New Books in Education

How has evolutionary theory shaped educational thinking over the past two centuries? ‘Evolutionary Theory and Education: The Influence of Evolutionary Thinking on Educational Theory and Philosophy’ (Brill, 2025) explores the considerable but under-appreciated influence of evolutionary ideas on educational theory and the philosophy of education. The book reveals the interplay between educational and evolutionary perspectives along the concepts of ‘adaptation’, ‘selection’, ‘inheritance’, and ‘progress’. It tracks these ideas across the works of various influential educational thinkers, including Herbert Spencer, Jean Piaget, John Dewey and Lev Vygotsky, and examines their continuing significance for how we understand and practice education today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

Marcus Golding, a historian and the Director of Educational Operations at ClioVis, dives into transformative digital tools for education. He highlights how ClioVis enhances historical research through engaging visualizations and interactive presentations. Golding discusses the software’s practical applications, making complex data accessible for visual learners and aiding in collaborative learning. He also addresses challenges like information overload, offering innovative solutions to enhance student organization and research presentations.

This book provides background, strategies, and tips for higher education faculty and instructors interested in incorporating meditation in their classrooms. The work is based on research involving introducing brief meditation practices to college students and developing a detailed guide. Readers will learn how to develop their own meditation practice as an academic, to set the stage of introducing practice to students, to create ideal conditions for meditation in the classroom, specific, classroom-friendly meditation methods, ways to advance meditation practice with students and keep it interesting, and how to spread the culture of meditation across campus. Guest: Steve Haberlin, PhD (he/him), is an assistant professor of curriculum and instruction in the College of Community Innovation and Education at University of Central Florida. He is the author of two books with Rowman & Littlefield: Meditation in the College Classroom (2022) and Awakening to Educational Supervision (2023). His research focuses on the practical use of meditation and mindfulness and current and future uses of technology in meditative practice. Prior to earning his PhD in Education, he spent ten years teaching elementary and middle school students in Tampa, Florida. Host: Jenna Pittman (she/her), a Ph.D. student in the Department of History at Duke University. She studies modern European history, political economy, and Germany from 1945-1990. Scholars@Duke: https://scholars.duke.edu/pers... Linktree: https://linktr.ee/jennapittman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

In this engaging discussion, Pooja Agarwal, an influential psychologist and author, joins fellow experts Cynthia Nebel and Veronica Yan to share insights from their collaborative work on enhancing educational strategies. They explore how small changes like retrieval practice and interleaving can significantly improve student retention. Nebel emphasizes the motivation-boosting effects of effective teaching cycles, while Yan highlights metacognition's role in early education. They arm educators with practical, evidence-based strategies to elevate classroom experiences.

In Learning to Lead: Undocumented Students Mobilizing Education (Duke University Press, 2024), Jennifer R. Nájera explores the intersections of education and activism among undocumented students at the University of California, Riverside. Taking an expansive view of education, Nájera shows how students’ experiences in college—both in and out of the classroom—can affect their activism and advocacy work. Students learn from their families, communities, peers, and student and political organizations. In these different spaces, they learn how to navigate community and college life as undocumented people. Students are able to engage campus organizations where they can cultivate their leadership skills and—importantly—learn that they are not alone. These students embody and mobilize their education through both large and small political actions such as protests, workshops for financial aid applications, and Know Your Rights events. As students create community with each other, they come to understand that their individual experiences of illegality are part of a larger structure of legal violence. This type of education empowers students to make their way to and through college, change their communities, and ultimately assert their humanity. Jennifer R. Nájera is Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Riverside. David-James Gonzales (DJ) is Assistant Professor of History at Brigham Young University. He is a historian of migration, urbanization, and social movements in the U.S., and specializes in Latina/o/x politics and social movements. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

James M. Lang, a prolific author known for his insights on teaching and learning, discusses how educators can transform their classroom skills into impactful writing. He emphasizes the adaptability of teaching techniques for broader audiences. Lang shares the joys of writing, the significance of relatable narratives, and the collaborative power of writing circles. He also dives into the importance of storytelling in both education and writing, offering practical tips for aspiring authors to craft engaging narratives and navigate the publishing landscape.

