Resources

Our goal in writing this book was to validate teachers for strong efforts in their life's work. We often observe teachers' frustrations with what they perceive to be a multitude of different hot topics in education that they must attend to now, but which they expect to come and go, like the last hot topics. So, we wanted to help readers see similarities between many of these hot topics-differentiation, multiple intelligences, culturally responsive teaching, brain-friendly strategies, authentic assessment, and ethical classroom management which we feel are not flashes in the pan. And we trust that serious practitioners will not oversimplify the findings of neuroscientists and their application to education. Reading studies and books by scientists, a number of which are user-friendly, can help ensure that teachers separate the hype from credible information. We have seen this professionally judicious approach in the work of graduate students (Kolinski, 2007) in adopting brain-friendly strategies. We have intentionally packed both theoretical/research-based and practical information in this book because professional educators want to know why they should use certain approaches, models, and strategies. In turn, as professionals, we should be able to explain why we teach the way we do-not to justify, but to educate others about our knowledge-based, reflective, decision-making processes and the impact on student learning. Thus, it is important to read Chapter 1 because it lays a foundation. Each succeeding chapter (2-6) has unique and compelling twists and turns-chock full of ideas to use or to adapt. It is possible to gain lots of ideas, processes, and strategies from reading and implementing (or adapting) even one of the unit chapters, or a part of it. While some of the units are explicitly about literacy, others focus on content using reading, writing, speaking, and listening as critical in the learning process. Thus, literacy skills are reinforced and strengthened. Additionally, some of our colleagues and public school partners have given us feedback that they wanted to implement some of the units and activities themselves. So, feel free to use this book for self-exploration and professional development. (From the Publisher)

This book is designed for higher education instructors. The focus of the book is to assist all faculty instructors in higher education to better meet the needs of their student populations. It addresses the major issue of higher education teaching today: the need to reach all higher education students using active learning strategies. Higher education today is rapidly changing and faculty members are being presented with new types of students; ones who often have clear goals for bettering themselves, but at the same time lack what might have been considered to be basic skills necessary for success in a college or university setting. Instructors today must reach and bring all students into the college or university setting in an inclusive manner. The emphasis of this book is on student-focused strategies for teaching inclusively. This book will provide valuable strategies and practical techniques for instructors to develop inclusive college classrooms that promote the learning of all students. The audience targeted will be all instructors who work with higher education students, including students in community colleges and vocational institutions. The book is designed to be mainly practical instructional strategies with limited theoretical text and references. At the same time, major theories will be included to demonstrate why specific approaches are recommended. Although the authors and editors are from the field of education, the book is particularly valuable for all college instructors without a background in the discipline of education. (From the Publisher)

Higher Education and First-Generation Students offers readers a rich understanding of the experience of students who are first in their family to attend college. This book contends that first-generation students are isolated and marginalized on many large college campuses and considers learning communities and critical multicultural pedagogies as vehicles to cultivate community, voice, and place for this new majority of students. This book is a theoretically informed study of the lived experience of FG students and draws on their voices to demonstrate how their insights interface with what we, as educators, think we know about them. What can we learn from these students? How might their insights inform and shape the learning spaces we create for them? (From the Publisher)

Learning and Teaching Across Cultures in Higher Education contains theoretical rationale, resources and examples to help readers understand and deal with situations involving contact between learners or educators from different cultural backgrounds, as well as giving insights into the new global context of higher education. (From the Publisher)

Degrees of Inequality reveals the powerful patterns of social inequality in American higher education by analyzing how the social background of students shapes nearly every facet of the college experience. Even as the most prestigious institutions claim to open their doors to students from diverse backgrounds, class disparities remain. Just two miles apart stand two institutions that represent the stark class contrast in American higher education. Yale, an elite Ivy League university, boasts accomplished alumni, including national and world leaders in business and politics. Southern Connecticut State University graduates mostly commuter students seeking credential degrees in fields with good job prospects. Ann L. Mullen interviewed students from both universities and found that their college choices and experiences were strongly linked to social background and gender. Yale students, most having generations of family members with college degrees, are encouraged to approach their college years as an opportunity for intellectual and personal enrichment. Southern students, however, perceive a college degree as a path to a better career, and many work full— or part—time jobs to help fund their education. Moving interviews with 100 students at the two institutions highlight how American higher education reinforces the same inequities it has been aiming to transcend. (From the Publisher)

