The Advancement of Learning: Building the Teaching Commons (review)

This book furthers the ongoing project of the Carnegie Foundation "to do and perform all things necessary to encourage, uphold, and dignify the profession of the teacher and the cause of higher education." Huber and Hutchings have taken the clarity and excitement about what teachers know and do—traditionally the hallmark of the scholarship of teaching movement—and added a sense of historical context and conceptual depth. They highlight the historical continuity between the empirical inquiry into the work of teaching that the scholarship of teaching movement supports and the inquiry into the natural world that scientists and philosophers like Sir Francis Bacon argued for some four hundred years earlier. Conceptually, they narrow and redefine what constitutes scholarship of teaching research. On a practical level, too, they provide several examples and recommendations for professors and administrators concerning how they can enhance the educational climates on their campuses.

Those familiar with the scholarship of teaching literature will recognize the authors' discussion of the need for pedagogy to be taken as an area of scholarly inquiry. Their emphasis on the importance of the practical knowledge that teachers possess and the significance of "going public" among and across disciplines with that knowledge will also be familiar. This book provides further development and thoughtful documentation of these ideas building on 15 years of the Carnegie Foundation's attempts to improve the quality and enhance the status of teaching in higher education. For newcomers to this emerging tradition of research on college teaching, this book provides a brief and attractive introduction.

Chapters 1 and 2 provide contextual definitions and, consequently, lay the groundwork for the major themes that are discussed throughout the book. The text introduces the new concept of establishing a "teaching commons" as a framing of the rapidly evolving nature of higher education. The teaching commons is discussed as providing a space for educators to reenvision the way that they engage their disciplines, colleagues, students, and practice. The authors describe the teaching commons as "a conceptual space in which communities of educators committed to inquiry and innovation come together to exchange ideas about teaching and learning and use them to meet the challenges of educating students for personal, professional, and civic life" (p 1).

Through these and similar advancements, the authors argue for establishing and maintaining the teaching commons as a space for new approaches to pedagogy. These approaches build on public discussions about improving college teaching across disciplines, countries, and continents.

Chapters 2 and 3 offer examples of teachers in action who were members of the Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. This section provides practical illustrations of using ideas that emerged from the scholarship of teaching movement. For instance, they examine the practice of Curtis Bennett, a theoretical mathematician, working with a group of students whom he is preparing to teach secondary school. In addition to training them in theory, he must also teach them in very practical ways, ultimately communicating not only the mechanics and procedures of mathematics but also the discipline's underlying principles.

To achieve these ends, Bennett redesigned his course around open-ended mathematical research problems. Bennett gave pre- and post-evaluations to gain a better understanding of his students' attitudes about math, documented and analyzed student office discussions, and kept a journal of these interactions to document the outcomes of these changes to his teaching. This level of inquiry about his teaching provided Bennett with added information about the most effective ways to engage his students and ultimately helped him understand what methods best allowed him to challenge his students to think like mathematicians.

Through these examples and others in the book, new possibilities for teaching are documented and envisioned. The authors also offer innovative approaches for broaching more traditional issues such as how to best engage students in large lecture courses or the best ways to teach inadequately prepared students. The scholarship of teaching movement may not be a silver...