written by outstanding American music educators, reflects the current issues in music education and the ongoing attempt to overcome obstacles to excellence in teaching music. It stands as the most important and far-ranging professional overview of the discipline since the publication of the landmark Basic Concepts in Music Education in 1958, and early reviews indicate that it will generate both critical discussion and acclaim.

Several themes recur:(1) that music and, therefore, music education exist in a variety of social and cultural contexts, even when examined in controlled situations; (2) that music teaching has not yet freed itself from its traditional over-reliance on technical training, in spite of attention to aesthetic education; and (3) that there is a remarkable undercurrent of agreement among this diverse group of authors concerning the profession’s basic obligation to expand and refine the musical sensitivity of all age group of Americans. This book reflects some advanced thinking about these themes, which establishes new foundations for next generation theorizing and research.
 

Contributors are Stephen Blum, Patricia Shehan Campbell, Sabine M. Feisst, Lawrence Gushee, Robert S. Hatten, William Kinderman, Natalie Kononenko, Robert Levin, Charlotte Mattax Moersch, Ingrid Monson, John P. Murphy, Bruno Nettl, A. Jihad Racy, Anne K. Rasmussen, Stephen Slawek, Gabriel Solis, Nicholas Temperley, John Toenjes, and Thomas Turino.