Last year, we provided suggestions for your summer reading lists from books we’ve read ourselves. 
This summer we’d like to provide additional suggestions. Over the summer, CITL consultants plan to collectively read Anton Tolman and Janine Kremling’s Why Students Resist Learning (2016). In this book, the authors propose an integrated model to explain why students may be less than eager to engage in learning tasks and provide strategies to address this resistance. Importantly, they include student voices in the discussion as well.
In addition to the collective read, we have individually read a number of books as well. A few of these are shared below.
Who’s Asking? Native Science, Western Science, and Science Education – Medin & Bang (2014)
This book explores the experiences of Native American students with science as part of a narrative to understand under-representation of African-Americans and indigenous peoples in STEM. As a critique of deficit-based explanations such as poor preparation or lack of resources, Douglas Medin and Megan Bang make visible and critique the culture, discourse, assumptions, and practice of Western science and science education. In addition, they share Native science knowledge as a vibrant and culturally meaningful process of knowing.
– Read by Katie Kearns
On Your Mark: Challenging the Conventions of Grading and Reporting – Guskey (2014)
In a very readable 100 pages, Thomas Guskey invites the reader to consider the purpose of grades and rethink the many traditional grading practices that interfere with, muddy, or outright contravene that purpose. Written for the K-12 audience, the monograph nevertheless has much to offer college instructors. Its lessons may be very helpful to instructors reflecting on their grading practices.
– Read by friend of the CITL Eric Metzler
Overcoming Student Learning Bottlenecks: Decode the Critical Thinking of Your Discipline – Middendorf & Shopkow (2017)
“Learning can be hard, and one of the beauties of the decoding the disciplines process described in this new volume is its respect for the real difficulties students face as they encounter unfamiliar ideas and mental models. With those difficulties–or bottlenecks–as a starting point, Middendorf and Shopkow lay out an elegant step-by-step structure for improving learning, rethinking classroom practice, and creating a more teaching-positive campus culture.”
– Amazon review from Pat Hutchings, Senior Scholar National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment and Bay View Alliance
Paying for the Party: How College Maintains Inequality – Armstrong & Hamilton (2015)
This eye-opening book shares the results from a longitudinal study conducted at a large Midwestern university. Researchers studied a group of women who lived in the same dorm during their freshmen year and followed their progress throughout college and a year beyond graduation to explore the many reasons why these women attended university.
– Read by Madeleine Gonin
Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning – Lang (2016)
In this incredibly useful book, James Lang presents a collection of small classroom activities and teaching strategies that are soundly grounded in research about how students learn. More than just a collection of teaching tips, this book provides a framework by which instructors can start making significant improvements to their teaching through relatively small steps that impact student knowledge, understanding, and motivation. The book is an engaging read and provides a balance of use-it-on-Monday teaching strategies and the deeper lessons about learning that underlie them.
– Read by Greg Siering
Dynamic Lecturing – Harrington & Zakrajsek (2017)
As the discussion around active learning has expanded, “lecture” has become a dirty word. However, lecturing and active learning are not either/or decisions. In this book, Christine Harrington and Todd Zakrajsek discuss the research on lecturing and offer tangible strategies for making lecture more effective when it is the appropriate pedagogical choice.
– Read by Shannon Sipes
If you are interested in reading Dynamic Lecturing, consider joining us for a reading group this fall sponsored by the IUB SoTL program within the CITL. The reading group is open to all faculty and AIs of Indiana University, but registration is limited to 14. Participants will receive a copy of the book.
Meetings will be held in the Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning in the Wells Library from 9:00-10:30 a.m. on the following Fridays: Sept. 7, Oct. 12, and Nov. 9, 2018. If you are interested in joining the book group and can commit to attending all three of these meetings, please fill out the brief application form no later than Friday, June 15, 2018.
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