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461 books match the query 'Teaching' and 111 start with t

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Technology in the Language Classroom

What Every New ESL Teacher Needs to Know

Matt Kessler

University of Michigan Press, 2026

Since technology plays many crucial roles in the functioning of modern society, language teachers are increasingly expected to be able to leverage a variety of digital tools in their classrooms. Despite this expectation, not all teachers feel comfortable with using technology. Many new teachers have not received formal training in the basics of computer-assisted language learning (CALL) and technology use.

Technology in the Language Classroom provides early-career and pre-service second language (L2) instructors with an overview of important issues involved in effectively integrating technology into the L2 classroom. Each chapter provides practical strategies, resources, and application activities to help new teachers gain familiarity with utilizing a variety of digital tools for teaching different skills, including listening, speaking, reading, grammar, vocabulary, and writing. Readers will be encouraged to think critically about the key factors to consider when choosing tools that work for them, their lessons, and their students.

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Testing Education

A Teacher's Memoir

Kathy Greeley

University of Massachusetts Press, 2024

Since the 2002 implementation of No Child Left Behind, the American public education system has been fundamentally changed. Excessive testing, standardized curriculums, destructive demands on children, corporate-style evaluations, and top-down mandates have become the norm. In response, record numbers of demoralized educators have quit, and millions of students have been left educationally impoverished. This troubling transformation has been exhaustively critiqued by scholars and commentators. Yet one crucial voice has been missing, until now.

In Testing Education, Kathy Greeley recounts the impact of education reform from a teacher’s point of view. Based on a teaching career spanning nearly forty years, Greeley details how schools went from learning communities infused with excitement, intellectual stimulation, and joy to sterile spaces of stress, intimidation, and fear. In this ultimately hopeful memoir, Greeley asks us to learn from the past to reimagine the future of public education.

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The Art of Play

Recess and the Practice of Invention

Anna Beresin

Temple University Press, 2013

What can the art of play teach us about the art of play? Showcasing the paintings of more than one hundred Philadelphia public elementary school children, folklorist Anna Beresin’s innovative book, The Art of Play, presents images and stories that illustrate what children do at recess, and how it makes them feel.

Beresin provides a nuanced, child-centered discussion of the intersections of play, art, and learning. She describes a widespread institutionalized fear of play and expressive art, and the transformative power of simple materials like chalk and paint. Featuring more than 150 paintings and a dozen surreal photographs of masked children enjoying recess, The Art of Play weaves together the diverse voices of kids and working artists with play scholarship.

This book emerged from Recess Access, a service-learning project that donated chalk, ropes, balls, and hoops to nine schools in different sections of Philadelphia. A portion of the proceeds of The Art of Play will support recess advocacy.

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The Art of Teaching Speaking

Research and Pedagogy for the ESL/EFL Classroom

Keith S. Folse

University of Michigan Press, 2006

*What elements make a speaking activity successful?
*Which tasks or activities really help build speaking fluency?
*What does the research show regarding speaking activities?
*What mistakes do ESL teachers often make in speaking activity design?

In this highly accessible and practical resource, Keith S. Folse provides a wealth of information to help ESL/EFL teachers design and use speaking tasks that will actually improve students' speaking fluency. The book presents and discusses the relevant research and assessment issues and includes case studies from twenty different settings and classrooms around the world so that readers learn from others about the problems and successes of using various speaking activities.

Teachers will find the chapters on Twenty Successful Activities and Ten Unsuccessful Activities particularly valuable. The successful activities are provided for classroom use and are reproducible. The book also contains five appendixes that explain what teachers need to know about vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar and how they affect the teaching of speaking. Samples of successful lesson plans and a list of resources useful for teaching speaking are also included.

Keith S. Folse, Ph.D., is Coordinator, TESOL Programs, University of Central Florida (Orlando). He is the author of Vocabulary Myths (University of Michigan Press, 2004) and more than 35 second language textbooks, including texts on grammar, reading, speaking, listening, and writing.

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The Case for Contention

Teaching Controversial Issues in American Schools

Jonathan Zimmerman and Emily Robertson

University of Chicago Press, 2017

From the fights about the teaching of evolution to the details of sex education, it may seem like American schools are hotbeds of controversy. But as Jonathan Zimmerman and Emily Robertson show in this insightful book, it is precisely because such topics are so inflammatory outside school walls that they are so commonly avoided within them. And this, they argue, is a tremendous disservice to our students. Armed with a detailed history of the development of American educational policy and norms and a clear philosophical analysis of the value of contention in public discourse, they show that one of the best things American schools should do is face controversial topics dead on, right in their classrooms.

Zimmerman and Robertson highlight an aspect of American politics that we know all too well: We are terrible at having informed, reasonable debates. We opt instead to hurl insults and accusations at one another or, worse, sit in silence and privately ridicule the other side. Wouldn’t an educational system that focuses on how to have such debates in civil and mutually respectful ways improve our public culture and help us overcome the political impasses that plague us today? To realize such a system, the authors argue that we need to not only better prepare our educators for the teaching of hot-button issues, but also provide them the professional autonomy and legal protection to do so. And we need to know exactly what constitutes a controversy, which is itself a controversial issue. The existence of climate change, for instance, should not be subject to discussion in schools: scientists overwhelmingly agree that it exists. How we prioritize it against other needs, such as economic growth, however—that is worth a debate.

With clarity and common-sense wisdom, Zimmerman and Robertson show that our squeamishness over controversy in the classroom has left our students woefully underserved as future citizens. But they also show that we can fix it: if we all just agree to disagree, in an atmosphere of mutual respect.

