Here’s a definition for classroom management: “the provisions and procedures necessary to establish and maintain an environment in which instruction and learning can occur.” The definition is attributed to W. Doyle, in a source I wasn’t able to locate online. I’ve never really thought about a definition for classroom management. I’ve always considered it a euphemism for classroom discipline—a nicer way of describing disruptive behavior and teachers’ need to deal with students behaving badly.

A large study of students enrolled in geography courses at multiple universities in Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States looked at their conceptions of geography, teaching, and learning. Each was considered separately.

The relatively new pedagogical periodical Academy of Management Learning & Education has a regular feature I very much enjoy and wish was part of more of the discipline-based periodicals on teaching and learning. Noted teachers and scholars in the discipline are interviewed and asked questions about teaching, learning and education. Besides being well edited and good reading, the interviews permanently record the wisdom of faculty from whom others can learn much.

Not everything I read in the pedagogical literature is wonderful. A lot of it is just kind ho-hum; a bit really raises the hair on the back of my neck.

“I’d like to share a really low-point in my teaching.” Wow! Most faculty don’t admit teaching errors in public venues, but this faculty member was participating in a lunchtime discussion with about 12 of her colleagues. She’s a biologist and the course was microbiology for nurses. The low point involved a comment made by a student with whom she had developed a relationship. Clearly a student wouldn’t make an admission like this if she (it was a she in this case) wasn’t comfortable with the faculty member. It was the end of the course and the student was doing well, and she pretty much had her A nailed down. Despite that, she said to her teacher, “I really don’t understand why they make us take a stupid microbiology course.”

I’m busy doing reading for the October issue of The Teaching Professor newsletter, sitting lakeside at our summer place in upstate New York. I got three mosquito bites while reading an article by Jerry Farber on presence. Yes, I was so enamored with the article I never felt the bites! I’ll summarize in the newsletter what he means by presence and how it so very often escapes teachers. But here’s another insight—one I felt like underlining twice!

I am just finishing up a book on pedagogical scholarship, more specifically a review of previously published work on teaching and learning authored by faculty in disciplines other than education and its related fields. If you read this newsletter regularly, you know that I have no quarrels with folks in education. In fact they are the pros-the folks trained to study teaching and learning and advance of our knowledge of both. But this book is devoted to the the scholarship of practitioners-the work that is written by college teachers for college teachers. Up to this point, I don't think anybody has looked at it as a body of applied scholarship and asked what we might learn from it.

I had an interesting accident of technology yesterday. I was trying to read the most recent issue of Innovative Higher Education. I entered the year correctly but then listed the volume number as 1 when that was the issue I wanted. I didn’t note the error and began reviewing the table of contents as it downloaded. An article on independent studies. Great, I thought. I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen an article on that topic. I downloaded the pdf and the article did not disappoint me.

I’ve been thinking a bit about deep and surface learning. The terms, primarily associated with the work of Ference Marton completed in the 80s, are now commonplace and mostly understood . . . or are they?