How Higher Education Feels

Teaching and learning in higher education can evoke strong feelings, including confusion, anxiety, boredom, curiosity, surprise and exhilaration. These emotions affect students’ learning, progress and overall success. Teachers’ emotions affect how they teach and their relationships and communication with students. Yet the emotional dimensions of teachers’ and students’ experiences are rarely discussed in the context of improving higher education. This book addresses that gap, offering short, evocative case studies to spark conversation among university teachers. It challenges readers to reflect on how higher education feels, to explore the emotional landscape of courses and programmes they create and consider the emotional effects of messages embedded in various policies and practices. Following the student lifecycle from enrolment to reunion, each of the main chapters contains 10 to 15 accessible, emotionally-engaging poems that serve as succinct case studies highlighting how some aspect of learning, teaching or development in higher education feels. Each chapter also contains an expert scholarly commentary that identifies emergent themes across the cases and establishes connections to theory and practice in higher education. The poems-as-case-studies are ideal for use in faculty or educational development workshops or for individual reflection. A variety of theoretical perspectives and associated reflection prompts provide lenses for variously interpreting the poems. An appendix offers suggestions for structuring case discussions as part of educational development activities. The book promotes a person-centered discourse, giving voice to previously neglected aspects of higher education and reminding us that education is essentially a human endeavor.

College Belonging reveals how colleges' and universities' efforts to foster a sense of belonging in their students are misguided. Colleges bombard new students with the message to "get out there!" and "find your place" by joining student organizations, sports teams, clubs and the like. Nunn shows that this reflects a flawed understanding of what belonging is and how it works. Drawing on the sociological theories of Emile Durkheim, College Belonging shows that belonging is something that members of a community offer to each other. It is something that must be given, like a gift. Individuals cannot simply walk up to a group or community and demand belonging. That's not how it works. The group must extend a sense of belonging to each and every member. It happens by making a person feel welcome, to feel that their presence matters to the group, that they would be missed if they were gone. This critical insight helps us understand why colleges' push for students simply to "get out there!" does not always work.

Why we need to stop wasting public funds on education Despite being immensely popular—and immensely lucrative—education is grossly overrated. Now with a new afterword by Bryan Caplan, this explosive book argues that the primary function of education is not to enhance students' skills but to signal the qualities of a good employee. Learn why students hunt for easy As only to forget most of what they learn after the final exam, why decades of growing access to education have not resulted in better jobs for average workers, how employers reward workers for costly schooling they rarely ever use, and why cutting education spending is the best remedy. Romantic notions about education being "good for the soul" must yield to careful research and common sense—The Case against Education points the way.

Mind-opening writing on what kids need from school, from one of education’s most outspoken voices Arguing that our schools are currently in the grip of a “cult of rigor”—a confusion of harder with better that threatens to banish both joy and meaningful intellectual inquiry from our classrooms—Alfie Kohn issues a stirring call to rethink our priorities and reconsider our practices. Kohn’s latest wide-ranging collection of writings will add to his reputation as one of the most incisive thinkers in the field, who questions the assumptions too often taken for granted in discussions about education and human behavior. In nineteen recently published essays—and in a substantive introduction, new for this volume—Kohn repeatedly invites us to think more deeply about the conventional wisdom. Is self-discipline always desirable? he asks, citing surprising evidence to the contrary. Does academic cheating necessarily indicate a moral failing? Might inspirational posters commonly found on school walls (“Reach for the stars!”) reflect disturbing assumptions about children? Could the use of rubrics for evaluating student learning prove counterproductive? Subjecting young children to homework, grades, or standardized tests—merely because these things will be required of them later—reminds Kohn of Monty Python’s “getting hit on the head lessons.” And, with tongue firmly in cheek, he declares that we should immediately begin teaching twenty-second-century skills. Whether Kohn is clearing up misconceptions about progressive education or explaining why incentives for healthier living are bound to backfire, debunking the idea that education reform should be driven by concerns about economic competitiveness or putting “Supernanny” in her place, his readers will understand why the Washington Post has said that “teachers and parents who encounter Kohn and his thoughts come away transfixed, ready to change their schools.”

Approaching the Holocaust in your classroom can be a difficult, often daunting task. This practical guide for English and social studies teachers features lessons learned from the author’s 17 years of experience teaching the subject in public schools, as well as his work with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Using anecdotes and empirical data, Gudgel offers advice for teaching the Holocaust in a way that is nuanced, socially responsible, and historically accurate. He provides guidance on common challenges and questions teachers will encounter, such as correcting misconceptions, using films, and discussing genocide with secondary students. While World War II grows ever more distant in the past, the lessons of the Holocaust are perhaps more relevant today than ever before. It may never be easy to teach about the Holocaust, but it can be done in ways that make it edifying and empowering, rather than causing despair. This approach is as important for educators as it is for their students. Book Features: Uses a conversational tone with classroom examples and actionable teaching advice.Designed to make a difficult topic more accessible for teachers at all levels of experience. Helps teachers think about best practices through a lens of inquiry, pedagogy, and personal experience.Focuses on what the author believes would have been most helpful when he began teaching about the Holocaust.

Something is going wrong on many college campuses in the last few years. Rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide are rising. Speakers are shouted down. Students and professors say they are walking on eggshells and afraid to speak honestly. How did this happen? First Amendment expert Greg Lukianoff and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt show how the new problems on campus have their origins in three terrible ideas that have become increasingly woven into American childhood and education: what doesn’t kill you makes you weaker; always trust your feelings; and life is a battle between good people and evil people. These three Great Untruths are incompatible with basic psychological principles, as well as ancient wisdom from many cultures. They interfere with healthy development. Anyone who embraces these untruths—and the resulting culture of safetyism—is less likely to become an autonomous adult able to navigate the bumpy road of life. Lukianoff and Haidt investigate the many social trends that have intersected to produce these untruths. They situate the conflicts on campus in the context of America’s rapidly rising political polarization, including a rise in hate crimes and off-campus provocation. They explore changes in childhood including the rise of fearful parenting, the decline of unsupervised play, and the new world of social media that has engulfed teenagers in the last decade. This is a book for anyone who is confused by what is happening on college campuses today, or has children, or is concerned about the growing inability of Americans to live, work, and cooperate across party lines.

Higher Education in South Africa should be of considerable interest to higher education researchers outside of South Africa, as well as within, for the general and comparative assessments it makes. The South African higher education researchers included within its covers have clearly engaged with research and writing from many parts of the world, which they have then applied to make sense of their own condition. - Malcolm Tight Lancaster University, UK