New Books in Education

Ethics and civics have always mattered, but perhaps they matter now more than ever before. Recently, with the rise of online teaching and movements like #PlayApartTogether, games have become increasingly acknowledged as platforms for civic deliberation and value sharing. We the Gamers: How Games Teach Ethics and Civics (Oxford UP, 2021) explores these possibilities by examining how we connect, com...

During Leo Lambert’s 19-year tenure as president at Elon University, the institution moved from a regional college to becoming one of the U.S.’s top 100 national universities. It is consistently ranked #1 for undergraduate education, ahead of Brown and Princeton. Lambert describes the five core “Elon Experiences” and other high impact practices that have helped Elon become one of the leaders in ac...

In Districts That Succeed: Breaking the Correlation Between Race, Poverty, and Achievement (Harvard Education Press, 2021), long-time education writer Karin Chenoweth turns her attention from effective schools to effective districts. Leveraging new, cutting-edge national research on district performance as well as in-depth reporting, Chenoweth profiles five districts that have successfully broken...

In Universities on Fire: Higher Education in the Climate Crisis (Johns Hopkins UP, 2023), futurist Bryan Alexander explores higher education during an age of unfolding climate crisis. Powered by real-world examples and the latest research, Alexander assesses practical responses and strategies by surveying contemporary programs and academic climate research from around the world. He establishes a m...

How are hiring and admissions decisions made in the hard sciences if not by merit? What are the risks of allowing science to be politicized? Professors Dorian Abbot (University of Chicago), Anna Krylov (University of Southern California), David Romps (University of California, Berkeley), and Bernhardt Trout (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), join the show to answer these questions and others...

Dorian Abbot is an Associate Professor of Geophysical Sciences at the University of Chicago. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) had invited Abbot to deliver their prestigious Carlson Lecture, but rescinded the invitation after receiving complaints about an article Abbot had written for Newsweek, titled "The Diversity Problem on Campus." In response, Princeton University's James Madiso...

Why do so many students and academics worry that they are imposters? Is it normal to experience this kind of self-doubt? This episode explores: The difference between imposter syndrome and imposter phenomenon. How we can better understand imposter syndrome. Why it strikes some people. How to recognize it when it does. Tips for helping others and ourselves. Our guest is: Dr Darragh McCashin, who is...

Today I sat down with Nadia Davis to discuss parenting and mindfulness. Nadia is the author of Home Is Within You: A Memoir of Recovery and Redemption (Girl Friday Books, 2021). Nadia Davis is the mother of three sons, a writer, attorney, kundalini yoga teacher and former executive director and elected official. She graduated from U.C.L.A. with a degree in Sociology and Specialization in Juvenile...

Why is education so important in a democracy? Are democracies capable of producing the citizens they need? What do John Locke and Alexis de Tocqueville have to teach us about education in a liberal democracy? Jeffrey Sikkenga, Executive Director of the Ashbrook Center, joins Madison's Notes to answer these questions and more.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support...

This book delves deep into the question of what is legal education for? Who does it serve, and how, as educators can we reflect on what we deliver in the law classroom? In answering this question, What is Legal Education For? Re-assessing the Purposes of Early Twenty-First Century Learning and Law Schools (Routledge 2022), editors Dr Rachel Dunn, Professor Paul Maharg and Dr Victoria Roper bring t...

State censorship and cancel culture, trigger warnings and safe spaces, pseudoscience, First Amendment hardball, as well as orthodoxy and groupthink: universities remain a site for important battles in the culture wars. What is the larger meaning of these debates? Are American universities at risk of conceding to mobs and cuddled “snowflake” students and sacrifice the hallowed values of free speech...

What is academic freedom for? What are the greatest threats to academic freedom today? Should Critical Race Theory be taught on college campuses? What about in K-12 classrooms? Keith Whittington, Chairman of the Academic Freedom Alliance's Academic Committee and the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Politics at Princeton University, joins the show to answer these questions and discuss the work...

Why read the Classics, and how to do it best? Louis Petrich teaches at St. John’s College, the third-oldest college and “the nation's most contrarian college” (according to the New York Times, meant as a compliment). St. John’s takes a remarkable approach to the liberal arts: students and teachers read and discuss 3,000 years of Great Books over four years, all via primary readings without discipl...

