Impact/Impasse
argues for the value of everyday life in college classrooms. Quantifiable categories such as high-impact practice, student engagement, and integrative learning have captured the imagination of a generation of higher education researchers, practitioners, administrators, and policymakers. But they miss those mundane moments, or "impasses," that resist capture by metrics while nevertheless shaping student outcomes.
blends critical theories and ethnographic research-conducted before and during the COVID-19 pandemic-to argue that learning happens in ordinary moments. Indeed, in sharing anecdotes from both in-person and virtual classrooms, the coauthors show how the so-called new normal is little different from the old in its neoliberal attachment to data.
provides a conceptual and practical foundation for an alternative approach to valuing impacts on their own terms, in excess of quantification.