New Books In Education

In the post-civil rights era, wide-ranging groups have made civil rights claims that echo those made by Black civil rights activists of the 1960s, from people with disabilities to women's rights activists and LGBTQ coalitions. Increasingly since the 1980s, white, right-wing social movements, from family values coalitions to the alt-right, now claim the collective memory of civil rights to portray themselves as the newly oppressed minorities. The Struggle for the People’s King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement (Princeton UP, 2023) reveals how, as these powerful groups remake collective memory toward competing political ends, they generate offshoots of remembrance that distort history and threaten the very foundations of multicultural democracy. In the revisionist memories of white conservatives, gun rights activists are the new Rosa Parks, antiabortion activists are freedom riders, and antigay groups are the defenders of Martin Luther King's Christian vision. Drawing on a wealth

George Floyd's death on May 25th 2020 marked a watershed in reactions to anti-Black racism in the United States and elsewhere. Intense demonstrations around the world followed. Within literary studies, the demonstrations accelerated the scrutiny of the literary curriculum, the need to diversify the curriculum, and the need to incorporate more Black writers.  Decolonizing the English Literary Curriculum (Cambridge UP, 2023), jointly edited by Professor Ankhi Mukherjee and Professor Ato Quayson, is a major collection that aims to address these issues from a global perspective. An international team of leading scholars illustrate the necessity and advantages of reform from specific decolonial perspectives, with evidence-based arguments from classroom contexts, as well as establishing new critical agendas. The significance of Decolonizing the English Literary Curriculum lies in the complete overhaul it proposes for the study of English literature. It reconnects English studies, the humanities, and the modern, int

Featuring perspectives from educators, undergraduates, and archivists who are affiliated with community and institutional archives, the contributions to Transforming the Authority of the Archive: Undergraduate Pedagogy and Critical Digital Archives (U Michigan Press, 2023) explore efforts to deconstruct and transform the institutional authority of the archive and describe new possibilities for archives in education. In this conversation, editors Andi Gustavson and Charlotte Nunes speak about the book’s genesis, their framing of critical digital archives, and the broad range of institutions, labor, and individuals connected to projects described in the book. This discussion also touches on how factors including supportive leadership and space for experimentation create opportunities for instructors and students to challenge the authority of the archive. Read an open access edition of this book on the Lever Press website. Jen Hoyer is Technical Services and Electronic Resources Librarian at CUNY New York City C

Incorporate Women’s and Gender Studies into your middle school classroom using the powerful lesson plans in this book. In Kathryn Fishman-Weaver and Jill Clingan's Teaching Women's and Gender Studies (Grades 9-12) (Routledge, 2022), the authors present seven units organized around four key concepts: Why WGST; Art, Emotion, and Resistance; Diversity, Inclusion, and Representation; and Intersectionality. With thought questions for activating prior knowledge, teaching notes, reflection questions, reproducibles, and strategies, these units are ready to integrate purposefully into your existing classroom practice. Across various subject areas and interdisciplinary courses, these lessons help to fill a critical gap in the curriculum. Through affirming, inclusive, and representative projects, this book offers actionable ways to encourage and support young people as they become changemakers for justice. This book is part of a series on teaching Women’s and Gender Studies in the K-12 classroom. We encourage readers to

Incorporate Women’s and Gender Studies into your middle school classroom using the powerful lesson plans in this book. In Kathryn Fishman-Weaver and Jill Clingan's Teaching Women's and Gender Studies (Grades 6-8) (Routledge, 2022), the authors present seven units organized around four key concepts: Why WGST; Art, Emotion, and Resistance; Diversity, Inclusion, and Representation; and Intersectionality. With thought questions for activating prior knowledge, teaching notes, reflection questions, reproducibles, and strategies, these units are ready to integrate purposefully into your existing classroom practice. Across various subject areas and interdisciplinary courses, these lessons help to fill a critical gap in the curriculum. Through affirming, inclusive, and representative projects, this book offers actionable ways to encourage and support young people as they become changemakers for justice. This book is part of a series on teaching Women’s and Gender Studies in the K-12 classroom. We encourage readers to

