Student Body Shots Another Round

This book picks up where the first book left off, exploring college even further. Hofstetter barely scratched the surface with his first title, using his second book to continue lampooning campus life, both academic and beyond. With contributions from other contemporary college writers and a forward from Spanky (a three-time college comedian of the year), the book is a 130-page dissection of college life, filled with sarcasm and designed so it can be read in one sitting or a page at a time. With a work hard, play hard attitude, Hofstetter once again proves that no matter who you are or where you went to school, college is, well, college.

Faced with a deepening crisis in their universities, African students have demonstrated a growing activism and militancy. They have been engaged in numerous, often violent, strikes for improvements in their deteriorating living and study conditions and the introduction of a democratic culture in the universities and society as a whole, including the right to express their views, organise in student unions and participate in university management. This book focuses on a recent violent strike action in Cameroons state universities, with special attention to the University of Buea the only English-speaking university in the country between 1993 and 2011. Such a detailed study on student strikes is still rare in African studies, and maybe even more important, this book pays special attention to certain elements that have been of great significance to the strike but are often overlooked in narratives of other student actions in Africa, namely the use of cell phones, differences in gender roles of student activists, the religious dimensions of the strike, the central role of some public spaces like bars and cafs for the planning and execution of student strikes, and the power of the photocopier. The book goes far beyond simply documenting the various protest actions of students against the state and university authorities. It also provides ample room for comments from journalists and other civil-society members and groups on various aspects of the strike.

This book draws from and analyzes teachers’ and students’ stories of great classes in order to promote teachers’ development of pedagogical tact and to encourage flow states for students. Taken together, these theoretical lenses—pedagogical tact and flow—provide a valuable framework for understanding and motivating classroom engagement. As the authors suggest, tactful teachers are more likely to see their students in flow than teachers who struggle with basic classroom routines and practices. Grounded in narrative research, and written for pre-service teachers, the book offers strategies for replicating these first-hand accounts of peak classroom teaching and learning.