Results by title

How the policies of elite colleges allow racially themed parties to continue by perpetuating the status quo.
 
On a cold February evening, a group of students at Bowdoin College, an elite and historically white liberal arts college in Maine, gathered to drink tequila at a party referred to as “not not a fiesta.” By noon the next day, Instagram videos of students sporting miniature sombreros had spread like wildfire through campus. Over the next few weeks, national media outlets would broadcast the embarrassing fallout. But the frequency with which similar parties recur on campuses across the United States begs the question: what, if anything, do undergraduates learn about race and racism from these encounters?

Drawing on interviews and archival research, Yet Another Costume Party Debacle shows us how colleges both contest and reproduce racialized systems of power. Sociologist Ingrid A. Nelson juxtaposes how students and administrators discuss race with how they behave in the aftermath of racially charged campus controversies. Nelson spoke in-depth with students and other key players in several controversial parties—“Cracksgiving,” a “gangster party,” and the “not not a fiesta” tequila party—at Bowdoin. The college’s administrative response failed to encourage productive dialogue or address larger questions about race on campus. Nelson shows how the underlying campus structures at elite liberal arts colleges foster an environment that is ripe for racially charged incidents; we shouldn’t be surprised when we read about yet another costume party debacle. Nelson advises how we can take charge of diversity on our campuses by changing the systems that bring students together and drive them apart.
 

This is an auto-narrated audiobook version of this book.

How the policies of elite colleges allow racially themed parties to continue by perpetuating the status quo.
 
On a cold February evening, a group of students at Bowdoin College, an elite and historically white liberal arts college in Maine, gathered to drink tequila at a party referred to as “not not a fiesta.” By noon the next day, Instagram videos of students sporting miniature sombreros had spread like wildfire through campus. Over the next few weeks, national media outlets would broadcast the embarrassing fallout. But the frequency with which similar parties recur on campuses across the United States begs the question: what, if anything, do undergraduates learn about race and racism from these encounters?

Drawing on interviews and archival research, Yet Another Costume Party Debacle shows us how colleges both contest and reproduce racialized systems of power. Sociologist Ingrid A. Nelson juxtaposes how students and administrators discuss race with how they behave in the aftermath of racially charged campus controversies. Nelson spoke in-depth with students and other key players in several controversial parties—“Cracksgiving,” a “gangster party,” and the “not not a fiesta” tequila party—at Bowdoin. The college’s administrative response failed to encourage productive dialogue or address larger questions about race on campus. Nelson shows how the underlying campus structures at elite liberal arts colleges foster an environment that is ripe for racially charged incidents; we shouldn’t be surprised when we read about yet another costume party debacle. Nelson advises how we can take charge of diversity on our campuses by changing the systems that bring students together and drive them apart.
 

A compelling history of the learning style concept and how it was shaped by shifting ideas in psychology, anthropology, and education.
 
The widely embraced notion that we all process information in one of three distinct modes—visual, auditory, or kinesthetic—has informed educational practices for decades. In recent years, however, numerous studies have questioned the effectiveness of aligning instruction with the alleged learning styles of individual students. So, why is it still commonplace in the literature on beneficial teaching at all levels of education?

In You Are Not a Kinesthetic Learner: The Troubled History of a Dangerous Idea, historian Thomas Fallace traces the origins, evolution, and history of the learning style idea, demonstrating its relationship to a legacy of unequal education for children of color. Fallace argues that the research supporting the learning style idea was problematic from its inception in the 1910s and that it was used to label and justify a diminished curriculum for many Black and Latine students, whose cultural differences were perceived as weaknesses. In recent years, numerous empirical studies have not found the approach to be effective. This fascinating history clearly shows the danger of sorting and labeling students with permanent style identities and makes a strong case for removing learning styles as the basis for any educators’ instructional toolkit.

The first book-length history of learning styles, You Are Not a Kinesthetic Learner encourages us all to consider the research, be open to future developments and updates, and question even our most intuitive assumptions.
 

This is an auto-narrated audiobook version of this book.

A compelling history of the learning style concept and how it was shaped by shifting ideas in psychology, anthropology, and education.
 
The widely embraced notion that we all process information in one of three distinct modes—visual, auditory, or kinesthetic—has informed educational practices for decades. In recent years, however, numerous studies have questioned the effectiveness of aligning instruction with the alleged learning styles of individual students. So, why is it still commonplace in the literature on beneficial teaching at all levels of education?

