Faculty and staff have released a number of books this semester:

David Blacker, professor of philosophy of education and legal studies, has authored The Falling Rate of Learning and the Neoliberal Endgame, published by Zero Books, which looks at how the educational world is being affected by Marx’s law of the falling rate of profit. To hear Blacker discussing his new book, click the podcast at From Alpha 2 Omega.  Blacker has published half a dozen books and has written widely on political, legal and ethical issues in education policy, including a continuing series of state-specific textbooks on educational law and ethics.

Jan Blits, professor in the School of Education, has written a book titled, The Heart of Rome: Ancient Rome’s Political Culture, published by Lexington Books. The essays in this book examine the political activities and institutions of pre-Imperial Rome in conjunction with the habits of the hearts and the minds of the Romans. Relying on the writings of ancient authors, the essays analyze significant political developments and events.  Blits is the author of seven other books and his articles have appeared in Educational Theory, The Review of Politics, The Journal of Politics, Political Theory, Interpretation, Apeiron, The Southern Journal of Philosophy, The Public Interest, and other journals.

Nancy Jordan and Nancy Dyson – Through grants from the National Institute of Child Health & Human Development and the Institute of Education Sciences, Nancy Jordan, professor, School of Education, and post-doctoral scholar Nancy Dyson have been studying ways to help children with math learning disabilities. They have developed a user-friendly curriculum called Number Sense Interventions, with fun and highly effective techniques to boost key math skills such as oral counting, number recognition, and numeral writing. Jordan is a principal investigator with the Center for Improving Learning of Fractions funded by the Institute of Education Sciences.

William Lewis, assistant professor, and Sharon Walpole, professor, both of the School of Education, and Michael McKenna, University of Virginia, have co-authored the book Cracking the Common Core: Choosing and Using Texts in Grades 6-12. Just released by Guilford Press, the book is a guide for secondary school teachers and leaders to help them meet the  reading and writing demands of the Common Core State Standards. It presents a framework for creatively combining literature, informational text and digital sources, and provides teachers strategies for analyzing text complexity, building background knowledge, promoting reading engagement, incorporating discussion and developing text-based writing skills. Lewis’s research interests focus on persuasive writing and argumentation, and secondary content-area reading and writing. Walpole is the author of eight other books and more than a dozen peer-reviewed journal articles. She designs and studies the effects of professional development on instruction and achievement.