New Books In Education

Commemorative Literacies and Labors of Justice: Resistance, Reconciliation, and Recovery in Buenos Aires and Beyond (Routledge, 2021) examines literacy practices of commemoration marking the 40th anniversary of the March 24, 1976 coup in Argentina. Drawing on research conducted across three distinct sites in Buenos Aires in March 2016—a public university, a Catholic church, and a former naval base and clandestine detention center transformed into a museum space for memory and justice—this book sheds light on the ways commemorative literacies at these locations work spatially to mobilize memory of the past to address and advance justice concerns in the present. These labors of justice manifest in three ways: as resistance, reconciliation, and recovery. Damico, Lybarger, and Brudney also demonstrate how these particular kinds of commemorative literacies resonate transnationally in ways that necessitate a commitment to commemorative ethics. This book is ideal not only for researchers, graduate students, and scho

From white-collar executives to mail carriers, public workers meet the needs of the entire nation. In Public Workers in Service of America: A Reader (U Illinois Press, 2023), Frederick W. Gooding Jr. and Eric S. Yellin provide an edited collection of new research on this understudied workforce:  Part One begins in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth century to explore how questions of race, class, and gender shaped public workers, their workplaces, and their place in American democracy. In Part Two, essayists examine race and gender discrimination while revealing the subtle contemporary forms of marginalization that keep Black men and Black and white women underpaid and overlooked for promotion. The historic labor actions detailed in Part Three illuminate how city employees organized not only for better pay and working conditions but to seek recognition from city officials, the public, and the national labor movement. Part Four focuses on nurses and teachers to address the thorny question of whether cert

Lit Hub's Most Anticipated of 2021.  Winner of the Studs and Ida Terkel Award. A year in the life of a Chicago high school that has one of the highest proportions of refugees of any school in the nation. “A wondrous tapestry of stories, of young people looking for a home. With deep, immersive reporting, Elly Fishman pulls off a triumph of empathy. Their tales and their school speak to the best of who we are as a nation—and their struggles, their joys, their journeys will stay with you.” —Alex Kotlowitz, author of There Are No Children Here. For a century, Chicago’s Roger C. Sullivan High School has been a home to immigrant and refugee students. In 2017, during the worst global refugee crisis in history, its immigrant population numbered close to three hundred—or nearly half the school—and many were refugees new to the country. These young people came from thirty-five different countries, speaking among themselves more than thirty-eight different languages. For these refugee teens, life in Chicago is hardly ea

For the past five years, American public schools have enrolled more students identified as Black, Latinx, American Indian, and Asian than white. At the same time, more than half of US school children now qualify for federally subsidized meals, a marker of poverty. The makeup of schools is rapidly changing, and many districts and school boards are at a loss as to how they can effectively and equitably handle these shifts. Suddenly Diverse: How School Districts Manage Race and Inequality (U Chicago Press, 2020) is an ethnographic account of two school districts in the Midwest responding to rapidly changing demographics at their schools. It is based on observations and in-depth interviews with school board members and superintendents, as well as staff, community members, and other stakeholders in each district: one serving “Lakeside,” a predominately working class, conservative community and the other serving “Fairview,” a more affluent, liberal community. Erica O. Turner looks at district leaders’ adoption of b

Can your graduate school affect your mental health? Dr. Zoe Ayres joins us to discuss what she wishes she had known before starting graduate school, including: What happens when you can’t access the hidden curriculum. The myths we tell ourselves, and the systems that work against us. How the pressures of graduate school can affect our mental health. Why you need a to build a network of mentors outside your school. Today’s book is: Managing Your Mental Health During Your PhD: A Survival Guide, by Dr. Zoe Ayres, which investigates why mental health issues are so common among the student population. Ayres looks honestly at the experiences of PhD students, and explores environmental factors that can impact mental health. These include the PhD student-supervisor relationship, the pressure to publish, and deep systemic problems in academia, such as racism, bullying and harassment. She provides resources students, while offering ideas for improvements that universities can make to ensure that academia is a pla

