Resources

The new edition of this bestselling book builds on the author’s extensive administrative and consulting experience as well as scholarship on faculty rewards. It includes additional discussion of important foundational issues as well as practical forms and ideas gleaned from disciplinary groups and campuses throughout the nation. Like the first edition of Peer Review of Teaching, this new edition is offered in the hope that providing examples and suggestions will not reduce the important work of peer review to mere forms or rigid procedures, but will empower faculty to articulate criteria and standards, perform the reviews systematically and thoughtfully, and realize that engaging in peer review is an approachable and worthwhile professional task. Updated to reflect the emphasis on student learning as the ultimate goal of college teaching, it incorporates new ideas and references from the literature. The most notable change in this edition is a discussion of peer review within special contexts for teaching, such as clinics, studios, and practice settings. The turn to active engagement in learning has also led to increased use of problem-based learning, the case study method, and other approaches that traditional forms for peer review do not address. Similarly, the explosion of the use of instructional technology calls for an articulation of new approaches to evaluating web-based instruction. (From the Publisher)

What does it mean to lead a truly "life-giving way of life"? What kinds of learning and teaching will best prepare ministers to foster such a way of life in their congregations? How might teachers of practical theology best understand and undertake their task to educate and form ministers? Respected scholars and ministers explore such questions in For Life Abundant, probing and clarifying the significance of practical theology in the classroom, in the wider academy, and in actual ministry settings. (From the Publisher)

The “Sista’ Network"”is a term used to describe the relationships between and among professional African-American women which enable them to assist one another in learning the unwritten rules and protocols of various professions. In the context of higher education, the Sista' Network can help new African-American women faculty learn the rules to “the Tenure Game.” A qualitative inquiry into the lives and experiences of nine African-American women during various stages of the tenure process, this book partly explores general, practical considerations such as the tenure process; requirements for tenure; and negotiating the balance among teaching, research, service, and collegiality. Yet it delves further into the statistics of African-American women faculty in the academy; issues of isolation, mentoring, and networking; African-American women faculty and the tenure process; African-American feminist thought; and racism, sexism, and the politics of singularity. Also included are 12 guiding principles for new African-American women faculty members embarking upon the tenure process. Carefully weaving African-American feminist thought with the literature on academic tenure and minority along with stories of women faculty’s experiences in the academy, the author creates an effective and engaging account for minority women embarking on the tenure journey themselves. (From the Publisher)

Because the drive toward external assessment speaks almost exclusively in terms of standardized testing, we need to be reminded of the internal purposes of assessment: measuring learning for both student and teacher so that instruction can be adjusted and improved. This book is written for college instructors who are striving to creatively change assessment practice to better reflect learner-centered teaching. It is intended to consider not only the multiple ways in which individuals learn content, but also the multiple avenues to assessment the variety of learning styles demands. Creative assessment is defined here as assessments that spin, twist, and reform what might be a standard kind of assessment in an ordinary classroom. Instructors should use these examples of creative assessment as starting points, and as the beginnings of an internal discussion on what matters most in the courses they teach: What components of each course count the most for solving a range of problems in the discipline? If facts are important, and they usually are, how can they be used to support a flexible approach to thinking, solving, considering options, and gathering and interpreting evidence? What are the facts not telling us? (From the Publisher)

An essential companion for university faculty interested in conducting scholarly inquiry into their classroom teaching, this practical guide presents a formal model for making visible the careful, difficult, and intentional scholarly work entailed in exploring a teaching question. As a how-to guide, this is an invaluable resource for planning and conducting classroom research—formulating questions and hypotheses, defining a data collection methodology, collecting data, measuring the impact, and documenting the results. Inquiry Into the College Classroom is filled with richly illustrative examples that highlight how university faculty from a range of academic disciplines have performed scholarly inquiries into their teaching and leads faculty on a journey that includes: * Developing a formal model for structuring the exploration of a classroom inquiry question * Providing a practical and useful guide for faculty interested in exploring teaching and learning challenges * Detailing faculty experiences in measuring specific changes in student learning or perspectives * Demonstrating how to document classroom inquiry in a form to be shared, used, and reviewed by other faculty * Sharing useful and practical suggestions for getting started with a classroom inquiry * Highlighting different models for disseminating classroom inquiry work * Linking classroom inquiry to larger conversations about the scholarship of teaching and learning (From the Publisher)

