Events & Book Talks

April 2011. GSE Professor Alan Schoenfeld spoke on his new book, How We Think: A Theory of Goal-Oriented Decision Making and its Educational Applications.

Teachers try to help their students learn. But why do they make the particular teaching choices they do? What resources do they draw upon? What accounts for the success or failure of their efforts? Based on thirty years of research on problem solving and teaching, GSE Professor Schoenfeld provides compelling evidence for a concrete approach that describes how teachers and individuals navigate their way through in-the-moment decision-making in well-practiced domains. Applying his theoretical model to detailed representations and analyses of teachers at work as well as of professionals outside education, Schoenfeld argues that understanding and recognizing the goal-oriented patterns of our day to day decisions can help identify what makes effective or ineffective behavior in the classroom and beyond.

April 2011. GSE Professors Jabari Mahiri and Derek Van Rheenen spoke on their new book, Out of Bounds: When Scholarship Athletes Become Athletic Scholars.

Out of Bounds explores the lives of exceptional men and women athletes who later became outstanding academic scholars. Through qualitative research, the book explores the intersection of athletics and academics and reflects on differences in race, gender and social class. Through the provocative and surprising narratives of gifted athletes who became prolific scholars, this book offers new ways of thinking about the connections, contradictions, and possibilities of sports and schools.

January 2011. W. Norton Grubb and Lynda Tredway discussed their new book: Leading from the Inside Out.

This book proposes that the collective responsibility of teachers as classroom and school leaders can provide the fulcrum of school change. Grubb and Tredway provide the building blocks of history, policy, and social analysis for an effective, collective school — a place where adults thrive as learners and are able to co-create joyful learning experiences for children and youth.

By encouraging teachers to move out of the individual classroom and to think critically and institutionally about the schools they would like to work in, about their own responsibilities for creating such schools, about the range of policies from outside the school and how they can influence those policies rather than being subjected to them — this book shows that a teacher’s influence is not limited to the classroom and students, but can significantly shape and inform external policies and decisions.

Also present was UCSC Professor Brad Olsen, commenting on his book, Teaching for Success.

November 2010. Dr. Lissa Soep discussed her new book: Drop That Knowledge: Youth Radio Stories.

Dr. Lissa Soep is Research Director and Senior Producer at Youth Radio, a unique, Peabody Award—winning organization that produces distinctive content for outlets from National Public Radio to YouTube. Young people come to Youth Radio, headquartered in Oakland, California, from under resourced public schools and neighborhoods in order to produce media that will transform both their own lives and the world around them.

Drop That Knowledge (2010) tells the story of how these young people come together to collaborate and to create breadth and depth of diversity in broadcast, cable, and satellite media. It provides a fresh framework for understanding the relationship among media, learning, and youth culture, while offering concrete strategies for engaging diverse groups of young people in real-world initiatives in both online and offline settings.

November 2010. John Willinksy spoke on "Open Access and Other Intellectual Properties of Learning"

Professor Willinsky is the Khosla Family Professor of Education at Stanford University and Director of the Public Knowledge Project. Much of his published work is available on the Public Knowledge Project's website, which also hosts open source software and PKP's journal.

Professor Willinsky's talk will provide a brief update on current developments in open access to research and scholarship, and will sketch out the historical, philosophical, economic, and legal reasons for why some form of open access on a global basis is an entirely reasonable expectation, full of educational and intellectual advantages.

October 2010. Jeff Duncan-Andrade discussed his book: The Art of Critical Pedagogy: Possibilities for Moving from Theory to Practice in Urban Schools.

Jeff Duncan-Andrade, UCB Ph.D, is an Associate Professor at San Francisco State University in the School of Education as well as in the College of Ethnic Studies, Raza Studies. Dr. Duncan-Andrade is an Urban Teacher Educator Network Fellow and a recipient of the “Scholars for the Dream” Award from the National Council of Teachers of English.

Dr. Duncan-Andrade will augment his discussion with insights from his recent work: Hope Required When Growing Roses in Concrete published in Harvard Educational Review, 2009(Sum), 79(2). His work reflects a passion for equity and social justice.

In his book, he argues that the field of education has attempted to “develop theory from theory” and that this pursuit “has left us essentially with a house built on sand.” In contrast, he and collaborator Professor Ernest Morrell have created a theory that balances principles and theories of critical pedagogy with empirical data focused on the context and structures of contemporary urban settings. This work advocates that educators move toward practices that counter the role urban schools have traditionally played in maintaining social inequalities, and that critical pedagogy must focus not only on developing the academic skills of urban youth, but also on creating opportunities for urban youth (in collaboration with adults) to be agents of social change.

October 2010. Jennifer Seibel Trainor discussed her book: Rethinking Racism: Emotion, Persuasion, and Literacy Education in an All-White High School.

Jennifer Seibel Trainor is an associate professor in the graduate program in composition studies at San Francisco State University. Her research on racism, whiteness, and literacy has been published in CCC, as well as in Research in the Teaching of English.