Interweaving a deeply personal narrative of elite-level cycling and mental health struggles with an evocative history of Western philosophy from Plato to the Existentialists, The Art of Cycling: Philosophy, Meaning, and a Life on Two Wheels (Pegasus Books, 2023) explores the limits of rationality and how the visceral, embodied nature of sport ultimately has the potential to redeem us from the pain...

In Sesame Street: A Transnational History (Oxford UP, 2023), author Helle Strandgaard Jensen tells the story of how the American television show became a global brand. Jensen argues that because the show's domestic production was not financially viable from the beginning, Sesame Street became a commodity that its producers assertively marketed all over the world. Sesame Street: A Transnational His...

What happens when jobs in academia are scarce, and few of the descriptions of jobs outside academia seem like a fit? How can graduates find the right job for them, whether it’s inside academia or far afield? This episode explores: Ways to explain your skills and expertise so an employer sees you as a good match for them. Tips for reframing how graduate students talk about themselves and their rese...

Mentorship continues to loom large in stories about women's work and personal lives-- sometimes for the better, but often for the worse. If mentors can nurture and support, they can also bitterly disappoint, reproducing the hardships they once suffered and reinforcing the same old hierarchies and inequities. The stories gathered in Feminists Reclaim Mentorship (SUNY Press, 2023) challenge our fund...

Reading instruction is the most legislated area of education and the most frequently referenced metric for measuring educational progress. This book, How Education Policy Shapes Literacy Instruction: Understanding the Persistent Problems of Policy and Practice (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), edited by Rachael Gabriel, traces the trajectories of policy issues with direct implications for literacy teach...

We have an engaging discussion with Dr. Dan Greenstein, who in 2018 left the Gates Foundation, where he led the Post-Secondary program, to become the Chancellor for the PASSHE system. He knew he was taking on a great challenge with a system that had seen enrollment decline over the prior decade from a peak of 120,000 to fewer than 90,000 students. He was able to garner the necessary political supp...

How to Think Like Shakespeare: Lessons from a Renaissance Education (Princeton UP, 2020) offers a short, spirited defense of rhetoric and the liberal arts as catalysts for precision, invention, and empathy in today's world. The author, a professor of Shakespeare studies at a liberal arts college and a parent of school-age children, argues that high-stakes testing and a culture of assessment have a...

African-Americans and women are increasingly visible in professional mathematical institutions, organizations, and literature, expanding our mental models of the mathematics community. Yet early representation also matters: We begin building these models as soon as we begin seeing and doing mathematics, and they can be slow to adapt. In her wonderful activity book Women Who Count: Honoring African...

Beyond Citizenship: Literacy and Personhood in Everyday China, 1900-1945 (Brill, 2022) focuses on the role of literacy in building a modern nation-state by examining the government provision of adult literacy training in early twentieth-century China. Based on untapped archives and diaries, Di Luo uncovers people’s strategic use of literacy and illiteracy in social interactions and explores the im...

In Blank Canvas: Art School Creativity From Punk to New Wave (Intellect Publishing, 2022), Simon Strange explores the relationship between art and music within education in the United Kingdom. Strange examines the diverse range of people who broke down the barriers between art, life, and the creative self. He looks at art school Britain in the 1960s and ’70s, a hotbed of experimental DIY creativit...

Today’s book is: Gay on God's Campus: Mobilizing for LGBT Equality at Christian Colleges and Universities (UNC Press, 2018), by Jonathan Coley. Although the LGBT movement has made rapid gains in the United States, LGBT people continue to face discrimination in faith communities. In this book, sociologist Jonathan S. Coley documents why and how student activists mobilize for greater inclusion at Ch...

Everyone knows the yellow school bus. It’s been invisible and also omnipresent for a century. Dr. Antero Garcia shows how the U.S. school bus, its form unaltered for decades, is the most substantial piece of educational technology to ever shape how schools operate. As it noisily moves young people across the country every day, the bus offers the opportunity for a necessary reexamination of what “c...