America has relied on public schools for 150 years, but the system is increasingly under attack. With declining enrollment and diminished trust in public education, policies that steer tax dollars into private schools have grown rapidly. To understand how we got here, The Death of Public School: How Conservatives Won the War Over Education in America (Basic Books, 2023) argues, we must look back at the turbulent history of school choice. Cara Fitzpatrick uncovers the long journey of school choice, a story full of fascinating people and strange political alliances. She shows how school choice evolved from a segregationist tool in the South in the 1950s, to a policy embraced by advocates for educational equity in the North, to a conservative strategy for securing government funds for private schools in the twenty-first century. As a result, education is poised to become a private commodity rather than a universal good. The Death of Public School presents the compelling history of the fiercest battle in the hist

In the library profession, and in the world as a whole, the experiences of trans and gender diverse people often go unnoticed, hidden, and ignored. Trans and Gender Diverse Voices in Libraries (Library Juice Press, 2021) is entirely written and edited by trans and gender diverse people involved in the field: its fifty-seven authors include workers from academic and public libraries, special collections and archives, and more; LIS students; and a few people who have left the library profession completely. Editors Kalani Adolpho, Stephen G. Krueger, and Krista McCracken share in this interview how this book is not intended to be the definitive guide to trans and gender diverse experiences in libraries, but instead to start the conversation. This project hopes to help trans and gender diverse people in libraries realize that they are not alone, and that their experiences are worth sharing. This book also demonstrates some of the reality in a field that loves to think of itself as inclusive. From physical spaces

Be The Change! Are you a policy maker? Parent? Teacher? Regenerative Learning: Nurturing People and Caring for the Planet (Salt Desert Media, 2022) is full of fresh ideas as well as practical solutions. Learn how we can make the whole world of education more inspiring - and more green. Education can be - and it should be - more inspiring, holistic, integrated, creative, and joyous! And that isn't a mere pipe dream.  This book will help you to achieve it. Published for the 30th anniversary of Schumacher College, this collection of independently-written essays is on a subject of urgent importance for a world afflicted by climate change, inequality, mass disadvantage, and pandemics. Schumacher College is synonymous with the effort to create a model of learning that develops alumni who have the skills and passions that will make the contemporary world a better place. Contributors include: Fritjof Capra, Vandana Shiva, David Orr, Charles Eisenstein, Gunter Pauli, Anthony Seldon, Jon Alexander, Alan Boldon, Pavel C

Early childhood can be a time of rich discovery, a period when educators have an opportunity to harness their students’ fascination to create unique learning opportunities. Some teachers engage with their students’ ideas in ways that make learning collaborative--but not all students have access to these kinds of learning environments. In Segregation by Experience: Agency, Racism, and Learning in the Early Grades (U Chicago Press, 2021), the authors filmed and studied a a first-grade classroom led by a Black immigrant teacher who encouraged her diverse group of students to exercise their agency. When the researchers showed the film to other schools, everyone struggled. Educators admired the teacher but didn’t think her practices would work with their own Black and brown students. Parents of color—many of them immigrants—liked many of the practices, but worried that they would compromise their children. And the young children who viewed the film thought that the kids in the film were terrible, loud, and badly b

In Passionate Work: Endurance after the Good Life (Duke UP, 2022), Renyi Hong theorizes the notion of being "passionate about your work" as an affective project that encourages people to endure economically trying situations like unemployment, job change, repetitive and menial labor, and freelancing. Not simply a subject of aspiration, passion has been deployed as a means to build resilience and mend disappointments with our experiences of work.  Tracking the rise of passion in nineteenth-century management to trends like gamification, coworking, and unemployment insurance, Hong demonstrates how passion can emerge in instances that would not typically be understood as passionate. Gamification numbs crippling boredom by keeping call center workers in an unthinking, suspensive state, pursuing even the most banal tasks in hope of career advancement. Coworking spaces marketed toward freelancers combat loneliness and disconnection at the precise moment when middle-class sureties are profoundly threatened. Ultimate