Blending narrative with more traditional forms of ethnographic analysis, Trainor draws from white students' own stories about the meanings of race in their learning and their lives. Rethinking Racism uncovers the ways in which constructions of racism originate in literacy research and in our classrooms—and how these constructions themselves can limit the rhetorical positions students enact. It provides new ways of thinking about how researchers and teachers represent whiteness.

"Rethinking Racism surprises, amazes, and indeed teaches, most of all how to read culture, not as some flattened and easily indexed set of categories, but as something as complex and necessarily elusive as humans themselves."—Catherine Prendergast, author of Literacy and Racial Justice: The Politics of Learning after Brown v Board of Education.

September 2010. Jason Marsh, editor-in-chief of Greater Good, UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center’s online magazine, and UCB psychology Professor, Rodolfo Mendoza-Denton, spoke on their book, Are We Born Racist?on September 30, 2010, 4-5 pm, at the EDP Library.

Are We Born Racist?: New Insights From Neuroscience and Positive Psychology explores the psychological roots of prejudice and considers how to overcome it. The book brings together leading scientists, journalists, educators, and many others to shed light on why and how our brains form racial prejudices and their negative impact. The research suggests that although propensities for racism are deeply ingrained, there are research-tested ways to keep our knee-jerk biases and prejudices in check. It's possible to teach others how to do the same. The book is edited by Jason Marsh, Professor Rodolfo Mendoza-Denton, and Greater Good contributing editor, Jeremy Adam Smith.

Claude Steele, one of the country's leading researchers on prejudice, said this about the book:

Revolutionary insight follows revolutionary insight in this broadly accessible book, accumulating to nothing less than a paradigm shift that will change how we think about everything from how prejudice affects our own lives to how laws and institutional practice can be used to reduce its ill effects. And it does it all with a brevity that I hope will insure what it deserves most: to be broadly read.

April 2010. Professor Hiebert discussed: "Changing Readers, Changing Texts"

Professor Hiebert, Adjunct Professor, Graduate School of Education, UC Berkeley, will speak on her research concerning California students and their reading textbooks. Over the past 25 years, the two largest U.S. states - California and Texas - have used textbooks as a major arm in their reading reform initiatives. Mandates have concentrated on the texts of beginning reading instruction. From a 1989 mandate that texts acceptable for state-wide adoption needed to be "authentic" and of literary quality, California moved to a 2002 mandate that acceptable texts needed to be decodable. The manner in which decodable was defined in this mandate (and in the Texas mandate) took a unique form, where the phoneme was the unit of text creation.

This presentation considers the characteristics of first-grade texts and the demographics of students over the most recent 25-year period, as well as the preceding 25 years. The analysis shows that, in 2010, the discrepancy is substantial between the tasks of first-grade textbooks and the skills of those students who depend on schools to become literate. Professor Hiebert will conclude with describing her ongoing research program that considers the nature of texts that support the changing profile of a first-grade cohort.

November 2009. Professor Alison Gopnik discussed her book: The Philosophical Baby: What Children's Minds Tell Us About Truth, Love, and the Meaning of Life.

Professor Gopnik of the UCB Psychology Department will be discussing her new book The Philosophical Baby in which she explores the groundbreaking new psychological, neuroscientific, and philosophical understanding of very young children. If you've ever had, been, or known a baby -- this will be relevant, informative and thought provoking.

"After convincing us that the seemingly familiar human child is actually wrapped in mystery, Alison Gopnik offers a compelling and convincing portrait of the opening years of life. This is scientific writing of the highest order." --Howard Gardner

Updated: Photos of the event from the ED/P Facebook page!

September 2009. Professor Grubb of the Graduate School of Education will be discussing his new book The Money Myth: School Resources, Outcomes, and Equity. This book comes at a critical time, and Professor Grubb will explain his findings and share his research and writing processes.

W. Norton Grubb argues that how much we spend is less important than how we spend it. For decades, Grubb says, school spending has inexorably risen, while student achievement has stayed relatively stagnant. Maybe it's time to look at which expenditures actually improve education, he argues, and which are a waste.

March 2009. Professor Stephen Hinshaw discussed his book: The Triple Bind: Saving Our Teenage Girls from Today's Pressures.

Societal expectations, cultural trends, and conflicting messages are creating what psychologist and researcher Stephen Hinshaw calls “the Triple Bind.” Girls are now expected to excel at “girl skills,” achieve “boy goals,” and be models of female perfection, 100 percent of the time. The Triple Bind is putting more and more girls at risk for aggression, eating disorders, depression, and even suicide.

"Highly readable, fascinating account of the lives of contemporary young women ... In probing chapters that deftly synthesize sobering statistics, case anecdotes, and personal observation, Hinshaw makes a strong case that teen girls are in crisis ... This balanced, thorough, compassionate title is required reading for parents, teachers, and teens of both sexes."
-- Booklist