Preface: The Story of the Evolution of This Book and Its Intentions

The Faculty Guidebook is the product of more than sixteen years’ worth of accumulated knowledge, experience, research, and collaboration. It is the means for realizing a long-standing dream of an eclectic community of educators who share in common a—

belief that educators and their institutions need to transform the way they conduct themselves if they want to add the value expected by modern society

passion for fostering the development of all learners, themselves included, to be more independent, skilled, life-long learners and

desire to advance teaching and learning by applying their scholarly skills to advance the philosophy, approaches, and tools of education

More than fifty members of this community of faculty members, administrators, and innovators in education have stepped forward to author one or more modules for this fourth edition and share with you the best of what they have learned. They come from a wide variety of disciplines, types of institutions, and geographic regions.

Ask any member of this community how he or she became involved in this effort, and you are likely to hear a similar story. They report having been dissatisfied with their own performance as well as that of their students, though they have conscientiously tried to foster student success. They convey a deep concern that students in general do not take enough ownership of their own learning and seem to be unable to transfer their knowledge from one context to another. They frequently express concern that if academic standards are compromised, society as a whole will suffer. Then these educators typically say that, once they had participated in a Process Education institute they felt excitement at the possibilities seen. Exposure to a Process Education institute offers a new way of looking at the roles of a faculty member and the relationship between faculty and students. Frustration has often been replaced with a determination to approach teaching and learning differently, knowing full well that this entails a great deal of hard work. Educators report trying new approaches with some wonderful successes, and others that will require considerable work before they will yield the desired results. Despite the difficulties and frustrations, you can see as they speak about teaching and student learning that they have a fire within them.

This up-and-down nature of the process is not surprising. Often great change comes only through great effort. Think, for example, of the Great Westward Migration of the United States. There were explorers who were restless, not content with what was already known. They looked around and saw that it was crowded, that there were limitations involved in keeping a growing population on the same familiar-but-limited land. The explorers were curious; they sought new challenges, and, through their willingness to explore and take risks, they expanded everyone’s idea of what might be possible. The pioneers were inspired by what the explorers had done and they built on it. They moved beyond exploring ‘the possible’ and concentrated on realizing ‘the actual.’ These were people of great courage who gathered the knowledge the explorers had gleaned, and used it to move to totally new locations, changing their lives as new situations required. Using the explorers’ knowledge, the pioneers were able to pack wisely for the journey, and move on with more confidence, better able to anticipate and manage predictable dangers. They were able to invest their energies in developing their new environments, learning to live and function effectively within them. The settlers were less eager to take risks; they needed greater evidence that success was possible before they were willing to venture into unsettled territories, but as the success stories of the pioneers became more numerous, and as they could see that it was possible to venture out safely, more and more settlers joined the migration. These people made up the masses that settled the West. The final group, the Tories, remained loyal to the mother country and the traditions of the past. They enjoyed many of the comforts and privileges associated with living in the already-settled East Coast, and had no interest in taking on the risks and hardships that came with settling new locations. Since they felt that the westward expansion threatened their beloved status quo, they used their energies to thwart it.

The “explorers” within our community of educators are an interesting group. Dr. Dan Apple, president and founder of Pacific Crest, came from a background in systems analysis, the sciences, technology, and business. In the early 80s he and his company explored using pre-Windows software designed to help professionals solve quantitative problems. People liked the software, but as the sales staff worked with users, they found that many individuals in business and industry didn’t have the thinking skills necessary to optimize its use. As they tried to teach their clients these skills, they began to invest a great deal of energy learning about how and where individuals developed (or didn’t develop) these necessary thinking skills. Dr. Apple then started to observe and explore educational institutions and trends in education, and, in doing so, he learned some of the best practices.

In the mid-1990s Pacific Crest shifted its business focus to helping faculty succeed in implementing new instructional methods. They developed a core set of institutes and instructional materials, built on the guiding principles for an educational philosophy that came to be known as Process Education. These institutes were offered at a variety of colleges and universities across the country, and, as Dr. Apple traveled and met with more and more educators, he noticed that a growing number of them, though they did not know each other, shared a common profile. These faculty members were convinced that they could be much more effective in their roles as educators and they were willing to engage in personal and professional development to achieve that goal. They also recognized that the needs of their student populations had become more complex, and that increasing numbers of students were arriving at college less well-prepared than had students in the past. These educators were dissatisfied with the level of student performance in their courses, and they were often disillusioned with practices that were standard in their own institutions. They knew that outside forces (i.e., legislators, taxpayers, business and industry leaders) demanded greater evidence of student success and they wanted new graduates to be able to perform to higher standards. They could see that if the changes were going to have lasting impacts, that they would have to occur throughout their institutions, not just within isolated classrooms, and they wanted to be able to help steer the direction of that change. Many members of this group were risk takers, challenged by trying to be agents of change within well-entrenched organizations.