In How Schools Make Race: Teaching Latinx Racialization in America, (Harvard Education PR, 2024) Laura C. Chávez-Moreno uncovers the process through which schools implicitly and explicitly shape their students’ concept of race and the often unintentional consequences of this on educational equity. Dr. Chávez-Moreno sheds light on how the complex interactions among educational practices, policies, pedagogy, language, and societal ideas interplay to form, reinforce, and blur the boundaries of racialized groups, a dynamic which creates contradictions in classrooms and communities committed to antiracism. Dr. Chávez-Moreno urges readers to rethink race, to reconceptualize Latinx as a racialized group, and to pay attention to how schools construct Latinidad (a concept about Latinx experience and identity) in relation to Blackness, Indigeneity, Asianness, and Whiteness. The work explores, as an example, how Spanish-English bilingual education programs engage in race-making work. It also illuminates how schools can offer ambitious teachings to raise their students’ critical consciousness about race and racialization. Ultimately, Dr. Chávez-Moreno’s groundbreaking work makes clear that understanding how our schools teach about racialized groups is crucial to understanding how our society thinks about race and offers solutions to racial inequities. The book invites educators and scholars to embrace ambitious teaching about the ambivalence of race so that teachers and students are prepared to interrogate racist ideas and act toward just outcomes. Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is the producer of the Academic Life podcast. Playlist for listeners: Teaching About Race and Racism in the College Classroom Transforming Hispanic Serving Institutions for Equity and Justice We Are Not Dreamers: Undocumented Scholars Theorize Undocumented Life in the United States Presumed Incompetent Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! You can support the show by downloading and sharing episodes. Join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 250+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening! Our guest is: Dr. Laura C. Chávez-Moreno, who is assistant professor in the César E. Chávez Department of Chicana/o and Central American Studies at the University of California Los Angeles. Her research has been recognized with multiple awards, including from the American Educational Research Association and the National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation. She is the author of How Schools Make Race, winner of a 2025 AAHHE Book of the Year Award​, and a 2025 Nautilus Silver Book Award. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

In his new book, The Community College Reform Movement: Contentions and Ideological Origins (Routledge, 2025), political scientist Milton Clarke critically examines the rise of the higher education reform movement, often referred to as the “completion agenda,” which, since the early 2000s, has sought to restructure core aspects of the community college experience. Drawing on community colleges from across nine U.S. states as practical examples, this exploration examines the major higher education reforms, including dual enrollment, guided pathways, the demise of developmental education, corequisites, and performance-based funding. Against the popular view that support for such policies is tied to neoliberalism, this book argues for a more nuanced understanding of the complicated and often indistinct ideological foundation of the reform movement, demonstrating that supporters and detractors alike draw on similar concepts of equity, student success, and affordability. This complication is further clarified through an account of the history, process, functions, and institutions that paved the way for the advent of the higher education reform movement. This book is vital reading for anyone interested in the future of community colleges and higher education. A special resonance is expected among researchers, scholars, and educators working in higher education, educational reform, and educational policy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

Elliot Lichtman, a Yale University junior and author, shares his passion for simplifying algorithms through engaging games. He discusses how he adapted computer science teaching during the pandemic from one-on-one sessions to larger groups, using puzzles and strategy games to make coding concepts fun. Lichtman illustrates problem-solving with games like Wordle and examines the evolution of algorithms in classics like chess. He highlights AI's transformative role in healthcare, enhancing diagnostics and drug discovery, all while sparking curiosity in young learners.

Children’s picture books are some of the most transparently ideological materials available to parents and educators, and as cultural objects they are an expression of the zeitgeist of a particular era. They reveal much about the hopes, values, and aspirations of the society that produces them, as well as that society’s vision of its place in the wider world at large.Children’s Picture Books and Contemporary Egyptian Society (AUC Press, 2025) by Dr. Yasmine Motawy examines a new wave of Egyptian picture books that was published in the current century to see how these books responded to larger societal trends and transformations in Egypt, as well as to explore the ideologies that lie behind them. Dr. Motawy argues that a host of factors, including the growth of gated communities and international schooling, the proliferation of lucrative literary awards, returning Gulf migrants, television dramas, and nationwide reading advocacy initiatives helped give rise to a new kind of children’s picture book in Egypt.Dr. Motawy focuses on three clusters of selected picture books to investigate the extent to which these books reproduce hegemonic discourses or, alternatively, open up new horizons of childhood agency and societal transformation. The first cluster includes books that directly socialize the child by showing them ‘how things are done,’ in both the domestic sphere and the increasing globalized spaces that children frequent with their families. The second cluster aims at reframing cultural notions around femininity through the retelling of folk and fairy tales, while the third cluster addresses children's abilities to assess the impact of their actions on their environment, and invites them to examine their personal suitability to positions of power and stewardship. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education