New Books in Education

Saving the World at Business School (Part 1) is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Andy Hoffman, Holcim Professor of Sustainable Enterprise at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business and School of Environment and Sustainability. This extensive conversation starts with inspiring insights into how Andy Hoffman became interested in environmental issues when he declined acceptances from graduate school at Harvard and Berkeley and instead worked as a carpenter for several years in Nantucket. Topics include the notions of ‘environmental sustainability’ and ‘big business’ which sometimes seem as incompatible as oil and water and ways to make a synthesis a reality by seriously reconsidering the way we currently conduct public policy and even some deep aspects of our current societal values.Howard Burton is the founder of the Ideas Roadshow, Ideas on Film and host of the Ideas Roadshow Podcast. He can be reached at howard@ideasroadshow.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

Political Scientist Ursula Hackett’s new book, America's Voucher Politics: How Elites Learned to Hide the State (Cambridge UP, 2020), is the winner of the APSA 2021 Education Policy and Politics Section Best Book Award. America’s Voucher Politics  examines the way that the approach to vouchers, as a policy design and as a point of advocacy, has evolved over the past decades, and, in the process, this policy area has shifted strategic losses into strategic and growing wins. School vouchers, essentially the central case study in Hackett’s book, are a perfect example of what Hackett describes as “attenuated governance.” Attenuated governance is the form that a particular policy design and often the associated rhetoric with that policy take in an effort to disconnect the policy itself from the state, so as to avoid or elide constitutional conflicts that may strike down the policy that was passed by state or national legislative bodies. Attenuated governance is the umbrella concept that includes both the attenuated delivery of the goods or services and the rhetoric to accompany the policy design and delivery. As Hackett notes, school vouchers are the perfect lens for this exploration of American political development and examining the shifting approaches that courts and judges have taken to how the policies work within public and private institutions.As the subtitle of the book indicates, the story of school vouchers is the tale of hiding the role of the state in shifting funds from public schools to private and parochial schools and doing so in such a way so that the courts would decide in favor of the constitutionality of these new policy designs. Many of the initial attempts at this form of attenuated governance were unsuccessfully made in the 1950s and 1960s in response to the Brown v. Board of Education decision and other moves to desegregate schools, and other public entities and spaces. But these early failures in court provided the blueprint for subsequent successes, not just in designing policy that would be more attenuated or disconnected from the state itself, but also in the way that these policies were publicly discussed and argued. America’s Voucher Politics is a fascinating study not only of this particular policy area as it developed over the past 70 years, but also of this concept of attenuated governance, which builds on America’s foundational identity struggles around religion, race and racism, and civic institutions.Lilly J. Goren is professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012), as well as co-editor of Mad Men and Politics: Nostalgia and the Remaking of Modern America (Bloomsbury Academic, 2015). Email her comments at lgoren@carrollu.edu or tweet to @gorenlj. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

In Learning a Foreign Language: Understanding the Fundamentals of Linguistics (Rowman and Littlefield, 2020), Alex Poole, professor of English at Western Kentucky University helps potential learners to negotiate the vagaries of learning a new language. In each chapter he details issues inherent in the learning process such as motivation, strategic decisions, and error analysis. How does language learning become enjoyable and not just a chore which one has to daily practice is the question he poses to himself and the readers. He emphasizes the need to have realistic expectations and analyses age and the acquisition of a new language. The text focuses on first time learners and its amenable style makes it ideal for high school and college students as well as independent learners.Minni Sawhney is a professor of Hispanic Studies at the University of Delhi. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

