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Emerging Strategies for Supporting Student Learning: A Practical Guide for Librarians and Educators

Click Here for Book Review The higher education landscape is rapidly evolving due to changes in the student population (millenials, increasing diversity, changing work habits), technology (the rise in the use of social media) and learning spaces (the increase in physical and virtual social learning spaces). Allan presents the first book to bring together recent developments in both theory and practice, covering a wide range of tools and techniques which will suit students in different contexts, from large groups of 500+ to very small classes of research students. Making extensive use of case studies, examples, checklists, and tables, this practical book contains: - an analysis of the current higher education landscape, the changes that are occurring and the diverse nature of student populations; - an exploration of new theories of digital literacy including case studies demonstrating how library and information workers have applied these models in practice; - a demonstration of the many different ways in which academic library and information services are working in support of student employability; - a theoretical overview of different approaches to teaching and learning including Kolb's learning cycle, Laurillard's conversational framework for university teaching, Entwistle's teaching for understanding at university, Land and Meyer's threshold concepts and the Higher Education Academy's work on flexible pedagogies; - practical guidance on designing, developing and evaluating courses and other learning and teaching events in different situations including face-to-face, flipped classroom, blended learning, and online learning; and an exploration of approaches to personal and professional development including 90+ approaches to workplace learning; accredited courses; short courses, conferences and workshops; - networking through professional organizations; and developing online networks. This book will be essential reading for different groups working in colleges and universities including library and information workers, staff developers, educational technologists, educational development project workers, educational change agents and students of library and information science who are planning their careers in higher education institutions. (From the Publisher)

Attuned Learning: Rabbinic Texts on Habits of the Heart in Learning Interactions

Click Here for Book Review Practice-oriented educational philosopher Elie Holzer invites readers to grow as teachers, students, or co-learners through “attuned learning,” a new paradigm of mindfulness. Groundbreaking interpretations of classical rabbinic texts sharpen attention to our own mental, emotional, and physical workings as well as awareness of others within the complexities of learning interactions. Holzer integrates pedagogical pathways with ethical elements of transformative teaching and learning, the repair of educational disruptions, the role of the human visage, and the dynamics of argumentative and collaborative learning. Literary analyses reveal that deliberate self-cultivation not only leads to ethical and spiritual growth, but also offers a corrective for the pitfalls of the contemporary calculative modalities in educational thinking. The author speaks to the existential, humanizing art of learning and of teaching. This book can serve as a companion volume for A Philosophy of Havruta: Understanding and Teaching the Art of Text Study in Pairs, adding a new dimension of its model of joint learning. (From the Publisher)

Formally known as a “Small Group Instructional Diagnosis” (SGID), specialists from the Illinois State Center for Teaching, Learning and Technology visit a classroom and interview the students in a consensus-building process that enables instructors to gain insights into students' perceptions about the class and their learning.

Let’s Get Physical: Using Sports, Yoga, and Dance to Teach about Religion
Academic Autoethnographies: Inside Teaching in Higher Education

Click Here for Book Review Abstract: Academic Autoethnographies: Inside Teaching in Higher Education invites readers to experience autoethnography as a challenging, complex, and creative research methodology that can produce personally, professionally, and socially useful understandings of teaching and researching in higher education. The peer-reviewed chapters offer innovative and perspicacious explorations of interrelationships between personal autobiographies, lived educational experiences, and wider social and cultural concerns, across diverse disciplines and university contexts. This edited book is distinctive within the existing body of autoethnographic scholarship in that the original research presented has been done in relation to predominantly South African university settings. This research is complemented by contributions from Canadian and Swedish scholars. The sociocultural, educational, and methodological insights communicated in this book will be valuable for specialists in the field of higher education and to those in other academic domains who are interested in self-reflexive, transformative, and creative research methodologies and methods. (From the Publisher)

The Teaching Professor, Volume 30, Number 8

In 2014, a roundtable on pedagogy appeared in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion with an initial piece by Vanessa Sasson. Although neither Sasson nor the respondents explicitly situated her article as a part of the broader body of work known as the “ Scholarship of Teaching and Learning” (SoTL), readers would reap benefit from such a contextualization. In this article, after first exploring what SoTL is and how it has interacted with the field of religious studies, I explore three main elements of this particular kind of scholarship: research with human subjects and the Institutional Review Board, a foundation in other scholarship, and assessment. In these three areas, I uncover special questions, considerations, and resources for all religious studies instructors interested in embarking upon a SoTL project with the aim of contributing to the ongoing conversation about pedagogy.

