COM Reading Bank: Education

Excerpt / Summary:
Provides a portrait of education in Canada, including the educational attainment of the working-age population as well as highlights on Aboriginal peoples and where newcomers to Canada are completing their education. The infographic also looks at fields of study and the earnings of Canadians at different levels of education.

Keywords: Education
Format: Infographic
Source: Govt. of Canada website

Excerpt / Summary:
Salman Khan talks about how and why he created the remarkable Khan Academy, a carefully structured series of educational videos offering complete curricula in math and, now, other subjects. He shows the power of interactive exercises, and calls for teachers to consider flipping the traditional classroom script -- give students video lectures to watch at home, and do "homework" in the classroom with the teacher available to help.

Keywords: Education
Format: Video
Source: TED Talk

Keywords: Education, Identity, Society & Culture
Format: Poem
Source: Poetry Foundation

Excerpt / Summary:
"A seven-year-old boy is causing quite the controversy with his new school haircut.

Grade 2 student Jakobe Sanden showed up to Arrowhead Elementary School in Santa Clara, Utah, last Monday sporting a Mohawk — a hairstyle that represents his family’s Native American heritage. However, since the new ‘do is in violation of the school’s dress code, Jakobe was sent to the principal’s office. "

Keywords: Education, Indigenous identity
Format: Article
Source: Huffington Post

Keywords: Health & Wellness
Format: Article
Source: The Conversation

Keyword: Education, Society and Culture, and Environmental Issues
Format: Article
Source: Brookings.edu

Excerpt / Summary:
A Smith College initiative called “Failing Well” is one of a crop of university programs that aim to help high achievers cope with basic setbacks.

Keywords: Psychology, Student life, Resilience
Format: Article
Source: The New York Times

Keywords: Communication, Education
Format: Article
Source: The Guardian

Excerpt / Summary:
New study adds to evidence that student reviews of professors have limited validity.

Keywords: Education
Format: Article
Source: Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt / Summary:
In this article the author discusses the possibility of eliminating the grading system in U.S. education. The author suggests that too much emphasis on grading systems and ratings inhibits learning, student interest, and student motivation. He examines studies done on the impact of grading in the 1980s and 1990s which show that students interpret the emphasis on grading and marking as evidence that success matters more than learning and quality of thinking. The author argues for complete abandonment of the grading system, saying that replacing letters with labels, telling students what is expected of them, and offering students narrative reports of grades do not sufficiently address the problems with grading.

Keywords: Education
Format: Article
Source: Slate

Excerpt / Summary:
For the past decade, on American campuses, history has been declining more rapidly than any other major, even as more and more students attend college.

Keywords: History, Education
Format: Article
Source: The New Yorker

Excerpt / Summary:
The teaching of humanities is, therefore, a militant job. Teachers are faced not simply with a mass of misconceptions and unexamined assumptions. They must engage in a fight to help the student confront and reject the verbal formulas and stock responses, to convert passive acceptance into active, constructive power. It is a fight against illiteracy and for the maturation of the mental process, for the development of skills which once acquired will never become obsolete.

Keywords: Education
Format: Article
Source: Toronto Star

Excerpt / Summary:
Teachers who stand in front of their classes and deliver instruction are not "out-of-touch experts"—they're role models.

Keywords: Education
Format: Article
Source: The Atlantic

Excerpt / Summary:
Rather than educating whole persons for lifelong growth, this “industrial model” treats education as just another sector of the economy. In this view, education’s job is to manufacture skilled labor, and it’s expected to do so in a way that’s maximally efficient. Knowledge is seen as a market commodity, teachers and professors are delivery vehicles for knowledge content and students are either consumers or manufactured products.

Keywords: Education
Format: Article
Source: The Conversations
Copyright Note: Creative Commons license

Format: Article
Source: JSTOR
Notes: Good companion for John Warner (opposing view)

Excerpt / Summary:
"For those teaching civics and civic engagement, the goal isn’t to get students to finish one project, but to make community involvement a habit — and one type of action often does lead to another."

Keywords: Education
Format: Article
Source: The New York Times

Excerpt / Summary:
There may be no greater enemy to quality writing than the 5-paragraph essay.

Keywords:
Format: Article
Source: Inside Higher Education
Copyright Note: Okay to link, reproduction requires permission
Notes: Good companion for Kerri Smith's "in Defense of the Five Paragraph Essay" (opposing view)

Excerpt / Summary:
A host of experts are arguing that liberal arts majors are about to make a major rebound.

Keywords:
Format: Article
Source: Inc.com

Excerpt / Summary:


Keywords: Education
Format: Article
Source: Grand Valley Review

Keywords: Education
Format: Article
Source: The Conversation

Excerpt / Summary:
"Writing is balancing, making choices while considering audience, purpose, occasion. The rhetorical situation has been at the core of writing instruction forever, and yet much of the writing we ask developing writers to do keeps them from fully wrestling with those choices because we strap on the training wheels and never take them off.

For me, the key to changing this is to make writing more engaging in every sense of the word, to require students to make meaning about subjects that are meaningful to them, to create stakes that go beyond assessments that mostly measure how good students are at passing an assessment."

Keywords: Communication, Language
Format: Article
Source: Inside Higher Ed

Keywords: Society and Culture; Education
Format: Article
Source: Scientific American Blog

Keywords: Education, Media & Technology
Format: Article
Source: The Conversation

Keywords: Education; Communication; Media and Technology
Format: Article
Source: The Conversation