Resources

Click Here for Book Review Abstract: Learning cities call for a connection of adult education to elementary, secondary, and postsecondary institutions along with vocational and corporate workspaces. This volume considers how “learning cities for adult learners” could be created in America that promote lifelong learning and education. Encouraging a widespread approach to educate and learn across disciplines, within communities, and inside the minds of all people, topics covered include: • workplace and organizational learning, • community engagement and service learning, • public libraries and cooperative extension, and • leisure, recreation, and public health education. This is the 145th volume of the Jossey Bass series New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education. Noted for its depth of coverage, it explores issues of common interest to instructors, administrators, counselors, and policymakers in a broad range of education settings, such as colleges and universities, extension programs, businesses, libraries, and museums. (From the Publisher)

Click Here for Book Review Abstract: The goal of Engaged Teaching in Theology and Religion is to guide a process of self-reflection for scholars and teachers of theology and religion that leads to intentional, transformative teaching, dialogue, and reform in theological education and religious studies. Effective teaching approaches must address the selfhood of the teacher, as well as pedagogy, course content, and community engagement. This book sets itself apart from other works in the field because of this holistic approach. In addition to addressing these four areas, Harrison and Knight provide a variety of practices for teaching that take seriously students' cries for a more socially and personally relevant pedagogy and curriculum in a rapidly changing transnational world. The volume provides a well-reasoned and accessible re-thinking of teaching theology and religion so that schools of theology and departments of religion might better live out their stated goals of forming transformative, courageous, and thoughtful leaders and teachers in the twenty-first century. (From the Publisher)

Click Here for Book Review Abstract: In this volume, the authors focus on the importance of inclusive teaching and the role faculty can play in helping students achieve, though not necessarily in the same way. To teach with a focus on inclusion means to believe that every person has the ability to learn. It means that most individuals want to learn, to improve their ability to better understand the world in which they live, and to be able to navigate their pathways of life. This volume includes the following topics: - best practices for teaching students with social, economic, gender, or ethnic differences - adjustments to the teaching and learning process to focus on inclusion - strategies for teaching that help learners connect what they know with the information presented - environments that maximize learners’ academic and social growth. The premise of inclusive teaching works to demonstrate that all people can and do learn. Educators and administrators can incorporate the techniques of inclusive learning and help learners retain more information. This is the 141st volume of the quarterly Jossey-Bass higher education series New Directions for Teaching and Learning. It offers a comprehensive range of ideas and techniques for improving college teaching based on the experience of seasoned instructors and the latest findings of educational and psychological researchers. (From the Publisher)

Click Here for Book Review Abstract: This book constitutes a guide for student and staff leaders in alternative break (and other community engagement, both domestic and international) programs, offering practical advice, outlining effective program components and practices, and presenting the underlying community engagement and global learning theory. Readers will gain practical skills for implementing each of the eight components of a quality alternative break program developed by Break Away, the national alternative break organization. The book advances the field of student-led alternative breaks by identifying the core components of successful programs that develop active citizens. It demonstrates how to address complex social issues, encourage structural analysis of societal inequities, foster volunteer transformation, and identify methods of work in mutually beneficial partnerships. It emphasizes the importance of integrating a justice-centered foundation throughout alternative break programs to complement direct service activities, and promotes long-term work for justice and student transformation by offering strategies for post-travel reorientation and continuing engagement. The authors address student leadership development, issue-focused education, questions of power, privilege, and diversity, and the challenges of working in reciprocal partnerships with community organizations. They offer guidance on fundraising, budget management, student recruitment, program structures, the nuts and bolts of planning a trip, risk management, health and safety, and assessment and evaluation. They address the complexities of international service-learning and developing partnerships with grassroots community groups, non-governmental and nonprofit organizations, and intermediary organizations. For new programs, this book provides a starting point and resource to return to with each stage of development. For established programs, it offers a theoretical framework to reflect on and renew practices for creating active citizens and working for justice. (From the Publisher)

Click Here for Book Review Abstract: Pietism has long been ignored in evangelical scholarship. This is especially the case in the field of Christian higher education, which is dominated by thinkers in the Reformed tradition and complicated by the association of Pietism with anti-intellectualism. The irony is that Pietism from the beginning "was intimately bound up with education," according to Diarmaid MacCulloch. But until now there has not been a single work dedicated to exploring a distinctively Pietist vision for higher education. In this groundbreaking volume edited by Christopher Gehrz, scholars associated with the Pietist tradition reflect on the Pietist approach to education. Key themes include holistic formation, humility and openmindedness, the love of neighbor, concern for the common good and spiritual maturity. Pietism sees the Christian college as a place that forms whole and holy persons. In a pluralistic and polarized society, such a vision is needed now more than ever. (From the Publisher)

