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What the Best College Teachers Do |  | Author: Ken Bain
Publisher: Harvard University Press
List Price: $26.00
Buy Used: $12.57
as of 11/24/2009 10:50 CST details
You Save: $13.43 (52%)
New (41) Used (35) from $12.57
Seller: okobojibooks
Rating:  38 reviews
Sales Rank: 7788
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Pages: 207
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.6 x 1
ISBN: 0674013255
Dewey Decimal Number: 378.12
EAN: 9780674013254
ASIN: 0674013255
Publication Date: April 30, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
What makes a great teacher great? Who are the professors students remember long after graduation? This book, the conclusion of a fifteen-year study of nearly one hundred college teachers in a wide variety of fields and universities, offers valuable answers for all educators. The short answer is--it's not what teachers do, it's what they understand. Lesson plans and lecture notes matter less than the special way teachers comprehend the subject and value human learning. Whether historians or physicists, in El Paso or St. Paul, the best teachers know their subjects inside and out--but they also know how to engage and challenge students and to provoke impassioned responses. Most of all, they believe two things fervently: that teaching matters and that students can learn. In stories both humorous and touching, Bain describes examples of ingenuity and compassion, of students' discoveries of new ideas and the depth of their own potential. What the Best College Teachers Do is a treasure trove of insight and inspiration for first-year teachers and seasoned educators. (20040315)
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 38
 Boring and sophmoric. October 22, 2009
Traci Nawrocki (Columbus, Ohio USA)
0 out of 3 found this review helpful
I read this book in conjunction with a Ph.D. level class at The Ohio State University. I have 25 years of successful teaching experience which made this book extremely boring to read. If you are a young, inexperienced future collegiate educator you might glean some wisdom from this book, but I wouldn't count on it.
 just what i ordered September 17, 2009
S. Cramme
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
this was just what i ordered, and it was in better condition than i thought it would be.
This is NOT a how-to guide June 1, 2009
Mom Academic (New York, NY United States)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Ken Bain is quite emphatic when he explains in his introduction that this is not a how-to guide to becoming a better college/university instructor. This book is the result of an extensive research project on college teaching and the teachers who were part of this study have many years of experience under their belt. To me, that part of Bain's point: while there may be naturally gifted teachers out there, in reality teaching is a learned art. The professors in the study have made and continue to make mistakes but they have found their way to be excellent in what they do through years of experience and experimentation. You're not going to become a super professor after reading a book or even ten books. One of the reviewers of this book mentions that most professors do not have the kind of flexibility that the professors in the book seemed to have, and while this may be true, I think the reviewer misses the point of the book. Again, this book is not for everyone and everyone's teaching situation is very different. I personally found this book to be interesting and inspiring and perhaps the greatest "comfort" I got from it is that great teachers are not necessarily born, they work towards greatness and it takes many years for them to hone their craft. Again, this is not a how-to book so don't expect to be given 10 steps to become a better teacher. But it does, nonetheless, have great ideas that you CAN adapt to whatever situation you are in if you really want to make changes.
What the Best College Professors Do April 27, 2009
James G. Clawson (Charlottesville, Virginia)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I listened to Ken speak, he did a great job. The book is similar in style and approach (d'oh). VERY helpful for graduate level instructors at all collegiate levels. For instance, creating an "expectation failure" even among budding scientists in order to challenge their underlying assumptions is not so easy. Thomas Kuhn's book (The Structure of Scientific Revolutions) sets up the problem, Bain addresses how to do it. Very nice book.
A Great Book April 24, 2009
K. Quertermous
I really enjoyed reading this book. Ken Bain has studied a large number of teachers who have been identified as the "best teachers." He has woven this material together with research about learning to create a book that is very thought-provoking. He emphasizes the need for deep learning instead of surface learning and gives many examples from the studied teachers about how this may be accomplished. This is not an instruction book on how to teach but rather a collection of motivating examples. I highly recommend this book.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 38
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