In The Making of Florida's Universities: Public Higher Education at the Turn of the Twentieth Century (UP of Florida, 2023), Carl Van Ness describes the remarkable formative years of higher education in Florida, comparing the trajectory to that of other states and putting it in context within the broader history and culture of the South. Central to this story is the Buckman Act of 1905, a state law that consolidated government support to three institutions and prompted decades of conflicts over where Florida’s public colleges and universities would be located, who would head them, and who would manage their affairs. Van Ness traces the development of the schools that later became the University of Florida, Florida State University, and Florida A&M University. He describes little-known events such as the decision to move the University of Florida from its original location in Lake City, as well as a dramatic student rebellion at Florida A&M University in response to attempts to restrict Black students to vocat

Diversity in higher education is under attack as the Supreme Court limits the use of race-conscious admissions practices at American colleges and universities. In On the Basis of Race: How Higher Education Navigates Affirmative Action Policies (NYU Press, 2023), Lauren S. Foley sheds light on our current crisis, exploring the past, present, and future of this contentious policy. From Brown v. Board of Education in the mid-twentieth century to the current Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard and University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Foley explores how organizations have resisted and complied with public policies regarding race. She examines how admissions officers, who have played an important role in the long fight to protect racial diversity in higher education, work around the law to maintain diversity after affirmative action is banned.  Foley takes us behind the curtain of student admissions, shedding light on how multiple universities, including the University of Michigan, have creatively respond

The Unteachables: Disability Rights and the Invention of Black Special Education (U Minnesota Press, 2023) examines the overrepresentation of Black students in special education over the course of the twentieth century. As African American children integrated predominantly white schools, many were disproportionately labeled educable mentally retarded (EMR), learning disabled (LD), and emotionally behavioral disordered (EBD). Keith A. Mayes charts the evolution of disability categories and how these labels kept Black learners segregated in American classrooms. The civil rights and the educational disability rights movements, Mayes shows, have both collaborated and worked at cross-purposes since the beginning of school desegregation. Disability rights advocates built upon the opportunity provided by the civil rights movement to make claims about student invisibility at the level of intellectual and cognitive disabilities. Although special education ostensibly included children from all racial groups, educationa

You’ve probably heard by now that there’s a hidden curriculum in academia. But it’s called hidden for a reason—only some [privileged] people are in the know about what it contains. And when you can’t find the answers you need, earning your degree is much harder than it should be. Today, higher education podcast host Dr. Ethel Tungohan of the Academic Aunties joins Dr. Christina Gessler, the producer and host of the Academic Life, to talk about why they are so passionate about bridging this knowledge gap. This episode explores: The importance of seeing the structural barriers and gatekeepers. Why the problem is not you, it’s them. How being left out of important conversations harms women, first gen students, and people of color in academia. Some advice that can help you survive and thrive in academia. Our guest is: Dr. Ethel Tungohan, who is Associate Professor of Politics and Social Science at York University. She received her doctoral degree in Political Science and Women and Gender Studies from the Un

Through the story of education and the teaching of history in Mandate Palestine, Yoni Furas reframes our understanding of the Palestinian and Zionist national movements. Educating Palestine: Teaching and Learning History Under the Mandate (Oxford UP, 2020) argues that Palestinian and Hebrew pedagogy could only be truly understood through an analysis of the conscious or unconscious dialogue between them. The conflict over Palestine, the study shows, shaped the way Arabs and Zionists thought, taught, and wrote about their past. British rule over Palestine promised the Jews a national home, but had no viable policy towards the Palestinians and established an education system that lacked a sustainable collective ethos. Nevertheless, Palestinian educators were able to produce a national pedagogy that knew how to work with the British and simultaneously promoted an ideology of progress and independence that challenged colonial rule. Roberto Mazza is currently an independent scholar. He is the host of the Jerusalem

