The Art and Craft of College Teaching: A Guide for New Processors and Graduate Students by Robert Rotenberg. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, 2005. xiv + 305 pages. ISBN 978-1-59874-159-9. $24.95.
Robert Rotenberg has been a professor at DePaul University since 1979, teaching sociology, anthropology and international studies. He is currently chair of the anthropology department and serves on the university Teaching, Learning and Assessment Committee. Due to his teaching experience, now covering three distinct decades, Rotenberg possesses a plethora of experience to share with newcomers to the field of professional teaching. Fortunately, Rotenberg has offered just that to us within this volume. Rotenberg notes that he had, for numerous years, been assigned as a mentor to incoming professors fresh out of postgraduate school, and that he found himself often repeating the same advice year-after-year. Instead of sounding like a proverbial broken record to the incoming new professors, Rotenberg decided to write his advice out – which became the skeleton of this book. This book, then, is a program for developing a successful career.
In over 100 succinct and distinct chapters, this book is a comprehensive handbook for graduate students and new college-level faculty members. Rotenberg stresses that this book is intended for those who have had less than five years of teaching experience at the college level, and identifies the various topics that one with that level of experience should expect to be aware of in their professorial role. The chapters within offer compact, yet time-tested, practical solutions to the most commonly experienced classroom dilemmas that early professors will experience at the collegiate level. Rotenberg gives solutions to these expected dilemmas based not only on his own experience, however, but also in conjunction with current research on how to effectively deal with postmodern young adults. Though one will not find much new ground broken in this volume, nonetheless one will encounter a depth, width and breadth of wisdom regarding the collection and presentation of the best teaching techniques from times past.
Throughout the book Rotenberg stresses that professors should aspire to learn the art of learning, as that results in proper teaching. Moreover, Rotenberg aspires to cause young professors to think of teaching itself as a part – if not the main part – of scholarship, as the classroom is the greatest source of inspiration for research. After all, there is no good reason for college professors to be inadequate at the very thing they are hired to do: teach. Although this book is not intended to be encyclopedic in its expanse, nonetheless one will find numerous concepts and techniques which new professors will find helpful. For example, topics within the volume concern the necessity of supporting your students as individuals, as well as encouraging learning opportunities beyond the classroom setting. Moreover, Rotenberg covers course design, discusses possible departmental requirements, and elaborates on the nature, purpose and function of student advising. I must say, however, that Rotenberg’s contributions to the notion of how to evaluate student’s papers are probably the most valuable component of this book.
Rotenberg spends much time on the processes of assessment and evaluation, which, for a postgraduate student looking to one day be a professor of higher education like myself, is invaluable. Rotenberg notes that assessment is classroom research to provide useful feedback for the improvement of teaching and learning. Assessment, then, is feedback from the student to the instructor about the student’s learning. Accordingly, Rotenberg asserts that classroom assessment is formative, and not summative, as per se, which should find implicit appreciation from readers of the journal Teaching Theology and Religion (because it is in accordance with the primary mission of Christian discipleship: to be transformed by the renewing of our minds). Faculty can then use this assessment information to refocus their teaching to help students make their learning more efficient and more effective. In contrast, evaluation uses methods and measures to judge student learning and understanding of the material for purposes of grading and reporting. Evaluation, then, is feedback from the instructor to the student about the student’s learning.
It should be noted that Rotenberg’s text is not written to – or explicitly for –teaching theology of religion. However, The Art & Craft of College Teaching provides answers to some of new professor’s most common questions: How do college students learn most effectively? What are the questions to consider when you develop a course for the first time? How does class size affect course design? How do you set your expectations for your students? How can you help students become better thinkers? Why is the assessment of student learning important to the classroom teacher? What makes lecturing effective? What are the best practices for grading student exams and papers? What do you actually learn from student evaluations? As a result, even though this volume is not written for the teaching of theology or religion explicitly, nonetheless, readers of this journal, especially newcomers to the field of teaching (such as myself), would do well in perusing this volume and inculcating many of the techniques therein proffered. After all, in order to effectively transform minds for Christ, we must be aware of effective techniques, whether they derive from secular sources or not, for our God is the God of all truth.
Bradford McCall, Regent University