There is no doubt that college teachers can, and should, learn to improve their pedagogical practice, and thus student learning, from the best scholarship on effective teaching. It is no surprise that Jossey-Bass has produced a handsome volume dedicated to that aim, that Maryellen Weimer, who is well known as the author of Improving College Teaching and the editor of The Teaching Professor, and Robert Menges, likewise esteemed in the field, should have edited it. The contributors are also eminent, for the most part, and well-versed in the scholarship of higher educational instruction. I am sorry to be unoptomistic that all this good will and effort will have as much impact as they deserve.

One chapter in particular addresses this issue; called "What College Teachers Need to Know" it is written by Sarah M. Dinham, an educational psychologist from the University of Arizona and is, in some ways, a sort of prHcis of the whole volume. College teachers need to know about students as learners; about teaching, including the scholarship on active learning, the most effective feedback, and diverse learning styles; about their disciplines; about discipline-specific teaching knowledge; about the context, that is, the educational philosophy of their programs or institutions; and about themselves. If every college teacher, new or (perhaps even more crucially) old were to read this book, and some of the best essays and studies referenced in its notes, college teaching would be improved.

And yet it is very unlikely that any large number of college teachers will read this book. It is perhaps more likely to be used by faculty development people, shelved in teaching centers, excerpted in newsletters, quoted in hortatory talks and workshops and consultations. For, as someone has usefully insisted, some concession must be made to the shortness of human life; the average modern college teacher, who is usually overworked and under-compensated and always feels so, is likely to be suspicious of educational research and to insist, with economical common sense mixed with just a trace of unease, on a pragmatic and empirical approach to teaching. The editors themselves write that "the faculty perspective on higher education is rarely broad-based and well informed."

That Teaching on Solid Ground is not, in my judgment, going to be widely read by its ideal audience of practicing college instructors should not obscure its very real virtues. It is clearly organized, in fifteen chapters arranged into sections on Students and Learning, Teachers and Teaching, and Laying the Groundwork for Good Teaching, introduced by Maryellen Weimer's intelligent chapter on "Why Scholarship is the Bedrock of Good Teaching." Her response to the question, raised by herself, "How does scholarship lead to improved practice?" is that "scholarly work encourages systematic, reflective practice"; "taking a scholarly approach to instructional enhancement encourages active inquiry about teaching and learning"; and "a scholarly approach works because it taps sources of intrinsic motivation." I hope so.

Weimer also insists very justly that "Scholarship results in improved practice when and only when it exemplifies quality." How do the chapters here meet that standard? Perceptions of quality must be partly dependent on any reader's interests and previous state of knowledge. I found one of the best chapters to be "Making the Transition to College," by Patrick T. Terenzini and several others, which distinguishes between the liminal experiences of traditional college students--middle-class whites about eighteen years old whose parents attended college--and the more diverse, unconventionally prepared students who are more and more the norm. The emphasis in this chapter is on "validation," both academic and social; it should be of especial interest to any faculty considering a first-year experience program.

"Student Motivation from the Teacher's Perspective" by Raymond P. Perry and others is the most empirical-looking chapter, with charts, number-crunching, and occasional neologisms, but it stimulated a good deal of reflection on student feelings of mastery and helplessness. There is a careful analysis of the real effects on student motivation of one of the most common devices meant to motivate: the pop quiz.

By contrast, Joseph Lowman's essay, promisingly entitled "Assignments That Promote and Integrate Learning," was disappointing, never more so than when it plodded to such conclusions as "When available, readings should be selected that engage students easily as well as serve instructors' intellectual ends," and "Instructors must also decide how many written assignments to use in a course, how long they should be, and when they should be due." There is further matter on devising assignments, by no means so obvious as this, but this is one of those chapters which does least to prove that scholarship is the bedrock of good teaching.

Marilla Svinicki's "How Research Strengthens Instruction" is better: a sort of literature review ranging over a wide array of topics and noting the most important studies. I was struck by such comments as these: "In reality, Ellner and Barnes (1983) reported, very little use is made of questions in the college classroom, and what questions are asked tend to cluster at the low end of the cognitive continuum."

The richest chapter in the book, Roberta S. Mathews's "Collaborative Learning; Creating Knowledge with Students," frames the issue very strongly: "covering content boils down to a pair of stark questions: if I am not talking, is anybody learning? and When I am talking, is anybody learning?" She deals with the usual "I-have-to-cover-the-content" argument against active learning by replacing the question of how much must be sacrificed for collaboration with the question, "How can collaborative learning be used to help students understand what it means to study the essential content of this discipline?"

There is ample material here for anybody interested in the improvement of college teaching; the editors and their associates have done us all a service in bringing together in one volume so much reflection on, summary of, and (not least useful, for the busy reader) bibliographical documentation of, recent scholarly research on teaching and learning. This will be a key book in instructional development efforts, though which it may have its desired aim, of improving classroom practice.

Merritt Moseley, The University of North Carolina at Ashville