New Books In Education

Bringing concepts from critical transitional justice and peacebuilding into dialogue with education, Schooling, Conflict and Peace in the Southwestern Pacific: Becoming Enemy Friends (Bristol University Press, 2024) by Dr. David Oakeshott examines the challenges youth and their teachers face in the post-conflict settings of Bougainville and Solomon Islands. Youth in these places must reconcile with the violent past of their parents’ generation while also learning how to live with people once on opposing ‘sides'. This book traces how students and their teachers form connections to the past and each other that cut through the forces that might divide them. The findings illustrate novel ways to think about the potential for education to assist post-conflict recovery. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civi

Studies show that students who have a positive outlook on their lives outperform students who don’t. Is positive thinking a skill? Can it be taught? Our article is: “Teaching Positive Psychology Skills at school may be one way to help student mental health and happiness,” by Dr. Kai Zhuang Shum, published in The Conversation, which explores how the components of happiness and connection can be applied to classroom settings around the world. Amid the reduced access to mental health services for many students, and the rising rates of student stress and depression, researchers are finding that positive psychology interventions make a real difference. “Students who’ve been introduced to science-based ideas about happiness,” Dr. Shum writes, “feel more satisfied with life.” She joins us for this episode to explain more. Our guest is: Dr. Kai Zhuang Shum, who is a Nationally Certified School Psychologist (NCSP) and a Licensed Psychologist. She serves as an assistant professor at the University of Tennessee Knoxvill

Undeclared: A Philosophy of Formative Higher Education (MIT Press, 2024) is an imaginative tour of the contemporary university as it could be: a place to discover self-knowledge, meaning, and purpose. What if college were not just a means of acquiring credentials, but a place to pursue our formation as whole persons striving to lead lives of meaning and purpose? In Undeclared, Chris Higgins confronts the contemporary university in a bid to reclaim a formative mission for higher education. In a series of searching essays and pointed interludes, Higgins challenges us to acknowledge how far our practices have drifted from our ideals, asking: What would it look like to build a college from the ground up to support self-discovery and personal integration? What does it mean to be a public university, and are there any left? How can the humanities help the job-ified university begin to take vocation seriously? Cutting through the underbrush of received ideas, Higgins follows the insight where it leads, clearing a pa

Good workplaces require both autonomy--giving employees a sense of ownership over how and where they work--and collaboration in pursuit of common goals. They see employees for who they are and support them, pay them enough money to live comfortably, and provide the resources, training, and support they need to be successful. Innovative Library Workplaces: Transformative Human Resource Strategies (2025, Association of College and Research Libraries) provides the tools you need to make your workplace a good one for your employees. Though this book took root during the pandemic, it is not of the pandemic: The changes wrought are permanent. Innovative Library Workplaces proposes a way forward after this monumental disruption, recognizing that neither the pandemic nor the work culture prior to it is a good model for what comes next. Bridgit McCafferty is the Dean of the University Library & Archives at Texas A&M University-Central Texas and has led the library for twelve years. Prior to this, she oversaw reference

In this episode of the Language-on-the-Move podcast, Dr Hanna Torsh speaks with Dr Prashneel Ravisan Goundar about his new book, English Language-Mediated Settings and Educational Inequality: Language Policy Agendas in the South Pacific published by Routledge in 2025. In this book, Goundar explores how educational inequalities are responsible for the way students perform in English language-mediated school settings. He seeks to establish an explicit connection between language testing and educational inequalities at the higher education level. With its focus on higher education, this research is a fresh reminder of the need to continuously revisit and unsettle inequalities that are embedded in education systems. In the South Pacific context, this study reveals the current issues, including medium of instruction challenges, lack of teaching and learning resources, teacher shortages, and language barriers. Goundar’s research seeks new answers to the problem of academic English language skills faced by undergrad

Students often think of science as disconnected pieces of information rather than a narrative that challenges their thinking, requires them to develop evidence-based explanations for the phenomena under investigation, and communicate their ideas in discipline-specific language as to why certain solutions to a problem work.  In Enquiry-based Science Education (CRC Press, 2020), Robyn M. Gillies provides teachers in primary and junior secondary school with different evidence-based strategies they can use to teach inquiry science in their classrooms. The research and theoretical perspectives that underpin the strategies are discussed as are examples of how different ones areimplemented in science classrooms to affect student engagement and learning. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

Exchange of Ideas: The Economy of Higher Education in Early America (U Chicago Press, 2023) launches a breathtakingly ambitious new economic history of American higher education. In this volume, Adam R. Nelson focuses on the early republic, explaining how knowledge itself became a commodity, as useful ideas became salable goods and American colleges were drawn into transatlantic commercial relations. American scholars might once have imagined that higher education could sit beyond the sphere of market activity—that intellectual exchange could transcend vulgar consumerism—but already by the end of the eighteenth century, they saw how ideas could be factored into the nation’s balance of trade. Moreover, they concluded that it was the function of colleges to oversee the complex process whereby knowledge could be priced and purchased. The history of capitalism and the history of higher education, Nelson reveals, are intimately intertwined—which raises a host of important and strikingly urgent questions. How do we

