Some books college teachers need to read

Maryanne Wolf: Reader Come Home - about how digital reading is changing our brains. I think this is extremely important in something I do, open educational resources, which are almost completely digital and which we are assuming are experienced by students just like traditional physical textbooks, only without the costs. They are not. I have a dog in this fight, having authored a successful OER (http://www.exploringpublicspeaking.com)

Angela Duckworth: Grit  - about her extensive work on the "grit scale." I haven't quite figured out why this is so ground-breaking except that she has a lot of her primary research behind it. I was annoyed by her example of all these top-tier successful people. One can be successful without going to the Naval Academy, winning political races, or being awarded the Nobel Prize. 

Ellen Langer: Mindfulness - not about meditation, but critical thinking and reflection. I liked it much better than I thought I was and need to revisit it.


Carol Dweck: Mindset - Like Grit, it's been criticized because school systems have treated it as if it answers every single question in the universe. It is a corrective to the talent myth and falls into the nature/nurture debate. I will always fall on the side of nurture, as long as nurture includes one's human will.


I do not recommend these books because I agree with them or think their ideas are some kind of received, revealed truth, but because they are influencing academia, even if they don't entirely stand up to scrutiny. 

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