Resources

The Hispanic community in the United States is growing by leaps and bounds. The most important institution in Hispanic barrios is the church. Government programs come and go, but the churches remain. So what could be more important than good Hispanic theological leadership? This book is unblinking about the problems involved. Lacking are financial and intellectual resources in otherwise excellent seminaries and other educational institutions. At the same time the book offers a vision of hope. It uses solid data to describe the willingness of many young people to get involved in religious leadership. It shows their eagerness to learn and to serve. The book concludes with a number of well examined and down to earth recommendations. (From the Publisher)

It has been estimated that in the next ten years, about half of the current higher education faculty will retire. How can we best prepare the next generation of faculty members to fill this tremendous gap in our educational system? Paths to the Professoriate offers all those involved in higher education—everyone from administrators to scholars to graduate students—a much-needed resource that brings together major research, the most important developments in practice, and informed analysis on improving graduate education and preparing the future faculty. This important book includes chapters from some of the best-known researchers, practitioners, and scholars working to prepare the faculty of the future. In one volume, the authors offer a synthesis of what has been learned about the challenges and concerns in graduate education as preparation for faculty careers, highlight the various projects and approaches for improving graduate education, and identify strategies for institutional leaders, department chairs, faculty advisors, and graduate students. Paths to the Professoriate: * Presents important reasons for considering ways to improve the preparation of the next generation of faculty * Describes research studies concerning the graduate school experience * Highlights illustrative examples of innovative programs and projects * Provides a synthesis of key lessons from the research and projects addressing the preparation of future faculty This solidly research-based book covers such vital topics as: the lack of systematic developmentally organized preparation for those aspiring to teaching careers in higher education; graduate students’ perceptions of their graduate experiences and their preparation for faculty work; particular challenges confronting Black doctoral students; reasons students leave doctoral study; programs to prepare graduate students for roles as teaching scholars and engaged citizens; strategies to help graduate students and faculty members identify mutual goals and resolve conflicts; and much more. Paths to the Professoriate offers all those concerned with the fate of higher education a valuable resource for the future. (From the Publisher)

This explosive book examines the current state of civil rights in the U.S. through the unique experiences of Asian Americans. In the tradition of W.E.B. Du Bois, Cornel West, and other public intellectuals who have confronted the "color line" of the twentieth century, journalist, scholar, and activist Frank H. Wu offers a unique perspective on how changing ideas of racial identity will affect race relations in the new century. Often provocative and always thoughtful, this book addresses some of the most controversial contemporary issues: discrimination, immigration, diversity, globalization, and the mixed race movement, introducing the example of Asian Americans to shed new light on the current debates. Mixing personal anecdotes, social science research, legal cases, history, and original journalistic reporting, Wu tackles Asian American stereotypes like "the model minority" and "the perpetual foreigner," and shows how these seemingly innocuous concepts have harmed individuals and damaged relations between communities. By offering new ways of thinking about race in American society, Wu's work challenges us to make good on our great democratic experiment. (From the Publisher)

"I won't learn from you" is Herb Kohl's now-classic essay about the phenomenon of "not-learning," or refusing to learn, which takes place when a student's intelligence, dignity, or integrity is compromised by a teacher, an institution, or a larger social mindset. Available in book form for the first time, "I Won't Learn from You" serves here as a starting point for four new, groundbreaking essays by one of the country's leading thinkers on education. "The Tattooed Man: Confessions of a Hopemonger" is about the importance of teaching hope, and is Kohl's first autobiographical effort to discover in his own ghettoized childhood attitudes that let him recognize "not-learning" when he saw it among his students decades later. "Creative Maladjustment and the Struggle for Public Education" is inspired by Martin Luther King, Jr.'s call for creative maladjustment to an unjust society, and deals with the ways in which one can lead a positive life and learn new ways of maintaining opposition and resistance. "Excellence, Equality, and Equity" explores the relationship between these three crucial - and often confused - concepts. "Uncommon Differences" is about the way in which notions such as political correctness have been used to distract us from the central concerns of public education, including educating the poor, developing cultural diversity within the schools, and undoing the stigmatization of students who do not conform. It is about what public education in America can become. Written in Kohl's hallmark conversational style and employing the case examples that make his writing so compelling, these essays are at the forefront of current thinking on urban education. (From the Publisher)

