New Books In Education

Upward mobility through the path of higher education has been an article of faith for generations of working-class, low-income, and immigrant college students. While we know this path usually entails financial sacrifices and hard work, very little attention has been paid to the deep personal compromises such students have to make as they enter worlds vastly different from their own. Measuring the true cost of higher education for those from disadvantaged backgrounds, Moving Up Without Losing Your Way: The Ethical Costs of Upward Mobility (Princeton UP. 2021) looks at the ethical dilemmas of upward mobility—the broken ties with family and friends, the severed connections with former communities, and the loss of identity—faced by students as they strive to earn a successful place in society. Drawing upon philosophy, social science, personal stories, and interviews, Jennifer Morton reframes the college experience, factoring in not just educational and career opportunities but also essential relationships with fa

Rewriting Our Stories: Education, Empowerment, and Well-Being (Atrium, 2020) harnesses the therapeutic power of storytelling to convert feelings of fear and powerlessness into affirmative life narratives. Rather than seeing fear as an outcome, we can view it as a feeling in the moment largely governed by narratives. Many of our fears are stories we tell ourselves, even if they are largely fictional and rooted in sociocultural belief systems. The result is that we often feel helpless in the face of those fears. This transformational book considers a potent antidote: by recognising our recurring negative stories, we can rewrite and transform them to achieve greater empowerment and well-being in our lives. Throughout human existence, no matter where our place of origin or when in history, storytelling shapes our societies, influencing personal, sociocultural, educational, and public discourses that impact how we live. Creating and communicating the language of stories - to ourselves and others - enhances our inn

The All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) is iconic in the landscape of Indian healthcare. Established in the early years of independence, this enormous public teaching hospital rapidly gained fame for the high-quality treatment it offered at a nominal cost; at present, an average of ten thousand patients pass through the outpatient department each day. With its notorious medical program acceptance rate of less than 0.01%, AIIMS also sits at the apex of Indian medical education. To be trained as a doctor here is to be considered the best. In what way does this enduring reputation of excellence shape the institution's ethos? How does elite medical education sustain India's social hierarchies and the health inequalities entrenched within? In Special Treatment: Student Doctors at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (Stanford UP, 2021), Anna Ruddock considers prestige as a byproduct of norms attached to ambition, aspiration, caste, and class in modern India, and illustrates how the institution's

Sean Creighton, the President of New American Colleges & Universities, discusses the origins and evolution of this Association that serves 24 institutions that each combine an undergraduate liberal arts core with a range of professional programs. He describes the distinctive role that NACU members play within the US higher ed system and the different services that the Association provides for its members. In Part II, Sean interviews David Finegold for the NACU podcast, discussing his recent visit to Chatham, one of the newest NACU members. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

Helen Sword, writing champion, brings us into the word gym. Or maybe kitchen. Either way, The Writer's Diet: A Guide to Fit Prose (U Chicago Press, 2016) is a short, sharp introduction to great writing based around 5 principles: --use active verbs whenever possible; --favour concrete language over vague abstractions; --avoid long strings of prepositional phrases; --employ adjectives and adverbs only when they contribute something new to the meaning of a sentence;  --reduce your dependence on four pernicious “waste words”: it, this, that, and there. There are examples of the good - William Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson, Martin Luther King Jr., John McPhee, A. S. Byatt, Richard Dawkins, Alison Gopnik, and well, the bad. But you can fix the bad - really Dr Sword's point.  Dr Helen Sword received her doctorate in comparative literature from Princeton University and has lived since 2001 in New Zealand, where she is a Professor of Humanities at the University of Auckland and runs a private writing consultancy, Writ

Listen to this interview of Peter Kaufman, Program Manager in Strategic Initiatives and Resource Development at MIT Open Learning and author of The New Enlightenment and the Fight to Free Knowledge (Seven Stories Press, 2021). We talk about us. All of us. Peter Kaufman : "Well, I'd say this about how to bring about the change my book calls for. Take a broad look at our knowledge institutions. Define them as broadly as we can, so obviously the universities, but there are museums, there are libraries, there are archives, there are public broadcasting institutions, there are historical societies–––and just figure out ways for all of these institutions, which have so many stakeholders, so many members, so many funders, so many visitors and readers and people who absorb things emanating from these institutions–––figure out ways for all these institutions to publish more, to publish more on to the Web, because (as someone put it) 'The truth is paywalled but the lies are free.' And you know, if these knowledge insti

Welcome to The Academic Life. You are smart and capable, but you aren’t an island, and neither are we. So we reached across our mentor network to bring you podcasts on everything from how to finish that project, to how to take care of your beautiful mind. Wish we’d bring in an expert about something? DM us your suggestion on Twitter: The Academic Life @AcademicLifeNBN. In this episode you’ll hear about: Dr. Piña’s path through higher education, the importance of mentors and coaches in achieving personal and professional success, how he found his current job, some of the concerns of first gen and of working class students, student grief, the complexity of using campus resources in a pandemic, and what he’s hopeful about. Our guest is: Dr. Ulices Piña, an Assistant Professor of History at California State University, Long Beach. A native of Long Beach and a product of the California public school system, his teaching and research interests include Mexico, Modern Latin America, revolutions and social movements,

