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College and Research Libraries
September 2006, Vol. 67, No. 5

Book Review

Huber, Mary Taylor, and Pat Hutchings. The Advancement of Learning: Building the Teaching Commons. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2005. 187 p. alk. paper, $35 (ISBN 078798115X). LC 2005-12459.

This timely publication from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching reports on the state of scholarship addressing teaching and learning. Historically, the teaching of higher education has been described as a lonely profession. Committed professors, well trained in their disciplines, have had little opportunity to engage in collective inquiry into the learning process. The creation of a "teaching commons," as the authors of this volume call it, provides opportunities for educators to explore and share ideas about teaching and learning. The authors argue, quite successfully, that teaching and learning, in and of themselves, are legitimate foci of scholarship and that all disciplines will benefit from the outcomes of research in these areas.

Pedagogy and the science of learning are not new subjects to be explored by researchers. In recent years, however, great changes have occurred that call for a renewed inquiry. New generations of students, technological change, classroom renovation, and, indeed, as the authors note, "new ideas about learning itself" are changing the landscape.

The Advancement of Learning is organized into seven chapters. Chapter One provides an historical overview of the scholarship relating to teaching and learning. This chapter contains an excellent, succinct summary of significant curricular initiatives and studies undertaken throughout the twentieth century. In addition to documenting the evolution of scholarship on teaching and learning, changes in the demographic makeup of students, the rise in interdisciplinary studies, and other pertinent variables are presented.

The second chapter sets the agenda for the rest of the book. Here, the authors provide their operational definitions relating to the types of scholarship they are promoting. Taking their case beyond schools of education, where inquiry into learning and pedagogy typically reside, the authors invite all higher education faculty to join their teaching commons to share information, best practice, and collaborative research.

Chapters Three through Six look at specific examples and contexts related to the scholarship of learning. The authors draw heavily upon their experience with the Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching (CASTL), citing numerous examples of individuals and programs supported by CASTL since its inception. CASTL’s Higher Education program consists of a center for advanced study that supports individuals in examining their own teaching and learning, colleges and universities developing on-campus programs in these areas, and collaboration with associations and societies interested in promoting scholarship focused on learning and teaching. Examples of research highlighted in these chapters include a professor’s, of theoretical mathematics, work to redesign his teaching to better prepare his students to become effective secondary school math teachers, as well as similar examples from a variety of disciplines including history, English, and biology. The authors offer these case studies, not as scalable projects that will solve problems in teaching in these various disciplines, but as examples of a process of inquiry, engaged in by these professors, that resulted in effective change.

At the center of Huber and Hutchings’ argument promoting the legitimacy of a scholarship of pedagogy and learning is their belief in the concept of the teaching commons. The commons is described in the abstract, as a place for scholars to come together to explore new approaches to teaching, to learn from each other, and to build continued interest and support for scholarly inquiry into teaching.

In the final chapter of The Advancement of Learning, the authors present an action agenda. They do this by emphasizing five areas that promise, in their words, to contribute greatly to the scholarship of teaching and learning. The five areas are: creating opportunities on campus to talk about learning; including students in these conversations; recognizing, on all levels, that teaching is "substantive and intellectual work"; creating new methods and ways of documenting and sharing classroom practice; and making the practice and theory of sound pedagogy available to everyone.

Huber and Hutchings are seasoned scholars who are well prepared to address the subject of this book. It is well researched, builds on earlier work by the Carnegie Foundation, and contains extensive notes and lengthy authoritative references. This book should be added to every academic library, where one hopes it will be read by presidents, provosts, academic administrators, librarians, and everyone else concerned with teaching and learning in higher education.—John W. Collins, Harvard University