New Books in Education

Studies show that students who have a positive outlook on their lives outperform students who don’t. Is positive thinking a skill? Can it be taught? Our article is: “Teaching [https://theconversation.com/teaching-positive-psychology-skills-at-school-may-be-one-way-to-help-student-mental-health-and-happiness-217173] Positive Psychology Skills at school may be one way to help student mental health and happiness,” by Dr. Kai Zhuang Shum, published in The Conversation, which explores how the components of happiness and connection can be applied to classroom settings around the world. Amid the reduced access to mental health services for many students, and the rising rates of student stress and depression, researchers are finding that positive psychology interventions make a real difference. “Students who’ve been introduced to science-based ideas about happiness,” Dr. Shum writes, “feel more satisfied with life.” She joins us for this episode to explain more. Our guest is: Dr. Kai Zhuang Shum, who is a Nationally Certified School Psychologist (NCSP) and a Licensed Psychologist. She serves as an assistant professor at the University of Tennessee Knoxville School Psychology Program. She specializes in positive psychology, motivation, anxiety (including OCD), attention, time management, and well-being (happiness). Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler [https://christinagessler.com/], who is the creator, producer and show host of the Academic Life podcast. Listeners may enjoy this playlist: * Mindfulness [https://newbooksnetwork.com/skills-for-scholars-how-can-mindfulness-help#entry:119415@1:url] * The Well-Gardened Mind [https://newbooksnetwork.com/exploring-new-paths-to-mental-health-a-discussion-with-sue-stuart-smith#entry:76677@1:url] * Inside Look at Campus Mental Wellness Services [https://newbooksnetwork.com/inside-look-campus-mental-wellness-services#entry:56341@1:url] * You Will Get Through This [https://newbooksnetwork.com/you-will-get-through-this-real-world-coping-strategies-for-common-mental-health-struggles#entry:333827@1:url] * Belonging: The Science of Creating Connection [https://newbooksnetwork.com/belonging-the-science-of-creating-connection-and-bridging-divides#entry:186456@1:url] * Managing Your Mental Health During Your PhD [https://newbooksnetwork.com/managing-your-mental-health-during-your-phd#entry:215448@1:url] * Make a Meaningful Life [https://newbooksnetwork.com/how-to-stop-chasing-happiness-and-make-a-meaningful-life-instead#entry:42069@1:url] * Meditation [https://newbooksnetwork.com/meditation-episode#entry:52243@1:url] Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! You can support the show by sharing episodes. Join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 240+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. [https://newbooksnetwork.com/category/up-partners/academic-life] And thank you for listening! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices] Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education [https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education]

Undeclared: A Philosophy of Formative Higher Education [https://bookshop.org/a/12343/9780262547499] (MIT Press, 2024) is an imaginative tour of the contemporary university as it could be: a place to discover self-knowledge, meaning, and purpose. What if college were not just a means of acquiring credentials, but a place to pursue our formation as whole persons striving to lead lives of meaning and purpose? In Undeclared, Chris Higgins confronts the contemporary university in a bid to reclaim a formative mission for higher education. In a series of searching essays and pointed interludes, Higgins challenges us to acknowledge how far our practices have drifted from our ideals, asking: What would it look like to build a college from the ground up to support self-discovery and personal integration? What does it mean to be a public university, and are there any left? How can the humanities help the job-ified university begin to take vocation seriously? Cutting through the underbrush of received ideas, Higgins follows the insight where it leads, clearing a path from the corporate multiversity to the renaissance in higher education that was Black Mountain College and back again. Along the way, we tour a campus bent on becoming a shopping mall, accompany John Dewey through a midlife crisis, and witness the first "happening.” Through diverse and grounded philosophical engagements, Undeclared assembles the resources to expand the contemporary educational imagination. Chris Higgins is Associate Professor and Chair in the Department of Formative Education in Boston College's Lynch School of Education and Human Development, where he directs the Transformative Educational Studies program. He is the author of The Good Life of Teaching. The book is available Open Access here [https://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-monograph/5780/UndeclaredA-Philosophy-of-Formative-Higher]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices] Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education [https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education]