Today’s book is: Black and Queer on Campus (NYU Press, 2023) by Michael P. Jeffries, which offers an inside look at what life is like for LGBTQ college students on campuses across the United States. Dr. Jeffries shows that Black and queer college students often struggle to find safe spaces and a sense of belonging when they arrive on campus. Drawing on his interviews with students from over a dozen colleges, Dr. Jeffries provides a much-needed perspective on the specific challenges Black LGBTQ students face and the ways they overcome them. We learn through these intimate portraits that many of the most harmful stereotypes and threats to black queer safety continue to haunt this generation of students. We also learn how students build queer identities. Black and Queer on Campus sheds light on the oft-hidden lives of Black LGBTQ students, and how educational institutions can better serve them. It highlights the quiet beauty and joy of Black queer social life, and the bonds of friendship that sustain the student

Academic Librarianship: Anchoring the Profession in Contribution, Scholarship, and Service (Rowman & Littlefield, 2023) by Marcy Simons is needed now as a response to how much has changed in academic librarianship as a profession (from the smallest academic libraries to large research libraries). Much has been written recently about the status of the profession of librarianship, i.e. whether or not it should still be considered a “profession,” are the same credentials still required/enough, should things change dramatically in SLIS programs in response to the new normal, and what is the impact of hiring PhD’s in disciplines outside of librarianship. Dr. Michael LaMagna is the Information Literacy Program and Library Services Coordinator and Professor of Library Services at Delaware County Community College. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

Focusing on the didactic nature of the work of Reinaldo Arenas, The Dissidence of Reinaldo Arenas: Queering Literature, Politics, and the Activist Curriculum (U Florida Press, 2022) demonstrates the Cuban writer’s influence as public pedagogue, mentor, and social activist whose teaching on resistance to normative ideologies resonates in societies past, present, and future. Through a multidisciplinary approach bridging educational, historiographic, and literary perspectives, The Dissidence of Reinaldo Arenas illuminates how Arenas’s work remains a cutting-edge source of inspiration for today’s audiences, particularly LGBTQI readers. It shows how Arenas’s aesthetics contain powerful insights for exploring dissensus whether in the context of Cuba, broader Pan-American and Latinx-U.S. queer movements of social justice, or transnational citizenship politics. Carefully dissecting Arenas’s themes against the backdrop of his political activity, this book presents the writer’s poetry, novels, and plays as a curriculum

Until the recent political shift pushed workers back into the media spotlight, the mainstream media had largely ignored this significant part of American society in favor of the moneyed upscale consumer for more than four decades. Christopher R. Martin now reveals why and how the media lost sight of the American working class and the effects of it doing so. The damning indictment of the mainstream media that flows through No Longer Newsworthy: How the Mainstream Media Abandoned the Working Class (Cornell UP, 2019) is a wakeup call about the critical role of the media in telling news stories about labor unions, workers, and working-class readers. As Martin charts the decline of labor reporting from the late 1960s onwards, he reveals the shift in news coverage as the mainstream media abandoned labor in favor of consumer and business interests. When newspapers, especially, wrote off working-class readers as useless for their business model, the American worker became invisible. In No Longer Newsworthy, Martin co

There are numerous political debates about education policy today, but some of the most heated surround vouchers, charter schools, and other questions about public funding and oversight of private schools. Though many of these questions feel new, they, in fact, have a long history. Public vs. Private: The Early History of School Choice in America (Oxford University Press, 2018) examines that history, tracing early debates about school choice. Robert N. Gross, a history teacher and assistant academic dean at Sidwell Friends School in Washington, DC, explains how public schools developed with their promoters intending them to be a new monopoly in education. Then, in the late 19th century, Catholic immigrants sought to set up private schools, leading to an era of conflict and compromise between public and private school policy. Gross shows how and why regulation become an important tool for both sides in those conflicts. Further, the book shows how schools were thought of as a public utility and become a key par

