Teaching and Learning about Teaching and Learning

Abstract

The Art of Teaching and Learning: Best Practices from a Master Educator. By Patrick Allitt. Chantilly, VA: The Teaching Company, 2010. 12 hours of DVD material plus paperback course guidebook. This is not a traditional “book” review, but a consideration of a series of 24 half-hour lectures designed to consider a significant range of teaching issues, primarily in higher education. Its publisher, The Teaching Company offers nearly 400 high-quality non-credit courses in a variety of media on everything from music appreciation to particle physics. History Professor Patrick Allitt, who directed Emory's Center for Teaching and Curriculum, is the primary lecturer. Allitt draws additional material from interviews with six colleagues at very different institutions. Among them are faculty in dedicated business programs, medical schools, and specialists in offering various introductory courses to large lecture halls full of students. Also included are clips of classroom activities and student interviews. Allitt is a somewhat gawky Brit with a tendency toward monotonic presentation, not some siren-voiced svengali capable of teaching managerial ethics, forensic entomology, or quantum computing to heads of cabbage by dint of pure charisma. If he can teach teachers about teaching, it will be the result of skill and insight, and not intangibles or non-transferables. This set of lectures has real value, though some areas are covered more effectively than others, and some suggestions should generate real controversy. The course promises something for everyone in the realm of education. Allitt tries, albeit mostly unsuccessfully, to make connections between instruction in higher education and teaching challenges in other venues, like job-related training. The value of these lectures is not their reach across educational contexts, but in the breadth …