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The Changing Contexts of Teaching

Edited by Ann Lieberman

University of Chicago Press, 1992

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The Chicago Guide to Your Academic Career

A Portable Mentor for Scholars from Graduate School through Tenure

John A. Goldsmith, John Komlos, and Penny Schine Gold

University of Chicago Press, 2001

Is a career as a professor the right choice for you? If you are a graduate student, how can you clear the hurdles successfully and position yourself for academic employment? What's the best way to prepare for a job interview, and how can you maximize your chances of landing a job that suits you? What happens if you don't receive an offer? How does the tenure process work, and how do faculty members cope with the multiple and conflicting day-to-day demands?

With a perpetually tight job market in the traditional academic fields, the road to an academic career for many aspiring scholars will often be a rocky and frustrating one. Where can they turn for good, frank answers to their questions? Here, three distinguished scholars—with more than 75 years of combined experience—talk openly about what's good and what's not so good about academia, as a place to work and a way of life.

Written as an informal conversation among colleagues, the book is packed with inside information—about finding a mentor, avoiding pitfalls when writing a dissertation, negotiating the job listings, and much more. The three authors' distinctive opinions and strategies offer the reader multiple perspectives on typical problems. With rare candor and insight, they talk about such tough issues as departmental politics, dual-career marriages, and sexual harassment. Rounding out the discussion are short essays that offer the "inside track" on financing graduate education, publishing the first book, and leaving academia for the corporate world.

This helpful guide is for anyone who has ever wondered what the fascinating and challenging world of academia might hold in store.

Part I - Becoming a Scholar
* Deciding on an Academic Career
* Entering Graduate School
* The Mentor
* Writing a Dissertation
* Landing an Academic Job
Part II - The Academic Profession
* The Life of the Assistant Professor
* Teaching and Research
* Tenure
* Competition in the University System and Outside Offers
* The Personal Side of Academic Life

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The Chicago Handbook for Teachers

A Practical Guide to the College Classroom

Alan Brinkley, Betty Dessants, Michael Flamm, Cynthia Fleming, Charles Forcey, and Eric Rothschild

University of Chicago Press, 1999

Unlike their counterparts on the high school or elementary school level, those who teach college students have extensive training in their various disciplines, but surprisingly little instruction in the craft of teaching itself.

The Chicago Handbook for Teachers is an extraordinarily helpful guide for all those who face the challenge of putting together material for a course and then making it work. Representing teachers at all stages of their careers, the authors, including distinguished historian Alan Brinkley, offer practical advice for almost any situation a new teacher might face, from preparing a syllabus to managing classroom dynamics. Beginning with a nuts and bolts plan for designing a course, the handbook also explains how to lead a discussion, evaluate your own teaching, deliver an effective lecture, supervise students' writing and research, create and grade exams, and more. Other sections address the less straightforward aspects of teaching, such as dealing with "diversity issues" and knowing where to draw the line in relationships with students. Particularly timely is an up-to-date discussion of when and how best to incorporate the Internet and other electronic resources into your teaching.

Indispensable for graduate students and new teachers, The Chicago Handbook for Teachers is also a useful refresher for the experienced professionals.

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The Classrooms All Young Children Need

Lessons in Teaching from Vivian Paley

Patricia M. Cooper

University of Chicago Press, 2009

Teacher and author Vivian Paley is highly regarded by parents, educators, and other professionals for her original insights into such seemingly everyday issues as play, story, gender, and how young children think. In The Classrooms All Young Children Need, Patricia M. Cooper takes a synoptic view of Paley’s many books and articles, charting the evolution of Paley’s thinking while revealing the seminal characteristics of her teaching philosophy. This careful analysis leads Cooper to identify a pedagogical model organized around two complementary principles: a curriculum that promotes play and imagination, and the idea of classrooms as fair places where young children of every color, ability, and disposition are welcome.

With timely attention paid to debates about the reduction in time for play in the early childhood classroom, the role of race in education, and No Child Left Behind, The Classrooms All Young Children Need will be embraced by anyone tasked with teaching our youngest pupils.

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The Educated Mind

How Cognitive Tools Shape Our Understanding

Kieran Egan

University of Chicago Press, 1997

The Educated Mind offers a bold and revitalizing new vision for today's uncertain educational system. Kieran Egan reconceives education, taking into account how we learn. He proposes the use of particular "intellectual tools"—such as language or literacy—that shape how we make sense of the world. These mediating tools generate successive kinds of understanding: somatic, mythic, romantic, philosophical, and ironic. Egan's account concludes with practical proposals for how teaching and curriculum can be changed to reflect the way children learn.

"A carefully argued and readable book. . . . Egan proposes a radical change of approach for the whole process of education. . . . There is much in this book to interest and excite those who discuss, research or deliver education."—Ann Fullick, New Scientist

"A compelling vision for today's uncertain educational system."—Library Journal

"Almost anyone involved at any level or in any part of the education system will find this a fascinating book to read."—Dr. Richard Fox, British Journal of Educational Psychology

"A fascinating and provocative study of cultural and linguistic history, and of how various kinds of understanding that can be distinguished in that history are recapitulated in the developing minds of children."—Jonty Driver, New York Times Book Review

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The Education of Teachers

Edited by Gary A. Griffin

University of Chicago Press, 1999

This volume addresses persistent issues in the preservice and continuing education of teachers. Attention is focused upon perspectives on teacher education that differ significantly from those that have characterized views of this field in the past. Among developments that provide the current context for teacher education are the movement for standards, the emphasis upon inquiry in the classroom, increased expectations for teachers' participation in curriculum development, constructivism and the cognitive revolution, and professional development schools. These and other matters receive the attention of a distinguished group of scholars and practitioners in the field.

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The Enduring Classroom

Teaching Then and Now

Larry Cuban

University of Chicago Press, 2023

A groundbreaking analysis of how teachers actually teach and have taught in the past.

