Best of Education Book List
Read these eight books to understand the current US education landscape
Education is a tricky topic. Because everyone has had education experience – either as a student or professional – nearly everyone has an opinion on education philosophy, practice, and policy. Me included.
I went to public K12, attended a regional research university, earned a bachelors, masters, and doctorate, and have been teaching and researching in education for five years now. I’ve worked professionally at many types of higher education institutions including a research university, a community college, a broad access teaching institution, and an online university. And through my work on the College Innovation Network at WGU Labs, I currently work with college leaders at a dozen institutions across the country to help implement education technology tools to build better learning communities.
I’d say I’m decently positioned to offer some reading suggestions on education.
This month’s curated book list focuses on providing you with excellent books that provide expert perspectives on key topics that will give you a great foundation to understanding the current US education landscape. Included are books on teaching, learning science, education technology, and history. Also included are two set of books that offer competing perspectives on policy and political debates in K12 and higher education.
After reading these, you’ll have a solid foundation from which to expand your knowledge of US education.
Best in Teaching
Most professors that are in university classrooms have little formal training on how to actually teach. At our nation’s leading research universities – where PhDs are all trained – teaching is an afterthought to the more important research portions of faculty’s jobs. What this means is that most PhDs come out of their programs with no formal training in how to teach, and thus do what everyone else has always done – lecture and create passive learning environments. As the title suggests, The Missing Course: Everything They Never Taught You about College Teaching by David Gooblar, teaches you everything you were never taught about college teaching. This book had a major influence on my own teaching practice, inspiring a lot of changes I made to my recent courses. I highly suggest The Missing Course for anyone who teaches, or for anyone interested in understanding just what is going on in college classrooms.
Best in Learning Science
Intimately related to how we teach is how we learn. Anyone involved in education professionally, whether it be as a teacher, designer, administrator, or support staff, needs to know how students actually learn to do their job best and support students. Unfortunately, popular learning science and teacher training is plagued by zombie ideas like “learning styles” that inhibit effectual learning. In How We Learn: Why Brains Learn Better Than Any Machine . . . for Now, Stanislas Dehaene explains four key pillars of learning that can be applied to how we teach and how learning environments are structured. This accessible learning science book is a must read for those curious about how our extraordinary brains learn.
Best in Education Technology
Education Technology (edtech) has promised to revolutionize education for a century. From the first teaching machines in the early 20th century to Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) in the 21st century, and the recent boom in edtech start-ups the hype cycle shows no sign of stopping. Edtech can be used to enhance learning, increase access opportunity, and change the teacher-student relationship. But what is edtech? How does it innovate? And what fundamental limitations are there to scaling edtech? In Failure to Disrupt: Why Technology Alone Can’t Transform Education, edtech expert and MIT Professor Justin Reich explains everything you need to know to understand the role of edtech in today’s educational environment – across K12 and higher ed. As someone who works in edtech and online learning professionally, this is an absolute must read. You can also check out my conversation with Justin about his book.
Best in History
US higher education is simultaneously one of the most chaotic and unorganized systems in the modern world and yet also has a ton of world-class universities. (In other words, we have a highly inequitable system). How did it come to be, and why is our “system” set up so differently than the rest of the world? In A Perfect Mess: The Unlikely Ascendancy of American Higher Education, David Labaree gives the best historical overview of the US higher education system that I’ve read to date. This succinct book explains the fundamental contradictions that define our education system: It both affords access to the highest proportion of students anywhere in the world, while preserving social privilege and increasing inequality; it is both populist by promising social mobility to all, and elitist by maintaining a clear hierarchical tier of selectivity and advantage; and, it’s best viewed as a public good to society, while being best viewed as a private good to the individual. Understanding policy and next steps for higher ed requires and understanding of how it came to be. The answers certainly won’t come easy.
Dueling Perspectives on Higher Ed
In part due to the messy structure of our higher education system (see A Perfect Mess, above), there is a lot of debate surrounding whether higher ed should be private or public, have increased funding, the importance of teaching versus research and, importantly, if college is “worth” it – both financially and educationally. In Sustainable. Resilient. Free.: The Future of Higher Education, John Warner provides the best argument I’ve read to date for higher education as a public good, meaning it is free and open to students (you can read my longer review of his book here). On the other side, Bryan Caplan in The Case against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money, provides an excellent argument for why higher education is largely a waste of money, and why many students should not bother going. Both books provide strong arguments, data, and compelling solutions. Both books continue to inform my own evolving perspectives on higher ed, and I strongly recommend reading both with an open mind within the context of the history of our system.
Dueling Perspectives on K12
Of all the places in the education landscape that I have the least expertise K12 seems the most complicated. The covid pandemic has served as a catalyst for political divides in K12 with the consequences for overall learning loss and increased inequity because of remote learning now taking center stage. I’ve been striving to become more informed about K12 issues as they directly relate to many problems that manifest in higher ed. Two excellent books provide great foundations for understanding the pro-public versus pro-choice debates currently at the epicenter of K12 policy. In Charter Schools and Their Enemies, Thomas Sowell provides a compelling argument in favor of charter schools and school choice, especially for students in urban areas. On the other side, A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door: The Dismantling of Public Education and the Future of School, by Jack Schneider and Jennifer Berkshire provide an equally compelling case for the necessity to rein in the conservative privatization, pro-choice agenda in favor of public education for all. I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t know what the right answer is for K12 right now, but these two books have provided me with important political content in which to understand the ongoing debates in this arena.
ICYMI: I published my library last week. Check it out!
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