John Bransford's earlier work, How Students Learn, discusses three fundamental learning principles, which are amply illustrated and applied in How Students Learn: History, Mathematics and Science in the Classroom. The first two principles are fairly well-known and accepted by teachers in higher education: (1) Because we must build on what students already bring to our courses, discovering what they know and don't know, including uncovering preconceptions and misconceptions, is critically important. The work of Angelo and Cross on classroom assessment techniques (CATs) dovetails nicely with this learning principle. (2) Students need deep foundational knowledge that rests on conceptual frameworks that facilitate retrieval and application. For most faculty, deep knowledge is a given. (3) Less understood is the third principle, metacognition, thinking about thinking. Students must know where they are headed and monitor their progress toward learning objectives.

All three of these principles are recapped in the Introduction to this second volume, which, even though it focuses on a K-12 audience and examples, contains "gold" for higher education (HE) faculty. Embedded throughout the book, also, is an emphasis on community-centered learning where students share ideas, reflect, and experiment in small groups and in whole-classes. The majority of the invited contributors, who wrote discipline-specific chapters, are serious researchers with Ph.D. credentials and university affiliations. Much of what they emphasize has implications for college and university teaching and learning.

History: The three chapters in Part I emphasize metacognitive elements such as helping students understand that history is counter-intuitive: people sometimes get past events wrong. Students must understand the progression of ideas as well as particular historical periods. Facts must be linked to concepts that transfer from one case to another in history. Historical knowledge is "contested, provisional, and subject to continuous change" (p. 72), a process that should create in students both mystery and excitement. HE faculty facing mixed ability classes will be surprised to learn that even in lower grades, teachers face a "seven-year gap between the ideas of the lowest and highest achieving students" (p. 82). The authors remind us that "questions, problems, puzzles, curiosities, and mysteries" (p. 181) can lead to instructional cohesion based on "history's key concepts, big ideas, and central questions" (p. 182).

Mathematics: These four chapters in Part II lead off with the conclusion that math is so hard because it is so badly taught, with teachers rarely using the three key learning principles. The authors then apply these principles to math, looking first at three common preconceptions about math with ways to counter them. They note that math teachers taught with an emphasis on procedure—a common practice—may have difficulty helping their students acquire deep foundational knowledge built around concepts. Two mathematically relevant metacognitive strategies are teaching students to use "internal and external dialogue" and to "seek and give" (p. 241). Three things needed to teach math or virtually any discipline are: (1) knowing your students' current abilities; (2) knowing where you want to take them; and (3) knowing the best teaching methods to get there. New ways to teach key math concepts include hands-on lessons with stopwatches and various mathematical games with a metacognitive emphasis. Three strategies for introducing mathematical ideas are: (1) Start with a familiar context; (2) Start with simple content; and (3) Have students "express concepts in their own language before learning and using conventional terminology" (pp. 389-390).

Science: The four chapters in Part III emphasize science as a process of inquiry demanding different questions than ones people typically ask about everyday events. A helpful heuristic, relevant to HE, contains phases on engagement, preparing to investigate, investigating, preparing to report, and reporting. Besides knowing their subject matter, teachers must also know how to help students over common stumbling blocks, assessing their progress. In a useful chapter on guided inquiry, the authors have highlighted in shaded ellipticals 43 summary statements about teaching and learning embedded in their examples. Community-based classroom environments should be "knowledge-centered," "learner-centered" and "assessment-centered" (p. 555).

A final synthesizing chapter by Donovan and Bransford reinforces the three learning principles—prior knowledge, deep conceptual knowledge base, and meta­­cognition —and the need for community-based classroom environments.

How Students Learn: History, Mathematics and Science in the Classroom is a 615-page book with enormous pay-backs, particularly for faculty in the three specified disciplines. The chapter authors excel in: (1) their depth of knowledge about creative ways to teach their disciplines; (2) their conscientious links to the three key learning principles in HPL; and (3) the depth of their scholarship. Busy faculty could read the introduction and then home in on the sections most relevant to their discipline.