Book Circles - Summer 2025

The CTLT hosts book circles every academic quarter and during summers. They are open to all Cal Poly educators. Selected books draw from a broad array of thoughtful and inspiring educational literature. These are opportunities to enrich your knowledge about timely and significant topics related to higher education while engaging with colleagues from across campus. Participants receive a complimentary copy of the selected book with the expectation that they will engage in three or more discussion sessions. Themes for book circle selections include: Mindful Educators, Mastery Teaching, Inclusive Educators, Navigating Academia, Sustainability Educators, and Writing Educators. 

NOTE: Our cumulative Book Circles list of titles is available on the CTLT's Book Circle archival webpage.

Failure: Why Science Is So Successful

Stuart Firestein, PhD

Rethinking "failure" has been an intermittent theme in CTLT books circles (see "Right Kind of Wrong" by Edmonson, "Being Wrong" by Kathryn Schultz). That is because of its relevance to learn-by-doing teaching models and growth mindset instructional practices. In this book, Firestein, former chair of Biological Sciences at Columbia, complements Edmonson's and Schultz's perspectives by offering a STEM-based case for reconsidering and reconceptualizing failure as something to to help students embrace, not fear as a source of shame. This topic is especially timely for educators as the emergence of AI reminds us of the importance of promoting the distinctly human capacities for innovation and creativity in college curricula where failures are essential. Firestein wants to dispel common myths about science as infallible by illuminating the messy, failure-dependent scientific processes that has produced so many invaluable insights, volumes of knowledge, and solutions to problems over the centuries. When faculty teaching STEM courses can lessen students' academic anxieties and reduce their fears of making mistakes, they foster a class culture that supports risk-taking and embraces "wrong results" as key to thinking like a scientist. There is lots of research evidence predicting that in these settings your students will be likely to respond with greater engagement and an increased capacity for persisting through challenges. Sounds like a good environment for student success.

A "Mastery Teaching" selection

Dates: Tuesdays, July 8, 15, 22, and 29
Time: 12:10-1 pm
Location: Onsite (Chase Hall 104) and online (zoom)
Facilitator: Patrick O'Sullivan, PhD (CTLT)

Register for Summer 2025 Book Circle