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This global study of teaching, learning, and assessment goes beyond the typical single country context to extend to good pedagogical practice on six continents.The argument of each chapter is supported by examples of good practice accounts from around the world, a collection that forms a refreshing change from a generic case study model. Although the examples lean most heavily toward English-speaking institutions and classrooms, there is significant attention paid to various elements of pedagogy from many cultural perspectives. The author takes great care throughout the book to consider all elements of the changing higher education landscape, including the changing student body, changes in technology, and changes in expectations about the goals of higher education and graduate employability. The twelve chapters of this book take a comprehensive view of diversity in higher education teaching, learning, and assessment. The book opens with a consideration of cultural mores and assumptions that directly affect interactions in higher education. Brown looks both to the past and the future in subsequent chapters, noting pedagogical traditions and innovations in the context of today’s higher education landscape. She argues that we must adjust to a technology-rich world that necessitates more focus on “learning how and learning why than on learning what” (21). Her view of technology in the balance as both a distraction and a valuable addition to certain aspects of both teaching and learning is refreshing, as so many books either glorify or decry technology in classrooms and society. This ability to see things in the balance is one of the greatest strengths of this book: rather than arguing for a “best” way to teaching or learning or assessment, this book offers multiple possibilities from multiple contexts and thus leaves much to the reader to judge based on his or her context and constraints. Brown identifies a few global trends. The most widespread seems to be a move from transmissive to transformative education. She notes that there is a “movement from perceiving the university teacher as an all-knowing, unchallengeable authority figure” (27) and parallel a movement by institutions and disciplines toward encouraging learning outside of the lecture hall. Another trend is teaching toward the multiple literacies expected of a twenty-first century graduate, looking well beyond academic literacy to digital, assessment, and interpersonal literacies (88). Finally, Brown notes that all education needs to think of itself as taking place in a global environment. This book is itself a fine way to encourage broader thinking about pedagogical contexts in higher education: our students are shortchanged when we privilege our own pedagogical traditions and ignore the broader, global context of higher education. The strengths of this book are many. For instance, the author provides substantive and exhaustive bulleted lists in each chapter, a diverse set of highlighted good practice accounts, and a full chapter devoted to higher education teacher development. The book is easy to navigate, written in clear prose, and at once expansive but grounded in particulars. I would recommend this book highly to teachers and administrators in higher education across the disciplines.

As an African American female associate professor in religious studies, I heard my voice and I felt heard as I read many of the essays in this book. It is intentionally intersectional, addressing race and ethnicity (and to some degree sexual preference) as well as gender. The editors and authors are scholars and administrators in the field of sociology, generally. With this book they interrupt the culture of silence in higher education, which remains the gendered domain of white males where women continue to experience inequality. Case studies, personal narratives and experiences, qualitative (interviews) and quantitative research raise readers’ consciousness about oppressive structures and cultures that impact women in academe. Women have made gains in the academy in terms of their increased presence, but major challenges remain. In this sourcebook each essay builds on existing research and offers suggestions for changing oppressive structures and cultures. The book is divided into five parts, each ending with a case study, and each chapter includes a list of resources. The final chapter offers models for engendering change. The book was born among scholars concerned with bringing together service, scholarship, and activism. While much is said about women faculty in general, a number of essays focus on nonwhite women and specifically black women as the “double minority” in the academy. They are less likely to be mentored, promoted to full professor, granted tenure, and more likely to leave the academy. Part One addresses problematic structures, such as exclusionary practices (lower wages and less upward promotions) that require faculty action to address. Also significant are the horizontal impediments to shattering the glass ceiling and not just the vertical ones (increasing numbers of women). Another example is the uneven, inequitable service burden placed on women and the accompanying fairy tale advice to ‘Just say no to service,’ which only “exacerbates gender-blind sexism in academia.” In the latter case the author suggests that institutions “just don’t ask” unless they are prepared to acknowledge and reward women’s service labor. Part Two discusses the dissonance between structures and cultures. Often structures like institutional quotas and commitments to diversity work in favor of women’s presence, but institutional cultures are resistant, hostile, violent, and unhelpful. Part Three addresses exclusionary cultures, including those that protect disciplinary canons, perpetuate the white male as the “ideal professor,” and value problem portable over problem-based research, which devalue women and the interdisciplinary work of nonwhite women. Part Four discusses “chilly climates,” “contrapower harassment,” incivility, microaggressions, and mobbing that are pervasive and often unchecked. These behaviors have greater negative impact on women with consequences for their physical and emotional well-being and job productivity. One author suggests that women of color consider a “trauma-to-transformation” model that involves redefining self, brain detoxification, sense-making, and reconfiguring the social reality. I highly recommend this book to institutions that value diversity (without which academic excellence does not exist) and desire to create a healthy, productive environment for a truly diverse and representative faculty and administration. I also recommend it for female and male faculty and administrators impacted by cultures of silence and who are interested in disrupting and dismantling those cultures.

