Abstract
The thesis of this article is “You are what you read.” We first make a case for staying current on ideas and innovations from a wide range of disciplines and then share recommendations for reading in higher education and beyond. We believe that no one, including the authors of this article, is in a position to offer a professional canon to our fellow educators. So what we offer here is a list of print resources that have impacted us professionally over the many decades of our combined experience working to enrich student lives and enhance student learning.
A Commitment to Our Own Learning
A thoughtfully and intentionally designed reading program has the potential to make us better role models as lifelong learners who are open to the transformational power of new ideas. It also has the potential to make us more effective collaborators in problem solving with others who have disciplinary backgrounds and perspectives different from our own. Reading widely also increases the value of our ideas in discussions about important educational and student issues. When educators strive to become scholar-practitioners through reading and writing, our deans, provosts, and presidents have increased incentive to listen to our views.
Scholar-practitioners read what their well-informed colleagues, provosts, and presidents read. They read what their regional accrediting bodies read. They read, and think, not only about the latest techniques in their own fields, but also about issues that cut across their institutions. They write about these matters as well, bringing to bear what they know from their practice but also what they have absorbed and synthesized from their study of the issues. There are dozens of outlets for such writing, with the trend toward online publishing exponentially increasing the venues for sharing expertise.
Colleges and universities should increasingly expect newly hired educators both on and off the tenure track to arrive with experience in thinking and writing about important educational issues. They should also support these endeavors for new and continuing employees. In addition, institutions should expect and reward scholarship from classroom and non-classroom educators that draws widely from across disciplines and focuses on proffering innovative and practical approaches to enhancing student learning. We believe these kinds of contributions are made possible first through a thoughtfully planned, wide-ranging program of reading.
The Enduring Power of Books
There are many ways that scholar-practitioners today can stay abreast of the latest findings in a variety of fields: newspapers, blogs, RSS feeds, magazines, journals, books, and more. Dennis Pruitt, vice president for student affairs at the University of South Carolina, teaches a graduate course on current trends and issues in higher education for the Higher Education and Student Affairs program and as part of his class requirements he has students set up an “electronic dashboard.” The dashboard allows students to establish a quickly accessible, customized system for keeping up-to-date on the latest news in higher education and beyond.
Even with this proliferation of electronic sources, we believe books continue to be an important way to add depth to the understanding of complex educational issues. We have compiled a list of 10 books (actually nine books and an article that became a book) within the field of higher education and 10 books outside of the field that have influenced our work and, in some cases, the way we live our lives.
Must-Read Works from within Higher Education
High-Impact Educational Practices by George Kuh
This is a concise description of 10 educational practices that have been shown by empirical research to be effective in enhancing student engagement and learning, across institution and student type. In fact, Kuh finds that they are especially effective for historically underserved students. Kuh particularly emphasizes the importance of students’ achieving what he calls “deep” or “integrative” learning. Perhaps simply listing the 10 practices is the best summary of the ideas: first-year seminars and experiences; common intellectual experiences; learning communities; writing-intensive courses; collaborative assignments and projects; undergraduate research; diversity/global learning; service learning/community-based learning; internships; and capstone courses and projects. Favorite quote: “In contrast to surface-level learning, deep-level processing emphasizes both acquiring information and understanding the underlying meaning of the information” (p. 14).
How College Affects Students by Ernest Pascarella and Patrick Terenzini
Pascarella and Terenzini provide an invaluable service to college and university educators by providing an overview of the research on how college affects students. Their analysis of research for the past 30 years, with a particular emphasis on research conducted in the 1990s, is invaluable in terms of understanding what types of student programming and interventions have been proven to be most and least effective. Topics addressed include the impact of college on students’ cognitive skills, psychosocial changes, attitudes and values, moral development, and their careers and life after college. Especially helpful is the last chapter, which highlights the implications of their findings for college educators. Favorite quote: “Better teaching and greater learning are also unlikely to emerge without leadership and support both from an institution's president and from within the faculty, particularly from faculty who are widely respected and who are known to value student learning” (p. 649).
