Teaching is an essential skill in becoming a faculty member in any institution of higher education. Yet how is that skill actually acquired by graduate students? Teaching as if Learning Matters collects first-person narratives from graduate students and new PhDs that explore how the skills required to teach at a college level are developed. It examines the key issues that graduate students face as they learn to teach effectively when in fact they are still learning and being taught.

Featuring contributions from over thirty graduate students from a variety of disciplines at Indiana University, Teaching as if Learning Matters allows these students to explore this topic from their own unique perspectives. They reflect on the importance of teaching to them personally and professionally, telling of both successes and struggles as they learn and embrace teaching for the first time in higher education.

About the Author

Jennifer Meta Robinson is Professor of Practice in the Department of Anthropology at Indiana University and Co-Director of IU's Graduate Certificate on College Pedagogy. She is author (with James Robert Farmer) of Selling Local: Why Local Food Movements Matter. Her edited books include (with Lelila Monaghan and Jane E. Goodman) A Cultural Approach to Interpersonal Communication: Essential Readings, Second Edition.

Valerie Dean O'Loughlin is Professor of Anatomy and Cell Biology and Assistant Director of Undergraduate Education at Indiana University School of Medicine. She is author (with Michael McKinley and Elizabeth Pennefather-O'Brien) of Human Anatomy, Fifth Edition.

Katherine Kearns is Associate Vice Provost for Student Development and Director of the Office of Postdoctoral Affairs in the Office of the Vice Provost for Graduate Education and Health Sciences at Indiana University.

Laura Plummer directs the Scholarly Writing Program, under the auspices of the Office of the Vice Provost for Faculty and Academic Affairs, at Indiana University.

Reviews

"The editors of Teaching as if Learning Matters have convened a group of experts -who happen to be graduate students- to use their collective voice to both contextualize and challenge academic discourse about college teaching and graduate student development. These experts are at once teachers and learners. In these chapters, they generously make public their own processes of becoming - becoming not only postsecondary educators, but becoming the reflective scholar-leaders we need to tackle some of the most pressing cultural, social and environmental challenges facing communities around the world."-Melissa McDaniels, University of Wisconsin-Madison

"Blending personal narratives and critical synthesis, this book makes a significant and novel contribution to the literature on both graduate education and SoTL. Teaching as if Learning Matters will challenge and inspire anyone interested in graduate students, new faculty, SoTL, or teaching in higher education."-Peter Felten, Elon University

"Learning as if Teaching Matters offers a welcome and timely look at how graduate students today are learning to teach. Engaging essays by graduate students and their mentors examine how new scholars are tapping higher education's growing teaching commons for ideas to enrich their classroom practice. Highlighting the training pathways these graduate students have travelled, this volume completes the circuit by bringing insights from their experience as instructors and scholars of teaching and learning back to the wider community of college and university educators."-Mary Taylor Huber, Contributing Editor, Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning

"27 years after Barr and Tagg proposed "a new paradigm for undergraduate education" by provocatively imagining a shift "from teaching to learning," this book chronicles a new paradigm for graduate education with an integrated vision of "teaching as if learning matters." More broadly, this integration of learning-the teacher-authors' and their students'-into the work of teaching, the book reminds us that good teachers are always becoming."-Nancy Chick, Rollins College

Book Information
ISBN 9780253060679
Author Jennifer Meta Robinson
Format Paperback
Page Count 376
Imprint Indiana University Press
Publisher Indiana University Press
Weight(grams) 553g