Learning and Motivation in the Postsecondary Classroom, Marilla D. Svinicki, Anker Publishing Company, 2004
Reviewed by Candyce Reynolds, Portland State University

I often hear fellow instructors bemoan the state of current students. They don't listen. They don't participate in discussions. They don't follow directions. They don't seem motivated to do well in college. After reading Marilla Svinicki's new book, Learning and Motivation in the Postsecondary Classroom, I wanted to give all of these instructors a copy of this book. In her preface,  Svinicki notes that the field of learning and motivation has come a long way since the 1970's but that little has been done to present this accumulated knowledge to higher education faculty in the trenches. Svinicki does an excellent job of helping her readers gain an understanding of how students learn in the postsecondary classroom as well as offering concrete ideas about how to apply this knowledge in the classroom.

Svinicki starts her book by attempting to motivate her readers to learn about learning. She makes convincing arguments about how learning about learning can help us become more effective teachers, save time, solve problems, become more creative and professional. Most convincingly, she speaks to the heart of the academic in positing that understanding these theories and applications can lead to interesting and publishable research. She also acknowledges that disciplines carry specific learning and teaching strategies, or what Lee Shulman calls pedagogical content knowledge, and that one need not abandon tried and true instructional methodologies that have worked in one's field to adopt the more general theories of learning and motivation.

Summarizing and explaining theories of learning and motivation for the lay reader is a tough task. Educational psychologists and researchers have a language all their own. Other books I have read on the topic (e.g., Bransford, Brown, and Cocking, 1999; Halpern, 1996) were helpful but difficult to get through. Svinicki organizes the chapters around questions that faculty might have about how they can help their students, rather than delineating and explaining one theory after another. Each chapter starts by explaining a theory or theories that address the question. She provides several examples of each theory from a variety of different disciplines. This should help the reader place complex theories within the context of their own background and experience. The majority of each chapter is spent offering principles for applying the theories in the classroom as well as sharing specific examples of instructional activities. Svinicki also includes a substantial number of visual presentations of the theory and practice in each chapter further advancing the reader's understanding.

The book tackles the following learning questions: helping students learn the content, helping students understand, helping students develop skills, including intellectual skills, helping students retain and use what they've learned in other settings, helping students help themselves, motivating students to learn, and what to do about individual differences in learning. While I enjoyed reading the book from cover to cover and each chapter builds on the next, I can imagine a reader picking one of these chapters to get help on a particular issue.

The book ends with the presentation of a hypothetical class and illustrates how the principles described in the earlier chapters could be applied when making decisions about how to structure and teach this course. Again, Svinicki uses multiple visual aids in explaining this application. If a reader had lost sight of a theory or its application while reading this book, the final chapter is an excellent review. I finished the book feeling that I really understood the theories and how they could be applied in a classroom.

The book's gem is the Appendix, which Svinicki titles "Theories in a Nutshell."  In this twelve page appendix, she summarizes the main points of each of the theories she has covered throughout the book. I have already found myself referring to the appendix to make sure I understood a particular theory or to find the language to share an idea with a colleague. It will also be helpful for readers to have this appendix to refer to as they are reading the book and wish to have a little more theory before application.

On finishing the book, I reflected that Svinicki had not only motivated me to learn about learning but she had also applied the principles she discussed in the writing of the book itself. I came away knowing that I have learned something and that I can apply what I have learned in a variety of settings. In the preface, Svinicki points out that researchers of learning rarely publish in venues that are read outside their disciplines and that faculty are rarely exposed to these ideas and if they are, find it difficult to translate into practical use. Svinicki's book stands at the intersection of research and teaching. She has translated the complex findings of a huge field into language we can all understand and provides examples that allow us to imagine ourselves doing something different. 

References

• Bransford, J., Brown, A., & Cocking, R. (Eds.). (1999). How people learn. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.
• Halpern, D. F. (1996). Thought and knowledge: An introduction to critical thinking. (3^rd Ed.). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

The book's gem is the Appendix, which Svinicki titles "Theories in a Nutshell."