Making the Most of College by Richard J. Light
Light and a group of colleagues conducted in-depth interviews with over 1,600 college seniors about what they perceived to be the keys to a successful college experience. The book summarizes the results and includes lengthy quotations from the interviews. It is written for students but is also relevant for educators, as it gives advice on decisions that students can make in order to inform educators on how they can design experiences that will support the best outcomes for students. Topics include integrating components of the college experience, residential arrangements, what makes professors and courses effective, the value of advising, and making the most of diversity. Favorite quote: “In our interviews, student after student has shared stories that cumulatively illustrate an overarching theme, and I want to stress it. That theme is the interplay, the complex interaction, among different parts of campus life” (p. 209).
Why Do I Have to Take this Course? by Robert Shoenberg
Students often arrive at college believing that education consists of acquiring information; hence, valuable learning experiences are simply those that provide information that one will “use,” presumably in one's expected career. Educators typically want students to do much more than memorize facts but they do not always do a good enough job of helping their students understand why. This booklet, written for students, explains many of the higher-order intellectual skills that are typically the goals of general education curricula, as well as such topics as active learning, creating coherence in one's education, analytic thinking, and dealing with unstructured problems. Professionals who work with students will find the book useful for providing talking points and approaches to helping students better understand higher education. Favorite quote: “Though it may not appear so in the way courses are titled, each one is designed to make a contribution to strengthening your intellectual skills as much as your base of knowledge and your professional skills. Keeping this underlying purpose of the curriculum in mind will help you make sense of your undergraduate education” (p. 8).
“From Teaching to Learning” by Robert B. Barr and John Tagg
Not a book but a substantial and very influential piece published in Change in 1995, this article by Barr and Tagg argues that much of what we do in higher education is based on a mistaken “paradigm,” that “A college is an institution that exists to provide instruction.” The vision they propose is that “A college is an institution that exists to produce learning.” The difference is one of seeing outcomes, rather than inputs, as the key to what educators do: the mission of our institutions, the structures around which they are organized, and the criteria for their success. For example, the authors argue that it is wrongheaded to rank colleges and universities based on such inputs as faculty credentials and competitive admissions. What matters is the quality of student learning. The authors suggest that all parts of an institution should judge themselves not on the programs they develop but on the results of those programs. Favorite quote: “Simply ask, how would we do things differently if we put learning first? Then do it” (p. 25).
Purposeful Pathways by Andrea Leskes and Ross Miller
This book emerged from a forum of educators, including K—12 teachers. It describes a set of learning outcomes that the participants believe will be critical for today's college graduates, across major, institution type, and career goal. The participants also developed a list of sample educational practices they expect will strengthen institutions’ ability to advance the desired outcomes. The authors strongly emphasize intentionality in this enterprise: both on the part of institutions that design “purposeful pathways” calculated to provide students with opportunities to develop their skills and especially on the part of the students, who become “intentional learners,” aware of the reasons for their various choices and conscious of how each experience contributes to the whole. As in the case of other books we recommend, this philosophy begins in the academic/curricu-lar domain but is equally applicable to programs offered through student affairs. Favorite quote: “The learning outcomes are so complex that they can be achieved only when all parts of the educational experience address them in a coordinated manner” (p. 2).
Scholarship Reconsidered by Ernest Boyer
Boyer, who held many leadership positions in higher education, argues that colleges and universities should not see scholarship as limited to empirical research and publications; rather, they should include what Boyer calls the scholarship of integration, application, and teaching. Boyer's approach helped to legitimize a great deal of the scholarship that has been done in the past two decades on students’ experiences and learning in college. It also provides a good framework within which professionals seeking to be scholar-practitioners can form their own conceptions of scholarship. Favorite quote: “If the vision of scholarship can be so enlarged on every campus, it seems reasonable to expect that across the entire country a true community of scholarship will emerge—one that is not only more collaborative, but more creative too” (pp. 80—81).
Academically Adrift by Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa
There is widespread agreement that higher education is important to economic advancement, and it is well known that employers are looking for graduates with strong communication and critical thinking skills. However, when Arum and Roksa examined a very large sample of results from students taking the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA), which focuses on measuring those skills, they found that in many cases students’ performance does not improve from their first year to their senior year. In other words, an astonishing proportion of students are not accomplishing what institutions report they will accomplish. The book examines in detail the range of factors that correlate with the improvement (and lack thereof) in CLA results. Two of the clearest indicators are how much students read per week for their classes and how much they are required to write. Favorite quote: “While they may be acquiring subject-specific knowledge or greater self-awareness on their journeys through college, many students are not improving their skills in critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing” (p. 36).
