Resources

The quality of our lives is determined by the quality of our thinking. The quality of our thinking, in turn, is determined by the quality of our questions, for questions are the engine, the driving force behind thinking. Without questions, we have nothing to think about. Without essential questions, we often fail to focus our thinking on the significant and substantive. When we ask essential questions, we deal with what is necessary, relevant, and indispensable to a matter at hand. We recognize what is at the heart of the matter. Our thinking is grounded and disciplined. We are ready to learn. We are intellectually able to find our way about. To be successful in life, one needs to ask essential questions: essential questions when reading, writing, and speaking; when shopping, working, and parenting; when forming friendships, choosing life-partners, and interacting with the mass media and the Internet. Yet few people are masters of the art of asking essential questions. Most have never thought about why some questions are crucial and others peripheral. Essential questions are rarely studied in school. They are rarely modeled at home. Most people question according to their psychological associations. Their questions are haphazard and scattered. The ideas we provide are useful only to the extent that they are employed daily to ask essential questions. Practice in asking essential questions eventually leads to the habit of asking essential questions. But we can never practice asking essential questions if we have no conception of them. This mini-guide is a starting place for understanding concepts that, when applied, lead to essential questions. We introduce essential questions as indispensable intellectual tools. We focus on principles essential to formulating, analyzing, assessing, and settling primary questions. You will notice that our categories of question types are not exclusive. There is a great deal of overlap. (From the Publisher)

Since its inception in 1969, Change magazine has been the bellwether of higher education. It has framed the key issues confronting the academy, attracted the best minds, and shaped the debate. In this important collection, Deborah DeZure and a panel of contributing editors have selected landmark articles on teaching and learning in higher education published in Change from its launch to the present. Through the articles and incisive commentaries we follow the controversies, witness the reception of innovations, and trace the threads of continuity of the past thirty years. What emerges is both an indispensable set of perspectives and a rich resource of models and ideas. The book spans a period that began in the turmoil of student unrest in the 60's, and concludes at the close of 1999 with higher education grappling with the issues of purpose, accountability, technology and changing demographics. What is striking about these articles is the vitality and relevance of the voices from the past. They offer valuable insights and inspiration as we plan for the future, and consider how to foster effective teaching and learning environments. Organized by topic, the articles in each section are introduced by a recognized authority in the field. Deborah DeZure's Introduction and Conclusion offer both the context and an analysis of trends. Learning from Change constitutes both fascinating reading and an important compass for administrators in higher education, directors of faculty development, and deans, department chairs and faculty engaged in leadership roles in the academy. It is an invaluable introduction and survey for anyone who wants to familiarize him or herself with the issues and trends. (From the Publisher)

"When Frank Lears came to teach at Medford High School in the fall of 1969, he looked easy prey to Mark Edmundson and his school-hating pals. At the front of the class, they saw a small, nervous man wearing a moth-eaten suit two sizes too big, with a large paperclip fastened to the left lapel. Lears, just out of Harvard, struck the class as absurd, the kind of teacher they could torment at will. And for some time, they did just that." "But Edmundson and his classmates radically underestimated Frank Lears. Lears got rid of their tired textbooks and brought in Kesey, Camus, and Freud. He ran a group psychology experiment that no one in the room ever forgot. He opened the class to a panel of SDS members and a crowd of proto-Black Panthers. He risked life and limb in a snowball fight with Edmundson and his football-playing buddies. He shook things up." Lears's opposition to the lockstep life of Medford High got under the skin and into the minds of Mark Edmundson and his friends - friends like Dubby O'Day, a fatalistic goof-off majoring in spitball ballistics. The conflicting ways of life represented by Lears and Medford's formidable football coach, Mace Johnson, confronted Edmundson with a choice. At real cost - the cost of conformity and belonging - Edmundson chose to go Lears's way. (From the Publisher)