New Books in Education

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 alternatives to college that can help learners combine general and job-specific skills. He shows how building social capital is also critical to success, particularly for disadvantaged students. A guidebook for students, parents, counselors, and educators, The Career Arts reveals why college education and job preparation are not either-or propositions and identifies the blend of education and networking needed to support real-world career aspirations.Our guest is: Ben Wildavsky, who is a visiting scholar at the University of Virginia's School of Education and Human Development. He is the award-winning author of The Great Brain Race and coeditor of Reinventing Higher Education, and Measuring Success. He is the host and co-producer of the Higher Ed Spotlight podcast.Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is the host and producer of the Academic Life podcast. She holds a PhD in history, which she uses to explore what stories we tell and what happens to those we never tell.Listeners to this episode may be interested in: Academic Life episode on making an alternative CV Academic Life episode on finding a job outside academia Academic Life episode on trying internships and new careers at any age Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey--and beyond! Join us to learn from experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 175+ Academic Life episodes? You’ll find them all archived here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

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, guiding readers from research into practice. Drawing on real-world examples, she shows how TVC creates dynamic learning environments where underrepresented ethnic students feel that they belong. Students who remix computationally, for instance, have larger toolkits of computational skills with which to connect cultural practices to STEAM subjects; reappropriation offers a way to navigate cultural repertoires; improvisation is firmly rooted in cultural and creative practices. Finally, Gaskins explores an equity-oriented approach that makes a distinction between conventional or dominant pedagogical approaches and culturally relevant or responsive making methods and practices. She describes TVC habits of mind and suggests methods of instructions and projects.Mentioned in this episode: “Underwater Dreams,” 2014 film directed by Mary Mazzio Dr. Gaskins’ collages, generative AI portrait of Greg Tate, links to Romare Bearden, and more Nettrice Gaskins is an African American digital artist, academic, cultural critic and advocate of STEAM fields. She is currently the assistant director of the STEAM Learning Lab at Lesley University in Cambridge, MA. Liliana Gil is Assistant Professor of Comparative Studies (STS) at the Ohio State University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

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 through credit-bearing courses, co-curricular partnerships, and faculty development and continuing education initiatives. Practicing Privacy Literacy in Academic Libraries provides theory-informed, practical ways to incorporate privacy literacy into library instruction and other areas of academic library practice.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/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

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 opportunity for us now with these new media, these digital technologies, to build structures of participation. If our keyword is participation — which is, how to build certain kinds of collaborative, participatory environments — then, can the digital help us do that? Or will the technology make things worse?"Some related links: Common Ground Scholar — Learn and work with meaning!  Here I talk to the authors of the book Syllabus And here's a link to Syllabus Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

Ann Medaille, author of 'The Librarian's Guide to Learning Theory,' explores how libraries can apply learning theory concepts to improve services such as maker spaces, book clubs, and group study spaces. They discuss constructivism, the importance of primary sources for active learning, the role of emotions in learning, and the interdisciplinary nature of educational theory.

Why are college programs offered in some prisons? How are the students selected? Where do the professors come from? What are the logistics of preparing to teach, and to learn, behind the wall? How does the digital divide affect these students?Today’s book is: Education Behind the Wall: Why and How We Teach College in Prison (Brandeis UP, 2022) edited by Mneesha Gellman, which is an edited volume reflecting on different aspects of teaching in prison and different points of view. This book seeks to address some of the major issues faced by faculty who are teaching college classes for incarcerated students. Composed of a series of case studies meant to showcase the strengths and challenges of teaching a range of different disciplines in prison, this volume brings together scholars who articulate some of the best practices for teaching their expertise inside alongside honest reflections on the reality of educational implementation in a constrained environment. The book not only provides essential guidance for faculty interested in developing their own courses to teach in prisons, but also places the work of higher education in prisons in philosophical context with regards to racial, economic, social, and gender-based issues. Rather than solely a how-to handbook, this volume also helps readers think through the trade-offs that happen when teaching inside, and about how to ensure the full integrity of college access for incarcerated students.Our guest is: Dr. Mneesha Gellman, who is the founder and director of the Emerson Prison Initiative, which brings an Emerson College bachelor’s degree pathway to incarcerated students at the Massachusetts Correctional Institution at Concord. Gellman is an associate professor of political science at the Marlboro Institute for Liberal Arts and Interdisciplinary Studies at Emerson College.Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is the host and producer of the Academic Life podcast. She holds a PhD in history, which she uses to explore what stories we tell and what happens to those we never tell.Listeners may also be interested in: An Academic Life conversation with the director of the Emerson Prison Initiative An Academic Life conversation about The Journal of Higher Education in Prison The Alliance for Higher Ed in Prison Academic Life conversation about racial injustice and the book Hands Up, Don't Shoot Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! Join us to learn from experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 175+ Academic Life episodes? You’ll find them all archived here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

