Resources

Featuring forthright testimonials by women who are or have been mothers as undergraduates, graduate students, academic staff, administrators, and professors, Mothers in Academia intimately portrays the experiences of women at various stages of motherhood while theoretically and empirically considering the conditions of working motherhood as academic life has become more laborious. As higher learning institutions have moved toward more corporate-based models of teaching, immense structural and cultural changes have transformed women’s academic lives and, by extension, their families. Hoping to push reform as well as build recognition and a sense of community, this collection offers several potential solutions for integrating female scholars more wholly into academic life. Essays also reveal the often stark differences between women’s encounters with the academy and the disparities among various ranks of women working in academia. Contributors—including many women of color—call attention to tokenism, scarce valuable networks, and the persistent burden to prove academic credentials. They also explore gendered parenting within the contexts of colonialism, racism, sexism, ethnocentrism, ageism, and heterosexism. (From the Publisher)

National Jewish Book Award finalist in Contemporary Jewish Life and Practice category Make Yourself a Teacher is a teaching book and a book about teaching. It discusses three dramatic, well-known stories about the student and teacher Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus from the Oral Torah. The stories of R. Eliezer serve as teaching texts and models for reflection on the teacher/student relationship in the Jewish tradition and in contemporary culture, with special emphasis on the hevruta mode of Jewish learning, a collaborative process that invites the reader into a dialogue with teachers past and present. Susan Handelman considers how teacher/student relations sustain and renew the Jewish tradition, especially during troubled times. As a commentary on historical and contemporary educational practices, she asks a range of questions about teaching and learning: What is it that teachers do when they teach? How do knowledge, spirituality, and education relate? What might Jewish models of study and commentary say about how we teach and learn today? Handelman not only presents pedagogical issues that remain controversial in today's debates on education but she also brings the stories themselves to life. Through her readings, the stories beckon us to sit among the sages and be their students. Susan Handelman is professor of English at Bar-Ilan University, Israel. (From the Publisher)

Let’s Do the Hokey Pokey! A few years back, George Will wrote that what we choose to believe, how we dream to live, how we strive to make those ideals become reality, we make self-validating. In that spirit, I’m going to talk about one of my self-evident truths, which I choose to believe, how I dream to live, how I strive to make it and other allied self-evident truths my reality. In academia, there is something that is often so deadening that it sucks the life out of teaching and learning, something so often depressing that it reduces focus to information gathering and transmission and exiles people to unnoticed corners, something so bland that it is devoid of emotional intensity, something so stagnating that it doesn’t stir the imaginative and creative juices. That something is passion. Now, I am not talking about being passionate about or dedicated to one’s discipline or to the practice of research and publication. I am talking about being passionate about teaching and being dedicated to each student’s learning. So, here is my take on the importance of passion in education, on what I call “hokey pokey teaching.” And, it starts like this:   You put your whole self in; you put your whole self out; you put your whole self in; and you shake it all about. You do the Hokey-Pokey, And you turn yourself around That’s what it’s all about!   Now that is passion! If you have ever danced the Hokey Pokey you know what I mean. It’s really an exciting experience. And, Hokey Pokey teaching! That’s what it’s all about! (From the Publisher)

Inspiring Academics draws on the experience and expertise of award-winning university teachers to illuminate exemplary teaching practice. It is structured around five core themes: inspiring learning, command of the field, assessment for independent learning, student development and scholarship. Mirroring the vast range of practices and characteristics that constitute high quality teaching, 26 distinguished scholars from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the USA recount and reflect on the personal and professional circumstances that have made them great teachers. Through its autoethnographic approach, this book provides captivating and illuminating personal explorations of the 'hows and whys' of excellent university teaching. (From the Publisher)

In this book, seventeen senior leaders from faith-based colleges and universities across North America--collectively bringing with them hundreds of years of leadership experience--share fresh insights into the theory and practice of Christian higher education leadership. These authors speak honestly about the successes, failures, and demands that have shaped their current leadership decisions and their visions for the future.In this book, seventeen senior leaders from faith-based colleges and universities across North America--collectively bringing with them hundreds of years of leadership experience--share fresh insights into the theory and practice of Christian higher education leadership. These authors speak honestly about the successes, failures, and demands that have shaped their current leadership decisions and their visions for the future. (From the Publisher)

Interpretive Pedagogies for Higher Education focuses on providing a humanistic perspective on pedagogy by relating it to the interpretive practices of particular public educators: thinkers and writers whose work has had an immeasurable impact on how we understand and interpret the world and how our understandings and interpretations act on that world. Jon Nixon focuses on the work of four public intellectuals each of whom reaches out to a wide public readership and develops our understanding regarding the nature of interpretation in the everyday world: Hannah Arendt’s work on ‘representative thinking’, John Berger’s injunction to ‘hold everything dear’, Edward Said’s notion of ‘democratic criticism’, and Martha Nussbaum’s studies in the intelligence of feeling. These thinkers provide valuable perspectives on the nature and purpose of interpretation in everyday life. The implications of these perspectives for the development of a transformative pedagogy – and for the renewal of an educated public – are examined in relation to the current contexts of higher education within a knowledge society. (From the Publisher)