false 5 188 188 true 5827424 read 0 true 2461573 currently-reading 0 true 2461572 to-read 11 false 3760528 pedagogy http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/32703548 to: Classroom Assessment Techniques: A Handbook for College Teachers (Jossey Bass Higher and Adult Education Series) by Thomas A. Angelo
This book purports to give ideas on how to get feedback on what, how much, and how well students are learning. Tips include thinking through and assessing your personal teaching goals, and then creating assessments to achieve those ends. Chapter 2 presents a worksheet that helps you to identify the goals most pertinent to your teaching style. As the book points out, you can't know if your students have reached the learning goals you had hoped if you have not clearly articulated your goals at least to yourself. Chapter 3 takes you through the steps of classroom assessment techniques -- evaluation tools that function as "feedback devices."
After glossing classroom assessment, the book then offers 50 different methods for gaining this feedback and evaluating the attainment of goals.
Overall, this book would be helpful to the teacher putting together a 309K course -- it offers a clear way of thinking about the goals of your course. Often, we can get over-excited about our topic in 309K, and forget the learning goals -- this book offers help conceptualizing your course through goals and assessment.
This book offers questions to ask yourself when creating course evaluations, but does not offer hand-outs or examples. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/32703881 to: Engaging Ideas: The Professor's Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking, and Active Learning in the Classroom (Jossey Bass Higher and Adult Education Series) by John C. Bean
bookshelves: pedagogy
Extremely helpful to the beginning writing teacher!! So much so, that I'm buying the book for myself. Considered to be an "Owner's Manual" for using writing as a method of critical thinking. Author offers instruction on planning your course through writing assignments (especially good for when you need to write your 309K proposal), and concrete ideas for creating those writing assignments.
Chapter 4 presents a helpful way to deal with and think about student errors with grammar and correctness, and offers ways to comment on papers to address error without being bogged down by it.
Chapter 5 presents the nuts and bolts of formal writing assignments from conception through hand-outs, and small prep assignments that work toward the larger assignment.
The bulk of the book focuses on the teacher as "coach" -- a guide through the process of learning to think critically and express ideas through writing. Chapters include examples of short writing and classroom assignments. Author also gives ways to use writing assignments to help students with the process of reading difficult texts.
Chapter 12 discusses ways to break down the tasks of research papers, and would be helpful for anyone teaching 306.
The final chapters of the book focus on the process of commenting on and grading written assignments -- excellent reading for anyone faced with giving revision comments for the first time. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/32708917 Understanding by Design (Paperback) by Grant Wiggins
Wiggins offers ideas for designing curriculum to engage students in exploring and deepening their understanding of important ideas, and creating assessments that reveal the extent of their understanding. This is not a step-by-step guide on how to design a course, but rather a conceptual framework and design process. It offers a way of thinking about your course, but does not offer individual lesson plans.

I read the book at the same time I was putting together my 309K proposal, and found it very helpful. The author advocates creating your class through a backward design process:
1) Identify the results -- what do you want student to know/understand/be able to do, at the end of your course?
2) Determine what constitutes acceptable evidence that your students have achieved the desired outcome
3) Plan learning experiences and instruction according to your end goals

The author also discusses getting to the essential questions that frame your course. As a way to develop this framework, he poses the question,"If the textbook contains the answers, what are the questions?"

Overall, for the instructor faced with creating their first course proposal, this book is a good starting place. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/32704145 Writing Space: Computers, Hypertext, and the Remediation of Print, Second Edition (Paperback) by Jay David Bolter
As a "good read," this is a fascinating book, exploring the history of writing technology from chiseling in stone to papyrus scroll to the computer. Bolter looks at how changes in technology challenge more traditional forms of engaging material -- the changes necessitated by the medium into arranging verbal ideas in visual spaces.

In exploring how the computer has redefined the writing space, Bolter examines ways in which the internet has privileged the visual over the verbal, and the interactive over the static.

For the classroom, this book makes a good argument for teaching writing in less traditional ways. Bolter presents good reasons why the writing process will never be the same. The writing space has been redefined, and web-based writing should perhaps be a part of the writing curriculum.