The quality and effectiveness of teaching are a constant subject of discussion within the profession and among the broader public. Most of that conversation focuses on the question of how teachers should teach. In The Enduring Classroom, veteran teacher and scholar of education Larry Cuban explores different questions, ones that just might be more important: How have teachers actually taught? How do they teach now? And what can we learn from both?

Examining both past and present is crucial, Cuban explains. If reformers want teachers to adopt new techniques, they need to understand what teachers are currently doing if they want to have any hope of having their innovations implemented. Cuban takes us into classrooms then and now, using observations from contemporary research as well as a rich historical archive of classroom accounts, along the way asking larger questions about teacher training and the individual motivations of people in the classroom. Do teachers freely choose how to teach, or are they driven by their beliefs and values about teaching and learning? What role do students play in determining how teachers teach? Do teachers teach as they were taught? By asking and answering these and other policy questions with the aid of concrete data about actual classroom practices, Cuban helps us make a crucial step toward creating reforms that could actually improve instruction.

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The Fifth Dimension

An After-School Program Built on Diversity

Michael Cole

Russell Sage Foundation, 2006

The significant increase in the number of working mothers over the last twenty years has led to widespread worries about the plight of "latchkey kids," who return from school each day to empty homes. Concerned that unsupervised children might be at greater risk of delinquency, schools and communities across the nation began providing after-school activities. But many of these programs were hastily devised with little understanding of what constitutes a quality program that meets children's developmental needs. The Fifth Dimension explores and evaluates one of the country's most successful and innovative after-school programs, providing insightful and practical lessons about what works and doesn't work after-school. The Fifth Dimension program was established in the 1980s as a partnership between community centers and local colleges to establish an educational after-school program. With an emphasis on diversity and computer technology, the program incorporates the latest theories about child development and gives college students the opportunity to apply their textbook understanding of child development to real learning environments. The Fifth Dimension explores the design, implementation, and evaluation of this thriving program. The authors attribute the success of the Fifth Dimension to several factors. First, the program offers a balance of intellectually enriching exercises with development enhancing games. Second, by engaging undergraduates as active participants in both learning and social activities, the program gives local community organizations a large infusion of high-quality help for their educational efforts. Third, by rewarding children for their achievements and good behavior with greater flexibility in choosing their own schedules, the Fifth Dimension acts as a powerful, enduring motivator. The Fifth Dimension program serves as a model for what an enriching after-school program can be. The product of years of innovation and careful assessment, The Fifth Dimension is a valuable resource for all who are interested in developing successful community-based learning programs.

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The Golden Shovel Anthology

New Poems Honoring Gwendolyn Brooks

Peter Kahn

University of Arkansas Press, 2019

“The cross-section of poets with varying poetics and styles gathered here is only one of the many admirable achievements of this volume.”
—Claudia Rankine in the New York Times

The Golden Shovel Anthology celebrates the life and work of poet and civil rights icon Gwendolyn Brooks through a dynamic new poetic form, the Golden Shovel, created by National Book Award–winner Terrance Hayes.

An array of writers—including winners of the Pulitzer Prize, the T. S. Eliot Prize, and the National Book Award, as well as a couple of National Poets Laureate—have written poems for this exciting new anthology: Rita Dove, Billy Collins, Danez Smith, Nikki Giovanni, Sharon Olds, Tracy K. Smith, Mark Doty, Sharon Draper, Richard Powers, and Julia Glass are just a few of the contributing poets.

This second edition includes Golden Shovel poems by two winners and six runners-up from an international student poetry competition judged by Nora Brooks Blakely, Gwendolyn Brooks’s daughter. The poems by these eight talented high school students add to Ms. Brooks’s legacy and contribute to the depth and breadth of this anthology.

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The Grounded Instruction Librarian

Participating in The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

Melissa Mallon

Assoc of College & Research Libraries, 2019

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The Heller Social Impact Case Collection

Reimagining Capitalism through Case-Based Learning

Edited by Carole Carlson, Matthew Kriegsman, and Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld

Brandeis University Press, 2023

A pathbreaking collection of case studies that spotlights the corporate sector’s societal obligations.

At a time of deep and pervasive global challenges, future CEOs and administrators need to apply management principles to social impact cases. Today, top business schools across the country are meeting the moment, teaching courses about socially responsible investing and debating ways companies can stem the effects of climate change.

The case studies collected here are an invaluable resource for today’s students and tomorrow’s leaders. Chapters address an array of business sectors, including consumer goods, finance, health care, higher education, manufacturing, nongovernmental organizations, social services, and transportation. A teacher’s guide is available online to educators.

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The High-Performing Preschool

Story Acting in Head Start Classrooms

Gillian Dowley McNamee

University of Chicago Press, 2015

The High-Performing Preschool takes readers into the lives of three- and four-year-old Head Start students during their first year of school and focuses on the centerpiece of their school day: story acting. In this activity, students act out stories from high-quality children’s literature as well as stories dictated by their peers. Drawing on a unique pair of thinkers—Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky and renowned American teacher and educational writer Vivian G. Paley—Gillian Dowley McNamee elucidates the ways, and reasons, this activity is so successful. She shows how story acting offers a larger blueprint for curricula that helps ensure all preschools—not just those for society’s well-to-do—are excellent.

McNamee outlines how story acting cultivates children’s oral and written language skills. She shows how it creates a crucial opportunity for teachers to guide children inside the interior logic and premises of an idea, and how it fosters the creation of a literary community. Starting with Vygotsky and Paley, McNamee paints a detailed portrait of high-quality preschool teaching, showing how educators can deliver on the promise of Head Start and provide a setting for all young children to become articulate, thoughtful, and literate learners.

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The Indispensable Academic Librarian

Teaching and Collaborating for Change

Michelle Reale

American Library Association, 2018

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The Know-Nothing Campaign Against Higher Learning

James Chandler

Prickly Paradigm Press, 2026

Irony and satire in the contemporary American moment.