The third episode in our series on the Keck Graduate Institute (KGI) of Applied Life Sciences, the 7th of the Claremont Colleges founded in 1998, features a discussion with Sheldon “Shelly” Schuster, KGI’s 2nd President, and Jim Sterling, a founding faculty member who has held many leadership roles at KGI, including PhD Program Director. They describe the dramatic evolution and growth of the Institute, from a single program, the Master of Business and Science, with 45 students, to today when the have a wide and growing range of graduate degrees in the life sciences. Many of the initial expansions were natural outgrowths of the MBS, including a Master’s in BioProcessing, a post-grad certificate for pre-meds, and one to prepare bioscience post docs to enter industry. More recently they have been adding highly regulated health science programs – i.e. PharmD, Occupational Therapy, Physician Assistant – but giving each an innovative KGI twist. They also discuss their innovative partnerships with Biocon Academy in India and serving as the host institution for Minerva Schools, the global undergraduate degree program that will be the subject of our next podcast. David Finegold is the president of Chatham University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

Contrary to the claims of many of today’s advocates of computerized instruction and online learning, efforts to use technology to improve the education process are hardly new. In Teaching Machines: The History of Personalized Learning (MIT Press, 2021), Audrey Watters recounts the attempts over the past century to use technology to improve educational procedures. These began over a century ago with psychologist Sidney Pressy’s effort to invent an “automatic teacher” that would eliminate drudgery by automating test scoring. While such efforts gained momentum in the 1930s, the attempts by manufacturers to profit from such technology often complicated their introduction and adoption. In the 1950s B. F. Skinner gave new life to these endeavors by developing devices and processes that applied his theories of behavioral psychology to the learning process. Though the idea of “push-button education” seized the public’s imagination and stimulated efforts to introduce his teaching machines to the classroom, by the end of the 1960s the growing backlash against Skinner’s ideas and regimentation in education ensured the demise of his vision of the automated classroom. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

Each summer, tens of thousands of American Jews attend residential camps, where they may see Hebrew signs, sing and dance to Hebrew songs, and hear a camp-specific hybrid language register called Camp Hebraized English, as in: “Let’s hear some ruach (spirit) in this chadar ochel (dining hall)!” Using historical and sociolinguistic methods, Hebrew Infusion: Language and Community at American Jewish Summer Camps, by Sarah Bunin Benor, Jonathan Krasner, and Sharon Avni (Rutgers University Press, 2020), explains how camp directors and staff came to infuse Hebrew in creative ways and how their rationales and practices have evolved from the early 20th century to today.Some Jewish leaders worry that Camp Hebraized English impedes Hebrew acquisition, while others recognize its power to strengthen campers’ bonds with Israel, Judaism, and the Jewish people. Hebrew Infusion explores these conflicting ideologies, showing how hybrid language can serve a formative role in fostering religious, diasporic communities. The insightful analysis and engaging descriptions of camp life will appeal to anyone interested in language, education, or American Jewish culture.Interviewees:Sarah Bunin Benor is Professor of Contemporary Jewish Studies at Hebrew Union College and courtesy Professor of Linguistics at the University of Southern California.Jonathan Krasner is the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Associate Professor of Jewish Education Research at Brandeis University.Sharon Avni is Professor of Literacy and Linguistics at Borough of Manhattan Community College, City University of New York, and a Research Associate at the Research Institute for the Study of Language in Urban Society at the CUNY Graduate Center.Host: Schneur Zalman Newfield is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Borough of Manhattan Community College, City University of New York, and the author of Degrees of Separation: Identity Formation While Leaving Ultra-Orthodox Judaism (Temple University Press, 2020). Visit him online at ZalmanNewfield.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

Gordon Gee was named the Top University President in the U.S. by Time Magazine, and is the only higher education leader to have been a president 7 times, including return stints at both The Ohio State University and WVU. He shares lessons and insights from his more than 4 decades of experience as a university president, including how he has boiled down all the information he needs to run WVU onto a card he can carry in his wallet. He discusses the vital role of our flagship public universities that he describes in detail in Land-Grant Universities for the Future: Higher Education for the Public Good (Johns Hopkins University Press), and that will appear in a new book with the same publisher. David Finegold is the president of Chatham University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

