If you are looking for suggestions for summer reading, you might turn to Google only to discover it seems everyone has a reading list. PBS has a list of America’s 100 most-loved books. Local county libraries have formal summer reading programs for kids and adults. Newspapers and magazines publish summer reading lists. Even celebrities have reading lists usually coined as book clubs (i.e. Oprah, Reese Witherspoon). CITL is no different. Each year we release a summer reading list of some of the CITL staff’s favorite teaching and learning focused books they’ve read over the past academic year. If you’ve missed the previous reading lists, you can find them by searching ‘reading list’ in the search bar on the CITL blog page.
Teaching as if Learning Matters: Pedagogies of Becoming by Next-Generation Faculty (Robinson, O’Loughlin, Kearns, & Plummer, 2022)
This book is great for graduate students learning to teach or for those mentoring graduate student instructors. In this edited volume, graduate student instructors and recent PhDs discuss how they learned to teach and what they have learned from teaching. The interdisciplinary authors offer insights on teaching identity, altering teaching to student and classroom needs, disciplinary pedagogies, and applying teaching strategies to postgraduate lives. – Recommended by Leslie Drane
Minding Bodies (Hrach, 2021)
I loved this short monograph that explores the connections between physical bodies and metacognitive learning. Hrach challenges us to rethink “being” in university classrooms to “moving” through our programs, rejecting the mind/body dualism and embracing embodied learning. She explains how our bodies naturally oppose the traditional lecture-based learning and explains how to find a way to teach that’s more in tune with our natural rhythms.- Recommended by Sarah Pedzinski
Picture a Professor (Neuhaus, 2022)
This collection of essays features instructors who challenge the typical image of a “professor” (old, bearded, White, male) and creates a space for them to think about how student assumptions impact their work, and what they do about that. In her introduction, Neuhaus notes the three themes that arose from the chapters in this project: 1) the intersections of identity and college education is dependent on reflection, experimentation and adjustment, 2) these practices do not happen in a vacuum, but rather with the support of SoTL networks, and 3) these authors emphasize the importance of classroom communities as opposed to a top-down model of education. – Recommended by Sarah Pedzinski
Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World (Epstein, 2021)
A New York Times bestseller rather than an academic book, Range, provides food for thought for those of us in higher education. Author, David Epstein, introduces readers to kind vs. wicked learning environments and the disciplines and industries that succeed in each, through a combination of concepts and theories from primary literature and stories detailing the application of those concepts and theories. Take a step back from the individual classroom to consider how you are (or are not) preparing students for life after graduation. – Recommended by Shannon Sipes
Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants (Kimmer, 2015)
Another New York Times bestseller, Braiding Sweetgrass is a collection of essays from author Robin Wall Kimmer with one “central argument: that the awakening of ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world” (Amazon description). Through these essays, Kimmer shares what she has learned through different identity lenses including those of Citizen Potawatomi Nation member, academic, botanist, and woman. If possible, choose the audio version, read by Kimmer herself, and get outside while listening. – Recommended by members of the 2022-2023 Indigenous Pedagogy Faculty Learning Community
Syllabus: Notes from an Accidental Professor (Barry, 2020, 5th ed)
In this graphic novel/record keeping method/experiment/experience, Professor Barry guides (I use that term loosely) her readers through an iteration of her syllabi. She self-identifies on the back cover as “a cartoonist, writer, and assistant professor of interdisciplinary creativity”, and this text combines all of those roles. As one moves through the Composition book sized text, we encounter more traditional syllabus pages, with guidelines and assignments, student examples, reflections from Barry herself, and experiments that did (and did not) succeed. Part of the fun of this text is Barry’s artistic talents, but part is also seeing an educator’s mind at work – how do we (re)present concepts to students, especially those from fields disparate to our own? How might we investigate the connection between creative practices and absorbing course content? – Recommended by Mary Helen Truglia
If you enjoy these reading lists, stay tuned for more information about our upcoming fall semester SoTL reading group, open to IUB instructors of all ranks. We will be reading Improving Learning and Mental Health in the College Classroom (Eaton, Hunsaker, & Moon, 2023) and participants will receive a complimentary copy of the book.
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