Syllabus : the remarkable, unremarkable document that changes everything / William Germano, Kit Nicholls.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Germano, William P., 1950- author.

Nicholls, Kit, 1979- author.

Series:

Skills for scholars (Princeton University Press)

Skills for Scholars Series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

College teaching.

Curriculum planning.

Education, Higher--Curricula.

Education, Higher.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (231 pages) : illustrations

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Princeton, New Jersey : Princeton University Press, 2022.

Summary:

"The syllabus is one of the central documents of academic life, the one thing every teacher needs to write and every student needs to read. Most syllabi begin with a course description, a statement of what the course is about. But how do we get there? How will our students get there? And where is there? This book by William Germano and Kit Nicholls is a field guide to, and collegial chat concerning, this fundamental but often overlooked document. It describes how syllabi work and don't work, offers advice and encouragement to the professor trying to finish yet another syllabus, and reimagines our students' encounters with our syllabi by reconsidering our own relationship to them. Sampling syllabi from a range of disciplines across the sciences, social sciences, and humanities, Syllabus asks such questions as: what is a reading list, and what is it for? how do we build human time into the semester's clocktime? and can a syllabus be a living thing? Germano and Nicholls argue that at its heart, a syllabus is not really about what students have to know, or what the instructor will do, but what the students will do. A syllabus designed around doing is not only a faster and more effective way to move students toward knowledge, they contend, but also, importantly, an invitation into a community of practice-one that includes the students, the instructor, and countless others who will enter the classrom through readings, images, designs, and theories. Reimagining the syllabus as a sort of constitution-a founding document that creates a community out of a group of disparate individuals-they show that a syllabus is, above all, a privilege and a responsibility, as one of the few forms of writing that can quite directly call others to act"-- Provided by publisher

Contents:

Cover

Contents

Acknowledgments

Preface: Reality Check

1. What You Do, What They Do

The Syllabus We Have

The Syllabus We Could Have

The Pedagogical Contract

2. Turning the Classroom into a Community

Students and Sovereigns

Classroom Composition

Finding the Center

The Classroom Community as a Working Community

True Believers

3. Clock and Calendar

Two Kinds of Time

Coursetime

Off-Season

4. What's a Reading List? And What's It For?

Not Quite a Short History of the Reading List

Required Reading, Recommended Reading

Thinking with the Incomplete

Making Use of Everything

How to Read a List, or Pretty Much Anything Else

5. Their Work and Why They Do It

Starting from the Work

Of Students and Stories

Facts and Concepts

Putting It All Together

6. Our Work and How We Do It

The Trouble with Grades

Feedback, Feed Forward

Honesty and Other Best Policies

7. What Does Learning Sound Like?

Group Improvisation

What Teaching Sounds Like

Together and Apart

8. For Your Eyes Only

The Instructor's Copy

Reflective Teaching

A Teaching Philosophy, with Oranges

9. The Syllabus as a Theory of Teaching

A Design for Possibilities

Us and Them

The Real Life of a Syllabus

The Syllabus at the End of the Mind

Further Reading

Index.

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780691209876

0691209871

OCLC:

1312726056