Our Underachieving Colleges by Derek Bok
Derek Bok, president of Harvard University from 1971 to 1991, argues here that American colleges and uni-versifies are unable to demonstrate that they are meeting their own professed goals for student learning. Although there is nominal agreement about these goals—a list that is fairly similar to those in some of the other works mentioned here—institutions have shown too little interest and devoted too little effort to finding out whether the goals are being met. For example, Bok argues that faculty members do not try hard enough to find out whether their teaching methods are the most effective ones available. And, most surprisingly, although there is a growing body of research on which educational practices are most effective, colleges and universities seem to pay little attention to this literature. Favorite quote: “Still less evident are campuswide efforts to combine assessments with an ongoing process for identifying problems, finding innovative ways to address them, and testing the new methods to see whether they work” (p. 317).
The College Administrator's Survival Guide by C. K. Gunsalus
Not many books deal with the day-to-day realities of being a college administrator. Gunsalus provides practical advice for administrators on a wide range of typical issues that they face, including managing negotiations, complaints, bullying, and rules/policy violations. Not only does she provide stories from college settings that ring true to anyone who has served in an administrative capacity, but what differentiates this book is Gunsalus's specific advice on how to confront colleagues and students who have violated policies or rules. The author also captures the diversity of the members of a campus community, including faculty, staff, and students, and describes how to build on the best of each community member. Favorite quote: “Universities are wonderful places. They are filled with smart, dedicated people. It's your job, as an administrator, to provide an environment that brings about the best in those people. If you don't, all these quirky and interesting people may find their energies diverted in ways that do not serve the mission of advancing the frontiers of knowledge and fostering the intellectual growth of generations of young men and women” (p. 225).
Must-Read Books outside of Higher Education
We have found that reading outside of higher education has sparked all kinds of innovative ideas.
Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath
In higher education, we attempt to deliver information to students that we feel will be helpful to them. Made to Stick gives higher education professionals specific ideas for making their messages “stickier”; in other words, the authors provide concrete suggestions on how to increase the chance that students will listen and use the information shared. In addition, the book cautions us to be aware of the “Curse of Knowledge” where we know our institutions’ policies, culture, and expectations so well that we forget that people from outside the institution and newcomers have no idea what we are talking about. Favorite quote: “Common sense is the enemy of sticky messages. When messages sound like common sense, they float gently in one ear and out the other” (p. 72).
Positivity by Barbara L. Fredrickson
Positive psychology, one of the hottest areas in psychology, is focused on bringing out the best in people rather than using the field's historical focus—fixing what is wrong with people. Barbara L. Fredrickson provides an excellent overview of research findings from positive psychology about happiness and subjective well-being. Fredrickson suggests that happiness doesn't just happen, explains the benefits of positivity, and then provides a positivity toolkit that lists things people can do to increase their positivity, including building relationships, meditating, and ritualizing gratitude. Favorite quote: “Positivity transforms us for the better. … By opening our hearts and minds, positive emotions allow us to discover and build new skills, new ties, new knowledge, and new ways of being” (p. 24).
Brain Rules by John Medina
Similar to the marked increase in positive psychology research, the cognitive neuroscience field has exploded with research findings that help us understand how humans learn and develop. In this highly accessible book, Medina synthesizes research on the brain and offers ideas on helping individuals optimize learning. Examples of Medina's 12 brain rules include getting exercise and sleep to increase brain power, tips for enhancing memory, and differences between male and female brains. Favorite quote: “No two people's brains store the same information in the same way in the same place” (p. 70).
Succeed: How We Can Reach Our Goals by Heidi Halvorson
For anyone working with students or supervising employees, Halvorson's book is a must-have because it so clearly summarizes the research on goal attainment. It provides specific suggestions for increasing the likeli-hood that individuals will be more successful in accomplishing their goals. For example, Halvorson shares the power of “if—then planning,” which involves thinking ahead about obstacles we may encounter on our way toward accomplishing a particular goal and then figuring out specific strategies if an obstacle emerges. Halvorson also offers excellent advice on how to provide effective feedback to those pursuing their goals: “When giving criticism, it's important to convey that you believe the recipient can succeed if he takes necessary action. Be as specific as possible about the nature of the problem and what steps the person can take to solve it” (p. 235).
