Outstanding Academic Titles 2024: Education

Enjoy this week's Outstanding Academic Titles list snippet: Five titles pertaining to Education

Posted on February 6, 2025 in Outstanding Academic Titles

Enjoy these five selections from the Choice Reviews 2024 Outstanding Academic Titles list. This week, we highlight Outstanding Academic Titles focused on Education. A hearty congratulations to the winning authors, editors, and publishers!

1. Campus misinformation : the real threat to free speech in American higher education
Vivian, Bradford. Oxford, 2023

In recent years, trust in higher education has eroded. A survey conducted in 2022 showed that merely 55 percent of Americans held a positive view of the impact colleges and universities have on society. As Vivian (communication, Penn State Univ.) illustrates in his highly important book, misinformation about campuses has a lot to do with the negative perception of higher education. One frequently echoed accusation is that colleges and universities predominantly uphold progressive politics, thereby displaying hostility toward conservative viewpoints. However, Vivian argues that attempting to counterbalance progressive and conservative perspectives under the banner of “viewpoint diversity” might not be the solution. Instead, he asserts that genuine freedom of speech should ensure the inclusion of a wide array of diverse viewpoints, extending well beyond the confines of the progressive/conservative dichotomy. View on Amazon

2. Rise and thrive with science: teaching pK–5 science and engineering
by Nancy Kober with Heidi Carlone National Academies Press, 2024

This excellent guide is for teachers who want to improve their student-centered science teaching with children. Building on decades of research, this volume is designed to make science and engineering learning meaningful, equitable, and enduring. Taken together, the well-written chapters offer a comprehensive overview of the fundamentals for engaging students in the active process of sense-making and problem-solving in both natural and designed environments. Bringing the vision of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) to life, the book offers real-world case studies of high-quality learning and teaching examples from classrooms serving students grades pK–5. Chapter 5 explores discourse in the preschool and elementary classrooms, and offers “talk moves” that teachers can immediately leverage to enhance their whole-group and/or small-group discussions. The final chapters address the topics of assessment and integration across the curriculum, which are both timely and important areas for consideration; however, more experienced teachers will likely want even more. View on Amazon

3. High leverage practices for intensive interventions
ed. by James McLeskey et al Routledge, 2023

The editors of this text have assembled perhaps the most influential group of scholars and researchers in the field of special education today to produce a book that will be well received by those preparing to be teachers of children with disabilities. The volume is, like many others over the years, a how-to compendium of effective practices for difficult-to-teach children. In fact, if one were to place the words “how to” at the start of most of the chapter headings (e.g., “Teach Social Behaviors,” “Provide Intensive Instruction,” etc.), the purpose of the book would be better understood. Unlike many other books of this type, all of the pedagogical strategies included here are field-validated and time-proven to be effective with this population of students. Examples of the strategies are numerous and easy to understand. Each chapter adheres to a specific format (Introduction, Narrowing the Focus, Overview/Outcomes, Using the Strategies, Wrap Up). Chapters are short, concise, and replete with examples of how the high leverage practices are supposed to operate in real-life situations. View on Amazon

4. Undeclared: a philosophy of formative higher education Higgins, Chris. MIT, 2024

How might corporatized and ossified higher educational institutions change if they were animated by the purpose of forming full human beings—human beings whose education had not been reduced to mere job training? What philosophical principles and pedagogy would guide such an endeavor? And from what historical examples and ideas might this critical effort draw? Higgins (Boston College) imaginatively explores these kinds of questions in his brilliant, spirited, and profoundly important new book. Borrowing extensively from Michael Oakeshott, John Dewey, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Maxine Greene, among others, and the brief but vital experience of Black Mountain College (1933–57), Higgins makes the case for recovering the ancient notion of higher education as Skholê, a period of purposeful, convivial, and exploratory leisure. Or, in Oakeshott’s formulation, “the gift of the interval” between the two grinds: the grind of childhood socialization and the grind of adulthood compulsion to the marketplace. Higgins’s reconceptualization of higher education would provide young people with the occasion to explore fundamental questions earnestly and to remain wide awake in whatever vocation they might eventually declare. View on Amazon.

5. Teach for climate justice: a vision for transforming education Roderick, Tom. Harvard Education Press, 2023

Beyond books merely addressing the issues underpinning environmental education, this interdisciplinary guide to promoting climate justice is perhaps the best education book this reviewer has read in a year. Roderick (independent scholar) places students and the community at the forefront of learning and teaching. The importance of cultivating a deep love of nature is the foundation of this book. The comprehensive strategy of fostering climate and social justice it presents is developmentally on target—and that is no small accomplishment. Topics like climate change, air pollution, land conservation, and biodiversity loss are inherently stressful issues to address in classrooms—even frightening for many students—and although this approach advocates deep understandings of these and other urgent issues, they are dealt with in a way that enhances community and promotes agency. The chapters are well sequenced, and notions of “active hope” and transformative grassroots approaches come on the heels of addressing these timely global challenges. Crossing the boundaries of policy, curriculum, and practice, this easily accessible book will be well received across a variety of contexts in K–16 education. View on Amazon.

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