CTL Book Club: What We Read in 2023
This guest post is by Senior Instructional Designer Amy Pinkerton and Instructional Designer Emily Haagenson at the Center for Teaching and Learning.
When the weather outside is frightful, it's the perfect time to catch up on some reading. Here is what the Center for Teaching and Learning's (CTL) Book Club (BC) has read in 2023 and how those books have impacted our professional work.
Think Again (Adam Grant)
The CTL BC read Adam Grant’s Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know (2021). Grant’s balanced tone, both humorous and insightful, provided accessible opportunities for us to discuss individual, interpersonal and collective rethinking.
What book club members are saying about this book:
- Grant, the author and a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, gave one of our favorite instructional suggestions when he offered his idea of “grapples.” The faculty poses a question at the start of a term without providing solutions and then continually prompts discussions and opportunities to “think again” on the subject throughout the academic term.
- One provocative take-away from Think Again was in his chapter on “The Joy of Being Wrong” when Grant says, “Attachment. That’s what keeps us from recognizing when our opinions are off the mark and rethinking them…I’ve learned that two kinds of detachment are especially useful:detaching your present from your past and detaching your opinions from your identity” (62).As educators and members of a venerable institution, it is easy to get stuck unquestioningly in our identities or patterns, but Grant reminds us to “think again” about what we know.
- Grant is an intriguing social thought-leader and interesting to follow on social media. He also offers quizzes related to the topics in his books that foster interesting personal reflections and team conversations.
The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters (Priya Parker)
The next book on the CTL BC’s list was The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters (2018) by Priya Parker. This acclaimed bestseller highlights the importance of a human-centered approach and personally and professionally “committing to a bold, sharp purpose” in your gatherings (1). We discussed the cultivation of belonging and social intention and how we, in our roles as educators and humans, can use our “generous authority” to improve and support a gathering.
What book club members are saying about this book:
- Many readers agreed that they would recommend this book to others at BSPH. The practical applications of developing a purposeful framework for gathering encourage us to “rethink” meetings, class sessions and other social interactions and intentionally make them more meaningful.
- One phrase that Parker reiterates is that “a category is not a purpose” and we discussed this in the context of “staff meetings”, as well as “baby showers” or “dinner parties”. So often we forget to clarify the purpose of bringing people together. Parker reminds us that the purpose should guide all the other components of a gathering: attendees and roles, invitations, format, structure.
- Pria Parker also offers supplemental resources to her book that focus on virtual and hybrid gatherings.
Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think (Hans Rosling)
CTL BC switched gears with their next book, Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think (2018), by the late Hans Rosling. It often feels like the world is getting worse, but Rosling disagrees, statistically, while also acknowledging that “things can both be bad and better” (71). This book challenges readers to examine ten instincts that distort our perspectives about the world we live in. According to their research team, “In 2017 we asked nearly 12,000 people in 14 countries to answer our questions. They scored on average just two correct answers out of the first 12. No one got full marks, and just one person (in Sweden) got 11 out of 12. A stunning 15% scored zero” (8). It makes you want to try the quiz yourself, doesn’t it?
What book club members are saying about this book:
- One of the more poignant comments that has stayed with us after reading Rosling’s book is that “people had a world view dated to the time when their teachers had left school” (11). As educators, our response to this comment is to commit to constantly updating our own knowledge and to reexamine the foundations of our own assumptions.
Atlas of the Heart (Brené Brown)
The CTL BC is currently reading Brené Brown’s Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience (2021). This book explores “emotional granularity” and our book club notes that the labeling and naming of emotions really makes a difference. Brown’s book has been a popular favorite for the year.
What book club members are saying about this book:
- One of our members emphasized that _Atlas of the Heart_is “a book that I really feel benefits from being discussed.” Not only does the discussion lead to nuanced personal reflections and engaging conversations, but it also establishes common definitions that foster understanding among our colleagues – it’s very relatable and applicable across contexts.
- Multiple readers in our group cited using takeaways from Atlas of the Heart to help lend emotional intelligence to interactions at work and in their personal lives.
Conclusion
Reading together with our colleagues at CTL allows us the opportunity to get to know one another in a new context and communicate with a shared language. We didn’t read about instructional design or even education specifically, but we discussed the ideas of multidisciplinary thought leaders – and this has been inspirational personally, inter-personally and professionally. CTL BC has been an opportunity to get to know one another better; even those of us who have known each other for years are able to engage in conversations about the nature of self-reflection, clarity of purpose, curiosity, belonging, and communication, and get to know each other and support each other in fresh ways. As one member put it, it’s an opportunity to “broaden my horizon at work and try something that would lead to new thoughts and a different type of work engagement”. We are looking forward to continuing these conversations into 2024.