The second Trump administration has committed itself to upending the knowledge systems and deliberative institutions that have been essential to modern democracy, with the American university—site of scientific research and liberal education—a primary target. In The Know-Nothing Campaign Against Higher Learning, literary and film critic James Chandler spotlights an American tradition of such hostility to intellectual life, especially the nativist movement of the 1850s that persecuted Catholic immigrants from Ireland and Germany. Ironically, Steve Bannon, the self-proclaimed “Know-Nothing vulgarian” who long ago recruited candidate Trump to his anti-intellectual crusade, is himself the great-grandson of an Irish immigrant who would have faced Know-Nothing backlash in that era.

Such dark ironies define our moment, Chandler argues, and they call out not only for intellectual critique but also for satire. Yet in the midst of the MAGA campaign’s calamitous effects on American public discourse, even satire must confront the “kayfabe” practices imported by Trump from professional wrestling, which mix illusion and reality to turn political life into a “spectacle without thought.” Drawing widely on cultural critics from Jonathan Swift and Alexis de Tocqueville to Roland Barthes, Chandler’s pamphlet offers an elegant and bracing account of the MAGA campaign against higher learning and its transformative effects on criticism and democracy itself.

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The Math Mafia

How a Persistent Group of Reformers Standardized American Education

Emily T. Hamilton

University of Alabama Press, 2026

How Cold War urgency, academic ambition, and federal power converged to make math the cornerstone of American education policy.

The Math Mafia by Emily T. Hamilton is a historical account of mathematics education reform in twentieth-century America and how that movement played a role in shaping the broader contours of national education policy. Hamilton contends that a cohesive and well-organized community of advocates was instrumental in the rise of standardized testing and curriculum reforms, as well as federal involvement in classrooms, especially during the Cold War. By positioning mathematics as central to national strength and security, these reformers established math education as a key area of federal focus.

The “mafia” at the center of Hamilton’s story includes mathematicians, educators, and researchers from universities, as well as members of government-funded organizations such as the National Science Foundation and various educational psychology circles. Prominent figures such as Edward Begle, who led the School Mathematics Study Group during the “new math” movement, played key roles. Other influential participants include federal education officials, advocates from professional organizations such as the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, and cognitive scientists, who contributed both research and theoretical frameworks that informed curriculum design and assessment methods.

The Math Mafia offers historians, educators, policymakers, and other interested readers a compelling perspective on the legacy of the math education reforms on federal education policy in the United States and is a welcome contribution to ongoing discourse around “teaching toward the test,” educational equity, school performance, and other hot-button issues in US education today.

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The Media and Communications Study Skills Student Guide

Doug Specht

University of Westminster Press, 2019

All the tips, ideas and advice given to, and requested by, MA students in Media and Communications, are brought together in an easy-to-use accessible guide to help students study most effectively.

Based upon many years of teaching study skills and hundreds of lecture slides and handouts this introduction covers a range of general and generic skills that the author relates specifically towards media and communications studies. As well as the mechanics of writing and presentations, the book also shows how students can work on and engage with the critical and contemplative elements of their degrees whilst retaining motivation and refining timekeeping skills.

Of course the nuts and bolts of reading, writing, listening, seminars and the dreaded dissertation and essays are covered too. In addition advice on referencing, citation and academic style is offered for those with concerns over English grammar and expression.

Aimed primarily at postgraduate students, there is significant crossover with undergraduate work, so this book will also prove of use to upper level undergraduate readers whether using English as a first or second language.

Supplementary resources

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The Mind's Eye

Image and Memory in Writing about Trauma

Marian Mesrobian MacCurdy

University of Massachusetts Press, 2007

In the post-September 11 world, therapeutic writing has become a topic of heightened interest in both academic circles and the popular press, reflecting a growing awareness that writing can have a beneficial effect on the emotional and cognitive lives of survivors of traumatic experiences. Yet teachers and others who encounter such writing often are unsure how to deal with it. In The Mind's Eye: Image and Memory in Writing about Trauma, Marian Mesrobian MacCurdy investigates the relationship between writing and trauma, examines how we process difficult experiences and how writing can help us to integrate them, and provides a pedagogy to deal with the difficult life stories that often surface in the classroom.

MacCurdy begins by discussing what trauma is, how traumatic memories are stored and accessed, and how writing affects them. She then focuses on the processes involved in translating traumatic images into narrative form, showing how the same patterns and problems emerge whether the writers are students or professionals. Using examples drawn from the classroom, MacCurdy investigates the beneficial effects of the study of trauma on communities as well as individuals, witnesses as well as writers, and explores the implications of these relationships for the world at large, particularly as they pertain to issues of justice, retribution, and forgiveness.

Throughout the volume the author draws on her own experience as teacher, writer, survivor, and descendant of survivors to explain how one can engage student work on difficult subjects without appropriating the texts or getting lost in the emotions generated by them. She further shows how appropriate safeguards can be put in place to protect both teacher and student writer. The end result of such a pedagogy, MacCurdy demonstrates, is not simply better writers but more integrated people, capable of converting their own losses and griefs into compassion for others.

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The Other Tongue

English Across Cultures

Edited by Braj B. Kachru

University of Illinois Press, 1992

When The Other Tongue appeared in 1982, it was called "required reading for all those concerned with English teaching in non-native situations, from the classroom teacher to the policy planner", Jowhn Platt, English World-Wide) and "an extremely useful and stimulating collection" (William C. Ritchie, Language). It introduced refreshingly new perspectives for understanding the spread and functions of English around the world.

