What way forward for the contemporary university? Critical University: Moving Higher Education Forward traverses fields in critical theory (Marcuse, Althusser), psychoanalysis (Kristeva, Freud), phenomenology (Husserl), and the philosophy of education (predominantly Freire and hooks) to analyze the direction forward for the contemporary university. Loughead’s writing style is lucid and accessible, yet provocative. She aims first and foremost for a pedagogical engagement with the reader, avoiding (or explicating clearly) the specialized vocabulary of her discipline. Though this book deals with complex philosophical ideas, its goal is not to merely tease out some abstract philosophical problem, but instead to intervene and provoke new directions in the contemporary discussion of the university in crisis, and to be part of a collection of works inspiring a more just society.
A remarkable indictment of how misguided business policies have undermined the American higher education system. Winner of the CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title of the Choice ACRL Higher education in America, still thought to be the world leader, is in crisis. University students are falling behind their international peers in attainment, while suffering from unprecedented student debt. For over a decade, the realm of American higher education has been wracked with self-doubt and mutual recrimination, with no clear solutions on the horizon. How did this happen? In this stunning new book, Christopher Newfield offers readers an in-depth analysis of the “great mistake” that led to the cycle of decline and dissolution, a mistake that impacts every public college and university in America. What might occur, he asserts, is no less than locked-in economic inequality and the fall of the middle class. In The Great Mistake, Newfield asks how we can fix higher education, given the damage done by private-sector models. The current accepted wisdom—that to succeed, universities should be more like businesses—is dead wrong. Newfield combines firsthand experience with expert analysis to show that private funding and private-sector methods cannot replace public funding or improve efficiency, arguing that business-minded practices have increased costs and gravely damaged the university’s value to society. It is imperative that universities move beyond the destructive policies that have led them to destabilize their finances, raise tuition, overbuild facilities, create a national student debt crisis, and lower educational quality. Laying out an interconnected cycle of mistakes, from subsidizing the private sector to “the poor get poorer” funding policies, Newfield clearly demonstrates how decisions made in government, in the corporate world, and at colleges themselves contribute to the dismantling of once-great public higher education. A powerful, hopeful critique of the unnecessary death spiral of higher education, The Great Mistake is essential reading for those who wonder why students have been paying more to get less and for everyone who cares about the role the higher education system plays in improving the lives of average Americans.
Becoming a critical thinker is a straight-forward, reassuring, and complete guide to critical thinking - one that helps you to understand critical thinking and develop the skills needed to employ it. This book supports the reader to not only think critically, but to do so independently, as a student, professional, and global citizen.The book has a clear three-part structure: firstly, examining what critical thinking is; secondly, exploring the three overarching aims of critical thinking; and finally, focussing on how to develop the essential tools to support those aims. This text assumes no prior knowledge or understanding: it has been developed to gently guide the reader from school-level education to university-level thinking in a clear and engaging manner.This is the only critical thinking skills text to offer insights and advice from professionals and students, helping the reader learn from the experiences of others in a range of contexts. Each chapter also offers guided exercises, checklists, and further reading to encourage the reader to apply techniques learnt to real situations. It is also the only text to offer chapters dedicated to listening and speaking, which are often overlooked, but are vitally important skills.This is the ideal introduction to critical thinking for students across all disciplines. Digital formats and resourcesBecoming a Critical Thinker is available for students and institutions to purchase in a variety of formats, and is supported by online resources. - The e-book offers a mobile experience and convenient access along with functionality tools, navigation features, and links that offer extra learning support: www.oxfordtextbooks.co.uk/ebooks- The book's online resources include: For students: - Additional 'student say' features - Links to additional resources - Downloadable Tools Matrix - Downloadable checklists - Fully-customisable argument map - MCQs - Flashcard glossary For lecturers: - Tutorial suggestions - PowerPoint slides
The idea of "region" in America has often served to isolate places from each other, observes Douglas Reichert Powell. Whether in the nostalgic celebration of folk cultures or the urbane distaste for "hicks," certain regions of the country are identified as static, insular, and culturally disconnected from everywhere else. In Critical Regionalism, Reichert Powell explores this trend and offers alternatives to it. Reichert Powell proposes using more nuanced strategies that identify distinctive aspects of particular geographically marginal communities without turning them into peculiar "hick towns." He enacts a new methodology of critical regionalism in order to link local concerns and debates to larger patterns of history, politics, and culture. To illustrate his method, in each chapter of the book Reichert Powell juxtaposes widely known texts from American literature and film with texts from and about his own Appalachian hometown of Johnson City, Tennessee. He carries the idea further in a call for a critical regionalist pedagogy that uses the classroom as a place for academic writers to build new connections with their surroundings, and to teach others to do so as well.
