This article was downloaded by: [University of Nebraska, Lincoln]On: 17 October 2014, At: 18:31Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH,UK

Community College Journal ofResearch and PracticePublication details, including instructions forauthors and subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ucjc20

A Review of: “Disciplinesas Frameworks for StudentLearning”Reviewed by Kristin Wilson Associate Professor aa Language and Literature Moberly Area CommunityCollege , Moberly, MOPublished online: 23 Feb 2007.

To cite this article: Reviewed by Kristin Wilson Associate Professor (2007) A Reviewof: “Disciplines as Frameworks for Student Learning”, Community College Journal ofResearch and Practice, 31:1, 71-74, DOI: 10.1080/10668920600860408

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10668920600860408

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BOOK REVIEWS

Disciplines as Frameworks for Student LearningBy Tim Riordan and James Roth (Eds.)Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing, 2005,138 pp., $22.50 (paperback)Reviewed by Kristin Wilson, Associate Professor Languageand LiteratureMoberly Area Community College, Moberly, MO

Disciplines as Frameworks for Student Learning, edited by TimRiordan and James Roth, is a collection of essays written by facultymembers and one former student at Alverno College. Alverno is aprivate, liberal arts, women’s college in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, thatis most notable for its work in assessing student learning (Kuh,Kinzie, Schuh, Whitt, & Associates, 2005). Students at Alverno areasked to cultivate eight abilities: communication, analysis, problemsolving, valuing in decision making, social interaction, developing aglobal perspective, effective citizenship, and aesthetic engagement.

The book is divided into four parts: ‘‘Learning in ‘Irrelevant’ Dis-ciplines,’’ Bringing Outsiders Inside the Disciplines, Teaching theCognitive Processes of the Disciplines, and The Student Perspective.In the first part, Learning in ‘‘Irrelevant’’ Disciplines there are essaysby a history professor and a mathematics professor. The history pro-fessor, James Roth, argues that history is most appropriately taughtas a modeling of the processes historians use to make claimsgrounded in the research. For Roth, the typical lecture format simplydoes not work. Historians who teach must find the common groundbetween academic history and the lives of students. The mathematicsprofessor, Susan Pustejovsky discusses the disconnect betweenteaching theoretically based calculus and calculus which requires realproblem solving. Pustejovsky hopes students will view mathematicsas a way to ‘‘figure things out,’’ so she constructs problems with realworld contexts that engage the principles of calculus in the answer.

Community College Journal of Research and Practice, 31: 71–84, 2007

Copyright # Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

ISSN: 1066-8926 print/1521-0413 online

DOI: 10.1080/10668920600860408

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In the second section, Bringing Outsiders Inside the Disciplinesthere are essays by a philosophy professor and an economics pro-fessor. Donna Englemann models the centrality of philosophicalthinking in her own life and engages students in discussions aboutphilosophical thinking in their lives. Zohreh Emami began her studyof economics by questioning the reasons for income disparity. Theclose tie between this question and policy leads Emami to criticizeacademic economics as far too abstract and not interested enoughin questions of policy. For her, teaching economics is a dialogue withstudents that generates debates concerning democratic governance.

As the introduction to the third part asserts, the two essays onliterature and chemistry in Teaching the Cognitive Processes of theDisciplines have remarkable connections. Both define thinking inthe discipline as a process of recognizing patterns. Both essays stressthe dynamic quality of their disciplinary practice. Both value connect-ing the academic to the real-world context. Cromwell’s students con-sider whether Sula by Toni Morrison is an appropriate reading forhigh school students, while van Heerden’s students consider intermo-lecular forces by thinking about drops of water on a penny.

In the final part of the book, The Student Perspective, RebeccaValentine connects her learning at Alverno to her parenting and toher writing, thereby inspiring college professors to see the learningthey engender in their students as relevant beyond academic pursuits.

At Alverno, the large majority of students are commuters andtransfers, so the book is particularly relevant to community collegepractitioners. These nontraditional students bring to college all therichness and complexity of a full life. As the numbers of nontradi-tional students grow across campuses, we in academia have anopportunity to stop and reflect on the kind of classroom work thatwill be mutually beneficial. The transmission mode is dead. It is timeto relate to our students as fellow human beings seeking meaning inthe world of ideas. The following suggestions for doing this are madein Disciplines as Frameworks for Student Learning: offer the autobio-graphical self to pedagogical practice, create an intellectual space fordialogue and debate, locate the common ground between the disci-pline and the student, and find the real-world contexts for academiclearning.

