SUMMARIES OF NEW BOOKS AVAILABLE IN THE TEACHING & LEARNING CENTER

Stop by the T&LC to browse or check one out. 

Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher

Author:  Stephen D. Brookfield, Distinguished Professor at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota

Building on the insights of his highly acclaimed earlier work, The Skillful Teacher, Stephen D. Brookfield offers a very personal and accessible guide to how faculty at any level and across all disciplines can improve their teaching.  Applying the principles of adult learning, Brookfield thoughtfully guides teachers through the process of becoming critically reflective about teaching, confronting the contradictions involved in creating democratic classrooms, and using critical reflection as a tool for continuous personal and professional development.

Creating Culturally Responsive Classrooms

Authors:  Barbara J. Shade, Cynthia Kelly, & Mary Oberg

The authors established 5 goals for this guide:

   1.  Provide a knowledge base about cultural orientations of the communities from which students come.

   2.  Provide suggestions on promoting culturally attuned motivational strategies.

   3.  Examine the impact of culture on ways of learning.

   4.  Provide suggestions on ways to structure culturally responsive classrooms.

   5.  Provide examples of the theory and ideas in practice that the reader can translate to the classroom. 

This guide is designed to be primarily used as a school-staff development project or as an independent study project.  It can also be helpful as a text in a graduate or undergraduate teacher-education course.  We encourage teams of teachers to proceed through this guide together because it is important that there is an opportunity for self-reflection and group discussion. 

Exploring Signature Pedagogies: Approaches to Teaching Disciplinary Habits of Mind

Edited by:  Regan A.R. Gurung (Chair of Human Development Department & Professor of Human Development and Psychology at UW-Green Bay), Nancy Chick (Associate Professor & Vice Chair of the English Department at UW Colleges), Aeron Haynie (Chair of English & Associate Professor of English & Humanities at UW-Green Bay)

This book builds on the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) but takes this important work in a new direction:  How does each discipline foster deep learning and help students think like disciplinary experts?  With contributions from the sciences, humanities, and the arts, this book offers a critical evaluation of how to best foster student learning across  the disciplines.  The 14 chapters provide a summary of disciplinary SoTL work, examine and analyze traditional disciplinary pedagogies, and identify or propose signature pedagogies for the discipline.

Optimizing Teaching and Learning: Practicing Pedagogical Research

Authors: Regan A.R. Gurung (Chair of Human Development at UW-Green Bay) & Beth M. Schwartz (Professor of Psychology at Randolph College)

This book will serve as a guide for anyone who is interested in improving their teaching and the learning of their students, and at the same time contribute to the scholarship of teaching and learning.  It bridges the gap between the research and practice of SoTL, with explicit instructions on how to design, conduct, analyze, and write up pedagogical research, including samples of actual questionnaires and other materials (e.g. focus group questions) that will jumpstart investigations into teaching and learning. It also exploresz the advantages and disadvantages of various pedagogical practices and present applications of SoTL using case studies from a variety of disciplines. This book will serve as an invaluable resource for both seasoned faculty and new faculty who are just beginning to assess their teaching methods and learn how to think beyond the content.

Leading Change

Author:  John P. Kotter - Konosuke Matsushita Professor of Leadership, Emeritus, at Harvard Business School and a frequent speaker at top management meetings around the world.

This book is an inspirational yet practical resource for everyone who has a stake in orchestrating changes in their organization. In Leading Change we have unprecedented access to our generation's master of leadership.

Principles of Instructional Design-5th Edition

Authors:  Robert M. Gagne (Florida State University, Emeritus), Walter W. Wager (Florida State University), Katharine C. Golas (Southwest Research Institute), John M. Keller (Florida State University)

The design of instruction, the background of knowledge from which its procedures are derived, and the various ways in which these procedures are carried out are described in each of the 16 chapters of this book. 

Assessing Student Learning: A Common Sense Guide

Author:  Linda Suskie- Director of Assessment at Towson University & Past director of the American Association for Higher Education's Assessment Forum

This book summarizes current thinking on the practice of assessing student learning in a comprehensive, accessible, and useful fashion.  Short on background and theory and long on practical advice, this is a plainspoken, informally written book designed to provide sensible guidance for assessment practitioners on virtually all aspects of student assessment, and for faculty who simply want to improve assessments within their classes. Assessing Student Learning presents readers with well-informed principles and options that they can select and adapt to their own circumstances. 

What The Best College Teachers Do

Author: Ken Bain- Director of the Center for Teaching Excellence at New York University

This book was the winner of the Virginia and Warren Stone Prize awarded annually by Harvard University Press for an outstanding book on education and society.