Each One Teach One: Parental Involvement and Family Engagement in Jamaica’s Education System (University of the West Indies Press, 2022) is a collection of research studies and essays across multiple educational fields: leadership, psychology, special education, early childhood, literacy studies, mathematics and teacher education. The contributors to this collection provide empirical evidence on the state of parental involvement and family engagement in Jamaica. A team approach has been used in completing the various chapters in which graduate researchers collaborated with lecturers in their areas of specialization. The different voices and data from the participants along with relevant literature shape the dialogue on the importance of home and school collaboration in students’ overall outcomes. Each One Teach One provides critical onto-epistemological frameworks grounded within the Jamaican context to examine the scope, prevalence, and effects of parental involvement and family engagement in schooling. The findings, implications and recommendations can guide policymakers in the formulation of strategies compatible with the needs of the schools, students and families and provide indispensable data on how to effectively work together to optimize students’ success.Saran Stewart is Associate Professor of Higher Education and Student Affairs and Director of Global Education, Neag School of Education, University of Connecticut, Storrs, Connecticut.Sharline Cole is Lecturer in Educational Psychology and Research, the School of Education, the University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica.Yewande Lewis-Fokum is Lecturer in Literacy and Language Education, the School of Education, the University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica.Madden Gilhooly is a humanities public-school teacher and casual academic based on Gadigal land in so-called-Sydney, Australia. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

The question of land is largely absent in libraries. Deeply committed to the neoliberal project as a guiding ideology of the profession, libraries exist at once as ahistorical, atheoretical, and landless institutions in their understanding of themselves, their work, and their impact on people.Land in Libraries: Toward a Materialist Conception of Education (Library Juice Press, 2023) seeks to contribute to the growing body of work on libraries and the anthropocene, decolonization, and climate change through writing in theory and practice. This edited volume explores both non-metaphorical (actual, material) as well as conceptual perspectives on land. Contributions to this book center land as a foundational category underpinning social relations, as a necessity for the function and reproduction of capitalism, and as a place where we work and learn together. Fundamentally, we live on the land and how we live in relation to the land matters to how we understand ourselves as individuals and a society.Jen Hoyer is Technical Services and Electronic Resources Librarian at CUNY New York City College of Technology. Jen edits for Partnership Journal and organizes with the TPS Collective. She is co-author of What Primary Sources Teach: Lessons for Every Classroom and The Social Movement Archive. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

How do Black women in higher education create, experience, and understand joy? What sustains them? While scholars have long documented sexism, racism, and classism in the academy, one topic has been conspicuously absent from the literature--how Black women academics have found joy in the midst of adversity. Moving beyond questions of resilience, labor for others, and coping, Robin Phylisia Chapdelaine, Abena Ampofoa Asare, and Michelle Dionne Thompson's book When Will the Joy Come?: Black Women in the Ivory Tower (U Massachusetts Press, 2023) focuses on the journeys of over thirty Black women at various stages of their careers.Joy is a mixture of well-being, pleasure, alignment, and purpose that can be elusive for Black women scholars. With racial reckoning and a global pandemic as context, this volume brings together honest and vital essays that ponder how Black women balance fatigue and frustrations in the halls of the ivory tower, and explore where, when, and if joy enters their lives. By carefully contemplating the emotional, physical, and material consequences of their labor, this collection demonstrates that joy is a tactical and strategic component of Black women's struggle. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

In recent years, public schools have become one of the central battlegrounds of American politics. Making Schools American: Nationalism and the Origin of Modern Educational Politics (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2022) lucidly explores how schools acquired such a critical role in the United States and its nation-building projects. Its author, Cody Dodge Ewert, illustrates how school reformers in the Progressive Era celebrated public education’s unique capacity to unite a diverse and diffuse citizenry while curing a broad swath of social and political ills. Pitching the school as a quintessentially American institution, these reformers’ lofty visions and nation-building projects inspired a historic expansion in public schooling, laying the groundwork for contemporary struggles over the structure and curriculum of public schools.Making Schools American carefully historicizes this varied progressive movement, examining case studies in New York, Utah, and Texas which all shed a unique light on the development of American education and the broader debates of the turn-of-the-twentieth-century United States concerning what it meant to be an American.Thomas Cryer is a PhD Student in American History at University College London, where he studies race, nationhood, education, and memory through the life, scholarship, and activism of the historian John Hope Franklin. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education