Communications, philosophy, film and video, digital culture: media studies straddles an astounding array of fields and disciplines and produces a vocabulary that is in equal parts rigorous and intuitive. Critical Terms for Media Studies defines, and at times, redefines, what this new and hybrid area aims to do, illuminating the key concepts behind its liveliest debates and most dynamic topics. Part of a larger conversation that engages culture, technology, and politics, this exciting collection of essays explores our most critical language for dealing with the qualities and modes of contemporary media. Edited by two outstanding scholars in the field, W. J. T. Mitchell and Mark B. N. Hansen, the volume features works by a team of distinguished contributors. These essays, commissioned expressly for this volume, are organized into three interrelated groups: “Aesthetics” engages with terms that describe sensory experiences and judgments, “Technology” offers entry into a broad array of technological concepts, and “Society” opens up language describing the systems that allow a medium to function. A compelling reference work for the twenty-first century and the media that form our experience within it, Critical Terms for Media Studies will engage and deepen any reader’s knowledge of one of our most important new fields.
Building on the intellectual and political momentum that established the Critical Ethnic Studies Association, this Reader inaugurates a radical response to the appropriations of liberal multiculturalism while building on the possibilities enlivened by the historical work of Ethnic Studies. It does not attempt to circumscribe the boundaries of Critical Ethnic Studies; rather, it offers a space to promote open dialogue, discussion, and debate regarding the field's expansive, politically complex, and intellectually rich concerns. Covering a wide range of topics, from multiculturalism, the neoliberal university, and the exploitation of bodies to empire, the militarized security state, and decolonialism, these twenty-five essays call attention to the urgency of articulating a Critical Ethnic Studies for the twenty-first century.
"Critical Models' combines two of Adorno's most important postwar works - 'Interventions' and 'Catchwords"--And addresses issues such as the dangers of ideological conformity, the fragility of democracy, educational reform, the influence of television and radio and the aftermath and continuity of racism.
Whether universities can survive as critical organisations in the current time is an open question which this volume seeks to address. The book examines particular aspects of three main themes: governance, critical regulation and regulated criticism; growth, equality, movement and instability in higher education systems; and teaching and learning. Topics range from ‘University Futures’ to an examination of governance by procedure and the loss of the social process of the university; a discussion of the meaning of academic freedom; and approaches to managerialism. Quality management is discussed, along with the question of whether European Liberal Education actually exists. Various aspects of the theme of teaching and learning are examined, from student participation in out-of-class activities, to the role of Centres of Excellence, and a consideration of widening participation. The book is international in its reach, and addresses the continuing dilemmas faced in higher education systems, within Europe and beyond.
This concise and practical text will equip students with the effective reading strategies they need when preparing for their university assessments. It dispels assumptions often made about the nature of reading at university, and provides an overview of the culture of academic reading, note-making, and what markers expect. This text provides support for reading structured around the process of crafting an assignment, including reading critically and developing an academic voice.
Critical Academic Writing and Multilingual Students is a guide for writing teachers who wish to embark on a journey toward increased critical awareness of the role they play, or potentially could play, in the lives of their students."--Jacket.