Published in the Fortress Press series, “Seminarium: The Elements of Great Teaching,” this affordable, concise volume is targeted for Protestant seminary professors in particular but will also be of value to those working in Christian higher education and ministry, more generally. The teacher-friendly format features three chapters of text by K. Johnston Largen, punctuated by sequentially numbered, stand-alone text boxes of “Praxis Points” by C. Lohr Sapp, and responses to each chapter and an epilogue by M. E. Hess. The text offers many useful resource references including texts, websites, and video clips. Quick Response codes intersperse the text and the relevant URLs are also provided in footnotes. The first chapter presents four specific examples of interreligious experience relating to Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, and Judaism, in order to demonstrate the urgent and practical importance of interreligious education and dialogue. The second chapter offers a theological rationale for such learning drawing upon insights of comparative theology. The third chapter suggests expected outcomes and pitfalls, strategies for including interreligious learning within a theological curriculum, and considerations for assessing transformative praxis for students, faculty, and institutions. The format highlights the richness of collaborative work that coheres well throughout the volume yet offers distinct contributions by each authorial voice, modeling the value of dialogue in its overall presentation. Theological references are primarily Lutheran and Roman Catholic but also model dialogue within Christian diversity. A further dialogue which informs all aspects of this text involves pedagogical scholarship, particularly literature associated with adult learners. Each author demonstrates pedagogical depth and writes in a personal, accessible, and occasionally humorous tone. Since the authors emphasize the importance of meeting students where they are and structuring learning opportunities with this in mind, a great deal of attention is paid to resistance and fears some Christian students continue to have toward learning about other religious ways and practices. Readers who are not actively involved in communities or educational settings that reflect this tension and ambivalence may be impatient with the introductory nature of the volume. The authors write to convince and inform those who are beginning or seeking to encourage others to begin this type of transformative praxis.

Martin Nguyen Associate Professor Fairfield University Teaching the Qur’an can be a formidable undertaking. Even though the Qur’an is an abiding research interest of mine, it makes teaching the scripture no less challenging. What do I choose to cover and how should I go about it in the course of

Tat-siong Benny Liew Class of 1956 Professor in New Testament Studies College of the Holy Cross After about six months and fifteen horrible haircuts in the San Francisco Bay area I finally found somebody who could give me a decent haircut, and I became a loyal customer for the

Theological school deans are not just theological leaders for their institution, they must be EDUCATIONAL leaders. That is, they must implement sound educational practices related to curriculum, instruction, supervision, assessment, and administration. While faculty members can focus on course-level and individual student learning assessment, academic deans need to implement program-level assessment in order to evaluate the effectiveness of the school's curricular course of study. There is a variety of ways to assess the effectiveness of the curriculum, and there are several levels of assessment (program-level, course-level, student testing, student projects, etc.).

Michael O’Donoghue writes that he has “attempted to create a work which [he] hope[s] is more of an educational thinking and production tool than a how-to-guide”(xi). The book does not quite achieve this particular goal because the author has, in fact, quite nicely done both. His paradigm for pedagogy’s interaction with video and his helpful sections on effective video creation gives the reader a philosophical as well as a practical grounding in the use of video in academic settings. O’Donoghue’s emphasis on teaching and learning ensures that every concept behind video production is linked in some way to a principle in teaching and learning. Making a pitch, or selling an idea for a video allows for review and reflection by teachers and students. Creating a framework for the film gives the educator an opportunity to clearly define learning objectives and outcomes. And a concern over the visual format of the film leads to a discussion on how teaching objectives are presented and received. While this may sound like a rather clumsy construction, O’Donoghue -- in part due to a clean and clear writing style -- pulls it off. As the educational justification is laid out for every aspect of multimedia production using video, readers begin to realize that something else is occurring. They are learning the technical aspects of video production and creation. While video production can seem intimidating, O’Donoghue walks the reader through the process from pitching and scripting to camera usage and post-production. His appendices add to the wealth of direction with an example of a pitch document, an illustrated storyboard, a production course structure, and a short section on lecture capture. But, by far, the best section in this book is the chapter of expert interviews. The author interviewed over twenty people on the use of educational video. He pared those down to the six who appear in chapter five, which is titled “Six of the Best.” And the title does not lie. Among the interviewees is are Sir David Attenborough, of natural history filmmaking renown, and Richard E. Mayer, one of America’s deans of academic multimedia usage. And there is a gem within this gem. The interviews are far ranging, illuminating, and different for each person. However, the final question is the same for them all: “Do you have suggestions for improving educational video productions?” Not only does the reader get very practical tips from these six but the author also gives the response to that question from all twenty-three persons interviewed. There is an embarrassment of riches here. The final chapter, concerning student production of a video, is interesting and practical but could have been longer. The further reading section and bibliography are also helpful and the index is surprisingly robust for such a short book. While the technology used in filming has changed in the last few decades many of the concepts of filming have not. Consequently, I see this philosophically and technically practical book being relevant and extremely useful for many years to come for educators in higher educational contexts.

Molly Bassett Associate Professor of Religious Studies Georgia State University A week into the spring semester, the fall term seems like it was forever ago! In my last post, I talked about the informal evaluations my students took, and since writing that post, I have thought about some of the.

Sophie Gilliat-Ray Director Centre for the Study of Islam in the UK Cardiff University The Muslim populations of most Western societies have grown over the last two decades as a result of immigration and conversion to Islam. This has drastically changed the landscape in which teaching and learning about Islam.

Nancy Lynne Westfield Associate Professor of Religious Education Drew Theological School Teaching for racial equality, and against oppression, has meant coming to grips with what my adult students (domestic and international) do not know, i.e. the basic concepts of race and the mechanisms of racism in the United States. Teaching