Teaching the Whole Student: Engaged Learning With Heart, Mind, and Spirit - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1620363038 ISBN 13: 9781620363034

Publisher: Routledge, 2017

Synopsis

Teaching the Whole Student is a compendium of engaged teaching approaches by faculty across disciplines. These inspiring authors offer models for instructors who care deeply about their students, respect and recognize students’ social identities and lived experiences, and are interested in creating community and environments of openness and trust to foster deep-learning, academic success, and meaning-making.

The authors in this volume stretch the boundaries of academic learning and the classroom experience by seeking to identify the space between subject matter and a student's core values and prior knowledge. They work to find the interconnectedness of knowledge, understanding, meaning, inquiry and truth. They appreciate that students bring their full lives and experiences—their heart and spirit—into the classroom just as they bring their minds and intellectual inquiry.

These approaches contribute to student learning and the core academic purposes of higher education, help students find meaning and purpose in their lives, and help strengthen our diverse democracy through students’ active participation and leadership in civic life. They also have a demonstrated impact on critical and analytical thinking, student retention and academic success, personal well-being, commitments to civic engagement, diversity, and social justice.

Topics discussed:

• Student relationships and community building
• How teaching the whole student increases persistence and completion rates
• How an open learning environment fosters critical understanding
• Strategies for developing deep social and personal reflection in experiential education and service learning

The authors of this book remind us in poignant and empirical ways of the importance of teaching the whole student, as the book's title reflects.

About this title

Review:

"In an era where administrative strategies to increase student retention tend to miss the mark, this elegant anthology of thoughtful essays by experienced college and university faculty helps bring attention back to the essentials of genuine, effective teaching and learning."--John R. Thelin, Professor"University of Kentucky" (03/03/2017)

"Exploring and justifying our attention as educators to the multiple connections of the pedagogies of engaged learning to the valuing of the wholeness of our students' lives and experiences provides the compelling case for why making those connections should be at the center of higher education - one of its core and essential purposes. Teaching the Whole Student succeeds in helping us do just that."-- (03/15/2017)

"Comprised of one-part call to action and two parts inspiration, Teaching the Whole Student offers encouragement and practical instructional strategies to college educators who care deeply about teaching and helping students discover meaning and purpose. By thoughtfully combining academic content with students' heart, mind and spirit, each essay author reveals their unique approaches to innovative teaching, stretching the boundaries of learning, and strengthening our diverse democracy."-- (03/22/2017)

"For nearly a decade, higher education has been abuzz with the educational power of 'high impact practices' - a family of interactive, hands-on pedagogies through which students and faculty work together on complex, important questions. Teaching the Whole Student reaches through the hype to explore, in rich, evidence-supported detail, how these engaged pedagogies kindle students' own sense of purpose and build commitment to help create a more just, inclusive, and sustainable future."-- (03/24/2017)

"Ultimately the strength of this book can be found in the questions that it poses more than in the answers it suggests. Each essay concludes with a set of reflection questions prompted by the content of the essay, and a patient, thoughtful reader could work her way through this book and be richly rewarded."-- (12/18/2017)

"Not only do the authors make clear that teaching the whole student is an important strategy for increasing retention and graduation rates, with increased individual commitment and connections of learning to life; but they also explain that this approach is good for the community, by increasing the number of problem-solvers and critical thinkers prepared to face and heal society's ills. This type of teaching opens up the world of service, where graduates can use their knowledge along with their hearts, minds, and spirits to make the world a better place.

I very much enjoyed this book, an excellent compilation of thoughtful, detailed, meaningful experiences of faculty who are teaching the whole student. Their stories are inspiring to those of us who are willing to consider engaging each student's heart, mind, and spirit. With both the theoretical underpinnings and the practical stories and examples, others will be inspired and challenged to create similar meaningful learning experiences within their own classrooms and communities."-- (02/07/2018)

About the Author:

David Schoem is Director of the Michigan Community Scholars Program at the University of Michigan and a faculty member in Department of Sociology. Christine Modey is Director of the Peer Writing Consultant Program at the University of Michigan and a faculty member in the Sweetland Writing Center. Edward P. St. John is Algo D. Henderson Collegiate Professor of Education at the University of Michigan's Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education. He is interested in education, justice, and public policy. He serves as series editor for Readings on Equal Education and has received awards for his leadership from the Association for the Study of Higher Education and for scholarship from the National Association of Student Financial Aid. Beverly Daniel Tatum, PhD, is president emerita of Spelman College and in 2014 received the Award for Outstanding Lifetime Contribution to Psychology, the highest honor presented by the American Psychological Association. She is also the author of the forthcoming "Why Are All the Black Kids Still Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?: And Other Conversations About Race" (Basic Books).

About this edition

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 1620363038
• ISBN 13: 9781620363034
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 300
• Editor: Schoem David, Modey Christine, St. John Edward P.