This dramatically revised volume contains eight new chapters, replacing or updating more than half of the first edition. The Other Tongue is the first attempt to integrate and address provocative issues relevant to a deeper understanding of the forms and functions of English within different sociolinguistic, cross-cultural, and cross-linguistic contexts. The volume discusses linguistic, literary, pedagogical, and attitudinal issues related to world Englishes.

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The Pedagogical Contract

The Economies of Teaching and Learning in the Ancient World

Yun Lee Too

University of Michigan Press, 2000

The Pedagogical Contract explores the relationship between teacher and student and argues for ways of reconceiving pedagogy. It discloses this relationship as one that since antiquity has been regarded as a scene of give-and-take, where the teacher exchanges knowledge for some sort of payment by the student and where pedagogy always runs the risk of becoming a broken contract. The book seeks to liberate teaching and learning from this historical scene and the anxieties that it engenders, arguing that there are alternative ways of conceiving the economy underlying pedagogical activities.

Reading ancient material together with contemporary representations of teaching and learning, Yun Lee Too shows that apart from being conceived as a scene of self-interest in which a professional teacher, or sophist, is the charlatan who cheats his pupil, pedagogy might also purport to be a disinterested process of socialization or a scene in which lack and neediness are redeemed through the realization that they are required precisely to stimulate the desire to learn. The author also argues that pedagogy ideally ignores the imperative of the conventional marketplace for relevance, utility, and productivity, inasmuch as teaching and learning most enrich a community when they disregard the immediate material concerns of the community.

The book will appeal to all those who understand scholarship as having an important social and/or political role to play; it will also be of interest to literary scholars, literary and cultural theorists, philosophers, historians, legal theorists, feminists, scholars of education, sociologists, and political theorists.

Yun Lee Too is Assistant Professor of Classics, Columbia University. She is the author of Rethinking Sexual Harassment;The Rhetoric of Identity in Socrates: Text, Power, Pedagogy; and The Idea of Ancient Literary Criticism, forthcoming; and coeditor, with Niall Livingstone, of Pedagogy and Power: Rhetorics of Classical Learning.

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The Radical Case for Teaching Skim Reading in First-Year Writing

Ellen C. Carillo

Utah State University Press, 2025

The Radical Case for Teaching Skim Reading in First-Year Writing encourages faculty, particularly in writing studies, to check internal biases toward deep reading and teach skim reading in first-year writing courses. Written by Ellen C. Carillo, who has previously published on the importance of teaching deep reading, this small book is a controversial prompt for further discussion and exploration.

Data from studies of the lived experiences of undergraduates indicate that students do not need deep reading practices in the majority of their classes across the disciplines and, moreover, that students succeed in their classes by skim reading. Rather than imagining an idealized set of circumstances that allow for sustained deep reading, as does a great deal of the scholarship on reading in writing studies, The Radical Case for Teaching Skim Reading in First-Year Writing argues for teaching students reading practices that will support their success in their college writing assignments rather than those strategies the field believes should support their success.

In our information landscape and our fragile democracy, encouraging skimming as opposed to deep reading may seem like a gamble—this very tendency toward the quick rather than the critical has undoubtedly contributed to the current crisis of mass misinformation. However, teaching students to use skim reading as a strategic tool for purposeful engagement and efficient yet thoughtful information filtering better equips them to navigate the rapidly changing information landscape and manage the fast-paced flow of content from diverse media sources.

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The Reading-Writing Connection

Edited by Nancy Nelson and Robert C. Calfee

University of Chicago Press, 1998

This volume shows that the separation of the teaching of reading and writing has been a dominant feature of educational practice at the elementary and secondary levels since colonial times. The editors identify current movements in education that have fostered connections between reading and writing as well as those that tend to push them apart.

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The Reflexive Teaching Artist

Collected Wisdom from the Drama/Theatre Field

Edited by Kathryn Dawson and Daniel A. Kelin, II

Intellect Books, 2014

Writing from the dual perspectives of artist and educator, Kathryn Dawson and Daniel A. Kelin II raise fundamental questions about the complex functions of the teaching artist in school, community, and professional theater settings. Contributions to the text explore a series of foundational concepts, including intentionality, quality, artistic perspective, assessment, and praxis, all used as a reflective framework to illuminate case studies from a wide range of teaching artist practice.
Readers are also offered questions to guide their practical application, charts to complete, and the editors examine the practice of teaching in, through, and about drama and theater.

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The Saga of Lucien L. Nunn and Deep Springs College

L. Jackson Newell

University of Utah Press, 2025

Here is a look at the life and legacy of an irrepressible innovator. Pushing against both social convention and technological boundaries, L.L. Nunn left enduring marks on economic and social history, labor development, and, educational reform. The Saga of Lucien L. Nunn and Deep Springs College is a bold portrayal of this progressive-era hydroelectric power magnate who, driven by a dynamic conscience, also became a force for social change and educational experimentation.

In 1891, Nunn, working with Tesla and Westinghouse, pioneered the world’s first commercial production of high-tension alternating current (AC) for long-distance transmission—something Thomas Edison deemed dangerous and irresponsible. After creating the Telluride Power Company, Nunn constructed the state-of-the-art Olmsted Power Plant in Provo Canyon and the Ontario Power Works at Niagara Falls. To support this new technology, he developed an imaginative model of industrial training that became so compelling that he ultimately abandoned his entrepreneurial career to devote his wealth and talents to experimenting with a new model of liberal education. In 1917, Nunn founded Deep Springs College in eastern California. The school remains one of the most daring, progressive, and selective institutions of higher learning in America. Newell examines how Nunn’s radical educational ideas have survived internal and external challenges for nearly a century and explores their relevance today.

