Maximizing the Impact of Assessment in Higher Education: Closing the Loop with Change Management

The commitment to accessibility serves as a catalyst for developing and implementing practices that prevent barriers and can better allow for inclusive participation with the world around us. Unfortunately, the importance of accessibility does not always equate with commitment and compliance. While there has been a slow-moving effort to increase accessibility, the global pandemic and several key social justice movements have spotlighted inaccessible content and systems. <p/><em>The New Accessibility in Higher Education</em> guides the reader through the various areas of higher education, detailing how barriers to access were identified and how accessibility was reimagined and improved through the perspectives of faculty, administrators, and students. The book considers the multidimensionality of accessibility and how postsecondary scholars and practitioners must reconsider how accessibility in postsecondary education is understood and achieved. It argues that higher education can no longer ignore issues of accessibility nor revert to previous, antiquated, and discriminatory policies that do not support the success of disabled students. The book not only spotlights what occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic and other recent key events but, instead, but also provides a roadmap for the continued integration of more accessible strategies within modern higher education.

Palfreyman, David

Widely understood to be the best tool of social change, education offers a space to interrogate persistent and damaging oppressions, calling into question the cultural and political antecedents, as well as the current politics and practices, that have facilitated inequity. Educational leaders themselves, however, have much to learn about dismantling systems that maintain these barriers. Diversity Leadership in Education offers a deep look into the complexities and opportunities afforded by new models of diversity leadership. Authors from across North America explore how diverse leaders are key to improving the school experience for marginalized students. Indigenous, Black, racialized, and collaborative forms of leadership contribute to decolonizing educational settings by unsettling hegemonic ideas; these include the dominance of equity myths in educational administration and pedagogical whitewashing around issues germane to social justice. Unpacking privilege in education systems, the volume speaks to incorporating social justice in everyday leadership practices through advocacy, solidarity, spirituality, relationality, and reconciliation. It profiles diversity leadership as a rudder, steering a more inclusive and equitable society.

Riddell, Jessica

<p>The Columbia University Seminars, founded in 1945, represent a distinctive experiment in academia. Scholars from different disciplines and institutions, as well as practitioners and other experts, meet once a month through the academic year to study and discuss subjects, sometimes beyond their specialties. Through collegial discussion, participants learn from one another. Today, over ninety seminars are ongoing: some have outlived their founders, while others are just beginning. <p/><i>A Community of Scholars</i> is a seventy-fifth anniversary celebration of the founding of The University Seminars. It brings together essays by seminar chairs and other leading participants that exemplify the diversity and vibrancy of these proceedings. Their topics are wide-ranging--the evolution of the labor movement, urban life, the politics and culture of Brazil, the Enlightenment, the prospects for world peace--but in each, a commitment to intellectual provocation and shared learning is on full display. An informative introduction explains how The Seminars came into being and why they continue to matter. The volume also features biographical sketches of Frank Tannenbaum, the Latin America scholar and criminologist who founded The Seminars, and his wife, the anthropologist Jane Belo, a close friend of Margaret Mead. Belo and Tannenbaum endowed The Seminars and allowed them to flourish. A remarkable testament to an unparalleled intellectual forum, <i>A Community of Scholars</i> allows readers to share in the eclectic spirit of The Seminars.</p>

Ehrlich, Thomas