John P. Kotier on What Leaders Really Do by John P. Kotter
One of the most important abilities that differentiates leaders from managers is leaders’ ability to carry out successful change initiatives. In this book, Kotter provides an eight-stage framework for leaders seeking to implement change in their organizations: “(1) create a sense of urgency, (2) put together a strong enough team to direct the process, (3) create an appropriate vision, (4) communicate that new vision broadly, (5) empower employees to act on the vision, (6) produce sufficient short-term results to give their efforts credibility and to disempower the cynics, (7) build momentum and use that momentum to tackle the tougher change problems, and (8) anchor the new behavior in organizational culture” (p. 7). Kotter provides detailed advice and powerful examples for implementing each of the eight stages. Favorite quote: “All people who are affected by change experience some emotional turmoil. Even changes that appear to be ‘positive’ or ‘rational’ involve loss and uncertainty. Nevertheless, for a number of different reasons, individuals or groups can react very differently to change—from passively resisting it, to aggressively trying to undermine it, to sincerely embracing it” (p. 31).
The Pursuit of Perfect by Tal Ben-Shahar
Perfectionism can be a positive or negative element of our personalities. In this book, Ben-Shahar uses the word perfectionism to capture its negative aspects, which he describes as “maladaptive and neurotic.” He uses the term optimalism to capture the positive type of perfectionism that is “adaptive and healthy” (p. xx). Perfectionists reject failure, painful emotions, success, and reality, while optimalists accept these things. Given that many faculty, staff, and students in higher education institutions have perfectionist tendencies, this book can be helpful in terms of understanding perfectionists’ fears and helping guide them toward an optimalist approach. Ben-Shahar shares his own bouts with perfectionism during his career as a world-class squash player and how it ultimately destroyed his career and his love for the sport. Perfectionism can manifest itself in a variety of ways, including eating disorders, depression, and anxiety disorders. In the most important part of the book, Ben-Shahar leads readers on the journey from perfectionism to optimalism. Favorite quote: “The antidote to perfectionism, and the prescription for optimalism, is acceptance of reality, of what is, be it failures, emotions, or success” (p. 105).
Crucial Conversations by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler
Human beings have a tendency to avoid conversations that make them feel uncomfortable, but if we did a better job of clearly communicating with people, we would avoid many of the pernicious problems in our lives. The authors believe that people can learn to engage in healthier dialogue and they set forth a plan for helping people acquire these skills, even when dealing with sensitive topics. They provide a five-step acronym, STATE, that involves: sharing your facts, telling your story, asking for other's stories, talking tentatively, and encouraging testing (p. 124). Given that many educators engage in high-stakes conversations each day, this book provides much-needed, wise and practical advice for enhancing relationships with others. Favorite quote: “When it comes to risky, controversial, and emotional conversations, skilled people find a way to get all relevant information (from themselves and others) out into the open” (p. 20).
The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less by Barry Schwartz
Higher education provides students with a plethora of choices, including academic major, course selection, co-curricular and social involvement, and decisions impacting work/study/life balance. Are there too many choices? Schwartz eloquently argues in this book that although providing some choices is good, it does not necessarily mean that providing more choices is better. He argues that “clinging tenaciously to all the choices available to us contributes to bad decisions, to anxiety, stress, and dissatisfaction—even to clinical depression” (p. 3). Schwartz lays out numerous examples of too many choices, shares how people make decisions between choices, describes the ramifications of too many choices, and makes a series of recommendations about how to make good choices. Favorite quote: “When we change our minds about decisions, we are less satisfied with them” (p. 228).
Getting to Yes by Robert Fisher and William Ury
When we seek to resolve conflict by finding a mutually acceptable solution rather than by the stronger party imposing its will, we negotiate. In this classic little book, Fisher and Ury provide a model for the negotiating process with three interrelated goals, reaching a wise agreement, being efficient, and leaving undamaged the relationship between the parties. The key is to focus on the parties’ concrete interests rather than on staking out positions, which makes it difficult to reach a compromise. Favorite quote: “People listen better if they feel you have understood them. They tend to think that those who understand them are intelligent and sympathetic people whose own opinions may be worth listening to. So if you want the other side to appreciate your interests, begin by demonstrating that you appreciate theirs” (pp. 52—53).