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The Science of Play

How to Build Playgrounds That Enhance Children's Development

Susan G. Solomon

University Press of New England, 2014

Poor design and wasted funding characterize today’s American playgrounds. A range of factors—including a litigious culture, overzealous safety guidelines, and an ethos of risk aversion—have created uniform and unimaginative playgrounds. These spaces fail to nurture the development of children or promote playgrounds as an active component in enlivening community space. Solomon’s book demonstrates how to alter the status quo by allying data with design. Recent information from the behavioral sciences indicates that kids need to take risks; experience failure but also have a chance to succeed and master difficult tasks; learn to plan and solve problems; exercise self-control; and develop friendships. Solomon illustrates how architects and landscape architects (most of whom work in Europe and Japan) have already addressed these needs with strong, successful playground designs. These innovative spaces, many of which are more multifunctional and cost effective than traditional playgrounds, are both sustainable and welcoming. Having become vibrant hubs within their neighborhoods, these play sites are models for anyone designing or commissioning an urban area for children and their families. The Science of Play, a clarion call to use playground design to deepen the American commitment to public space, will interest architects, landscape architects, urban policy makers, city managers, local politicians, and parents.

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The Second Conversation

Interpretive Authority in the Bible Classroom

Ziva R. Hassenfeld

Brandeis University Press, 2024

A teacher reflects on her teaching practice, bringing literacy scholarship into the arena of Jewish education.

In The Second Conversation, university professor Ziva R. Hassenfeld returns to the middle school classroom to study her own seventh grade Bible class. The book explores dilemmas of practice she encountered around interpretive authority in the classroom. She analyzes the questions that came up in her teaching within the context of the most influential religious education scholarship, literacy scholarship, sociocultural theory and literary theory. She highlights the importance of two conversations about interpretive rules within the classroom, the first about the text’s meaning, and the second about competing conventions for determining its meaning. Instructors of any type of literature will benefit from Hassenfeld’s study, which offers rich ideas about when and how teachers enforce a classroom’s way of reading or follow a student’s line of inquiry toward more flexible interpretation.

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The Signed English Starter

Harry Bornstein

Gallaudet University Press, 1984

The Signed English Starter is the first book to use when learning Signed English. It contains 940 basic signs presented topically, a method especially suited to beginning signers.

The organization of the volume facilitates learning. It provides a basic, functional sign vocabulary; a systematic progression in the use of the 14 sign markers; discussion of the unique features of a manual English system; a glossary of terms; and a page of exercises following each of the 12 chapters in the book. The words have been selected to be of most value to young children.

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The Spark of Learning

Energizing the College Classroom with the Science of Emotion

Sarah Rose Cavanagh

West Virginia University Press, 2016

Historically we have constructed our classrooms with the assumption that learning is a dry, staid affair best conducted in quiet tones and ruled by an unemotional consideration of the facts. The field of education, however, is beginning to awaken to the potential power of emotions to fuel learning, informed by contributions from psychology and neuroscience. In friendly, readable prose, Sarah Rose Cavanagh argues that if you as an educator want to capture your students' attention, harness their working memory, bolster their long-term retention, and enhance their motivation, you should consider the emotional impact of your teaching style and course design. To make this argument, she brings to bear a wide range of evidence from the study of education, psychology, and neuroscience, and she provides practical examples of successful classroom activities from a variety of disciplines in secondary and higher education.

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The Sport Management Educator

Strategies for Teaching

Emily Dane-Staples

FiT Publishing, 2023

The value and placement of sport in society is significant and has created an extensive need for qualified practitioners. With over 800 academic programs of sport management in North America alone, there is a great demand for qualified educators in the field. As such, resources to support educational excellence are essential.

The Sport Management Educator: Strategies for Teaching provides a resource for those new to teaching and those seeking to improve instructional skills. Beginning with the fundamentals of brain-based learning, this text builds a strong foundation for teaching in sport management and enhances existing teaching practices and strategies to improve instructional elements such as planning, classroom management, course design, and student engagement.

Author Emily Dane-Staples draws on years of experience, skills, a solid foundation in the science of teaching and learning, and expertise to create this invaluable resource to help current and future sport management educators improve their instructional skills. This definitive source assists new and experienced instructors alike enhance foundational knowledge and improve teaching effectiveness.

The Sport Management Educator chapters focus on course planning, student success and engagement, teaching with technology, classroom management, course reflection and revision, assessment, and more. Practical tools help readers choose instructional options that align with their teaching philosophy, address their students’ needs, and enhance their ability to become more effective, successful educators.

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The Student Actor Prepares

Acting for Life

Gai Jones

Intellect Books, 2014

The Student Actor Prepares is a practical, interactive approach to a student actor’s journey. Each chapter includes acting principles, their importance to the process, and workbook entries for emotional work, script analysis, and applications to the study of theater. Topics cover a brief history of the art of acting and how the study of acting can be an advantage in numerous occupations; an actor’s discovery of emotional work; movement and mime practices for the actor; vocal practices for the actor; solo improvisational study; script analysis for the individual actor; rehearsal tips; monologue work; original solo work; audition information; working with an acting partner or in a production; acting resources; and research topics.

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The Subject Matters

Classroom Activity in Math and Social Studies

Susan S. Stodolsky

University of Chicago Press, 1988

To achieve quality education in American schools, we need a better understanding of the way classroom instruction works. Susan S. Stodolsky addresses this need with her pioneering analysis of the interrelations between forms of instruction, levels of student involvement, and subject matter. Her intensive observation of fifth-grade math and social studies classes reveals that subject matter, a variable overlooked in recent research, has a profound effect on instructional practice.

Stodolsky presents a challenge to educational research. She shows that classroom activities are coherent actions shaped by the instructional context—especially what is taught. Stodolsky contradicts the received view of both teaching and learning as uniform and consistent. Individual teachers arrange instruction very differently, depending on what they are teaching, and students respond to instruction very differently, depending on the structure and demands of the lesson.

