But what’s involved in bringing these narratives into the classroom—in creative writing, cultural studies, women’s and ethnic studies, and social science and literature courses? How may instructors engage the philosophical, historical, social, and theoretical contexts of the emerging field of autobiography studies?Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson, two authorities in life narrative studies distill their diverse forays into life writing in a concise yet far-reaching overview of key terms, issues, histories, and texts in autobiography studies. Reading Autobiography is a step-by-step introduction to the differences of self-narrative from fiction and biography; the components of autobiographical acts; such core concepts as memory, experience, identity, agency, and the body; the textual and critical history of the field; and prospects for future research. Organized as a user-friendly handbook, it includes a glossary of key words, suggestions for teaching, and extensive primary and secondary bibliographies. Sidonie Smith is professor of English and women’s studies at the University of Michigan. Julia Watson is associate professor of comparative studies at Ohio State University.

    This text teaches students to be a better consumer of research results, understand how the research enterprise works, and prepares them to conduct small research projects. Upon completing this text, students will be aware of what research can and cannot do, and why properly conducted research is important. Using clear, accessible language and examples from real research, this discusses both qualitative and quantitative approaches to social research, emphasizing the benefits of combining various approaches. Briefer, paperback text, adapted from Neuman's Social Research Methods, Sixth Edition.

    In this new Seventh Edition of his perennially successful social research text, author Russell K. Schutt continues to make research come alive through stories that illustrate the methods presented in each chapter, and hands-on exercises that help students learn by doing. Investigating the Social World helps readers understand research methods as an integrated whole, appreciate the value of both qualitative and quantitative methodologies, and understand the need to make ethical research decisions. New to this Edition: * upgraded coverage of research methods to include the spread of cell phones and the use of the Internet, including expanded coverage of Web surveys * larger page size in full color allows for better display of pedagogical features * new 'Research in the News' boxes included within chapters * more international examples * expanded statistics coverage now includes more coverage of inferenctial statistics and regression analysi

    Offering an approach with a visual/graphical emphasis, this text offers a number of examples on the premise that students learn best by doing. This book features an emphasis on interpretation of results and critical thinking over calculations.

    This view was at the core of the compact between government and science that led to the golden age of scientific research after World War II—a compact that is currently under severe stress. In this book, Donald Stokes challenges Bush's view and maintains that we can only rebuild the relationship between government and the scientific community when we understand what is wrong with that view.Stokes begins with an analysis of the goals of understanding and use in scientific research. He recasts the widely accepted view of the tension between understanding and use, citing as a model case the fundamental yet use-inspired studies by which Louis Pasteur laid the foundations of microbiology a century ago. Pasteur worked in the era of the "second industrial revolution," when the relationship between basic science and technological change assumed its modern form. Over subsequent decades, technology has been increasingly science-based. But science has been increasingly technology-based--with the choice of problems and the conduct of research often inspired by societal needs. An example is the work of the quantum-effects physicists who are probing the phenomena revealed by the miniaturization of semiconductors from the time of the transistor's discovery after World War II.On this revised, interactive view of science and technology, Stokes builds a convincing case that by recognizing the importance of use-inspired basic research we can frame a new compact between science and government. His conclusions have major implications for both the scientific and policy communities and will be of great interest to those in the broader public who are troubled by the current role of basic science in American democracy.

    From the very first attempts by the Greeks to grapple with the complexities of our known world to the latest application of infinity in physics, The Road to Reality carefully explores the movement of the smallest atomic particles and reaches into the vastness of intergalactic space. Here, Penrose examines the mathematical foundations of the physical universe, exposing the underlying beauty of physics and giving us one the most important works in modern science writing.

    The book demonstrates what sharply rising standards for literacy have meant to successive generations of Americans and how--as students, workers, parents, and citizens--they have responded to rapid changes in the meaning and methods of literacy learning in their society. Drawing on more than 80 life histories of Americans from all walks of life, the book addresses critical questions facing public education at the start of the twenty-first century.

    Steele’s conclusions shed new light on a host of American social phenomena, from the racial and gender gaps in standardized test scores to the belief in the superior athletic prowess of black men. Steele explicates the dilemmas that arise in every American’s life around issues of identity, from the white student whose grades drop steadily in his African American Studies class to the female engineering students deciding whether or not to attend predominantly male professional conferences. Whistling Vivaldi offers insight into how we form our senses of identity and ultimately lays out a plan for mitigating the negative effects of “stereotype threat” and reshaping American identities.

    This comprehensive work covers both statistical and symbolic approaches to language processing; it shows how they can be applied to important tasks such as speech recognition, spelling and grammar correction, information extraction, search engines, machine translation, and the creation of spoken-language dialog agents. The following distinguishing features make the text both an introduction to the field and an advanced reference guide.- UNIFIED AND COMPREHENSIVE COVERAGE OF THE FIELDCovers the fundamental algorithms of each field, whether proposed for spoken or written language, whether logical or statistical in origin.- EMPHASIS ON WEB AND OTHER PRACTICAL APPLICATIONSGives readers an understanding of how language-related algorithms can be applied to important real-world problems.- EMPHASIS ON SCIENTIFIC EVALUATIONOffers a description of how systems are evaluated with each problem domain.- EMPERICIST/STATISTICAL/MACHINE LEARNING APPROACHES TO LANGUAGE PROCESSINGCovers all the new statistical approaches, while still completely covering the earlier more structured and rule-based methods.