What makes a great teacher great? Why are some professors remembered by students long after graduation? This book is the result of a fifteen-year study of nearly one hundred college teachers from a variety of fields and universities. This book contains valuable answers for all educators. It's not what teachers do, it's what they understand. The best teachers know their subjects inside and out, but they can also engage and challenge students and to provoke impassioned responses. In a humorous and touching way, Ken Bain provides examples of ingenuity and compassion, of students' discoveries of new ideas and the depth of their own potential. This book provides remarkable insight and inspiration for first-year teachers, as well as seasoned educators.

Learning and Motivation in the Postsecondary Classroom

Author: Marilla D. Svinicki – Director of the Center for Teaching Effectiveness & associate

Professor of education at the University of Texas-Austin

While there is much available research and theory about learning and motivation, until now there has been no resource that translates esoteric findings into everyday language and examples that can be readily applied in college classrooms. This book brings the findings and theories of educational psychology to classroom faculty, helping them to adopt a scholarly approach to understanding their students' learning problems. Nine clearly written chapters demonstrate how learning theories can be successfully adapted to the classroom, and a useful appendix succinctly outlines the theories: cognitive, concept learning, social learning, constructivism, and motivational.

Knowing What Students Know: The Science and Design of Educational Assessment

National Academy Press

At a time when traditional testing is subject to increasing criticism, research suggests that new, exciting approaches to assessment may be on the horizon. Advances in the sciences of how people learn and how to measure such learning offer the hope of developing new kinds of assessments-assessments that help students succeed in school by making as clear as possible the nature of their accomplishments and the progress of their learning. This book explains how expanding knowledge in the scientific fields of human learning and educational measurement can form the foundations of an improved approach to assessment. These advances suggest ways that the targets of assessment-what students know and how well they know it, as well as the methods used to make inferences about student learning can be made more valid and instructionally useful. Principles for designing and using these new kinds of assessments are presented and examples are used to illustrate the principles. Special attention is given to the role of technology in harnessing the power of these new approaches.

Learning to Think: Disciplinary Perspectives

Author: Janet Gail Donald – Professor in the Centre for University Teaching and Learning at

The Department of Educational and Counseling Psychology at McGill University

Drawing on more than twenty-five years of research, Janet Donald shows how knowledge is structured and how professors and students perceive learning in their fields. It offers strategies for constructing and using knowledge that will help postsecondary institutions to promote students' intellectual development within and across the disciplines. The author creates a framework for understanding student intellectual development and for learning to think in different disciplines. She describes the principal methods of inquiry in each discipline and their effects on learning to think, examining what this means for students and how we might use it to improve the instructional process. This book provides insight into the representation and development of curricula, courses, and programs to improve teaching and learning processes.

To Improve the Academy: Resources for Faculty, Instructional, and Organizational Development, Volume 22

Editors: Catherine M. Wehlburg, Sandra Chadwick-Blossey

An annual publication of the Professional and Organizational Development (POD) Network in Higher Education, To Improve the Academy offers a resource for improvement in higher education to faculty and instructional development staff, department chairs, faculty, deans, student services staff, chief academic officers, and educational consultants. Some topics that are covered include the scholarship of teaching and learning: past, present, and future; educating and engaging faculty to educate and engage students; academic development as a team sport; to name just a few.

Community-Based Research and Higher Education: Principles and Practices

Authors: Kerry Strand, Sam Marullo, Nick Cutforth, Randy Stoecker, Patrick Donohue

This is a guide to how to incorporate a powerful and promising new form of scholarship into academic settings. The book presents a model of community-based research (CBR) that engages community members with students and faculty in the course of their academic work. Unlike traditional academic research, CBR is collaborative and change-oriented and finds its research questions in the needs of communities. This dynamic research model combines classroom learning with social action in ways that can ultimately empower community groups to address their own agendas and shape their own futures. At the same time it emphasizes the development of knowledge and skills that truly prepare students for active civic engagement. Community-Based Research and Higher Education is written by five academics from different disciplines with extensive experience in community-based research as teachers, researchers, administrators, scholars, and community activists. The authors offer extensive practical suggestions for incorporating CBR into courses and curricula.

Collaborative Learning Techniques: A Handbook for College Faculty

Authors: Elizabeth F. Barkley, K. Patricia Cross, Claire Howell Major

Engaging students in active learning is a predominant theme in today's classrooms. To promote active learning, teachers across the disciplines, and in all kinds of colleges, are incorporating collaborative learning into their teaching. Collaborative Learning Techniques is a scholarly and well-written handbook that guides teachers through all aspects of group work, providing solid information on what to do, how to do it, and why it is important to student learning. Synthesizing the relevant research and good practice literature, the authors present detailed procedures for thirty collaborative learning techniques (CoLTS) and offer practical suggestions on a wide range of topics, including how to form groups, assign roles, build team spirit, solve problems and evaluate and grade student participation.