Review of Teaching on Solid Ground: Using Scholarship to Improve Practice edited by Robert J. Menges, Maryellen Weimer and Associates. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1996. ISBN 0-7879-0133-4 406 pages
Teaching on Solid Ground: Using Scholarship to Improve Practice edited by Robert Menges, Maryellen Weimer and Associates challenges both faculty and administrators to first reflect upon the ways we serve today’s college students and then reframe our approach. The book is divided into three parts: “Students and Learning,” “Teachers and Teaching,” and “Laying the Groundwork for Good Teaching.”
“Part One: Students and Learning” provides an in-depth look at today’s college students, going beyond the traditional discussions of demographics and personal characteristics. Topics addressed include an overview of today’s college students, transition issues, student motivation, collaborative learning and assessing student involvement in learning. The chapter, “Student Motivation from the Teacher’s Perspective” by Raymond P. Perry, Verena H. Menee, and C. Ward Struthers, discusses student motivation and its relationship to academic achievement. Students are divided into two categories based on their perceived control in academic settings: helplessness and mastery. Students in the helplessness category may be at risk, high risk, learning disabled or educationally disadvantaged while students in the mastery category are educationally gifted or educationally exceptional. Students with a lower sense of perceived control (helpless students) respond quite differently to academic challenges than those (mastery students) with a higher sense of perceived control (80). Helpless students tend to withdraw both physically and psychologically from failure situations, whereas the mastery students intensify their efforts. For helpless students “prior successes [are] forgotten and/or viewed as irrelevant to future success” (81). Mastery students, on the other hand, benefit from their past successes (81).
As I reflected on this chapter, two questions came to mind. First, can developmental students, many of whom fit the helplessness profile, become mastery students? Secondly, if they can become mastery students, how can we assist them in this process?
The authors provide some possible answers. A review of research in the above mentioned chapter reveals that “otherwise-effective teaching behaviors may be of little value to students lacking control over their academic performance” (92). The authors believe that if perceived control can be enhanced, then motivation will follow, and ultimately students will be able to benefit from good teaching practices. They suggest attributional retraining (retraining the way students view the causes of their academic successes and failures) and an analysis of how teaching practices impact students’ perceived control as two ways to help students move from helpless to mastery (92). These are discussed briefly in the chapter, and other sources are referenced for further reading.
“Part Two: Teachers and Teaching” focuses on new roles for teachers, course development, assignments, feedback, and using research to strengthen instruction. I found that each chapter reinforced what I already knew about teaching, but also offered new ideas. For example, Chapter 10, “Feedback for Enhanced Teaching and Learning,” by Robert J. Menges and William C. Rando, discusses how students obtain and use feedback by implementing a four phase model (235). The four phases of the model are seeking and gathering, interpreting and valuing, planning and building, and doing and checking. Within each phase are procedural, quality and transition questions which help faculty to work through and continuously evaluate the feedback process. Case studies are also presented to show how this model can be implemented.
“Part Three: Laying the Groundwork for Good Teaching” identifies some of the national trends in higher education and their impact on teaching and learning. The authors urge faculty and administrators to be more aware of and involved in the larger issues that are affecting higher education today, such as assessment and multiculturalism. Chapter topics include: the domains of knowledge needed by college teachers, the creation of an environment that fosters instructional vitality, the development of a multicultural campus, and the use of assessment to improve programs and promote student learning. As with the other sections of this book, some of the information discussed is what would be considered core knowledge, but again new insights and suggestions are provided throughout. The last chapter, “Using Assessment to Improve Instruction,” provides a good introduction to outcomes assessment, focusing on program improvement.
This book achieved its overall purpose, which was to have the reader reflect upon current practices and consider making changes in instructional practices and institutional policies. I would recommend this book to someone who is new to higher education because it provides “solid ground” upon which to build a foundation. I would also recommend it to those who have been teaching for some time because it leads to reflection, evaluation, validation and reframing. This book is available in the College’s library.
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Maintained by Jay Howard,Sept 2005