Political Scientists Lauren C. Bell, Allison Rank, and Carah Ong Whaley have a new edited volume, Civic Pedagogies: Teaching Civic Engagement in an Era of Divisive Politics (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024). This book has four separate sections that guide the reader through different dimensions of teaching civic engagement and the many aspects of this important pedagogical capacity that often falls on the shoulders of political science faculty at universities and colleges in the United States. In our discussion we cover the idea of civic engagement itself as an approach that many of us integrate into our courses in a variety of ways. Civic Pedagogies focuses on this complex topic first through a number of chapters that dive into the theory behind civic engagement and how to think about this concept as a dimension of or the entirety of a college course. The next section of the book takes up a variety of different practical approaches to embedding civic learning into courses. The last two sections of the book explore

Two centuries ago, London school reformer Joseph Lancaster swept into New York City to revolutionize its public schools. Pennsylvania and Massachusetts passed laws mandating Lancaster's methods, and cities such as Albany, Savannah, Detroit, and Baltimore soon followed. In Mr. Lancaster's System: The Failed Reform That Created America's Public Schools (Johns Hopkins UP, 2024), Adam Laats tells the story of how this abusive, scheming reformer fooled the world into believing his system could provide free high-quality education for poor children. The system never worked as promised, but thanks to real work done by students, teachers, and families, Lancaster's failed reforms eventually led to the creation of the modern public school system. Lancaster's idea was simple: instead of hiring expensive adult teachers, Lancasterian schools made children teach one another to read, write, and behave properly. America's city leaders poured the equivalent of millions of dollars into the scheme, built specialized school build

In this episode of International Horizons, RBI Director John Torpey speaks with Steven Brint, Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Public Policy at UC Riverside, about the early days of the second Trump administration and its impact on higher education. Brint discusses the administration’s aggressive efforts to reshape federal governance, including its attacks on DEI programs, proposals to tax university endowments, and moves to condition federal funding on ideological compliance. The conversation explores how these policies could undermine academic freedom, international student enrollment, and the global reputation of U.S. universities. Brint also examines the broader crisis of public confidence in higher education, tracing concerns over cost, curriculum relevance, and perceptions of political bias. The episode concludes with a discussion of the risks facing the American university system in an era of rising authoritarianism and political polarization. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.f

As of 2018, only about one in ten Mexican/Mexican American/Xicanx (MMAX) students graduate with a college degree. Drawing on in-depth interviews, participant observations, pláticas, document analyses, and literature on race, space, and racism in higher education, Why you always so political?: The Experiences and Resiliencies of Mexican/Mexican American/Xicanx Students in Higher Education (Viva Oxnard, 2024) by Dr. Martín Alberto Gonzalez documents the narratives of 20 MMAX undergraduate students at a private, historically and predominantly white university in the Northeast United States. Utilizing counterstorytelling as a research method, Martín Alberto Gonzalez argues that the racially hostile campus environment experienced by MMAX students at their respective university manifests itself as a form of educational-environmental racism. By providing culturally relevant counterstories about racism in higher education, this book offers an accessible tool for teaching and learning about the harsh realities of Stud

Queer Childhoods: Institutional Futures of Indigeneity, Race, and Disability (NYU Press, 2024) explores how the institutional management of children's sexualities in boarding schools affected children's future social, political, and economic opportunities Tracing the US's investment in disciplining minoritarian sexualities since the late nineteenth century, Mary Zaborskis focuses on a ubiquitous but understudied figure: the queer child. Queer Childhoods examines the lived and literary experiences of children who attended reform schools, schools for the blind, African American industrial schools, and Native American boarding schools. In mapping the institutional terrain of queer childhoods in educational settings of the late nineteenth- and twentieth-century, the book offers an original archive of children's sexual and embodied experiences. Zaborskis argues that these boarding schools--designed to segregate racialized, criminalized, and disabled children from mainstream culture--produced new forms of childhood

Few have ever valued literacy as much as the enslaved Black people of the American South. For them, it was more than a means to a better life; it was a gateway to freedom and, in some instances, a tool for inspiring revolt. And few governments tried harder to suppress literacy than did those in the South. Everyone understood that knowledge was power: power to keep a person enslaved in mind and body, power to resist oppression. In the decades before the Civil War, Southern governments drove Black literacy underground, but it was too precious to be entirely stamped out. Dangerous Learning: The South's Long War on Black Literacy (Yale UP, 2025) describes the violent lengths to which southern leaders went to repress Black literacy and the extraordinary courage it took Black people to resist. Derek W. Black shows how, from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the end of Reconstruction, literacy evolved from a subversive gateway to freedom to a public program to extend citizenship and build democratic institu

Resistance to feminist, queer, and antiracist pedagogies can take many forms in the composition class: silence during class discussion; tepid, bland writing that fails to engage with course content; refusal to engage with feminist and queer ideas; open and direct challenges to professors’ authority. According to Wilton Wright, Rewriting Resistance to Social Justice Pedagogies (Lexington Books, 2024) argues that composition studies has not adequately addressed the complex and deeply local contexts and causes of resistance. Therefore, the author argues that resistance research must first understand the origins and purpose for a student’s resistance, interrogating the language used to name and describe students who resist. Composition instructors must then give students the tools to uncover and investigate their reasons for resistance themselves, challenging students to continually interrogate their resistances. This book utilizes feminist composition pedagogies, masculinity studies, and queer pedagogies to enga

