Lending Library

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Lending Library

Faculty and staff are welcome to borrow books from the CTSE Lending Library, which has over 400 books, journals, videos, and other resources related to good teaching practice and scholarship. We offer a collection of thoughtful literature about:

the science of teaching and learning,
teaching with technology,
diversity and inclusion,
leadership,
and much more.

Browse our full catalog

Contact us or stop by the CTSE for suggestions on what literature might meet your needs. We are located on the 12th floor of the Stahl Building (73 Tremont St.) in room 1294. Our team looks forward to seeing you!

Featured books

“I wrote this book to let everyone in on one of the best kept secrets in education,” writes Dr. Saundra McGuire. With this book, the acclaimed student success expert encapsulates two decades of helping faculty to improve student learning. McGuire asks readers to reject the assumption that students enter college prepared to learn. Instead, she encourages faculty to view learning as a skill that students need support to develop. This is a matter not only of helping students transition to college, but of achieving “metacognitive equity,” which McGuire describes as equal access to effective thinking and learning strategies.

Teach Students How to Learn presents simple and effective strategies to dramatically improve student learning and create strategic, lifelong learners. Recommendations range from the familiar (create a supportive classroom environment) to the reassuring (keep it simple) to the utterly surprising (teach students how to implement Bloom’s Taxonomy), with plenty of research and success stories to back it up. Faculty can make ready use of the book’s wealth of resources, including step-by-step lesson guides, presentation slides, illustrations, case studies, and resources for students. Teach Students How to Learn is an engaging, hopeful read with the potential to transform your classroom.

Tips for Faculty from Teach Students How to Learn:

Emphasize that students’ actions, not their intelligence, will determine their success.
Provide students with targeted feedback, perhaps with a comment that you are providing feedback because you have high standards and believe in their ability to meet or exceed them.
At the end of class, ask students to jot down a one- or two-sentence summary of the important concepts from that day’s lesson. This “exit ticket” gives students an opportunity to consolidate their comprehension of the material.

Tip for Students from Teach Students How to Learn:

Create your own test questions to evaluate your ability to apply the material.
Prepare as if you have to teach the information you are learning. Then, see if you can actually help a friend or family member understand what you are learning.
Preview the reading: scan the text for bolded words, italicized words, guiding questions, and subheadings. Write down the questions you have based on your previewing. Then, read the text and see if you can answer your questions.

Teaching to Transgress is a celebration of teaching; it crackles with bell hooks’ contagious enthusiasm. “After twenty years of teaching,” she writes, “I can confess that I am often most joyous in the classroom, brought closer to the ecstatic than by most of life’s experiences.” At a time when it may feel more difficult than ever to remember the possibilities that teaching presents, Teaching to Transgress reminds us that each semester is an opportunity to begin again – to reawaken the joy we find in teaching.

Nearly 30 years after its initial release, Teaching to Transgress has the same power to refresh, inspire, and enlighten. This first entry into hooks’ Teaching trilogy teems with possibility, full of excitement about the capacity of education to liberate. It blends practical, intuitive teaching advice with hooks’ trademark criticality. Complex topics like holistic pedagogy, the utility of student experience, and oppressive dynamics in the classroom are easily untangled in hooks’ clear, accessible prose.

Learn more about bell hooks’ Teaching trilogy: Teaching to Transgress and Teaching Critical Thinking are available through the CTSE lending library. Teaching Critical Thinking and Teaching Community are available in e-book format through the Sawyer Library.

Bhandari’s writing is captivatingly intimate, deftly navigating between the personal and the universal. She writes vividly of her first encounter with a chocolate chip cookie during her journey to the US as a doctoral student in 1992. Her memoir vividly captures her journey from there – the bureaucracy of visas and work permits, her hurried adjustment to the American classroom, and her struggle to find employment in India and America. America Calling is a reminder that every student treads a unique path to our classroom. The richness of Bhandari’s narrative also reminds us just how much wisdom and wonder our students carry with them, waiting to be tapped.

With this book, Bhandari is blending a deeply personal narrative with her own nuanced, academic analysis. Her journey is contextualized against the broader experience of international students in the US. At a time of declining international student enrollment and rising nationalism, America Calling is a striking counternarrative that captures the confusion and wonder of being an international student. This book is a timely and informative read for all instructors invested in student development and success.