Every year millions of high school seniors in China take the gaokao, China’s standardized college entrance exam. Students, parents, and head teachers all devote years, sweat, and tears to this consequential and chancy exam — even though the ideal of the gaokao as a fair, objective, and scientific measure of individual merit is known to be something of a myth.Why examinees and their families continue to believe in the relative fairness of the gaokao is what Zachary Howlett’s book, Meritocracy and Its Discontents: Anxiety and the National College Entrance Exam in China (Cornell University Press, 2021), seeks to explore. Based on fieldwork conducted in China’s Fujian province, this rich and engaging book looks at what it means for individuals and communities to believe in both the gaokao and the myth of meritocracy that it engenders. Accessible to both experts and those entirely unfamiliar with the gaokao, this book offers a fresh perspective on the role of examinations in the lives of individuals and in their communities, as well as a useful comparative tool, that of ‘fateful rites of passage,’ for future work. It is also filled with stories of examination candidates, their hopes, dreams, and the lengths that they (and their teachers and parents) go to in order to succeed, all of which should be of interest to anyone who has ever experienced a fateful right of passage of their own.Sarah Bramao-Ramos is a PhD candidate in History and East Asian Languages at Harvard. She works on Manchu language books and is interested in anything with a kesike. She can be reached at sbramaoramos@g.harvard.edu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

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 on an expert about something? DM us your suggestion on Twitter: The Academic Life @AcademicLifeNBN.In this episode you’ll hear: mentoring across academic careers from graduate students to seasoned faculty, optimal conditions for mentor-mentee relationships, mentoring scholars through the publishing process, and gender and power dynamics within academic mentoring.Our guest is: Dr. Claire M. Renzetti, Professor and Chair of Sociology and the Judi Conway Patton Endowed Chair for Studies of Violence Against Women at the University of Kentucky. She received a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Delaware, with specialties in criminology and the sociology of gender.For more than 40 years, Dr. Renzetti’s research has focused on the violent victimization experiences of socially and economically marginalized women and girls. She founded in 1995, and continues to edit, the peer-reviewed, international and interdisciplinary journal Violence Against Women, through Sage Publications. Dr. Renzetti is also the editor of the Gender and Justice book series for University of California Press; co-editor of the Interpersonal Violence book series for Oxford University Press, and editor of the Family and Gender-based Violence book series for Cognella. She has written or edited 26 books as well as numerous book chapters and journal articles based on her own research. She also studies the problem of domestic sex trafficking. Additionally, she conducts research on the effects of religiosity and religious self-regulation on intimate partner violence perpetration and victimization. She has held elected offices in several national and regional professional associations, including the American Sociological Association, the American Society of Criminology, the Society for the Study of Social Problems, and the Eastern Sociological Society. Her research and community service has been recognized with awards from the American Sociological Association, the American Society of Criminology, the Society for the Study of Social Problems, the University of Delaware, Artemis Center (Dayton, OH), and the YWCA of Dayton (OH).Your host is: Dr. Dana Malone, a higher education scholar and practitioner. Dana met Claire as a PhD student at the University of Kentucky, when one of Dana’s academic mentors introduced them.Listeners to this episode might be interested in: Positive Academic Leadership: How to Stop Putting Out Fires and Start Making a Difference by Jeffrey L. Buller Presumed Incompetent II: Race, Class, Power, and Resistance of Women in Academia edited by: Yolanda Flores Niemann, Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs, and Carmen G. González NBN Podcast on Presumed Incompetent II NBN Podcast on How to Create a Mentor Network Claire Renzetti’s video series on academic publishing for the American Sociological Association (ASA).*Please note access requires an ASA membership Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

Scott Miller, who has been recognized as one of the most innovative and influential college presidents in the U.S., shares insights from his over 3 decades of experience leading four private, independent colleges: Lincoln Memorial University, Wesley College, Bethany College, and Virginia Wesleyan University. Scott, who became the youngest college president in the U.S. when he took the helm at Lincoln Memorial at the age of 31, shares some of the secrets of his success, including how he has adapted with the times to master social media. He has been generous in sharing these through a number of publications he edits with his long-time professional partner, Mary Louise “Weezie” Fennell, including a series of essays on all aspects of presidential leadership and President to President. David Finegold is the president of Chatham University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education