Chalmers and Fuller have prepared a "how-to" book on enhancing teaching through a better understanding of learning styles and of how understanding learning styles needs to influence what we do in the classroom as teachers. The book is divided into three sections. First, a review and discussion of the theoretical and conceptual underpinnings of teaching through learning, complete with reference to relevant research on learning and teaching. This overview quickly takes the reader through the literature and develops the authors' argument for basing teaching on what we know about how people learn. This would appear on the surface to be an obvious argument, but clearly takes many of our faculty colleagues by surprise when they realize that not all students learn in the same manner, nor do they all learn in the same way that we faculty learned when we were students.

The second part of the book moves the reader into a step-by-step tour of the strategies they have developed for modifying how faculty teach to reflect processes that promise enhanced learning from our students. The authors are quite systematic and thorough in their approach, almost to the point of redundancy with some aspects of the strategies; however, the straightforward presentation of the strategies and the steps involved in each has great potential for helping faculty identify where they may wish to modify what they do in the classroom (and before they enter the classroom) to increase the effectiveness of their teaching for enhanced learning.

The final part of the book focuses on case studies of faculty members in a variety of academic disciplines who volunteered to try to implement the authors' strategies in their classrooms. The case studies are effective in revealing the difficulty of adopting their strategies, but also the opportunities for enhanced learning. The authors present both the successes and the failures encountered by faculty in implementing the strategies.

The authors are clearly convinced of the usefulness of building teaching strategies on the research findings related to learning styles and the importance of matching teaching with learning to facilitate student learning outcomes. The biggest limitation with the book is its simplicity and how-to approach. The biggest strength of the book is its simplicity and how-to approach. In short, for faculty who are new teachers, the book will be quite useful and easy to use. Faculty who have been in the classroom for a longer time may find the book to be too "easy"; however, the simplicity of the prose is deceptive given the challenge of re-making or modifying ingrained teaching strategies. There is little that is really new in the book, but much that is valuable for all of us as teachers. You can pick up this book and glean from it quickly what will bel.p most useful for yourself and then be on your way to introducing changes in your classes. It will be worth your while!

Terrell Rhodes,
UNC-Charlotte