This book brings together reflections from seventy academics – everyone from doctoral students to a retired provost – who share their lived experiences in graduate school and beyond. Career seekers, adjunct professors, those in or considering graduate school, and tenure-track professors alike will find truths revealed through these shared experiences of struggle, triumph, loss and hope.
The book publishing industry is going through a period of profound and turbulent change brought about in part by the digital revolution. What is the role of the book in an age preoccupied with computers and the internet? How has the book publishing industry been transformed by the economic and technological upheavals of recent years, and how is it likely to change in the future? This is the first major study of the book publishing industry in Britain and the United States for more than two decades. Thompson focuses on academic and higher education publishing and analyses the evolution of these sectors from 1980 to the present. He shows that each sector is characterized by its own distinctive ‘logic’ or dynamic of change, and that by reconstructing this logic we can understand the problems, challenges and opportunities faced by publishing firms today. He also shows that the digital revolution has had, and continues to have, a profound impact on the book publishing business, although the real impact of this revolution has little to do with the ebook scenarios imagined by many commentators. Books in the Digital Age will become a standard work on the publishing industry at the beginning of the 21st century. It will be of great interest to students taking courses in the sociology of culture, media and cultural studies, and publishing. It will also be of great value to professionals in the publishing industry, educators and policy makers, and to anyone interested in books and their future.
In university teachers'' hectic lives, finding space to reflect, restore, renew, and recommit can seem impossible. Jean Koh Peters and Mark Weisberg believe regular reflection is critical and have designed A Teacher''s Reflection Book to help teachers and other professionals find that space. Growing out of the authors'' extensive experience facilitating retreats and leading teaching and learning workshops, the book builds on their discoveries in those settings, supporting and promoting teachers'' self-directed development. Inviting that development, A Teacher''s Reflection Book is a cornucopia of stories, exercises, and examples that will inspire teachers to make reflection a cornerstone of their daily lives. With its multiple suggestions and strategies, it offers something for every reader, and is responsive to teachers'' needs at all stages of their careers. The book''s six chapters offer readers several perspectives from which to reflect. Some sections offer glimpses of teachers in the midst of their daily teaching lives, while others step away, inviting readers to reflect on what it means to have a vocation as a teacher. The book explores how we listen, a crucial yet rarely taught skill, essential for reflecting, as well as for learning and teaching. And it invites teachers to reflect on their students: who they are, and what and how they learn. For those latter reflections, the authors turn the focus on fear, which so pervades university life and which can distort learners'' and teachers'' perspectives and responses. Throughout this book, readers will visit several classrooms and listen to the evocative voices of several thoughtful students. Revelatory, practical, and wise, A Teacher''s Reflection Book is a valuable companion and guide. "One key strength of the book is its authentic writing style, which engages the reader and builds the trustworthiness of the authors. Another strength is the book''s wealth of readings and the activities it offers to catalyze teacher reflection." -- Teaching Theology and Religion, Ryan S. Gardner "This excellent book should be part of every teacher''s professional library. It is a book pitched at all teachers in higher education and, through the processes of reflection, a book that advances important principles of good teaching practice that are usually introduced all too briefly in the basic texts on teaching in higher education. ...Several descriptive words come to mind when reading this book. It is a polite and gentle book. Politeness is revealed in the book''s sub-title - ''Exercises, stories, invitations''. It is the idea of invitation that characterizes much of the book. It is not didactic but rather invites us to use the book and the processes described in it in ways that work best for us. It does this through questions and inductive approaches to reflection. Through these approaches and the careful use of real-life examples, we are gently invited to explore the perspectives presented in the text and apply these to our personal and professional lives. It is also an accessible book. Most refreshingly, it is not burdened with unnecessary technical jargon and convoluted language that sadly cripples too much writing in education today and makes learning inaccessible to many, particularly for those readers whose first language is not English." -- Higher Education Research & Development (HERDSA), Robert Cannon "I was asked to write a book review but I find that, instead, I want to write a thank you note thanking Jean Koh Peters and Mark Weisberg for the gift of their book, A Teacher''s Reflection Book. ...The reflections, examples and exercises you offer in the book make reflecting about both challenging and positive moments in my life as a teacher feel like something I can do easily and regularly. ...In this book, you have found a way to model, encourage and help create a compassionate space where teachers can make the deepest connection between who they are and what they do. You give us permission to find our truth in and the courage to bring our hearts to our teaching and writing. You have made a home for reflection." -- The Law Teacher, Kimberly Kirkland, University of New Hampshire School of Law "We are all so busy. We race from task to task. We attempt to multi-task; dividing and depleting our energies. How many times do we arrive in class breathless with hardly a moment to think about what we have planned for the day? I harbor no illusions that a blog entry is going to change our lives, but I would like to use this one to reiterate the need to make time for reflection, for contemplation about what we do, and how and why we do it. The value of doing so is laid out clearly in [this] new book..." -- Teaching Professor Blog, Maryellen Weimer
This book is open access under a CC-BY licence. Part of the AHRC/British Library Academic Book of the Future Project, this book interrogates current and emerging contexts of academic books from the perspectives of thirteen expert voices from the connected communities of publishing, academia, libraries, and bookselling.
