Resources

This lively book will help new and veteran teachers develop the knowledge, skills, and confidence needed to successfully address racial controversies in their classrooms. The author first explains what race and racism mean and why we need to talk about these topics in schools. Then, based on an in-depth study of a high school classroom, she shows what happens when teachers and students talked about race and racism in a history and language arts classroom. Throughout the book she guides teachers in ways to discuss important issues—from civil rights to institutional racism—that will ultimately help teachers and students to change school culture. Features: * Analysis of actual classroom dialogues, illustrating the often-rough conversations that teachers and students engage in while learning to talk constructively about race and racism. * Useful questions, resources, and activities to help teachers get started. * Ideas and strategies that teachers can use to get students to address race and racism critically in the classroom. (From the Publisher)

Journal Issue.

In a rapidly changing congregational and professional environment, how will churches and their institutions of theological education prepare ministers for diverse contexts? Barker and Martin affirm the theological school's continued role yet claim that American Protestantism can no longer rely on graduate theological schools as the sole educational institutions charged with providing curricula for theological study related to ministerial preparation. To support their thesis, the authors researched the graduate theological education programs of The Episcopal Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Presbyterian Church (USA), the United Church of Christ, the United Church of Canada, and The United Methodist Church; and compiled essays that show powerful new models for successful ministry preparation. Contributors: Janet Silman, Carol Bell, Isaac McDonald, Richard Sales, Bert Affleck, Minka Shura Sprague, Glenn Miller, Ken McFayden, and Thomas Ray. (From the Publisher)

Richard T. Hughes's highly praised book on the relationship between Christian faith and secular learning originally published as "How Christian Faith Can Sustain the Life of the Mind" is now available in a revised edition that brilliantly incorporates recent interest in the topic of vocation.While the vocational dimensions of the earlier book were implicit, this revised edition makes them explicit. In the first of two completely new chapters, Hughes recounts his own vocational journey, telling how he drew on Christian theology to discover his talents and how best to use them. The second new chapter focuses on the vocation of Christian colleges and universities, including the purpose and goals of churchrelated education. The story offered here provides a compelling argument that faith, properly pursued, nourishes the openness and curiosity that make a life of the mind possible. (From the Publisher)

This book explores how insights into figurative language can reshape what teachers do in the classroom. It reveals why some well-known methods work while others do not. Rejecting prescriptive pedagogical formulae, it recounts classroom episodes that help teachers rethink their own practice. Finally, the book sets out how we can use these episodes to reappraise language learning theory in a way that treats it as consonant with the cognitive nature of language. (From the Publisher)

The Encyclopedia of Adult Education is the first comprehensive reference work in this important and fast-growing field, and is an invaluable resource for adult educators who research and teach in the fields of higher education, work in community-based settings, or practice in public or private organizations. Its 200 articles, written by an international team of contributors, detail the research and practice of the field from its emergence as a separate discipline to the present day, covering key concepts, issues and individuals and providing a cutting-edge summary of ongoing debates across a wide range of perspectives, from self-directed learning to human resource development. Entries are arranged A-Z and extensively cross-referenced, with detailed bibliographies for each topic to facilitate further research. (From the Publisher)

With more than a few misgivings but desperate to pay off her loans, Nicole Adams, a newly minted Ph.D. in philosophy, accepts an assistant professorship at Higher State, a small state university in "the middle of the Midwest". Little does she suspect that on just her second day, still flustered and disoriented in her new surroundings, she'll be plunged into a mystery. Crusty R. Reynolds Raskin, with whom she uneasily shares an office, disappears after his desk and files have been ransacked. The police are called. Two weeks later, with Raskin still missing, Nicole receives a threatening phone call... Read one way up, this is an entertaining parody of an academic mystery that satirizes the ways of academe. Turning the book upside down reveals another purpose: each chapter is in fact a case study, as is revealed by a series of discussion questions intended for faculty orientation and development. As the mystery unfolds, each chapter shows Nicole encountering testing situations such as student incivility and sexual harassment, problems with her first day of class, dilemmas concerning teaching evaluation and peer observation and issues related to assessment, classroom technology and the rights of faculty and students, among others. This little book can be read and used both ways: as pure entertainment or as a series of cases whose humorous presentation will break down academic barriers and promote spirited discussion. (From the Publisher)

Drawing on a large body of empirical evidence, former Harvard President Derek Bok examines how much progress college students actually make toward widely accepted goals of undergraduate education. His conclusions are sobering. Although most students make gains in many important respects, they improve much less than they should in such important areas as writing, critical thinking, quantitative skills, and moral reasoning. Large majorities of college seniors do not feel that they have made substantial progress in speaking a foreign language, acquiring cultural and aesthetic interests, or learning what they need to know to become active and informed citizens. Overall, despite their vastly increased resources, more powerful technology, and hundreds of new courses, colleges cannot be confident that students are learning more than they did fifty years ago. Looking further, Bok finds that many important college courses are left to the least experienced teachers and that most professors continue to teach in ways that have proven to be less effective than other available methods. In reviewing their educational programs, however, faculties typically ignore this evidence. Instead, they spend most of their time discussing what courses to require, although the lasting impact of college will almost certainly depend much more on how the courses are taught. In his final chapter, Bok describes the changes that faculties and academic leaders can make to help students accomplish more. Without ignoring the contributions that America's colleges have made, Bok delivers a powerful critique--one that educators will ignore at their peril. (From the Publisher)