Two issues seem important to consider. The first is the importanceof connecting the autobiographical self to teaching. The second is thepowerful holographic nature of creating a culture where studentlearning is thought of in similar ways and with similar language. Inevery chapter, the essayist names her or his personal position in thediscipline, and each essayist names the connection between that

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perspective and teaching. For instance, in the essay from the philo-sophical perspective, Englemann says,

Feminist ethics and politics helped me to understand the ways in

which women’s experience had been overlooked in the philosophical

tradition, and the ways in which traditional philosophizing spoke

not only from a male perspective, but also in a distinctly masculine

voice. This understanding helped me to analyze some of what was

not working in my teaching.

Historically, coursework was treated as a concrete set of discreteitems to be learned. It was unusual to be part of a class where thelearning was dynamic. There are still professors, administrators,and students who consider the story of self to be outside the bound-aries of appropriate classroom discussion. In contrast, Disciplines asFrameworks for Student Learning, makes the argument in chapterafter chapter that it is time to stop depersonalizing academia andembrace its relevance in the real-world.

The majority of the ideas in the book are familiar, but the presen-tation of these ideas in the context of many voices from a single insti-tution has holographic power. In February of 2005 the Chronicle ofHigher Education published a combined review of five books onteaching (Bartlett, 2005). Many of the themes in Disciplines as Frame-works for Student Learning were present, including connecting withstudents, connecting teaching to self, and making academic jargonclear. All five offered an interesting perspective on the teaching andlearning process; however, each had a single author with a single per-spective from five different institutions. Although there have beenmany edited books on teaching and learning, this one is unique inoffering an edited perspective of many faculty members from a singleinstitution with reputed success in student assessment.

Alverno College is one of the DEEP (Documenting Effective Edu-cational Practices) colleges described in Kuh, Kinzie, Schuh, Whitt,and Associates’ (2005) book Student Success in College, so Disciplinesas Frameworks for Student Learning offers readers an opportunity tolook in detail at the pedagogical practices that have earned the collegehigh accolades. Both college faculty and administrators interested increating a learning culture will be interested in reading this book. Theweight of the book is in the compounding of the details that make theculture of student learning at Alverno College so obvious. While indi-vidual professionals can and do make a difference in isolation on col-lege campuses, the strength of the book is in reminding the reader of

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the synergistic power of working together as teaching professionals tocreate a culture of learning for ourselves and our students.

REFERENCES

Bartlett, T. (2005, February 11). Please take my advice: 5 books for professors who

want to improve their teaching. The Chronicle of Higher Education, p. A14.

Kuh, G. D., Kinzie, J., Schuh, J. H., Whitt, E. J., & Associates. (2005). Student suc-

cess in college: Creating conditions that matter. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Teaching & Learning through Inquiry:A Guidebook for Institutions & InstructorsBy Virginia S. Lee, (Ed.)Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing, 282 pp.,$24.95 (paper back)Reviewed by Mary M. Bendickson, EdD, Dean of Artsand SciencesHillsborough Community College, Tampa, FL

Teaching & Learning through Inquiry is a handbook describing aninnovative pedagogical approach applicable across the postsecondarycurriculum. Virginia S. Lee, former associate director of the facultycenter for teaching and learning at North Carolina State University,presents the framework of Inquiry-Guided Learning from her per-spective as a faculty developer. The Teaching and Learning throughInquiry program began as a grant funded initiative in 1995 tostrengthen critical thinking skills of undergraduate students at NorthCarolina State University (NCSU). The program has grown at NCSUin the past decade with support of grant funding and now permeatesdisciplines across the whole institution. The organization of the bookis clear and provides the necessary framework to assess its applica-bility to other institutions. Faculty members have written individualchapters as to how each one chose to implement the Inquiry-GuidedLearning approach across the disciplines. Chapters written by 36 indi-viduals present a variety of perspectives drawn from practice sinceeach of them actually implemented Inquiry-Guided Learning in aparticular course, discipline, or program. Full-time and part-time fac-ulty members, department heads and program directors, as well asdoctoral students wrote chapters. The breadth of this list shows thebroad-based acceptance and implementation of the program.

The first section of Teaching & Learning Through Inquiry presentsthe basic framework to the reader: what is Inquiry-Guided Learning?

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