Landon Mascareñaz and Doannie Tran propose that, even as events of this decade have exposed stress points in existing top-down, closed systems within education and other public institutions, they have also created prime opportunities to rethink and redesign those systems in ways that encourage civic participation and invigorate local democracy. In The Open System: Redesigning Education and Reigniting Democracy (Harvard Education Press, 2023), Mascareñaz and Tran argue for a critical revitalization of public education centered in openness, an organization design concept in which an entity receives, considers, and acts on input from the community it serves. As they demonstrate, open education policy improves information flow, increasing opportunity, bolstering public trust, and making room for cocreation and coproduction driven by community partnerships and family engagement. Based on their groundbreaking work with educational coalitions such as the Kentucky Coalition for Advancing Education and Colorado's Home

Embark on a journey of self-discovery and empowerment with Nurture their Nature; The Torah’s Essential Guidance for Parents and Teachers (Mosaica Press, 2021), an insightful book co-authored by Rabbi Jack Cohen and Rabbi Dr. Yosef Lynn. Drawing on wisdom from the Torah, this book guides parents and teachers in finding their own unique selves and igniting the same in their children and students. It's an essential read for those shaping the next generation. Ohad Fedida lives in Miami and is a psychology research and clinical assistant. He is pursuing a graduate degree in psychology, and is involved in a wide array of initiatives and studies from legal philosophy, Jewish programming, and psychology. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

The vast majority of American college students attend two thousand or so private and public institutions that might be described as the Middle—reputable educational institutions, but not considered equal to the elite and entrenched upper echelon of the Ivy League and other prestigious schools. Richard DeMillo has a warning for these colleges and universities in the Middle: If you do not change, you are heading for irrelevance and marginalization. In Abelard to Apple, DeMillo argues that these institutions, clinging precariously to a centuries-old model of higher education, are ignoring the social, historical, and economic forces at work in today's world. In the age of iTunes, open source software, and for-profit online universities, there are new rules for higher education. DeMillo, who has spent years in both academia and in industry, explains how higher education arrived at its current parlous state and offers a road map for the twenty-first century. He describes the evolving model for higher education, fro

An Introduction to the Blue Humanities (Routledge, 2023) is the first textbook to explore the many ways humans engage with water, utilizing literary, cultural, historical, and theoretical connections and ecologies to introduce students to the history and theory of water-centric thinking. Comprised of multinational texts and materials, each chapter will provide readers with a range of primary and secondary sources, offering a fresh look at the major oceanic regions, salt and freshwater geographies, and the physical properties of water that characterize the Blue Humanities. Each chapter engages with carefully-chosen primary texts, including frequently-taught works such as Herman Melville's Moby Dick, Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Homer's The Odyssey, and Luis Vaz de Camões' The Lusiads, to provide the perfect pedagogy for students to develop an understanding of the Blue Humanities chapter by chapter.  Readers will gain insight into new trends in intellectual culture and the long his

For decades, parents across America have asked their kids, “If your friends jumped off a bridge, would you?” The answer is, “Duh, yes.” Peers, as parents well know, have a tremendous impact on who their kids are and what they will become. And even while they insist otherwise, parents know that they’re largely powerless to change this. But the effect of peers is not just a story about kids; peers can also affect adult behavior—they affect what we do and who we are well into old age. Noted sociologists Syed Ali and Margaret M. Chin call this “the peer effect.”  In their book, The Peer Effect: How Your Peers Shape Who You Are and Who You Will Become (NYU Press, 2023), they take readers on a tour of how our peers, and the peer cultures they create, shape our behavior in schools and the workplace. Ali and Chin begin their look at the peer effect at the high school from which they both graduated: New York City’s prestigious Stuyvesant High School, arguably the best public high school in the nation. Through a fascin