From the Winner of the Grawemeyer Award in Education in 2007 "In the world of education reform, where silver-bullet ideas, ideologies, and intellectual fashion clamor for influence, James Comer's thinking has long been a sea of calm, balanced, and humane wisdom focused on the needs of the whole person. Reading Comer you see the incompleteness of so many other approaches to reform, as well as learn an integrated approach to making schools work. And now, here it all is in a single book. If you want to see how schools can actually work, as opposed to affiliate with a prior belief about how they should work, this is a must read." —Claude Steele,professor, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University "The best introduction?professional and personal—to the remarkable world of James Comer: physician-educator, par excellence." —Howard Gardner, Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education, Cambridge, Massachusetts "James Comer is a rare constellation among social scientists: a great intellect, a keen analyst, a creative problem-solver and a man of enormous empathy. His writings are required reading for anyone interested in education reform or improving the odds for poor children." —Geoffrey Canada, president and CEO, Harlem Children's Zone
Carolyn Ellis is the leading writer in the move toward personal, autobiographical writing as a strategy for academic research. In addition to her landmark books Final Negotiations and The Ethnographic I, she has authored numerous stories that demonstrate the emotional power and academic value of autoethnography. This volume collects a dozen of Ellis’s stories—about the loss of her husband, brother and mother; of growing up in small town Virginia; about the work of the ethnographer; about emotionally charged life issues such as abortion, caregiving, and love. Atop these captivating stories, she adds the component of meta-autoethography—a layering of new interpretations, reflections, and vignettes to her older work. An important new work for qualitative researchers and a student-friendly text for courses.
Serena Casey takes us on a journey through her life and career as an educator. It is both a personal tale of growth and an insightful look at what constitutes good teaching. Her own teachers, her colleagues, her bosses, and mostly her students star in this touching story of what a life of teaching has meant to one woman. Anyone who is a teacher—or who has ever been a student—will be glad to have taken this journey with her.
Reveals small but significant actions people can take to lead happier lives, offering reflections on such topics as family, relationships, work, school, sports, emotions, and experiences.
This book records the stories of doctoral study experiences of the twenty-two writers. These research degree experiences are embedded in the lives and careers of the writers and the twenty-two distinctive projects draw from those individual lives and careers. The authors write about meeting the continuing demands of older and younger family members and of their struggles with ill health and work place demands while working through their studies. There is also the joy of coming to see themselves and being seen as research scholars and supporting and celebrating with others as they move through candidature proposals and ethics applications to graduation. Apart from the stories that bring the writers to their particular projects and that colour their individual journeys, storying methodology is most often selected for the research, all of which is undertaken within the arts, humanities and education. Phenomenology, narrative, ethnography are central to most of the studies and the detailed accounts of each research topic, methods and outcomes locate each of the research projects in rich bodies of knowledge. Valued writers and readers in these fields, Mary Beattie and Elaine Martin have read each reflection and provided in turn a foreword and an afterword which bookend the volume and further enrich these reflections on learning, life and work.