In The Teacher Insurgency: A Strategic and Organizing Perspective (Harvard Education Press, 2020), Leo Casey addresses how the unexpected wave of recent teacher strikes has had a dramatic impact on American public education, teacher unions, and the larger labor movement. Casey explains how this uprising was not only born out of opposition to government policies that underfunded public schools and deprofessionalized teaching, but was also rooted in deep-seated changes in the economic climate, social movements, and, most importantly, educational politics. With an eye to maintaining the momentum of the insurgency, the author examines four key strategic questions that have arisen from the strikes: the relationship of mobilization to organizing; the relationship between protests and direct action; the conditions under which teacher strikes are most likely to be successful; and the importance of "bargaining for the common good." More broadly, Casey examines how to organize teachers for collective action, focusing o

David Chard, the President of Wheelock College in Boston, MA, discusses the process of merging Wheelock successfully into Boston University to become the BU Wheelock College of Education and Human Development. His book, When Colleges Close: Leading in a Time of Crisis (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020), written with Wheelock’s VPAA Mary Churchill, provides the most detailed guide available on each step involved in merging a struggling small college into a large university in a way that preserve and amplified its mission and impact. Chard shares what led them to write the book so soon after completing this painful process, and many additional insights about what goes into a successful merger. David Finegold is the president of Chatham University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

Building on work in feminist studies, queer studies and critical race theory, this volume challenges the universality of propositions about human nature, by questioning the boundaries between predominant neurotypes and 'others', including dyslexics, autistics and ADHDers. Neurodiversity Studies: A New Critical Paradigm (Routledge, 2020) is the first work of its kind to bring cutting-edge research across disciplines to the concept of neurodiversity. It offers in-depth explorations of the themes of cure/prevention/eugenics; neurodivergent wellbeing; cross-neurotype communication; neurodiversity at work; and challenging brain-bound cognition. It analyses the role of neuro-normativity in theorising agency, and a proposal for a new alliance between the Hearing Voices Movement and neurodiversity. In doing so, we contribute to a cultural imperative to redefine what it means to be human. To this end, we propose a new field of enquiry that finds ways to support the inclusion of neurodivergent perspectives in knowledge

In 1961, it was famously declared that the “fight for education is too important to be left solely to the educators.” Enter the OECD. In The OECD’s Historical Rise in Education: The Formation of a Global Governing Complex (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), Christian Ydesen offers a well-edited volume that illuminates how the OECD normalized its influence over global education policy from its Cold War origins until today. Ydesen argues for an interpretation of the OECD as a “global governing complex” that roots its power in comparative data and the production of educational norms. How did the OECD, initially an outgrowth of Marshall Plan funds, become a dominant player in global education policy? Listen in to find out. Elisa Prosperetti is a Visiting Assistant Professor in African history at Mount Holyoke College. Her research focuses on the connected histories of education and development in postcolonial West Africa. Contact her at: www.elisaprosperetti.net. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adcho

Listen to this interview of Terry McGlynn, author of The Chicago Guide to College Science Teaching (U Chicago Press, 2020). McGlynn is also a professor of biology at California State University Dominguez Hills and research associate in the Department of Entomology in the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. We talk about learning, actually. Terry McGlynn : “If you’re giving students a writing assignment, like an experimental protocol, and they’re supposed to write about what they did in the lab or in the field, and it’s a cookbook project, you know, where the students don’t design the methods themselves and they're just doing what they were told to do and they're writing that down–––well, then the students are just jumping through a hoop and there's no ownership. That just gets you following through the prescribed steps, and in each of those steps, you just need to know, 'Oh, I just need to write a sentence where I've said This is where I did this,' and you write that sentence. And so, I think you ca

For a change of pace this week, David Finegold is the interviewee, speaking with Brad Johnson, the host of the Plexuss podcast, about a range of current issues in higher education. Plexuss is an educational technology company that helps high school students identify the best college for them. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

Recent protests around the world (such as the Arab Spring uprisings and Occupy Wall Street movements) have drawn renewed interest to the study of social change and, especially, to the manner in which words, images, events, and ideas associated with protestors can "move the social." What Democracy Looks Like: The Rhetoric of Social Movements and Counterpublics (U Alabama Press, 2017) is an attempt to foster a more coherent understanding of social change among scholars of rhetoric and communication studies by juxtaposing the ideas of social movements and counterpublics--historically two key factors significant in the study of social change. Foust, Pason, and Zittlow Rogness's volume compiles the voices of leading and new scholars who are contributing to the history, application, and new directions of these two concepts, all in conversation with a number of acts of resistance or social change. The theories of social movements and counterpublics are related, but distinct. Social movement theories tend to be conce