In You Are Not a Kinesthetic Learner: The Troubled History of a Dangerous Idea, historian Thomas Fallace traces the origins, evolution, and history of the learning style idea, demonstrating its relationship to a legacy of unequal education for children of color. Fallace argues that the research supporting the learning style idea was problematic from its inception in the 1910s and that it was used to label and justify a diminished curriculum for many Black and Latine students, whose cultural differences were perceived as weaknesses. In recent years, numerous empirical studies have not found the approach to be effective. This fascinating history clearly shows the danger of sorting and labeling students with permanent style identities and makes a strong case for removing learning styles as the basis for any educators’ instructional toolkit.

The first book-length history of learning styles, You Are Not a Kinesthetic Learner encourages us all to consider the research, be open to future developments and updates, and question even our most intuitive assumptions.
 

As men and women throughout England were called up for war work during World War II, the country needed to generate as much food and wealth as possible to support them. Children quickly came to be seen as a vital resource. Many children worked the land, planting and harvesting crops, raising money for the war effort, and carrying out a range of other tasks. That war work followed on debates throughout the preceding decades about the character and proper activities of childhood, debates that saw commentators in education and workers' organizations arguing about whether children should stay in school and learn or should combine their education with war-related work. The work of children during the war raised a question that still has relevance today: Should children be conceptualized as citizens of the future or as participating citizens now? That debate has led to even larger questions about the social construction of childhood. As children have increasingly withdrawn from paid and unpaid work, their contribution today can best be understood through their work at school, though that work is often disguised or devalued as mere socialization. The interwar years and the war years in England were a key time for re-thinking childhood, and the issues that were raised then still have relevance to the role of children in society today.
 

A study on empowering systemically marginalized youth through applied theater.

Drawing on over twenty years of scholarship from Diane Conrad's academic career in applied theater research with systemically marginalized youth, this book examines applied theater research conducted with youth in three specific contexts: alternative high schools, a youth jail, and street-involved youth.

By highlighting youths’ voices and youths’ creations, this book offers an introduction to the theoretical considerations for the research, suggests practical strategies for engaging with marginalized youth, and describes how the applied theater process developed. It also addresses specific considerations for working with incarcerated and Indigenous youth and explores the ethical considerations in conducting such work and the role of applied theater in social change. The book will be of interest to applied theater researchers, instructors, practitioners, students, drama teachers, and youth workers.
 

At Highfields Youthful Offenders —are kept for no longer than four months —are permitted to leave the grounds with any responsible adult —are granted three-day furloughs over weekends to visit their families —live with no more than 19 other boys in a 14-room house on a 320-acre estate —work forty hours a week at the nearby New Jersey Neuropsychiatric Institute —actively participate in guided group interaction sessions. How successful is this program? How do the results compare with those of the more traditional reformatory? At one-third the usual cost per capita, is Highfields the answer in delinquency prevention? H. Ashley Weeks, on the basis of a survey by the New York University Department of Sociology, evaluates the success of a program of crime prevention in action. Measuring Highfields against a traditional institution, he gives a statistical analysis not only of success and failure rates but of change in the basic personality structures of the youthful offenders. Tables show the comparative distribution of boys sent to Highfields who completed their stay and have not been re-institutionalized; the disposition of forty-one boys returned to the courts as unsuitable for residence at Highfields; the type of delinquency which returned boys to confinement. Professor Weeks gives the tetrachoric correlations between nine background variables including extent of education, number of delinquencies, marital status of parents, number of cities lived in; he shows the comparative distribution of responses on ten scales adapted from the Army Psychoneurotic Screening Inventory. In addition, the volume contains essays by Professor Ernest W. Burgess, Richard L. Jenkins, Walter Reckless, G. Howland Shaw, and Hellmen J. Warner, appraising Highfields in the light of current thought. Youthful Offenders at Highfields, with statistical proof of effective delinquent treatment, points the way to a new method of crime prevention, a method that rests on a new concept of the nature of behavior and its dynamics.

At Highfields Youthful Offenders —are kept for no longer than four months —are permitted to leave the grounds with any responsible adult —are granted three-day furloughs over weekends to visit their families —live with no more than 19 other boys in a 14-room house on a 320-acre estate —work forty hours a week at the nearby New Jersey Neuropsychiatric Institute —actively participate in guided group interaction sessions .How successful is this program? How do the results compare with those of the more traditional reformatory? At one-third the usual cost per capita, is Highfields the answer in delinquency prevention? H. Ashley Weeks, on the basis of a survey by the New York University Department of Sociology, evaluates the success of a program of crime prevention.