What can explain the success of science as an endeavor for getting closer to truth? Does science simply represent a successful methodology, or is it something more? In The Scientific Attitude: Defending Science from Denial, Fraud, and Pseudoscience (MIT Press, 2019), Lee McIntyre addresses recent attacks on science in areas such as climate change, vaccination, and even belief that the world is flat by explaining why science is a culture built around a “scientific attitude” that embraces evidence and a willingness to change beliefs based on where evidence leads. What does it mean for science education if the success of science derives as much from attitude as it does from methodology? And can science provide a model for other truth-seeking endeavors? Join us for a conversation that draws together ideas from science, philosophy, and education and applies them to the most important issues we face as a society. Lee McIntyre is a Research Fellow at the Center for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston Univers

Boredom is an enduring problem. In response, schools often do one or both of the following: first, they endorse what novelist Walker Percy describes as a 'boredom avoidance scheme,' adopting new initiative after new initiative in the hope that boredom can be outrun altogether, or second, they compel students to accept boring situations as an inevitable part of life. Both strategies avoid serious reflection on this universal and troubling state of mind.  In Why Boredom Matters (Cambridge UP, 2022)k, Gary argues that schools should educate students on how to engage with boredom productively. Rather than being conditioned to avoid or blame boredom on something or someone else, students need to be given tools for dealing with their boredom. These tools provide them with internal resources that equip them to find worthwhile activities and practices to transform boredom into a more productive state of mind. This book addresses the ways students might gain these skills. From reviews:  ‘Kevin Gary’s important and ins

In this episode, John Linstrom tells us about Nature-Study, an educational movement that began in the rural classrooms of American Progressive Era. It takes students and learners of all kinds out of the classroom, away from the textbook, and into the world, to observe and learn. It offers us a mode of attunement to the world that we might use to heal the divide between rural and urban, and kindle the kind of social change we need to get the world off fossil fuels. Our conversation is centered around the new scholarly edition John edited of Liberty Hyde Bailey’s The Nature-Study Idea (Cornell University Press, 2023), which just came out. It’s the first book in the new The Liberty Hyde Bailey Library, a series for Cornell University Press reintroducing the ecological and critical-agrarian writings of L. H. Bailey (1858-1954). John was one of our first guests on High Theory back in 2020 – so if you want to listen back, you can check out the episode on Ecosphere. John told me when were were preparing to record th

In Stories of Struggle: The Clash over Civil Rights in South Carolina (U South Carolina Press, 2020), longtime journalist Claudia Smith Brinson details the lynchings, beatings, bombings, cross burnings, death threats, arson, and venomous hatred that black South Carolinians endured―as well as the astonishing courage, devotion, dignity, and compassion of those who risked their lives for equality. Through extensive research and interviews with more than one hundred fifty civil rights activists, many of whom had never shared their stories with anyone, Brinson chronicles twenty pivotal years of petitioning, preaching, picketing, boycotting, marching, and holding sit-ins. Participants' use of nonviolent direct action altered the landscape of civil rights in South Carolina and reverberated throughout the South. These firsthand accounts include those of the unsung petitioners who risked their lives by supporting Summerton's Briggs v. Elliot, a lawsuit that led to the historic Brown v. Board of Education decision; the

With around two million children currently enrolled in home schools in the USA, no-one can doubt that the subject of Milton Gaither’s new book is timely. Gaither, a professor of education at Messiah College, PA, first published this study in 2008, but has updated his text to reflect both the levelling out of the number of children involved in the movement as well as to explain some of the scandals that have brought some parts of the movement into disrepute. Homeschool: An American History (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) describes the long history of home education, from the colonial period to the present day, and it highlights the key roles played by individuals on the left, such as John Holt, and on the right, such as R. J. Rushdoony. Home education is changing, and might never have been more important than it is today – and this important new book explains why. Crawford Gribben is a professor of history at Queen’s University Belfast. His research interests focus on the history of puritanism and evangelicalism, a