This book transcends recent debates about political correctness to address the underlying problems of teaching controversial subjects in the college and university history classroom. The author criticizes both sides of the debate, rejecting, on the one hand, calls for a uniform, chronological history curriculum and, on the other hand, claims that only ethnic or racial "insiders" are qualified to teach about their communities. In chapters on colonial, comparative, and African history, Williams applies the concept of "Gandhian truth" to historical subjects, moving through tentative and flexible perspectives to achieve a complex picture of historical episodes. And in chapters on imperialism, nationalism, racism, and the problem of "the other," he discusses the difficult and contingent nature of conceptual language. In the second half of the book, he addresses framing rules of discussion by which sensitive issues can be discussed with diverse audiences, the relationship of American pluralism to a world perspective, and what can be accomplished through an education in pluralism. (From the Publisher)

How appropriate for today and for the future are the policies and practices of higher education that largely assume a norm of traditional-age students with minimal on-campus, or no, work commitments? Despite the fact that work is a fundamental part of life for nearly half of all undergraduate students – with a substantial number of “traditional” dependent undergraduates in employment, and working independent undergraduates averaging 34.5 hours per week – little attention has been given to how working influences the integration and engagement experiences of students who work, especially those who work full-time, or how the benefits and costs of working differ between traditional age-students and adult students. The high, and increasing, prevalence and intensity of working among both dependent and independent students raises a number of important questions for public policymakers, college administrators, faculty, academic advisors, student services and financial aid staff, and institutional and educational researchers, including: Why do so many college students work so many hours? What are the characteristics of undergraduates who work? What are the implications of working for students’ educational experiences and outcomes? And, how can public and institutional policymakers promote the educational success of undergraduate students who work? This book offers the most complete and comprehensive conceptualization of the “working college student” available. It provides a multi-faceted picture of the characteristics, experiences, and challenges of working college students and a more complete understanding of the heterogeneity underlying the label “undergraduates who work” and the implications of working for undergraduate students’ educational experiences and outcomes. The volume stresses the importance of recognizing the value and contribution of adult learners to higher education, and takes issue with the appropriateness of the term “non-traditional” itself, both because of the prevalence of this group, and because it allows higher education institutions to avoid considering changes that will meet the needs of this population, including changes in course offerings, course scheduling, financial aid, and pedagogy. (From the Publisher)

More first-generation students are attending college than ever before, and policy makers agree that increasing their participation in higher education is a matter of priority. Despite this, there is no agreed definition about the term, few institutions can quantify how many first-generation students are enrolled, or mistakenly conflate them with low-income students, and many important dimensions to the first-generation student experience remain poorly documented. Few institutions have in place a clear, well-articulated practice for assisting first-generation students to succeed. Given that first-generation students comprise over 40% of incoming freshmen, increasing their retention and graduation rates can dramatically increase an institution’s overall retention and graduation rates, and enhance its image and desirability. It is clearly in every institution’s self-interest to ensure its first-generation students succeed, to identify and count them, and understand how to support them. This book provides high-level administrators with a plan of action for deans to create the awareness necessary for meaningful long-term change, sets out a campus acclimation process, and provides guidelines for the necessary support structures. At the heart of the book are 14 first-person narratives – by first-generation students spanning freshman to graduate years – that help the reader get to grips with the variety of ethnic and economic categories to which they belong. The book concludes by defining 14 key issues that institutions need to address, and offers a course of action for addressing them. This book is intended for everyone who serves these students – faculty, academic advisors, counselors, student affairs professionals, admissions officers, and administrators – and offers a set of best practices for how two- and four-year institutions can improve the success of their first-generation student populations. (From the Publisher)

From the “Forward” by Stephen D. Brookfield, Distinguished University Professor, University of St. Thomas, Minneapolis St. Paul, Minnesota “These days it is fashionable to lament the passing of adult education’s transgressive spirit. The historical myth that exercises considerable influence on the field is that adult education used to be a radical expression of the democratic spirit, but it has been tamed, moved to the dark side, become the lapdog of workplace learning, sold its soul to the devil of professionalism in a misguided attempt to be taken seriously by more powerful branches of education. This myth is just that – a myth. I have never believed it. The radical, transgressive spirit of adult education has endured and constantly reconfigured itself, doing its best to escape and outwit those who would contain and neutralize its energy and surfacing in ways that constantly take adult e ducators by surprise. The colleagues I work with in adult and higher education and the learners I serve and study with are neither tamed nor ideologically hoodwinked. This volume of spirited commitment — defiantly hopeful, seriously playful, and placing matt ers of desire and resistance at its center — is an apt representation of the enduring radical spirit of the best of adult education.”