student learning

Dewey in Our Time is a volume of collected essays that provides an overview of Deweyan scholarship since the original publication of John Dewey’s Democracy and Education in 1916. Recognizing the continuing influence of Dewey’s works, the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain and the History of Education Society, UK invited scholars of education, philosophy, history, educational policy, and cultural studies to contribute to this volume.

The volume is composed of an introduction and two main parts. In Part I, “Dewey in Changing Cultural Contexts,” the authors critically reinterpret Dewey’s wisdom and apply it to the educational contexts of Finland, Singapore, Spain, Japan, the UK, Australia, and the US. The diverse essays in this section engage with Dewey’s work on a philosophical level while also accounting for the histories that affect its reception in different national contexts. Taken together, the perspectives of authors from a variety of disciplines shed important light on the ways “science and epistemology, religion and politics” interact in the domain of education (3).

Part 2 is titled “Dewey, Pedagogy, and Practice in Our Time.” “Our time” here refers to the first decades of the twenty-first century, seen in relation to and even under the shadow of the past and future. Hence, Part 2 treats the world in which teachers and educators work, live, and research as a space in constant flux. Each contributor to this section discusses Dewey’s relevance to a particular challenge in contemporary education. The essays make connections between “educative experience and experimentation; experience and moral judgment; doubt, difficulty, and struggle; and … action research” (4). Part 2 concludes with a call to replace current models of “citizenship education” with Dewey’s “democratic education.”

The most valuable aspect of this book is the discussion of the wide range of Deweyan influences on contemporary education. For example, in Chapter 6, Javier Sáenz Obregón maintains that Dewey’s concept of educational experience has influenced contemporary education in terms of “self-reflection and self-creation” (96). Arguing that teachers, like students, are the “subjects of educational experience,” Obregón asserts that we must learn to apply to teachers the same aspirations we have for students (96). In particular, pedagogical practices should promote “inter-subjective transformation” for teachers and students alike (96). Andres English argues in Chapter 8 that Dewey’s concept of “struggle in learning” has influenced definitions of learning and of learning’s beginning point in contemporary education. Connecting Dewey’s concept of learning to historical and contemporary concepts of philosophical education (Plato, Rousseau, and J.F. Herbart), English distinguishes between productive and destructive forms of struggle and discusses how these conceptual distinctions can inform educational practice, based on the idea of the “in-between of learning” (129) – a condition of being beyond ignorance but not yet in possession of full knowledge. This condition is uncomfortable and difficult, but it offers rich possibilities for reflective thinking.

Overall, Dewey in Our Time successfully demonstrates Dewey’s ongoing legacy in educational practice, policy making, and curriculum development and illuminates the ongoing Dewey-inspired research on historical and philosophical education. Teachers and educators will greatly benefit from this volume when undertaking the daunting task of pedagogical reconstruction in the face of changing realities. Researchers will gain deeper insight into the historical and philosophical underpinnings behind educational practice.

Empowering Learners with Mobile Open-Access Learning Initiatives is a well-designed book giving an overview and awareness to mobile activities as they can be provided in an educational setting. The anthology was compiled by Michael Mills and Donna Wake, both from the University of Central Arkansas. Most of the studies are North American, but there is ample diversity of circumstances in the populations studied and techniques showcased. The book is separated into four parts: practice, curriculum, assessment, and theory.

This book will likely become a historic piece of educational observation on today’s environment, but just as importantly, it is future-looking. So how is the future looking? The authors are clearly optimistic about the future of higher education. The evidence shows the effectiveness of mobile technologies to provide a more equal and motivated voice in society.

Considering the Wabash Center for Teaching in Learning in Theology and Religion’s audience, this book would be most effective for those in curriculum development and assessment. It is easy to read, but scientifically formatted. Each chapter constitutes a separate study contributing to the overall discussion, and new vocabulary is introduced and defined at the conclusion of each chapter. The publisher, IGI Global, is an established publisher of Information Science and this text could be useful even as a textbook for courses in Information Science and Technology.

The book could have been enhanced through a greater diversity of authorship and a wider distribution of geographical locations. Mobile technology is world-reaching, but much of this book’s arguments were grounded in a Western cultural understanding of the world. It would have been helpful for that to have been disclosed in the preface as a both a limitation of this volume and a signal for further study about student learning in online open-access models of education. There was some effort by the authors to attend to issues related to physical and learning disabilities and learning needs of underprivileged communities. However, the only examples the authors provide outside of the United States were Kenya and Portugal.

The real value of the book is its comprehensive structure of presentation and approach to mobile technology as a discipline. It does not make light of the common lay person’s experience with mobile technology. Rather, there is a sense of power behind today’s and the future’s possibilities for reducing social barriers in education. Empowering Learners with Mobile Open-Access Learning Initiatives would be an excellent contribution to a higher education library, and that is said without hesitancy even when the examples of technology in the book could be somewhat fleeting given the rapid changes in technology and online learning.

Not a pedagogical tool, “This book provides a detailed look at the current state of Latino/a theological education in the United States” (26). A compilation of research, it begins and ends using data to logically demonstrate the importance of theological education beyond denominations: (1) churches are anchor institutions in areas of poverty that provide critical services which are cost effective; (2) these churches partner to build social capital and personal relationships; (3) seminary educated religious leaders are better prepared to lead such vital churches.

However, this is also an issue vital to denominations because demographic and religious adherence data suggest “Hispanic peoples are the future of Christianity” (469). Finally, it is an important issue for seminaries which not only wish to participate in that greater good beyond denomination by addressing diversity, but also wish to attract and retain faculty who are: comparatively young yet experienced, likely to hold more graduate degrees than required and speak more than one language, love teaching and excel as educators, are hard-working and open-minded, view their academic work as a vocation and persevere in their denominational affiliation, and who have a natural proclivity to span divides among races, partisan politics, languages, ethnicities as well as between seminaries and local churches. These are all descriptors of Latina/o faculty.

Though lengthy, the book is an easy read due to its helpful introduction and chapters that both provide both an opening summary and concluding recommendations. Chapter ten is the most challenging because it moves the discussion beyond inclusion to justice: “push against tokenism, stereotyping, monocultural curricula….recognizing scholarship and teaching….[push for] greater transparency…” (326). Two chapters provide case studies on seminaries that are models of this inclusive justice. Another chapter describes the worthy efforts of the Hispanic Summer Program and the Hispanic Theological Initiative, both important partners for schools serious about increasing the number of their Latino/a faculty, which is a key take-away because “Latino/as beget more Latino/as” (445). Every positive outcome documented appears predicated on the presence of Latina/o faculty. Chapter thirteen is a groundbreaking study of Bible Institutes.

Among the most important recommendations is a kind of mutual mentoring. Latina/o faculty need and want to be mentored; non-Latino/a deans and presidents with good will but poor skills concerning diversity would profit by listening to those faculty. If they do, everyone benefits. Another urgent need is continual training on diversity for faculty, students, staff, administrators, and board members. “Through Hispanic Eyes” (chapter fourteen) serves as an example.

Although not exhaustive, the bibliography is comprehensive. An index would have been helpful, and given the repeated assertion that Catholic seminaries compare well to their Protestant counterparts, a case study of a Catholic seminary seems missing. Nonetheless, this is not a book to be shelved or filed, but rather one to spark necessary debate and urgent action.