PLS 399 Senior Thesis: Books

"Academically Adrift might be the most important book on higher education in a decade. Combined with students' limited effort and great disparities in benefits among students, Arum and Roksa's findings raise questions that should have been raised long ago about who profits from college and what colleges need to do if they are to benefit new groups of students. In this new era of college for all, their analysis refocuses our attention on higher education's fundamental goals." - James Rosenbaum, Northwestern University"

"Why didn't I learn this in school?" -- The question forumulation technique : teaching multiple thinking abilities in one process -- Choose the question focus : the starting point for student questions -- Introduce the rules for producing questions : an exercise in metacognition -- Students produce the questions : divergent thinking unleashed -- Students improve the questions : closed- and open-ended questions -- Students prioritize the questions : analysis and convergence -- Next steps : "What do we do with all these questions?" -- Students reflect on their learning : cognition, affect, and behavior -- A memo to my fellow teachers : what I've learned from using the QFT -- Students and classrooms transformed : a community of self-directed learners -- Questions and education, questions and democracy.

Addressing questions of race, gender, and class in this work, hooks discusses the complex balance that allows us to teach, value, and learn from works written by racist and sexist authors. Highlighting the importance of reading, she insists on the primacy of free speech, a democratic education of literacy. Throughout these essays, she celebrates the transformative power of critical thinking. --from publisher description