In A New Agenda for Higher Education, the authors endorse higher education's utility for enhancing the practical as well as intellectual dimensions of life by developing a third, different conception of educational purpose. Based on The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching seminar that brought together educators from six professional fields with faculty from the liberal arts and sciences, A New Agenda for Higher Education proposes an educational aim of "practical reason," focusing on the interdependence of liberal education and professional training. The book includes case studies of instructors from a wide array of disciplines including those who educate their students for practical responsibility. The authors document the process by which they learned to collaborate with one another across fields and, in the end, produced a new discourse of practical reason. (From the Publisher)

It is well known that the Western university gradually evolved from the monastic stadium via the cathedral schools of the twelfth century to become the remarkably vigorous and interdisciplinary European institutions of higher learning that transformed Christian intellectual culture in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. It is equally well known that subsequent disciplinary developments in higher education, including the founding and flourishing of many of the most prestigious of North American universities, owe equally to the Protestant and perhaps particularly Calvinist influence. But that the secularized modern university that descended from these developments is now in something of an identity crisis is becoming widely and often awkwardly apparent. The reason most often given for the crisis is our general failure to produce a morally or spiritually persuasive substitute for the authority that undergirded the intellectual culture of our predecessors. This is frequently also a reason for the discomfort many experience in trying to address the problem, for it requires an acknowledgement, at least, that the secularization hypothesis has proven inadequate as a basis for the sustaining of coherence and general intelligibility in the university curriculum. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the disciplines of biblical studies and theology, which once were the anchor or common point of reference for theological thought, but which are now both marginalized in the curriculum and internally divided as to meaning and purpose, even where the Church itself is concerned. In this final volume of the Scripture and Hermeneutic Series, a group of distinguished scholars havesought to understand the role of the Bible in relation to the disciplines in a fresh way. Offered in a spirit of humility and experimentally, the essays here consider the historic role of the Bible in the university, the status of theological reflection regarding Scripture among the disciplines today, the special role of Scripture in the development of law, the humanities and social sciences, and finally, the way the Bible speaks to issues of academic freedom, intellectual tolerance, and religious liberty. Contributors Include: Dallas Willard William Abraham Al Wolters Scott Hahn Glenn Olsen Robert C. Roberts Byron Johnson Robert Cochran, Jr. David I. Smith John Sullivan Robert Lundin C. Stephen Evans David Lyle Jeffrey (From the Publisher)

This book offers college and university teachers a practical guide for meeting the challenges of educating the burgeoning population of Latino students. The contributors, a stellar group of experienced leaders in higher education, clearly show that the changes to higher education needed to ensure Latino student success will benefit all students. In this book, the authors call for systemic change across the entire K-16 spectrum but put the focus on the challenges for higher education. The book outlines strategies for increasing access and retention, explores the role of professional associations in advocating change, and explains the importance of the contributions of Latino college graduates to the U.S economy. Latino Change Agents in Higher Education is a much-needed guide for higher education leaders no matter what type of campus or institution they represent. (From the Publisher)

How to Talk About Hot topics on Campus fills a gap in the literature by providing a resource that shows how to construct and carry out difficult conversations from various vantage points in the academy. It offers a theory-to practice model of conversation for the entire college campus that will enable all constituencies to engage in productive and civil dialogue on the most difficult and controversial social, religious political and cultural topics. How to Talk About Hot Topic on Campus covers teaching highly controversial, potentially, provocative, subject matter as well as creating an institutional culture that welcomes and nourishes difficult conversations throughout campus life. The book speaks to faculty student affairs staff, administrators and students in all campus venues. (From the Publisher)

Journal Issue. Full text is available online.