Available in the CTSE library or Sawyer Library

As its title implies, Taking College Teaching Seriously: Pedagogy Matters! presents college teaching as a valuable practice worthy of critical examination and reflection. Authors Gail O. Mellow, Diana D. Woolis, Marisa Klages-Bombich, and Susan G. Restler outline “the pedagogy matters practice improvement model,” a professional learning community model that uses online platforms to support reflection, coaching, and relationship-building. Although the primary audience is faculty teaching at two-year institutions, Taking College Teaching Seriously contains theories and practical wisdom that transcend institutional type. The authors present a “sustainable, cost-effective way to support faculty who want to improve college teaching” and contextualize this process within the challenges of higher education, learning science, and theories of change. Among the book’s greatest attributes is its many examples of faculty who rediscovered their love of teaching while participating in the process. Taking College Teaching Seriously is a practical resource for instructors and departments looking to support reflective, relationship-based professional development while renewing a passion for college teaching.

Available in the CTSE library or Sawyer Library (e-book)

Archived reviews

Relationship Rich Education

The centrality of relationships to student learning and achievement is not a radical, or even a new idea. Decades of research indicate that relationships are vital to students’ success and sense of belonging in college. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the importance of relationships in education became even more apparent. What makes Peter Felten and Leo M. Lambert’s Relationship-Rich Education (2020) so compelling is not the idea that relationships matter, but how they matter, and how higher education might be fundamentally altered by placing relationships at the center of policy and practice.

While relatively brief, Relationship-Rich Education encompasses nearly 400 interviews with students, faculty, and staff at 29 diverse higher education institutions across the United States. The book explores the possibilities and challenges for creating and sustaining relationship-rich education, strategies for implementing relationship-driven pedagogies, and examples of programs rooted in human connection. In six short chapters (and a new pandemic postscript) Felten and Lambert provide the tools and practical advice necessary to create relationship-rich environments in higher education.

Tips for instructors from Relationship-Rich Education

Peer-to-peer relationships are often more impactful than student-instructor relationships. Consider how your course would change if building peer relationships was one of your course objectives.
Research indicates that simple practices like learning and using students’ names, giving formative feedback early in the semester, and expressing high (but not impossible) expectations positively impact student performance and retention.
Across institutions, students consistently recalled the powerful impact of someone asking “How are you?” and taking the time to listen generously to the answer.

Available in the CTSE library or Sawyer Library (e-book)

Engaging Students as Partners in Teaching and Learning

Authors Alison Cook-Sather, Catherine Bovill, and Peter Felten outline an innovative, relationship-based approach to education in Engaging Students as Partners in Teaching and Learning. They suggest that within the framework of faculty-student partnerships, students are “experts and essential partners” who possess practical insights into effective teaching and learning (29), and assert that students and instructors can “contribute equally, though not necessarily in the same ways” to curriculum design and implementation (7).

This book is intended as a user-friendly guide for faculty, who are encouraged to start small and gain inspiration from the many wide-ranging case studies. In the years since the publication of this book, it has become clear that student faculty partnerships are more than just a shiny, new teaching technique. It is a mindset with the capacity to transform higher education. As faculty-student partnerships continue to gain traction, Cook-Sather, Bovill, and Felten’s book is a necessary read for any instructor seeking new and innovative approaches to engage students in transformative learning.

Available in the CTSE library or Sawyer Library (e-book)

The New Science of Learning

Anthropologist Margaret Mead spoke of the value of teaching students “how to think, not what to think.” Mead’s sentiment is paraphrased in The New Science of Learning, which focuses on teaching students how to learn.

As the subtitle “How to learn in harmony with your brain” implies, the authors examine learning as a holistic process in which sleep, nutrition, fitness, and sensory engagement all play a role. Authors Doyle and Zakrajsek use research-based strategies and compelling practical explanations to demystify the learning process for students and transform their habits.

Students often enter college with little understanding of how to learn effectively, and instructors want to know how they can prepare students to become lifelong learners. The 2nd edition of The New Science of Learning contains critical discussion questions at the end of each chapter that can easily be implemented in the classroom. This groundbreaking book offers a fresh and engaging view of self-directed learning and represents a step towards democratizing academic success.

Available in the CTSE library or Sawyer Library (e-book).