Editor's Note

Twice a year, the FORUM now publishes a supplement of book reviews of recent titles in higher education, written by our readers. Last fall we sent out 26 books and sixteen recipients actually kept their promise to file a review in exchange. Many stimulating titles went out in this batch of books and we received many vigorous reviews, more than we can include in our printed pages. Subscribers will find over a dozen additional reviews posted as ancillary material to this issue on our web site. To all our reviewers, hearty thanks; to those who kept the book but were just "too busy" to file the promised review, "tsk, tsk." A new crop of books awaiting review is listed in the book supplement.

The issue proper opens with a CARNEGIE CHRONICLE about perhaps the most important aspect of life-long learning—the ability to ask good questions. At the risk of looking silly, I will pat myself on the back and say that when it came time to pick an area of specialization in my graduate work, it was my professor's skill at asking questions that turned the tide. I didn't really care a fig about 18th Century British Literature, but I wanted to run with the big dog intellectually speaking. These questions, this mind, intimidated and flattered simultaneously; the prospect that I might learn to think so probingly seduced me completely. And so I have always been enthralled with the power of good questions. As with "forgiveness" in the moral sphere, "questions" and "questioning" are rife with opportunity for rich and meaningful study in the scholarship of teaching and learning. Kudos to Laura Greene for her work in this area.

New research finds balance in a review of older research of increasing relevance as teachers become more responsive to diversity of all types, including the different types of learners. Hence, we offer Sharyn Hardy Gallagher's review of the work on left-brain/right-brain differentiation. If the left side of the brain performs the more logical functions, which deal with verbal and analytical processes, and the right side performs activities thought of as more creative, dealing with patterns and relationship, doesn't good teaching need to appeal to and stimulate both? But do the same stimuli stimulate both? Probably not. Another argument for multi-variant pedagogies, it would seem.

If the words "correlation coefficient" frighten you, brace yourself for Ed Nuhfer's DEVELOPER'S DIARY. Ever the scientist, Nuhfer takes us non-science people by the hand and shows us how to apply scientific rigor to an examination of our tests. With a few simple calculations (made simple thanks to now ubiquitous software), we can see how well our tests actually test the knowledge of the broadest range of our students. Readers who see the merits of testing our tests to see how well they are doing what we think they are doing will be ready for the DEVELOPER'S DIARY soon to follow on "test item analysis."

The work of the "positive psychology" movement led by Martin Seligman appears in this issue for the first time. Seligman, a former president of the American Psychological Association, has done important research on "learned helplessness," "optimism," and "authentic happiness," and his work, along with that of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on "flow" will, I predict, soon have a major impact on the improvement of college teaching and learning. Too many students learn helplessness in academe before they have a chance to learn how to learn. Expect to hear more about the implications of positive psychology for teaching and learning in future issues.

Linc. Fisch's AD REM . . . rounds out the issue with a reminder that rankings are a trap as fatal as poor test design and a poor way to teach most things of real value.

-- James Rhem