Class and the college classroom
"In recent decades, scholarly work and pedagogical practice in higher education have paid increasing attention to issues of race, class, gender, and sexuality. But among these four terms of analysis - and clearly they are interrelated - class has often been an afterthought. Several recent books have been about admissions, about who is in the college classroom, not about what goes on there; this is a good time for a book that takes a broader look at college teaching and social class.Class and the College Classroom collects and reprints (from the journal Radical Teacher) twenty essays that can help college teachers and others think about class. An Introduction explores larger questions of how class is experienced and viewed in US society generally. Two challenges facing those who would teach seriously about issues of class come immediately to mind: first, the widespread belief that just about everyone in the United States is "middle class," a way of thinking that masks the power and importance of class; and, second, the reality that most students who pursue higher education are doing so with an eye to rising in social class and are reluctant to entertain, for example, the possibility that lines between classes are less permeable than they might wish or think. And then, of course, there is the genuine complexity of defining just what "class" is. This is a wide-ranging and insightful collection of essays that will be helpful to all educators who wish to engage with this issue of teaching in the college classroom"-- "First up, this book is very US-focused. Most Schools/Depts of Education in the US have several faculty members whose research is focused purely on issues in Higher Education - this book is aimed squarely at them, and at the (smallish) graduate courses/seminars that they teach. There's a secondary, and somewhat amorphous, other readership for this book: faculty in higher education, those long established and those entering or (like adjuncts) on the margins, should find this book appealing and useful, definitely something they would urge their institutions' libraries to purchase if they can't spend the money themselves. Most colleges have faculty development workshops, reading circles, and other groups (usually well supported and funded by the administration) devoted to improving teaching, and a this book would be natural for these groups. In addition, colleges are increasingly teaching about college teaching in their graduate courses (which often supply adjunct faculty) and this could be an important text in such courses"--