The instructional forms used in math classes, a "basic" subject, and social studies classes, an "enrichment" subject, differ even when the same teacher conducts both classes. Social studies classes show more diversity in activities, while math classes are very similar to one another. Greater variety is found in social studies within a given teacher's class and when different teachers' classes are compared. Nevertheless, in the classrooms Stodolsky studied, the range of instructional arrangements is very constricted.

Challenging the "back to basics" movement, Stodolsky's study indicates that, regardless of subject matter, students are more responsive to instruction that requires a higher degree of intellectual complexity and performance, to learning situations that involve them in interaction with their peers, and to active modes of learning. Stodolsky also argues that students develop ideas about how to learn a school subject, such as math, by participating in particular activities tied to instruction in the subject. These conceptions about learning are unplanned but enduring and significant consequences of schooling.

The Subject Matters has important implications for instructional practice and the training, education, and supervision of teachers. Here is a new way of understanding the dynamics of teaching and learning that will transform how we think about schools and how we study them.

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The Synergistic Classroom

Interdisciplinary Teaching in the Small College Setting

Corey Campion

Rutgers University Press, 2021

Among the many challenges confronting the liberal arts today is a fundamental disconnect between the curricula that many institutions offer and the training that many students need. Discipline-specific models of teaching and learning can underprepare students for the kinds of interdisciplinary collaboration that employers now expect. Although aware of these expectations and the need for change, many small colleges and universities have struggled to translate interdisciplinarity into programs and curricula that better serve today’s students.

Written by faculty engaged in the design and delivery of interdisciplinary courses, programs, and experiential learning opportunities in the small college setting, The Synergistic Classroom addresses the many ways faculty can leverage their institutions' small size and openness to pedagogical experimentation to overcome the challenges of limited institutional resources and enrollment concerns and better prepare students for life and work in the twenty-first century. Taken together, the contributions in this volume invite reflection on a variety of important issues that attend the work of small college faculty committed to expanding student learning across disciplinary boundaries.

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The Teaching Guide for English for Dispute Resolution

Mastering Negotiation, Mediation, and Alternative Dispute Resolution

Barrie J. Roberts

University of Michigan Press, 2025

The Teaching Guide for English for Dispute Resolution shows ESL/ESP instructors how to use the textbook to teach negotiation, mediation, professional-level communication, and the field of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR). Designed to support instructors who may not have formal background or training in these topics, the book provides separate guidance for ESP and ESL instructors. It shows ESP instructors how to use the textbook in their current Legal English or Business English courses or in stand-alone negotiation or mediation courses. It advises ESL instructors on how to use these topics as a theme for multi-skill courses or as an engaging new way to develop students’ cross-cultural communication, problem-solving, critical thinking, teamwork, leadership, and other soft skills in their current courses. The textbook and guide are based on over twenty years of classroom experience with high-intermediate to advanced ESL and ESP students, from undergrads to LL.M. students, and on teacher-training workshops offered at places such as UC Berkeley, TESOL, and CATESOL.

Each chapter of the textbook provides a ready-made lesson plan with a sample dispute, warm-up questions, background readings, follow-up questions, activities, and reflections, and The Teaching Guide supplements each chapter with:

Support in the form of teaching tips, lesson plans, additional activities or role-plays, assessment suggestions, and resources for further exploration.
Separate guidance for ESL and Legal English/Business English instructors that helps them select the material and activities best suited to their students’ interests and needs.
Resources such as sample syllabi and activities with step-by-step instructions that make it easy to start teaching the textbook.
An online companion site where instructors can download and send activities and role-plays directly to their students.

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The Teaching of English

James R. Squire

University of Chicago Press, 1977

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The Teaching with Primary Sources Cookbook

Julie M. Porterfield

Assoc of College & Research Libraries, 2021

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The Three-Legged Woman and Other Excursions in Teaching

Robert Klose

University Press of New England, 2013

Since 1986, Robert Klose has taught biology at a “small, impoverished, careworn” college in central Maine. Located on a former military base, the school became first the South Campus of the University of Maine, or SCUM, and later, Penobscot Valley Community College, then Bangor Community College, and most recently University College of Bangor. Despite its improved nomenclature, University College of Bangor remains an open-admissions environment at which “one never knows what’s going to come in over the transom.” Klose’s nontraditional students have included, in addition to single parents and veterans, the homeless, the abused, ex-cons, and even a murderer (who was otherwise “a very nice person”). Chronicling his experiences teaching these diverse students, Klose describes with equal doses of care and wry wit those who are profoundly unfit for college, their often inadequate command of the lingua franca, and the alacrity with which they seize upon the paranormal (the three-legged woman) while expressing skepticism about mainstream science. He reflects on the decline of reading for enjoyment and the folly of regarding email as a praiseworthy substitute for expository writing. He details what works in the classroom, identifies what has failed, and relates stories of the absurd, the sublime, and the unanticipated, such as one student’s outburst following a discussion of evolution: “For what you have taught today you shall be damned to everlasting fires of hell!” Tempering thoughtfulness with a light touch and plenty of humor, these essays prove that teaching, an “imperfect occupation,” remains a “special profession.”

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The Two Ends of the Log

Learning and Teaching in Today’s College

Russell Cooper

University of Minnesota Press, 1958

The Two Ends of the Log was first published in 1958. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.Distinguished professors and administrators from a number of colleges, universities, and related organizations pool their thinking in this volume for an appraisal of college teaching as it stands today and a synthesis of ideals for the improvement of teaching and learning in higher education. The book is based on a series of papers presented at a conference on college teaching held at the University of Minnesota under the sponsorship of the Association of Minnesota Colleges. There are 27 chapters by 24 contributors.The chapters in the first section consider various aspects of the learning process. The subjects discussed include an analysis of learning, the motivation of students’ interest, the gifted student, the use of examinations, student-teacher relations, the stimulation of creativity, and the development of critical thinking and judgment.The second section, which deals with teaching, includes chapters on such subjects as a historical survey of teaching, the role of teaching in relation to technological progress, and artistry in teaching.The final section is devoted to individual methods of teaching, both traditional and new. Among chapter topics are the use of television and other audio-visual methods, student personnel services, and the role of the community in college teaching.In addition to presenting the material based on the major conference addresses, the book also includes the reports of analysts who participated in the conference programs. There is a foreword by James Lewis Morrill, former president of the University of Minnesota.