Conventional wisdom has it that education is the great equalizer in a society. Notwithstanding, access to higher education and terminal degrees have not proven synonymous with the establishment of legitimacy for many voices. Academics and scholars of color continue to confront barriers constituent of the racialized, gendered, and class(ed) baggage characterizing dominant social relations. In I've Got a Story to Tell different members of academe struggle with the institutionalized constructs that pose real challenges to the transformation and democratization of higher education. (From the Publisher)

Since 1986, when K. Patricia Cross first began to write and speak about Classroom Research, faculty across the country have been inspired by her vision of a learner-centered, teaching-directed approach aimed at understanding and improving student learning. In the intervening five years, hundreds of college teachers at dozens of institutions have taken up her challenge to become "Classroom Researchers," engaging in the systematic and ongoing study of teaching and learning. This volume of New Directions for Teaching and Learning is a collection of examples illustrating a range of ways Classroom Research can be used in a variety of disciplines and settings. It is a gathering of teachers' stories that are also teaching stories, narratives that distill hundreds of hours of experience into a few pages. Whether they are faculty, faculty developers, or academic administrators, readers can profit by learning from the hard-won experience and insights distilled in these early lessons from success. This is the 46th issue of the quarterly journal New Directions for Teaching and Learning. (From the Publisher)

This book offers a close-up look at theological education in the United States today. The authors' goal is to understand the ways in which institutional culture affects the outcome of the educational process. To that end they undertake ethnographic studies of two seminaries - one evangelical and one mainline Protestant. These studies, written in a lively journalistic style, make up the first part of the book and offer fascinating portraits of two very different intellectual, religious, and social worlds. The authors then go on to examine these disparate environments and suggest how, in each case, school culture acts as an agent of educational change. This unique and practical study should be of great interest to both students and scholars of American religion, to theological educators, and to educators generally. (From the Publisher)

The majority of undergraduate instructors hold contingent appointments, a term used here to include not only the non-tenure-track part-time faculty but also many instructional staff who lack faculty status, an increasing proportion of full-time non-tenure track faculty, and a substantial number of graduate student teaching assistants. This volume seeks to foster a dialogue, long overdue, between those who believe that the academy has failed to give adequate respect and support to undergraduate instruction and those who believe that the academy has failed to give adequate support and respect to the selection and terms and conditions of employment of undergraduate instructors. It may be that the increasing dependence on contingent appointments imperils undergraduate learning no less than it imperils the future of the academic profession. (From the Publisher)

Teaching can happen anywhere, at any time - not just in classrooms but in churches, in bookstores, in homes, anywhere people get together to share ideas that affect their daily life. In Teaching Community, bell hooks shows how complex ideas of cultural theory can be simplified and made relevant to the lives of working people, and how the values of shared knowledge and learning can be a catalyst for progressive social change. Teaching - so often undervalued in our society - can be a joyous and inclusive activity and, as hooks shows, can never be confined to the classroom. (From the Publisher)

Steal This University explores the paradox of academic labor. Universities do not exist to generate a profit from capital investment, yet contemporary universities are increasingly using corporations as their model for internal organization. While the media, politicians, business leaders and the general public all seem to share a remarkable consensus that higher education is indispensable to the future of nations and individuals alike, within academia bitter conflicts brew over the shape of tomorrow's universities. Contributors to the volume range from the star academic to the disgruntled adjunct and each bring a unique perspective to the discussion on the academy's over-reliance on adjuncts and teaching assistants, the debate over tenure and to the valiant efforts to organize unions and win rights. (From the Publisher)