Click Here for Book Review Abstract: If you find yourself thinking or saying any of the following, this is a book you need to pick up. I know or suspect that I am underpaid, but I hate negotiating. I do everything else first and then write in the time left over. I’m not sure exactly what the promotion requirements are in my department. Since earning tenure, my service load has increased and my research is suffering. I don’t get enough time with my family. This is a practical guide for women in academe – whether adjuncts, professors or administrators – who often encounter barriers and hostility, especially if women of color, and generally carry a heavier load of service, as well as household and care responsibilities, than their male colleagues. Rena Seltzer, a respected life coach and trainer who has worked with women professors and academic leaders for many years, offers succinct advice on how you can prioritize the multiplicity of demands on your life, negotiate better, create support networks, and move your career forward. Using telling but disguised vignettes of the experiences of women she has mentored, Rena Seltzer offers insights and strategies for managing the situations that all women face – such as challenges to their authority – while also paying attention to how they often play out differently for Latinas, Black and Asian women. She covers issues that arise from early career to senior administrator positions. This is a book you can read cover to cover or dip into as you encounter concerns about time management; your authority and influence; work/life balance; problems with teaching; leadership; negotiating better; finding time to write; developing your networks and social support; or navigating tenure and promotion and your career beyond. (From the Publisher)

Click Here for Book Review Abstract: Despite a growing body of research on teaching methods, instructors lack a comprehensive resource that highlights and synthesizes proven approaches. Teaching for Learning fills that gap. Each of the one hundred and one entries: - describes an approach and lists its essential features and elements - demonstrates how that approach has been used in education, including specific examples from different disciplines - reviews findings from the research literature - describes techniques to improve effectiveness. Teaching for Learning provides instructors with a resource grounded in the academic knowledge base, written in an easily accessible, engaging, and practical style. (From the Publisher)

Click Here for Book Review Abstract: In MOOCs, High Technology, and Higher Learning, Robert A. Rhoads places the OpenCourseWare (OCW) movement into the larger context of a revolution in educational technology. In doing so, he seeks to bring greater balance to increasingly polarized discussions of massively open online courses (MOOCs) and show their ongoing relevance to reforming higher education and higher learning. Rhoads offers a provocative analysis of a particular moment in history when cultural, political, and economic forces came together with evolving teaching and learning technologies to bring about the MOOC. He argues persuasively that the OCW and MOOC movements have had a significant impact on the digitalization of knowledge and that they have helped expand the ways students and teachers interact and develop ideas collaboratively. He also critically analyzes the extensive media coverage of MOOCs while examining empirical studies of MOOC content delivery, the organizational system supporting the OCW/MOOC movement, and faculty labor concerns. Too often, technology advocates champion the MOOC movement as a solution to higher education’s challenges without recognizing the pedagogical, social, and economic costs. MOOCs, High Technology, and Higher Learning challenges many of the democratic claims made by MOOC advocates, pointing to vast inequities in the ways MOOCs are presented as an alternative to brick-and-mortar access for low-income populations. This book offers a clear-eyed perspective on the potential and peril of this new form of education. (From the Publisher)

Click Here for Book Review Abstract: Our primary goal in assembling this collection is to convince faculty to experiment with the “flipped” classroom. Given the techtonic shift, providing educators with an abundance of electronic resources, as well as the nature of today’s students, every faculty member needs to consider the possibilities of the flip. Now that active learning has been demonstrated by research to be more effective than the pure sage-on-the-stage paradigm, flipping is a natural outgrowth with its recognition that classroom time needs to be dedicated to activities by the instructor, the individual students, and groups that promote a deeper learning of the material. This book offers a guide for those faculty members wishing to make the first steps, taking the instructor from preparation for the flipped class experience through actual out-of-class assignments, in-class activities, electronic resources available for support, and even assessment of student performance and class effectiveness. (From the Publisher)

This edited collection brings together global experts to explore the role of information professionals in the transition from an analogue to a digital environment. The contributors, including David Nicholas, Valerie Johnson, Tim Gollins and Scott David, focus on the opportunities and challenges afforded by this new environment that is transforming the information landscape in ways that were scarcely imaginable a decade ago and is challenging the very existence of the traditional library and archive as more and more resources become available on line and as computers and supporting networks become more and more powerful. By drawing on examples of the impact of other new and emerging technologies on the information sciences in the past, the book emphasises that information systems have always been shaped by available technologies that have transformed the creation, capture, preservation and discovery of content.  Key topics covered include: • Search in the digital environment • RDF and the semantic web • Crowd sourcing and engagement between institutions and individuals • Development of information management systems • Security: managing online risk • Long term curation and preservation • Rights and the Commons • Finding archived records in the digital age. Is Digital Different? illustrates the ways in which the digital environment has the potential to transform scholarship and break down barriers between the academy and the wider community, and draws out both the inherent challenges and the opportunities for information professionals globally. (From the Publisher)