Linchpin: Are you Indispensable? by Seth Godin
Any book that has an introduction that starts with a heading titled “You Are a Genius” is worth reading. The book's premise is that we all have genius in us, but society, schools, and the workplace have convinced many of us that we do not have genius to share with the world. Godin demonstrates that while the industrial era is over, many remnants of that era remain, including the assembly-line mentality where we all are just responsible for one piece of the creative process. His mission in the book is to help readers reclaim their genius and become indispensable members of society (i.e., linchpins). Godin provides practical suggestions on how to become a linchpin. Our view: education needs more linchpins. Favorite quote: “Leaders don't get a map or a set of rules. Living life without a map requires a different attitude. It requires you to be a linchpin” (p. 19).
Infusing What We Read into Our Practice
Reading a book or article, even a powerful one such as those listed here, is not enough to improve the educator's practice. We must also integrate the lessons learned into our daily work. In this section, we share some of the techniques we have used to incorporate what we have learned from books, journals, newspapers, social media, and other sources into our daily lives.
Quotes Document
Whenever Jenny reads an electronically formatted piece that impacts her work, she saves the document and takes time to add quotes into a quotes document she keeps on her computer. She marks quotes in the books she reads and before they are returned to her shelves, she types them all into her quotes document. Electronic readers, such as the Kindle, are time savers in this regard, as they allow readers to highlight quotes and copy and paste them into their documents. We strongly suggest that readers provide the full APA citations for every quote, including the page or paragraph number, in the document to save time later when using these quotes in presentations or articles. Whenever Jenny is asked to give a speech, she accesses the quotes document to build the rest of the presentation around. In fact, most of the favorite quotes for the books Jenny provided in this article were taken from her quotes document.
Reflective Questions
One key to making the most of reading materials is to remind yourself before diving into the literature that you want to read with an eye toward discovering new information that can be put into practice in some facet of your life. After reading, asking yourself reflective questions can be a powerful way to figure out how to put what you have learned into action. Examples of reflective questions include:
What are the most important take-away points of this writing for me?
What can I take from this reading and incorpo rate into my work?
What about this reading makes me question my current practice?
What could I do even better now that I have read this material?
Another technique involves attempting to make connections between a new reading and previous readings or ideas we hold. Doing so raises questions such as:
Does this book challenge any ideas I have believed in? Are there ideas I should rethink in light of this new approach?
Have I read, or heard, anyone else's views on this topic, or a related topic? Do these thinkers agree? Disagree? Can their approaches be com bined in some way?
Do these ideas shed new light on what I already know? Have I had experiences that take on new significance when seen in the context of this book?
If this reading has raised questions or issues for me and I don't know what I think about them, where should I go next to learn more?
Share Findings
One of the best approaches for putting learning into action is to share your insights with others. One way to do this is to establish a book club with colleagues within your office or from across campus. This can be an incentive for others to read more, allows for discussion about the books, and supports brainstorming on incorporating lessons learned into the workplace. Another option is to start a blog that features summaries of the take-home points from each book you have read. Another option is to write an article in your area of expertise on how your reading has influenced your practice. Although young professionals may not perceive themselves as experts, as they read in one area and actively incorporate ideas from their reading into their work practice, they are becoming experts. The more widely one reads, and the more sources of ideas and information one draws on, the more opportunities one has to combine ideas in new and interesting ways. For example, Jenny has all of her master's degree students in her Student Affairs Administration class submit articles for publication as one of the course requirements. Although most students worry at the beginning of the class that they have no areas of expertise, by asking them a few questions Jenny is able to help them identify relevant experiences and knowledge they have acquired in a particular area that would be appropriate for an article. In the past five years, 115 of her students have had their articles published.
Conclusion
With higher education facing multiple unprecedented challenges, it is more important than ever for educators to continuously read and update their knowledge. Toward that end, we have shared some of the printed resources from higher education and other disciplines that have impacted our lives and our work and we offered strategies for incorporating newly acquired knowledge into practice. Walking the talk as life-long learning role models to students involves reading widely and writing to inform educational practice. We believe this is one of the educator's most important responsibilities.