In response to the needs of educators and their institutions, Pacific Crest expanded its repertoire of faculty development institutes. As Dr. Apple visited colleges in different parts of the country and developed connections with more and more educators, he could see that many were lonely explorers who had been trying new approaches with active learning in their own environments, trying to help learners become more responsible for their own learning. Exploration takes great courage and involves risk, and many educators were trying new approaches with varying degrees of success, often in environments that were not very supportive or tolerant of the mistakes that inevitably accompany innovation. Dr. Apple began to introduce these clients to each other, feeling that educators’ innovations would be put to better use if they were pooled and shared. As these early explorers came to know one another and became familiar with each other’s work, they discovered that they had much in common. They were eager to learn from one another’s experiences and were hungry for the development of best practices. As scholars who were established in their respective disciplines, they saw the need to apply a scholarly approach to what they had been learning and developing in the application of Process Education in their classrooms.

This group of educators evolved into ‘pioneers,’ hungry to establish solid roots. They wanted knowledge and practices that could evolve as others built upon what they had learned. They recognized the benefit of a shared community experience. The pioneers identified two tangible resources for building their new community. First, they wanted a place in which to publicly share their scholarly writings so that they could be assessed by peers and shared with others in order to expand the community. This resulted in development of the Faculty Guidebook, an annual publication that shares an increasing amount of new knowledge related to teaching and learning. The second resource that the pioneers are developing is the Academy of Process Educators. They hold a conference each summer that offers a space for networking, sharing research in the practices of teaching and learning while it is still in the formative stage, receiving peer assessment of new ideas, and sharing best practices. A number of these pioneers have joined Pacific Crest as associates, facilitating institutes in areas that are consistent with their personal expertise.

During the last ten years, the Academy of Process Educators has identified five roles that are viewed as primary for an educator. These are represented by the five nodes in the star diagram that appears on the front cover of the Faculty Guidebook. These roles provide an organizational framework for the sections in this book.

• Enhance Learning & Scholarship

An educator facilitates higher levels of learning (knowledge construction) using Bloom’s Taxonomy, emphasizing integrated performance and problem solving rather than memorization.

• Foster Learner Development

An educator mentors learners, helping them improve their learning performance by growing a set of transferable learning skills. The mentor assists this process using facilitation skills that include assessment, diagnosis, and intervention.

• Nurture Self-Growth

An educator encourages students to reflect and improve their self-assessment skills so that students can self-mentor their own growth.

• Invest in Professional Development

Educators must become master teachers by acquiring competencies that are identified as part of the desired repertoire. Examples of these include assessment, creating measures of effectiveness, using learning theory, creating enriched learning environments, designing instruction, conducting research, and modeling good team membership.

• Expand Institutional Effectiveness

As institutions are held ever more accountable for measuring and demonstrating their effectiveness, individual educators must become systems thinkers who contribute to the overall credibility of their institutions.

As these educational pioneers gained experience and confidence, they found themselves better able to create more self-sustaining settlements in their respective institutions. This can be seen in stronger connections with colleagues who are now actively seeking new ways of teaching and learning and are willing to invest energy in institutional reform. There is also a fresh openness to teaching and learning innovation among newly-hired colleagues. The growth of these communities of scholars promises long-term transformation in their respective institutions.

The Faculty Guidebook serves as an up-to-date forum for sharing wisdom gained from years of experience and rapidly disseminating new practices and tools required by expanded communities of ‘settlers.’ While a wide variety of topics are included in the Guidebook, the modular format makes it easy for readers to focus on a subset of proven learning and teaching tools and slowly expand their repertoire. The book is also a place in which to engage in the emerging scholarship of teaching and learning en route to publication in disciplinary-specific journals. Topics are wide-ranging, covering the areas of educational philosophy, learning theory, mentoring, creating quality learning environments, facilitation, teaching practices and learning tools, assessment, measurement and evaluation, instructional design, and program assessment. During the next two years, more content will be added to successive editions.

The metaphor is incomplete without mention of the ‘Tories.’ They exist in abundance and can be found in unexpected places. It would be an over-simplification to say that the common thread among them is resistance to change, though that is a motive. The following are some examples of the players and the ways that they serve to resist change.

• Legislators want reform, and then they pass legislation that freezes or reduces resources.

• Employers want better-prepared graduates, and then, when there is a shortage of employees, they recruit students who have not yet finished their education.

• Seasoned faculty members who are comfortable with routine ways of teaching are often the first to criticize those who attempt to innovate.

• Administrators in community colleges who espouse the desire to become more learning centered sometimes continue to expect all faculty members to assume significant teaching loads so that it is nearly impossible to reflect and try new methods.

• People throughout research universities and within professional organizations continue to reward and emphasize quantitative research in the respective disciplines, and dismiss the qualitative research often required to improve teaching and learning.

The Faculty Guidebook includes reader-friendly pieces that concisely answer many of the challenges by the ‘Tories,’ they summarize proven teaching and learning techniques for the ‘settlers,’ and provide professional opportunity for the ‘pioneers’ to receive recognition for their work. The authors and editorial staff hope that efforts like the Faculty Guidebook succeed in generating a critical mass of educators working for transformational change in higher education. A companion manual to the Faculty Guidebook is currently being designed to assist individual educators and those who are responsible for guiding the professional development of educators. We look forward to hearing your insights about how to make these types of resources more effective. Look for regular updates and share the modules you find most meaningful with your colleagues.

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