    Drawing on personal and professional experience, Stephen Shore, who is currently completing his doctoral degree in special education, combines three voices to create a touching and, at the same time, highly informative book for professionals as well as individuals who have Asperger Syndrome. Get a unique perspective on AS across the years!

    Yet little is known about why for-profits have expanded so quickly and even less about how the power and influence of this big-money industry impact individual lives. Lower Ed, the first book to link the rapid expansion of for-profit degrees to America’s increasing inequality, reveals the story of an industry that exploits the pain, desperation, and aspirations of the most vulnerable and exposes the conditions that allow for-profit education to thrive.Tressie McMillan Cottom draws on her personal experience as a former counselor at two for-profit colleges and dozens of interviews with students, senior executives, and activists to detail how these schools have become so successful and to decipher the benefits, credentials, pitfalls, and real costs of a for-profit education. By humanizing the hard choices about school and survival that millions of Americans face, Lower Ed nimbly parses the larger forces that deliver some of us to Yale and others to For-Profit U in an office park off Interstate 10.

    Carolyn Ellis, the leading proponent of these methods, does not disappoint. She weaves both methodological advice and her own personal stories into an intriguing narrative about a fictional graduate course she instructs. In it, you learn about her students and their projects and understand the wide array of topics and strategies that fall under the label autoethnography. Through Ellis's interactions with her students, you are given useful strategies for conducting a study, including the need for introspection, the struggles of the budding ethnographic writer, the practical problems in explaining results of this method to outsiders, and the moral and ethical issues that get raised in this intimate form of research. Anyone who has taken or taught a course on ethnography will recognize these issues and appreciate Ellis's humanistic, personal, and literary approach toward incorporating them into her work. A methods text or a novel? The Ethnographic 'I' answers yes to both.

    Derek Attridge argues that such resistance represents not a dead end, but a crucial starting point from which to explore anew the power and practices of Western art.In this lively, original volume, the author:considers the implications of regarding the literary work as an innovative cultural event, both in its time and for later generations; provides a rich new vocabulary for discussions of literature, rethinking such terms as invention, singularity, otherness, alterity, performance and form; returns literature to the realm of ethics, and argues the ethical importance of the literary institution to a culture; demonstrates how a new understanding of the literary might be put to work in a 'responsible, ' creative mode of reading.The Singularity of Literature is not only a major contribution to the theory of literature, but also a celebration of the extraordinary pleasure of the literary, for reader, writer, student or critic.

    She argues that the grading system most commonly in use now is unwieldy, imprecise and unnecessarily complex, involving too many rating levels for too many individual assignments and tests, and based on a hairsplitting point structure that obscures the underlying criteria and encourages students to challenge their grades.This new specifications grading paradigm restructures assessments to streamline the grading process and greatly reduce grading time, empower students to choose the level of attainment they want to achieve, reduce antagonism between the evaluator and the evaluated, and increase student receptivity to meaningful feedback, thus facilitating the learning process - all while upholding rigor. In addition, specs grading increases students' motivation to do well by making expectations clear, lowering their stress and giving them agency in determining their course goals. Among the unique characteristics of the schema, all of which simplify faculty decision making, are the elimination of partial credit, the reliance on a one-level grading rubric and the -bundling- of assignments and tests around learning outcomes. Successfully completing more challenging bundles (or modules) earns a student a higher course grade. Specs grading works equally well in small and large class settings and encourages -authentic assessment.- Used consistently over time, it can restore credibility to grades by demonstrating and making transparent to all stakeholders the learning outcomes that students achieve.This book features many examples of courses that faculty have adapted to spec grading and lays out the surprisingly simple transition process. It is intended for all members of higher education who teach, whatever the discipline and regardless of rank, as well as those who oversee, train, and advise those who teach.Specification grading promotes the following values and outcomes. It: 1. Upholds High Academic Standards2. Reflects Student Attainment of Skills and Knowledge 3. Motivates Students to Learn and to Excel4. Fosters Higher-Order Cognitive Development and Creativity5. Discourages Cheating6. Reduces Student Stress7. Makes Students Feel Responsible for Their Grades8. Minimizes Conflict Between Faculty and Students9. Saves Faculty Time and Is Simple to Administer10. Makes Expectations Clear and Simplifies Feedback for Improvement11. Assesses Authentically12. Achieves High Inter-Rater Agreement

    Fully revised to meet the needs of the wide range of students beginning engineering courses, this edition has an extended Foundation section including new chapters on graphs, trigonometry, binomial series and functions and a CD-ROM