For the first-year teacher, this book may offer insight into your more visually-oriented students, and good arguments for incorporating computer mediated writing in the classroom. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/32705697 Passions Pedagogies And 21St Century Technologies (Paperback) by Gail Hawisher
bookshelves: pedagogy
Although not designed for easily-extractable classroom ideas, the essays in Passions, Pedagogies, and 21st Century Technologies offer opportunities for reflection on literacy and technology, which have the potential to translate into concrete teaching practices and assignments.

The essays in this collection range in approach/purpose, from historical surveys to case studies of student composition practices to attempts to raise broader socioeconomic issues of technology and access. Some of these essays were experiments in form that I found self-indulgent and/or dated. Below, a few essays that seemed to raise issues of interest for graduate instructors:

Ch. 2 on the essay, or what the author refers to as "essayistic literacy." What is the value of assigning essays? What can the genre do for students' thinking and writing that other types of assignments do not make possible?

Ch. 8 thinks through (or gives you the tools to think through) the instructor's role in online discussion forums.

The third section on "Ethical and feminist concerns in an electronic world" might be worth checking out for instructors with an interest in feminist pedagogy. For example, Ch. 15 tackles visual representations of women (and their self-representation) on the web.
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/32703114 Teaching for Understanding: Linking Research with Practice (Jossey Bass Education Series) by Martha Stone Wiske
bookshelves: pedagogy

This book requires braving education-theory speak, but its aims are worthwhile: to focus on what the authors call a "performance of understanding," i.e., to shift one's emphasis from products to process in the classroom.

While not useful for everyday teaching ideas, the book offers some questions to ask yourself that might be helpful for curriculum design (or redesign) (see esp. Ch. 3). ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/32704919 Designing Groupwork: Strategies for the Heterogeneous Classroom (Paperback) by Elizabeth G. Cohen
bookshelves: pedagogy
This book might be helpful for new instructors or lecture-centric instructors who need a basic introduction to the how and why of groupwork.

I wouldn't recommend Designing Groupwork for instructors who already incorporate groupwork successfully in their classroom practice. Also, the practical classroom ideas in the appendices are geared toward elementary and secondary school educators.
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/32706052 Writing/Teaching: Essays Toward a Rhetoric of Pedagogy (Pittsburgh Series in Composition, Literacy and Culture) by Paul Kameen
bookshelves: pedagogy
Lots of scholars love this book. As a reflective piece of writing on what it means to teach, it is an interesting read. However, those of us who come to the CWRL library as relatively inexperienced teachers and harried graduate students looking for a little help will not find it here.

I found the book to be on the self-indulgent side. For example, Part II of the book is devoted to one of the "significant voices" in the construction of the author's "teacherly position." It is imagined as a dialogue with Plato about teaching -- as a way for the author to call for a larger debate about what it means to teach.

Part I of the book is a series of Essays on the author's experiences in the classroom -- it examines his fears and his intellectual connundrums and the demanding mistress that is poetry.

]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/32704979 The Writing Teacher's Sourcebook (Paperback) by Edward P. J. Corbett
The title of this book is misleading. When I thought of a "sourcebook," I imagined a lot of practical help in putting together classes and activities that would help me in facilitating understanding of the writing process. This book is not at all like that.

The book, instead, is a collection of essays culled from the standard composition journals. The essays are presented in two major sections: The context of writing and the teaching of writing.

Each essay addresses aspects of teaching writing. It's greatest strength lies in helping the beginning teacher think through student needs and teaching goals. It would make a great textbook for a course on pedagogy in that it is full of things to think through before teaching your class.

Most of the essays are very personal and would be helpful to a teacher struggling with a particular aspect of the classroom. For example, there are essays on re-thinking remedial writing courses, and experiences with ESL classrooms.

The book functions more as a counselor, if you will, and less as a sourcebook. Again, a good read for before you start teaching, not so helpful once you're in the middle of the semester and looking for help. ]]>