Resources
Click Here for Book Review Abstract: This practical guide prepares graduate students of color for their first job in academia and offers strategies for succeeding in the early years of a tenure-track position. Through the voices of faculty who have experienced the rigors of the job search and a career in academia, Beginning a Career in Academia offers advice for graduate students of color on how to transition from graduate school to an academic position. This inclusive volume shares perspectives that vary based on gender, racial, ethnic, generational, and disciplinary backgrounds, giving readers an opportunity to reflect on successful strategies for career readiness and for dealing with marginalization. The authors provide recommendations and tips to enhance the job search, identify campus fit, prepare for the interview and negotiation process, address dynamics of of racial and gender politics, find work-life balance, and demystify the promotion and tenure process. This must-read provides candid advice and mentorship for any graduate students of color embarking on a carreer in academe. (From the Publisher)
The ground of higher education is shifting, but learning ecosystems around the world have much more space than MOOCs and trendy online platforms can fill, and Loewen shows how professors have an indisputable pedagogical edge that gives them a crucial role to play in higher education. By adopting the collaborative pedagogical process in this book, professors can create effective social learning experiences that connect students to peers and professional colleagues in real time.   Loewen moves beyond surface questions about technology in the classroom to a problem best addressed by educators in bricks-and-mortar institutions: if students are social learners, how do we teach in a way that promotes actual dialogue for learning? Designing learning experiences that develop intercultural competencies puts the test to students’ social inclinations, and engagement with course material increases when it’s used to dig deeper into the specificities of their identity and social location. Loewen’s approach to interinstitutional collaborative teaching will be explored with examples and working templates for collaborative design of effective social learning experiences. This is done by collaborative dialogue with G. Brooke Lester and Christopher Duncanson-Hales. As a group, Loewen, Lester, and Duncanson-Hales create a text that extends pedagogical innovation in inspiring but practical ways. (From the Publisher)
An early demonstration of the value to teachers (and students) of writing the scholarship of teaching (SoTL) by defining a challenge to classroom learning, a “problem” to be investigated (much as we define a problem for our guild research to address) – in this case: learning goals and student pre-knowledge.
Journal Issue. Full text is available online.
Click Here for Book Review Abstract: Decades before educators began to draw teaching and learning implications from neuroscientists’ groundbreaking findings on brain plasticiy, Reuven Feuerstein had already theorized it and developed practices for teaching and developing higher level cognition and learning for all students, even those with Down syndrome and other learning disabilities. His mediated learning, enrichment instruments, and dynamic assessment are used in urban districts in the United States and around the world to raise student achievement, success levels, and self-regulation. In this final work, Feuerstein provides a first-person reflective narrative of the implementation of mediated learning experience (MLE) past and present, including stories, new insights, observations, and newly formulated concepts on MLE and how it contributes to higher-level thinking and overcoming disability. Featuring both educational and clinical case examples, it offers a more detailed picture of the practical applications than any other publication to date. Those familiar with Feuerstein’s methods will find this book an important resource in deepening their knowledge. It is also essential reading for all educators looking for approaches that promote thinking skills that improve educational outcomes for diverse learners. Book Features: • Provides stories of Feuerstein’s inspirational journey as a teacher and learner, often working with special needs children and youth. • Relates mediated learning to contemporary learning environments • Explores theory and research on whether spiritual and behavioral practices change the brain. • Includes chapters devoted to questioning techniques and the effects of modern media access to the development of thinking skills. (From the Publisher)
One page Teaching Tactic: using images as an analogy to help students understand the difference between plagiarism and other appropriate uses of scholarship.
One page Teaching Tactic: individual oral exams during office hours in place of the first high stakes exam, helps encourage student engagement and diagnose learning problems.
One page Teaching Tactic: student-centered process demonstrating the processes and reasonableness of biblical textual criticism.
This response explains three ways in which the preceding essays are a significant contribution to the study of study abroad, explores three additional issues, and makes three suggestions for future work on religious studies and study abroad. This response is published alongside of six other essays, comprising a special section of the journal (see Teaching Theology and Religion 18:1, January 2015).