Welcome to The Academic Life. You are smart and capable, but you aren’t an island, and neither are we. So we reached across our mentor network to bring you podcasts on everything from how to finish that project, to how to take care of your beautiful mind. Wish we’d bring in an expert about something? Email us at dr.danamalone@gmail.com or cgessler05@gmail.com. Find us on Twitter: The Academic Life @AcademicLifeNBN. In this episode you’ll hear about: distinguishing between student abilities and academic skill sets, why the goal should not be making first-generation students more like continuing generation students, how to introduce yourself in a way that promotes student success, the mini-midterm, and other strategies to promote student success. Our guest is: Lisa M. Nunn, Ph.D., author of 33 Simple Strategies for Faculty: A Week-by-Week Resource for Teaching First-Year and First-Generation Students (Rutgers University Press, 2018) and Professor of Sociology at the University of San Diego. She is the Director

Ryan Ruby is a writer and translator from Los Angeles, California. His fiction and criticism have appeared in The New York Review of Books, The Paris Review Daily, Conjunctions, n+1, The Baffler, and elsewhere. The piece we are discussing here is Child’s Play. What can Wittgenstein teach us about raising kids published in June 2021 in The Believer. His debut novel The Zero and the One was published in March 2017 by Twelve Books. It has subsequently appeared in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and France. He is the author of a book-length poem, Context Collapse, which was a Finalist for the 2020 National Poetry Series and a Semi-Finalist for the 2020 Tomaž Šalamun Prize. He has translated Roger Caillois and Grégoire Bouillier from the French for Readux Books. A graduate of Columbia University and the University of Chicago, he lives in Berlin, where he is on the faculty of the Berlin Writers' Workshop and an Affiliate Fellow of the Institute for Cultural Inquiry. Agata Popeda is a Polish-American journalist. Int

Nicholas Harrison's Our Civilizing Mission: The Lessons of Colonial Education (Liverpool UP, 2019) is a fascinating examination of colonial education not just as a facet of colonialism, but as an "example" of education in a broader sense, albeit an "extreme" one. At once a historical study, a series of close readings of texts, ideas, and authors, and a set of intellectual, professional, and political biographies, the book explores and interrogates approaches to the teaching of languages, literatures, and histories within and beyond colonial contexts.  Centering as educators writers and thinkers essential to our critical understanding of colonialism and postcolonialism literature, the book has implications for how we think about the project of education as a whole, particularly in the Humanities, and especially right now. In chapters that pursue the educational, intellectual, and teaching stories of figures like Edward Said, Mouloud Ferraoun, Assia Djebar, and Albert Memmi, Our Civilizing Mission takes up issu

Bob Fisher earned the moniker “Bob the Builder” by spearheading over $1 billion in new construction during his 21-year tenure at Belmont University. Accompanying and enabling the physical transformation of the campus was a dramatic expansion of the University’s programs, including the addition of medical, law and pharmacy schools, the acquisition of two colleges of art & design, that enabled Belmont to grow from fewer than 3,000 students to over 8,000 during his tenure. A core part of growth strategy was becoming “Nashville’s University”, including the largest Music Business program in the U.S. and a new performing arts center that serves as home for the Nashville Opera. Bob share how he was able to leverage his economics and business training to create one of the most remarkable financial success stories in higher education – with the University generating an $82 million annual surplus on a budget of $350 million, while drawing under 2% of the endowment and offering annual faculty salary increases averaging

What should the relationship between school and society be? Obstinate Education: Reconnecting School and Society (Brill, 2019) argues that education is not just there to give individuals, groups and societies what they want from it, but that education has a duty to resist. Education needs to be obstinate, not for the sake of being difficult, but in order to make sure that it can contribute to emancipation and democratisation. This requires that education always brings in the question whether what is desired from it is going to help with living life well, individually and collectively, on a planet that has a limited capacity for giving everything that is desired from it. This text makes a strong case for the connection between education and democracy, both in the context of schools, colleges and universities and in the work of public pedagogy. Kai Wortman is a PhD candidate at the Institute of Education, University of Tübingen, interested in philosophy of education. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit mega

In post-World War II Canada, black women’s positions within the teaching profession served as sites of struggle and conflict as the nation worked to address the needs of its diversifying population. From their entry into teachers’ college through their careers in the classroom and administration, black women educators encountered systemic racism and gender barriers at every step. So they worked to change the system. Using oral narratives to tell the story of black access and education in Ontario between the 1940s and the 1980s, Schooling the System provides textured insight into how issues of race, gender, class, geographic origin, and training shaped women’s distinct experiences within the profession.  In Schooling the System: A History of Black Women Teachers (McGill-Queen's UP, 2021), Funké Aladejebi illustrates that black women, as a diverse group, made vital contributions to the creation and development of anti-racist education in Canada. As cultural mediators within Ontario school systems, these women c