Accurate information is at the heart of democratic functioning. For decades, researchers interested in how information is disseminated have focused on mass media, but the reality is that many Americans today do not learn about politics from direct engagement with the news. Rather, about one-third of Americans learn chiefly from information shared by their peers in conversation or on social media. How does this socially transmitted information differ from that communicated by traditional media? What are the consequences for political attitudes and behavior? Drawing on evidence from experiments, surveys, and social media, in Through the Grapevine: Socially Transmitted Information and Distorted Democracy (University of Chicago Press, 2024) Dr. Taylor N. Carlson finds that, as information flows first from the media then person to person, it becomes sparse, more biased, less accurate, and more mobilizing. The result is what Carlson calls distorted democracy. Although socially transmitted information does not neces

Philosophical Presentations of Raising Children: The Grammar of Upbringing (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019) uses contemporary film to articulate a philosophical account of raising children. It forms part of a revaluation of the parent as a pedagogical figure, which stands in contrast to the instrumental accounts dominant in contemporary ‘parenting’ culture. Hodgson and Ramaekers use film to offer an affirmative account of the experience of raising children, as a presentation of those inevitable aspects and experiences that upbringing is: the initiation into language and the world; the representative nature of the parent; and the maintaining of mundane practices that constitute our shared culture and community. The films which are discussed are taken as grammatical investigations and enable the authors to develop an account of the use of film in education and as educational philosophy, and to respond to each film’s invitation to articulate the existential dimensions of raising children. Philosophical Presentations o

How do Black women experience education in Britain? Within British educational research about Black students, gender distinctions have been largely absent, male-dominated or American-centric. Due to the lack of attention paid to Black female students, relatively little is known about how they understand and engage with the education system, or the influences which shape their long-term strategies and decision-making in order to gain educational 'success'. Babygirl, You've Got This! Experiences of Black Girls and Women in the English Education System (Bloomsbury, 2024) by Dr. April-Louise Pennant will illustrate the educational experiences and journeys of Black British women graduates and considers the influence of the intersections of race, gender, ethnicity, culture and social class on their educational journeys. Dr. Pennant uniquely documents the entire educational journey - from primary school to university - within both predominantly white (PW) and predominantly global majority (PGM) educational instituti

Arts graduate education is uniquely positioned to deliver many of the public good needs of contemporary Canada. For the Public Good: Reimagining Arts Graduate Programs in Canadian Universities (U Alberta, 2024) argues, however, that graduate programs must fundamentally change if they are to achieve this potential. Drawing on deep experience and research, the authors outline how reformed programs that equip graduates with advanced skills can address Canada’s most vexing challenges and seek action on equity, diversity, inclusion, and decolonization. In the episode, the authors, Loleen Berdahl, Jonathan Malloy and Lisa Young, chart how current approaches to graduate education emerged and make a data-informed case for change. We also discuss an evidence-based vision for reimagining arts graduate education and actor-specific steps to achieve this potential. This interview was conducted by Shreya Urvashi, a doctoral researcher of sociology and education based in Toronto, Canada. Learn more about your ad choices. Vi

A heartbreaking account of grief, Black boyhood, and how we can support young people as they navigate loss. JahSun, a dependable, much-loved senior at Boys' Prep was just hitting his stride in the fall of 2017. He had finally earned a starting position on the varsity football team and was already weighing two college acceptances. Then, over Thanksgiving, tragedy struck. An altercation at his older sister's home escalated into violence, killing the unarmed teenager in a hail of bullets. JahSun's untimely death overwhelmed his entire community, sending his family, friends, and school into seemingly insurmountable grief. Worse yet, that spring two additional Boys' Prep students would be shot to death in their neighborhood. JahSun and his peers are not alone in suffering the toll of gun violence, as every year in the United States teenagers die by gunfire in epidemic numbers, with Black boys most deeply affected. Brothers in Grief: The Hidden Toll of Gun Violence on Black Boys and Their Schools (U Chicago Press,

In 2019, journalist and writer Peter Hessler traveled with his family to China. He’d gotten a gig as a teacher of writing—nonfiction writing in particular—in what he’d hoped would be a sequel to his 2001 book River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze. But plans changed—radically. At the very end of 2019, the COVID-19 virus emerges in Wuhan, leading to chaos as officials frantically try to figure out how to control the new disease. Peter’s reporting first wins his criticism from Chinese nationalists angry about his frank discussions of China’s mistakes—then criticism from U.S. hawks angry that Hessler gives Beijing credit for what it managed to do right as COVID rapidly spreads around the world. Peter’s years in China are covered in his latest book Other Rivers: A Chinese Education (Penguin Press, 2024), published last year. Peter Hessler is a staff writer at the New Yorker, where he served as Beijing correspondent from 2000 to 2007, Cairo correspondent from 2011 to 2016, and Chengdu correspondent from 2019 to 202