'Engaging Minds' involves readers in an exploration of teaching and learning. Prompting examinations of the complexities of learning, pedagogy, and schooling, it interrupts the assumptions and norms that frame popular understandings and refuses simplistic notions of unresolvable tensions.
If any book comes close to matching the omniscience of the Book in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, this well-designed book on learning and teaching would be it. All the possibilities it presents to teachers, specifically aimed at pre-service teachers, and the emergence of new ways of thinking, inspired largely by the new technologies available to students in the 21st century, are cleverly connected throughout the text.
This book was indeed engaging. Davis, Sumara, and Luce-Kapler give an overview of different theories of learning while interweaving narratives of classroom practice that demonstrate applications of the concepts. The margins are filled with interesting tidbits and object lessons. The authors identify valuable elements from several different learning theories and advocate complexity thinking as it applies to educational philosophy. I highly recommend this book to any teacher and particularly as an introduction to those interested in the potential influence of complexity theory on education.