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The Vocation of a Teacher

Rhetorical Occasions, 1967-1988

Wayne C. Booth

University of Chicago Press, 1989

This critically acclaimed collection is both a passionate celebration of teaching as a vocation and an argument for rhetoric as the center of liberal education. While Booth provides an eloquent personal account of the pleasures of teaching, he also vigorously exposes the political and economic scandals that frustrate even the most dedicated educators.

"[Booth] is unusually adept at addressing a wide variety of audiences. From deep in the heart of this academic jungle, he shows a clear eye and a firm step."—Alison Friesinger Hill, New York Times Book Review

"A cause for celebration. . . . What an uncommon man is Wayne Booth. What an uncommon book he has provided for our reflection."—James Squire, Educational Leadership

"This book stands as a vigorous reminder of the traditional virtues of the scholar-teacher."—Brian Cox, Times Literary Supplement

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Theater Games for the Classroom

A Teacher's Handbook

Viola Spolin

Northwestern University Press, 1986

The most comprehensive theater instruction guide for all types of students

This best-selling book by Viola Spolin offers the most comprehensive theater instruction for all types of students, from small children to young adults. It includes over 130 theater games, plus exercises and instructional strategies. First developed by Spolin, the originator of modern improvisational theater techniques, these games have been tried and tested for over fifty years.

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Theory and Practice

Bite-Sized Activities for Teaching Reading Skills

Aviva Katzenell

University of Michigan Press, 2023

Theory and Practice: Bite-Sized Activities for Teaching Reading Skills is an easily digestible guide that links key reading skills theory to practical activities that can be adapted for different classrooms. It dives into the physiological process of reading, the link between sounds and symbols, reading accomplishments at different levels, and the skills required for reading fluency. In addition, Theory and Practice discusses Color Vowel methodology and how it aids students in acquiring automaticity through pattern recognition and associating sound with color. Chapters contain activities for pre-reading, interactive reading, and post-reading as well as how to adapt these activities for different learning levels. Examples of real student work, images, vocabulary logs, and the annotations that accompany each activity demonstrate what teachers can expect for the outcome of each activity. Theory and Practice aims to provide practicing ESOL instructors, student teachers, and educators with the key theory and tools they need to help their classes boost L2 reading skills and cultural competency in English.

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There Has to Be a Better Way

Lessons from Former Urban Teachers

Mawhinney, Lynnette

Rutgers University Press, 2019

Winner of the 2020 American Educational Studies Association Critics Choice Book Award

Teacher attrition has long been a significant challenge within the field of education. It is a commonly-cited statistic that almost fifty percent of beginning teachers leave the field within their first five years, to the detriment of schools, students, and their own career development. There Has to be a Better Way offers an essential voice in understanding the dynamics of teacher attrition from the perspective of the teachers themselves. Drawing upon in-depth qualitative research with former teachers from urban schools in multiple regions of the United States, Lynnette Mawhinney and Carol R. Rinke identify several themes that uncover the rarely-spoken reasons why teachers so often willingly leave the classroom. The authors go further to provide concrete recommendations for how school administrators can better support their practicing teachers, as well as how teacher educators might enhance preparation for the next generation of educators. Complete with suggested readings and discussion questions, this book serves as an indispensable resource in understanding and building an effective and productive educational workforce for our nation’s students.

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Thinking Like a Historian

Rethinking History Instruction

Nikki Mandell

Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2008

Thinking Like a Historian: Rethinking History Instruction by Nikki Mandell and Bobbie Malone is a teaching and learning framework that explains the essential elements of history and provides "how to" examples for building historical literacy in classrooms at all grade levels. With practical examples, engaging and effective lessons, and classroom activities that tie to essential questions, Thinking Like a Historian provides a framework to enhance and improve teaching and learning history. We invite you to use Thinking Like a Historian to bring history into your classroom or to re-energize your teaching of this crucial discipline in new ways.

The contributors to Thinking Like a Historian are experienced historians and educators from elementary through university levels. This philosophical and pedagogical guide to history as a discipline uses published standards of the American Historical Association, the Organization of American Historians, the National Council for History Education, the National History Standards and state standards for Wisconsin and California.

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Through the Schoolhouse Door

Folklore, Community, Currriculum

Paddy Bowman and Lynne Hamer

Utah State University Press, 2011

The creative traditions and expressive culture of students' families, neighborhoods, towns, religious communities, and peer groups provide opportunities to extend classrooms, sustain learning beyond school buildings, and better connect students and schools with their communities. Folklorists and educators have long worked together to expand curricula through engagement with local knowledge and informal cultural arts-folk arts in education is a familiar rubric for these programs-but the unrealized potential here, for both the folklore scholar and the teacher, is large. The value folklorists "place on the local, the vernacular, and the aesthetics of daily life does not reverberate" throughout public education, even though, in the words of Paddy Bowman and Lynne Hamer, "connecting young people to family and community members and helping them to develop self-identity are vital to civic well-being and to school success."

Through the Schoolhouse Door offers a collection of experiences from exemplary school programs and the analysis of an expert group of folklorists and educators who are dedicated not only to getting students out the door and into their communities to learn about the folk culture all around them but also to honoring the culture teachers and students bring to the classroom.

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