Resources

Click Here for Book Review Abstract: High Impact Practices (HIP). Through the voices of dozens of seasoned college faculty and junior and senior students, this book shares insights and practical examples on how a college campus can be “HIP”—utilizing high-impact educational practices widely and effectively. The book’s strength is numerous hands-on examples about HIPs’ implementation in and out of the classroom. HIPs have been proven to improve student learning, yet practical examples of their implementation are still few. This book fills that gap. Covering seven (sets of) HIPs, we ask such questions as: What do creative assignments based on active learning look like? How does one teach the “whole student?” How does and should student diversity affect teaching? The book is most beneficial to current and future instructors of college courses, especially those wanting to use more active learning pedagogies. It will also benefit university administrators and staff by identifying campus priorities, culture, and structure that support the effective implementation of HIPs. It makes the case for a campus-wide adoption of high-impact practices, across disciplines and in both academic and co-curricular life. (From the Publisher)

Click Here for Book Review Abstract: What are the barriers and obstacles to adults learning? What makes the process of adult learning so fragile? And what exactly do we mean by fragile learning? This book addresses these questions in two ways. In Part One, it looks at challenges to learning, examining issues such as language invention in a maximum security prison, geography and bad technology, and pedagogic fragility in Higher Education. Through a psychoanalytic lens, Fragile Learning examines authorial illness and the process of slow recovery as a tool for reflective learning, and explores ethical issues in problem-based learning. The second part of the book deals specifically with the problem of online anxiety. From cyberbullying to Internet boredom, the book asks what the implications for educational design in our contemporary world might be. It compares education programs that insist on the Internet and those that completely ban it, while exploring conflict, virtual weapons and the role of the online personal tutor. The book also examines the issue of time as a barrier to learning and its links to unconscious thinking, as well as defining fragility in a summative essay. Using real-life examples, originality and wit, Fragile Learning is an important contribution to the field of psychoanalysis and pedagogy. (From the Publisher)

Click Here for Book Review Abstract: In this new collection, contributors from a variety of disciplines provide a critical context for the relationship between feminist pedagogy and academic feminism by exploring the complex ways that critical perspectives can be brought into the classroom. This book discusses the processes employed to engage learners by challenging them to ask tough questions and craft complex answers, wrestle with timely problems and posit innovative solutions, and grapple with ethical dilemmas for which they seek just resolutions. Diverse experiences, interests, and perspectives—together with the various teaching and learning styles that participants bring to twenty-first-century universities—necessitate inventive and evolving pedagogical approaches, and these are explored from a critical perspective. The contributors collectively consider the implications of the theory/practice divide, which remains central within academic feminism’s role as both a site of social and gender justice and as a part of the academy, and map out some of the ways in which academic feminism is located within the academy today. (From the Publisher)

Students need more than just academic skills for success in college and career, and the lack of an explicit instructional focus on the “soft skills” critical to postsecondary success poses a challenge for many students who enter college, especially the underprepared. Based upon a multi-campus, cross-disciplinary collaboration, this book presents the resulting set of habits-of-mind-based strategies that demonstrably help not only low-income, ESL, and first-generation college students overcome obstacles on the path to degree completion; these strategies equally benefit all students. They promote life-long, integrative learning and foster intellectual qualities such as curiosity, openness, flexibility, engagement, and persistence that are the key to developing internalized and transferrable competencies that are seldom given direct attention in college classrooms. This contributed volume, written with full-time and adjunct faculty in mind, provides the rationale for this pedagogical approach and presents the sequential instructional cycle that begins by identifying students’ assets and progressively focusing on specific habits to develop their capacity to transfer their learning to new tasks and situations. Faculty from both two-year and four-year colleges provide examples of how they implement these practices in English, math, and General Education courses, and demonstrate the applicability of these practices across course types and disciplines. Chapters address key factors of college success, including: * The link between habits of mind and student retention and achievement * Using an assets-based approach to teaching and learning * Supporting and engaging students * Creating inclusive learning communities * Building confidence and self-efficacy * Promoting transfer of learning * Teacher networks and cross-disciplinary collaboration By foregrounding habits of mind as an instructional lens, this book makes a unique contribution to teaching in developmental and general education settings. (From the Publisher)

