Annotated+Bibliography

Several people had asked for a bibliography with suggested readings-- here is a list of sources to start, and some select passages from them in the attached file. Feel free to add other recommended titles to this list!

// Ken Bain is Vice Provost for Instruction and Director of Montclair University’s ////Teaching and Learning Resource Center. His book’s central question, “what do the best college teachers do?,” is answered by drawing from a fifteen-year study into the practices and insights of highly successful teachers. These outstanding teachers were selected according to Bain because they had achieved “remarkable success in helping their students learn in ways that made a sustained, substantial, and positive influence on how those students think, act, and feel” (5). The book covers a wide range of topics from preparing to teach, expectations of students, classroom management, ways to treat students, and methods of evaluating both students and self.//
 * Bain, Ken. //What the Best College Teachers Do//, Harvard University Press, 2004. **

//John Dewey (October 20, 1859 – June 1, 1952) has had a profound influence on education and philosophy around the world////. One educator has written, "Dewey has been to our age what Aristotle was as to the late Middle Ages, not a philosopher, but **the** philosopher.” This small volume of 91 pages was written late in his career to most concisely present his thoughts about education in the light of his experience with progressive schools and the criticism his theories received. Like all of Dewey’s work, it is not a simple read.//
 * Dewey, John. //Experience & Education,// Collier Books 1938.**

//Donald Finkel and Peter Elbow were among the founding faculty of The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, and were close friends. Though Donald died in September 1999, he fortunately wrote this simple 179-page book about his story of how he learned to produce significant learning in others. The book parallels ‘Gems of Pedagogy’ in its provocation of how to think with others about what we do. Peter wrote the Foreword to this book (and many other works later). This work by Donald Finkel is a treasure.//
 * Finkel, Donald L. //Teaching with Your Mouth Shut,// Boynton/Cook Publishers, Inc. 2000.**

//This is a book-length essay about the ethical ideal of creating the conditions that permit caring to flourish. The caring attitude, that attitude we all have experienced of both caring for others and being cared for, is universally accessible. This treatise explores how caring and the joy of that relatedness bears upon the actions of teachers and the organization of schools. She has given names to the two parties in caring as ordered pairs: “one-caring” refers to the first member and “cared-for” is the second member. In describing the former she uses feminine pronouns and the latter masculine.//
 * Noddings, Nel. //Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education,// University of California Press 1984, 2003.**

// In 1997 Parker Palmer lit up the academic stage with his book, // The Courage to Teach, //gently challenging teachers to not give up hope but instead to look inward – to find their “inner landscape” – as a source for professional renewal. Now 71, Palmer spends most of his time supporting the work of the non-profit organization he founded, The Center for Courage & Renewal, which has touched over 25,000 educators to date.//
 * Palmer, Parker J. //The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher’s Life//, John Wiley & Sons 2007.**

//For twenty years Raider-Roth has taught students of all ages, from first grade to graduate school. She has also been a researcher at Harvard Project Zero. The examples in this book are taken from elementary education, specifically four children whose stories illustrate the tensions about knowing and not knowing, trust and mistrust, connecting and disconnecting. The human relationships in school fundamentally shape each student’s capacity to learn, know and trust. Their stories address an essential topic for all educators: pay close attention to relationships for they are the foundation of learning.//
 * Raider-Roth, Miriam B. //Trusting What You Know,// Jossey-Bass 2005.**
 * ISBN 0-7879-7165-0**

//The central idea is ‘reflection-in-action’, which takes a bit to comprehend, unless of course it is the way you currently approach your own uncertainty. Schön offers many examples, which essentially describe what it means to be a professional.//
 * Schön, Donald A. //The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action,// Basic Books 1983.**

//Smilkstein, a developmental English teacher at North Seattle Community College, has merged neuroscience research with pedagogy. She has conducted research around the world in how people learn, including those who are ‘successful’ and those who have been marginalized as ‘deficient’ or ‘remedial.’ This book shows what happens when students are challenged to ‘see if you can figure this out.’//
 * Smilkstein, Rita. //We’re Born to Learn: Using the Brain’s Natural Learning Process to Create Today’s Curriculum// Corwin Press, Inc. 2003.**