Good workplaces require both autonomy--giving employees a sense of ownership over how and where they work--and collaboration in pursuit of common goals. They see employees for who they are and support them, pay them enough money to live comfortably, and provide the resources, training, and support they need to be successful. Innovative Library Workplaces: Transformative Human Resource Strategies [https://bookshop.org/a/12343/9798892555357] (2025, Association of College and Research Libraries) provides the tools you need to make your workplace a good one for your employees. Though this book took root during the pandemic, it is not of the pandemic: The changes wrought are permanent. Innovative Library Workplaces proposes a way forward after this monumental disruption, recognizing that neither the pandemic nor the work culture prior to it is a good model for what comes next. Bridgit McCafferty is the Dean of the University Library & Archives at Texas A&M University-Central Texas and has led the library for twelve years. Prior to this, she oversaw reference and instruction services. She has taken on major administrative projects for her university, including recently chairing the SACSCOC Accreditation Reaffirmation Compliance Committee. She is the author of Library Management: A Practical Guide for Librarians and the coauthor of British Postmodernism: Strategies and Sources. Lisa Kallman Hopkins is an associate librarian at A&M-Central Texas. She is the head of Technical Services and assistant dean of the University Library & Archives. In her role as head of Technical Services, she is directly responsible for systems, E-Resources, and agreements, and manages cataloging and acquisitions, interlibrary loan, e-reserves and textbook reserves. She is the university copyright specialist and copyeditor. In addition to Innovative Library Workplaces, she has submitted chapters to Transforming Acquisitions & Collection Services: Perspectives on Collaboration Within and Across Libraries and Technical Services: Adapting to the Changing Environment. Dr. Michael LaMagna is the Information Literacy Program & Library Services Coordinator and Professor of Library Services at Delaware County Community College. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices] Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education [https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education]

In this episode of the Language-on-the-Move podcast, Dr Hanna Torsh [https://researchers.mq.edu.au/en/persons/hanna-torsh] speaks with Dr Prashneel Ravisan Goundar [https://www.une.edu.au/staff-profiles/research-services/dr-prashneel-ravisan-goundar2] about his new book, English Language-Mediated Settings and Educational Inequality: Language Policy Agendas in the South Pacific [https://bookshop.org/a/12343/9781032765778] published by Routledge in 2025. In this book, Goundar explores how educational inequalities are responsible for the way students perform in English language-mediated school settings. He seeks to establish an explicit connection between language testing and educational inequalities at the higher education level. With its focus on higher education, this research is a fresh reminder of the need to continuously revisit and unsettle inequalities that are embedded in education systems. In the South Pacific context, this study reveals the current issues, including medium of instruction challenges, lack of teaching and learning resources, teacher shortages, and language barriers. Goundar’s research seeks new answers to the problem of academic English language skills faced by undergraduate students. Since English is a second language for the majority of students in Fiji and as the quality of education varies between urban and rural schools, this cumulatively impacts students’ acquisition of English skills, and, consequently, their university performance. The important questions posed and addressed in this book are as follows: * What are the language implications of colonisation on education in the South Pacific? What resources and learning opportunities are provided in schools to promote equal access to education content for students from non-English-speaking backgrounds? * How do students from different schooling backgrounds in Fiji cope with an English language-mediated university learning environment? * Do educational inequalities manifest in the performance of students from all schooling backgrounds, or are they confined to specific sociocultural zones? Drawing on a unique dataset from a context in the Global South, this book provides new insights for a more holistic approach to examining academic language proficiency and the use of language testing. English Language-mediated Settings and Educational Inequalities: Language Education Policy Agendas in the South Pacific is suitable for postgraduate students in language policy and planning, multilingual language policies for schools, medium of instruction studies, and language testing, and South Pacific studies. For additional resources, show notes, and transcripts, go here [https://www.languageonthemove.com/podcast/]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices] Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education [https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education]

Students often think of science as disconnected pieces of information rather than a narrative that challenges their thinking, requires them to develop evidence-based explanations for the phenomena under investigation, and communicate their ideas in discipline-specific language as to why certain solutions to a problem work.  In Enquiry-based Science Education [https://bookshop.org/a/12343/9780367279233] (CRC Press, 2020), Robyn M. Gillies provides teachers in primary and junior secondary school with different evidence-based strategies they can use to teach inquiry science in their classrooms. The research and theoretical perspectives that underpin the strategies are discussed as are examples of how different ones areimplemented in science classrooms to affect student engagement and learning. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices] Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education [https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education]