Transforming Understandings of Diversity in Higher Education: Demography, Democracy, and Discourse

Click Here for Book Review Abstract: This exciting new text examines one of the most important and yet elusive terms in higher education and society: What do we mean when we talk in a serious way about “diversity”? A distinguished group of diversity scholars explore the latest discourse on diversity and how it is reflected in research and practice. The chapters trace how the discourse on diversity is newly shaped after many of the 20th century concepts of race, ethnicity, gender and class have lost authority. In the academic disciplines and in public discourse, perspectives about diversity have been rapidly shifting in recent years. This is especially true in the United States where demographic changes and political attitudes have prompted new observations - some which will clash with traditional frameworks. This text brings together scholars whose research has opened up new ways to understand the complexities of diversity in higher education. Because the essential topic under consideration is changing so quickly, the editors of this volume also have asked the contributors to reflect on the paths their own scholarship has taken in their careers, and to see how they would relate their current conceptualization of diversity to one or more of three identified themes (demography, democracy and discourse). Each chapter ends with a candid graduate student interview of the author that provides an engaged picture of how the authors wrestle with one of the most complicated topics shaping them (and all of us) as individuals and as scholars. Of interest to anyone who is following the debates about diversity issues on our campuses, the book also offers a wonderful introduction to graduate students entering a discipline where critically important ideas are still very much alive for discussion. (From the Publisher)

Multiculturalism on Campus: Theory, Models, and Practices for Understanding Diversity and Creating Inclusion, 2nd Edition

Click Here for Book Review The first edition of this book constituted a comprehensive resource for students of higher education, faculty, higher education administrators and student affairs leaders engaging with multiculturalism and diverse populations on college campuses. It was one of the first texts to gather in a single volume the related theories, assessment methods, and environmental and application issues pertinent to the study and practice of multiculturalism, while also offering approaches to enhancing multicultural programming and culturally diverse campus environments. This second edition retains the structure and vision of the first, introducing readers to the key theories and models for understanding the complexity of the students they serve, and for reflecting on their own values and motivations. It provides an array of case studies, discussion questions, examples of best practice, and recommendations about resources for use in the classroom. This edition includes a new chapter on intersectionality; updates several chapters, presents a number of new cultural frameworks and updated best practices for creating an inclusive environment for marginalized groups, and expands the third section of the book on cultural competent practice. (From the Publisher)

Making Sense of Teaching in Difficult Times

Click Here for Book Review Abstract:Thinking about teaching in educational terms has become increasingly difficult because of the conceptions of higher education that predominate in both policy and public debate. Framing the benefits of higher education simply as an economic good poses particular difficulties for making educational sense of teaching. Moreover, the assumptions about social mobility, usefulness, and the economic advantages of higher education, upon which these conceptions are based, can no longer be taken for granted. The chapters in this book all wrestle with understandings of education and teaching experiences in changing global, national, and institutional contexts. They explore questions of difference and privilege, the social transformation of teaching through transforming teachers, contestations of global citizenship and interculturality, learning and sensibilities of self-in-the-world, the relationship between programme content and student decision-making, divergent conceptions of learning in international education, and subject-centred approaches to embodied teaching. The book considers the value of disciplinary tools of analysis in addressing contextual challenges in developing societies, connections between pedagogies, autonomy and intercultural classrooms, and ways of countering the marketization of higher education through online teaching communities. This book was originally published as a special issue of Teaching in Higher Education. (From the Publisher)

Wabash Center Staff Contact

Sarah Farmer, Ph.D.
Associate Director
Wabash Center

farmers@wabash.edu