Listen to this interview of Cassidy Sugimoto and Vincent Larivière, co-authors of Equity for Women in Science: Dismantling Systemic Barriers to Advancement (Harvard UP, 2023). Cassidy is Professor and Tom and Marie Patton School Chair in the School of Public Policy at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She is also President of the International Society for Scientometrics and Informetrics. Vincent is Professor of Information Science at Université de Montréal, where he also serves as Associate Vice-President of Planning and Communications. He is Scientific Director of the Érudit journal platform and Associate Scientific Director of the Observatoire des Sciences et des Technologies. We talk about how the science of science is advancing the work done by each and every scientist, by helping them to do work that is fairer, truer, and realer. Vincent Larivière : "Scientists are group leaders, reviewers, editors, administrators — I mean, we are mostly an autonomous community, so there's mostly no one else to blame

On this episode of the Academic Life, we dive into the book The Career Arts: Making the Most of College, Credentials, and Connections (Princeton UP, 2023) by Ben Wildavsky, which makes a persuasive case for building career success through broad education, targeted skills, and social capital. People today expect to hold many jobs over the course of their lives, which is why they need a range of essential skills. The Career Arts provides a corrective to the misleading notion that there is a direct trade-off between going to college and acquiring practical job skills. Drawing on evidence-based research, illuminating case studies, and in-depth interviews, Wildavsky shares vital lessons of what he calls the career arts, which include cultivating a mix of broad and targeted skills, taking advantage of employer-funded education benefits, and preparing for the world as it is, not as you wish it could be. He explains why college remains the gold standard of credentials, and presents the most promising supplements and

Today I talked to Nettrice R. Gaskins about Techno-Vernacular Creativity and Innovation: Culturally Relevant Making Inside and Outside of the Classroom (MIT Press, 2021). The growing maker movement in education has become an integral part of both STEM and STEAM learning, tapping into the natural DIY inclinations of creative people as well as the educational power of inventing or making things. And yet African American, Latino/a American, and Indigenous people are underrepresented in maker culture and education. In this book, Nettrice Gaskins proposes a novel approach to STEAM learning that engages students from historically marginalized communities in culturally relevant and inclusive maker education. Techno-vernacular creativity (TVC) connects technical literacy, equity, and culture, encompassing creative innovations produced by ethnic groups that are often overlooked. TVC uses three main modes of activity: reappropriation, remixing, and improvisation. Gaskins looks at each of the three modes in turn, guidin

Privacy is not dead: Students care deeply about their privacy and the rights it safeguards. They need a way to articulate their concerns and guidance on how to act within the complexity of our current information ecosystem and culture of surveillance capitalism. Practicing Privacy Literacy in Academic Libraries: Theories, Methods, and Cases (Association of College and Research Libraries, 2023) edited by Sarah Hartman-Caverly and Alexandria Chisholm, can help you teach privacy literacy, evolve the privacy practices at your institution, and re-center the individuals behind the data and the ethics behind library work. Divided into four sections: What is Privacy Literacy? Protecting Privacy Educating about Privacy Advocating for Privacy Chapters cover topics including privacy literacy frameworks; digital wellness; embedding a privacy review into digital library workflows; using privacy literacy to challenge price discrimination; privacy pedagogy; and promoting privacy literacy and positive digital citizenship thr

Listen to Episode No.3 of All We Mean, a Special Focus of this podcast. All We Mean is an ongoing discussion and debate about how we mean and why. The guests on today's episode are Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis, professors at the University of Illinois, and as well, Kit Nicholls, who is Director of the Cooper Union's Center for Writing and Learning. In this episode of the Focus, our topic is Learning happens where there's meaning. Bill Cope : "At root, what we're talking about in this conversation is some very old values. We wouldn't disagree much with Jean-Jacques Rousseau, we wouldn't disagree much with John Dewey, we wouldn't disagree much with Maria Montessori — if you want to take some of the greats of education — Paulo Freire, we wouldn't want to disagree with. So, we're talking about some old values, but the reality is, The values have not been realized. They might be in small spots of time, for some of us, sometimes, in moments of idealism and extremely hard work. But the question is then, Is there an