Reading Circles
CTE Reading Circles are small (between 4-10 participants), short-term (meeting around three times in the semester) reading groups focused on a specific book or other text proposed by a faculty member or librarian. The book may be on any topic but should open conversations about teaching and learning. The outputs of Reading Circles are collegiality, conversation, and intellectual curiosity about teaching and learning. Meetings might be on campus or off. CTE will buy the books! All USF faculty members and librarians are eligible to participate.
Previous Reading Circle Selections
Editor: Susan B. Blum
The moment is right for critical reflection on what has been assumed to be a core part of schooling. In Ungrading, fifteen educators write about their diverse experiences going gradeless. Some contributors are new to the practice and some have been engaging in it for decades. Some are in humanities and social sciences, some in STEM fields. Some are in higher education, but some are the K–12 pioneers who led the way. Based on rigorous and replicated research, this is the first book to show why and how faculty who wish to focus on learning, rather than sorting or judging, might proceed. It includes honest reflection on what makes ungrading challenging, and testimonials about what makes it transformative.
Author: Megan Boler
First published in 1999. Megan Boler combines cultural history with ethical and multicultural analyses to explore how emotions have been disciplined, suppressed, or ignored at all levels of education and in educational theory.
Feeling Power charts the philosophies and practices developed over the last century to control social conflicts arising from gender, class, and race. The book traces the development of progressive pedagogies from civil rights and feminist movements to Boler's own recent studies of emotional intelligence and emotional literacy. Drawing on the formulation of emotion as knowledge within feminist, psychobiological, and post structuralist theories, Boler develops a unique theory of emotion missing from contemporary educational discourses.
Author: Nick Zepke
This book investigates origins, meanings, uses and effects of student engagement in higher education, and addresses three core questions: (1) Why is student engagement so visible in higher education today? (2) What are its dominant characteristics? (3) What is missing in the popular view of student engagement? These questions pave the way for a fresh approach to student engagement. The book argues that an elective affinity between student engagement and policies embedded in neoliberalism, the dominant ideology of the early 21st century, enables student engagement to transcend diverse intellectual and practice contexts. This affinity encourages quality learning and teaching that enables student to succeed in their studies and future careers. The book shows that focusing on neoliberal objectives for learning and teaching limits the potential of student engagement in higher education. This conclusion leads to a critical and practical social-ecological perspective that approaches engagement more as a pathway to social justice than as a list of techniques. This book is a work of critical scholarship backed by empirical research. It questions accepted theories and practices and offers fresh insights into student engagement in higher education, including how engagement could promote social justice.
Author: James Lang
A freshly updated edition featuring research-based teaching techniques that faculty in any discipline can easily implement. Research into how we learn can help facilitate better student learning―if we know how to apply it. Small Teaching fills the gap in higher education literature between the primary research in cognitive theory and the classroom environment. In this book, James Lang presents a strategy for improving student learning with a series of small but powerful changes that make a big difference―many of which can be put into practice in a single class period. These are simple interventions that can be integrated into pre-existing techniques, along with clear descriptions of how to do so. Inside, you’ll find brief classroom or online learning activities, one-time interventions, and small modifications in course design or student communication.
Author: Steven Johnson
The printing press, the pencil, the flush toilet, the battery--these are all great ideas. But where do they come from? What kind of environment breeds them? What sparks the flash of brilliance? How do we generate the breakthrough technologies that push forward our lives, our society, our culture? Steven Johnson's answers are revelatory as he identifies the seven key patterns behind genuine innovation, and traces them across time and disciplines. From Darwin and Freud to the halls of Google and Apple, Johnson investigates the innovation hubs throughout modern time and pulls out the approaches and commonalities that seem to appear at moments of originality.