Click Here for Book Review Abstract: Faculty mentoring programs greatly benefit the institutions that have instituted them, and are effective in attracting and retaining good faculty. Prospective faculty members commonly ask about mentoring at on-campus interviews, and indicate that it is a consideration when choosing a position. Mentoring programs also increase the retention rate of junior faculty, greatly reducing recruitment costs, and particularly help integrate women, minority and international faculty members into the institution, while providing all new hires with an orientation to the culture, mission and identity of the college or university. The book provides step-by-step guidelines for setting up, planning, and facilitating mentoring programs for new faculty members, whether one-on-one, or using a successful group model developed and refined over twenty-five years by the authors. While it offers detailed guidance on instituting such programs at the departmental level, it also makes the case for establishing school or institutional level programs, and delineates the considerable benefits and economies of scale these can achieve. The authors provide guidance for mentors and mentees on developing group mentoring and individual mentor / protégé relationships – the corresponding chapters being available online for separate purchase; as well as detailed outlines and advice to department chairs, administrators and facilitators on how to establish and conduct institution-wide group mentoring programs, and apply or modify the material to meet their specific needs. For training and faculty development purposes, we also offer two chapters as individual e-booklets. Each respectively provides a succinct summary of the roles and expectations of the roles of Mentor and Mentee. Faculty Mentoring / Mentor Guide The booklets are affordably priced, and intended for individual purchase by mentors and mentees, and are only available through our Web site. (From the Publisher)

Click Here for Book Review Abstract: Experiential Education in the College Context provides college and university faculty with pedagogical approaches that engage students and support high-impact learning. Organized around four essential categories—active learning, integrated learning, project-based learning, and community-based learning—this resource offers examples from across disciplines to illustrate principles and best practices for designing and implementing experiential curriculum in the college and university setting. Framed by theory, this book provides practical guidance on a range of experiential teaching and learning approaches, including internships, civic engagement, project-based research, service learning, game-based learning, and inquiry learning. At a time when rising tuition, consumer-driven models, and e-learning have challenged the idea of traditional liberal education, this book provides a compelling discussion of the purposes of higher education and the role experiential education plays in sustaining and broadening notions of democratic citizenship. (From the Publisher)

Click Here for Book Review Abstract: Bullying Amongst University Students is a pioneering collection of knowledge and evidence exploring the under-researched phenomenon of bullying in universities. Abusive behaviour amongst young people is a serious and pervasive problem that is exacerbated by the rapid advances in electronic communication, and in this book the authors highlight the problem and proceed to facilitate new practices and policies to address it. This book brings together an international team of authors from a range of disciplines, encompassing education, psychology, criminology, law and counselling, who have carried out research in the area of university bullying. Addressing critical dialogues and debates, the authors explore peer on peer violence, intimidation and social exclusion before considering its effects on students and making recommendations for action and further research. Key topics include: • Cyberbullying and cyber aggression • Rape culture across the university • Homophobic and transphobic bullying • The impact of bullying on mental health • The role of bully and victim across the lifespan • Policies and procedures to address bullying International in authorship and scope, this book will be an invaluable resource for students and researchers in fields such as education, psychology, sociology, health studies and criminology. It is also essential reading for university policy-makers and union representatives responsible for the emotional and physical well-being of students. (From the Publisher)

Journal Issue. Full text is available online.

Click Here for Book Review Abstract: Moving beyond critique, Alternative Solutions to Higher Education’s Challenges uses an appreciative approach to highlight what is working in colleges and universities and offers an examination of how institutions can improve practice. Drawing on examples and cases from real higher education institutions, this book offers a solution-focused framework that challenges the negative assumptions that have plagued higher education. Chapters explore how current narratives have perpetuated and maintained systematic flaws in our education system and have hindered reform. This invaluable resource breaks from the substantial literature that only highlights the many problems facing higher education today, and instead provides alternative strategies and essential recommendations for moving higher education institutions forward. (From the Publisher)

Click Here for Book Review Abstract: Presents the key experiences of a diverse group of teachers and students in their journeys of becoming social justice educator/scholars. This innovative book is a collection of autoethnographies by a diverse group of contributors who describe and theorize about the critical moments in their development as social justice educator/scholars in the face of colonizing forces. Using a rhizomatic approach, the editors’ meta-analysis identifies patterns of similarity and differences and theorizes about the exercise of agency in resistance and identity formation. In our increasingly diverse society, Becoming Critical is a wonderful resource for teacher education and sociology of education as it presents an alternative methodological approach for qualitative inquiry. The book contributes to students’ understanding of the development of critical theories—especially as they pertain to identities. The contributors make use of the work of critical scholars such as Collins, hooks, Weber, Foucault, and others relevant to the lives of students and educators today. (From the Publisher)