Resources

Museums are public resources that can offer rich extensions to classroom educational experiences, from tours through botanical gardens to searching for family records in the archives of a local historical society. With clarity and a touch of humor, Quinn presents ideas and examples of ways that teachers can use museums to support student exploration while also teaching for social justice. Topics include disability and welcoming all bodies, celebrating queer people’s lives and histories, settler colonialism and decolonization, fair workplaces, Indigenous knowledge, and much more. This practical resource invites classroom teachers to rethink how and why they are bringing students to museums and suggests projects for creating rich museum-based learning opportunities across an array of subject areas. (From the Publisher)

This is a visionary, consciousness-raising book that asks us to rethink the purposes and design of study away and study abroad experiences in the context of a broadened set of global threats, including climate disruption, soaring inequality, ecosystem breakdown, the dying off of distinct languages and cultural communities, and the threat of a nuclear catastrophe. As we ask students to truly comprehend this world from the privileged perspective of the global North, Rich Slimbach asks us to consider two fundamental questions: What and how should we learn? And having learned, for what should we use what we know? A panoply of pedagogies and methods of inquiry – from study away/abroad and service-based learning to diversity programming, environmental education, and community-based research – aim to develop students who both understand the challenges faced by global communities and act in ways that advance their social and environmental health. What temperaments, social habits, and intellectual abilities will they need to help heal their corner of creation? And what pedagogical perspectives, principles, and procedures can best support them in this creative challenge? Rich Slimbach argues that transforming student consciousness and life choices requires a global learning curriculum that integrates multi-disciplinary inquiry into the structural causes of problems that riddle the common good, along with mechanisms that bid students to cross borders, to pay attention, and to listen to those unlike themselves. At its heart, this book proposes a truly transformative approach to community-engaged global learning. (From the Publisher)

What if our students learn the most when they’re far from campus? Integrating Worlds demonstrates how high-quality off-campus study epitomizes integrative learning, both supporting and enhancing the entire undergraduate experience. While off-campus study (both study abroad or study away) occupies a marginal position on most campuses, it has the almost unique capacity to bring together a high concentration of high-impact educational practices. When we combine global learning with collaborative work, shared intellectual pursuits, learning communities, and more, these practices reinforce each other, exerting a multiplier effect that can potentially result in the most intense learning experience our students will have. It can energize and inspire them for the work they will continue to undertake on their home campus. It thus becomes crucial for us to identify or design high-quality programs that will achieve these goals. Moreover, we need to reimagine off-campus study as an integrated portion of the undergraduate arc—one that begins well before our students depart and continues long after they return. In this way, we help them understand the interconnectedness not only of the world, but also of their own education. At the same time, the authors recognize material constraints and educational imperatives. Off-campus study costs money; its complexity makes it difficult to assess; it overlaps increasingly with internships and civic engagement; and by its nature, it is more subject to external forces than the on-campus experience. In careful, practical ways Integrating Worlds advances suggestions for dealing with these issues. This book urges educators to go beyond the episodic ways we currently link on-campus curricula to off-campus experience. While of interest to specialists in international or intercultural education, it speaks most directly to faculty, deans and provosts—many of whom may have little (or dated) experience of study abroad and who thus feel unprepared to address this issue of pressing importance. As our disciplines and institutions face the complexities of a rapidly changing world, this book seeks to fuel the necessary conversations. (From the Publisher)

The Creative Classroom presents an original, compelling vision of schools where teaching and learning are centered on creativity. Drawing on the latest research as well as his studies of jazz and improvised theater, Sawyer describes curricula and classroom practices that will help educators get started with a new style of teaching, guided improvisation, where students are given freedom to explore within structures provided by the teacher. Readers will learn how to improve learning outcomes in all subjects—from science and math to history and language arts—by helping students master content-area standards at the same time as they increase their creative potential. This book shows how teachers and school leaders can work together to overcome all-too-common barriers to creative teaching—leadership, structure, and culture—and collaborate to transform schools into creative organizations. (From the Publisher)

This edited volume draws together educators and scholars to engage with the difficulties and benefits of teaching place-based education in a distinctive culture-laden area in North America: the United States South. Despite problematic past visions of cultural homogeneity, the South has always been a culturally diverse region with many historical layers of inhabitation and migration, each with their own set of religious and secular relationships to the land. Through site-specific narratives, this volume offers a blueprint for new approaches to place-based pedagogy, with an emphasis on the intersection between religion and the environment. By offering broadly applicable examples of pedagogical methods and practices, this book confronts the need to develop more sustainable local communities to address globally significant challenges. (From the Publisher)