They have, in fact, selected essays to appeal to the busy faculty member. While the "third-year FERPer" may not be as directly concerned with the effect teaching evaluations will have on his or her career, the newly-hired assistant professor is soon made aware that he or she is under the gun to deliver credible evidence of being an effective teacher. Thus, as the editors note in their Introduction, they have selected materials that can be "assimilated quickly . . . things that we can read in short periods of time" (vi). Thus these pieces are short, clearly written, and free (generally) of mind-numbing jargon. They are full of practical advice, that is, they not only articulate problems; they also offer solutions. And their tone encourages action. The section on discussion is the longer of the two because, of the two areas, discussion is more amorphous than questioning. The essays give specific advice and instructions.

For example, William Ewens, in "Teaching Using Discussion" (21-26), offers eighteen specific suggestions for leading effective discussions. Building student preparation time into the lesson plan is one such suggestion, which, while perhaps obvious to some, is often overlooked with predictable results. We all appreciate having some time to gather our thoughts before being ordered to "stand and deliver." This preparation may involve writing for a few minutes at the beginning of a class for which specific reading has been assigned. Preparing and distributing discussion questions along with making the reading assignment will usually ensure that the discussion will contribute to genuine learning. Another suggestion that Ewens makes is to vary the level of abstraction of the questions used to stimulate discussion. Another suggestion, one that I especially appreciate since I am by nature an often impatient man, is to follow the ten-second rule, that is, ask the question and then pause for ten seconds to allow students time to reflect, formulate an answer, and build the courage required to jump in. Let the students answer the question. The other sixteen suggestions are equally practical—and equally important for teachers at any level of experience to consider. I would add another suggestion, one that is not, admittedly, for the faint of heart but which goes far to create an atmosphere of mutual learning. Ask questions the answers to which you do not know, that is, real questions. Modeling the habits of inquiry and openness will go far toward stimulating a genuine learning environment. (Ewens, I am happy to note, references William Fawcett Hill's splendid and effective Learning Thru Discussion (Sage Publications) in his notes, a little book with huge effects used by many teachers at Cal Poly Pomona since its publication in 1962.)

The next essay, "Improving Discussions" by William E. Cashin and Philip C. McKnight, argues that discussion as a technique while appropriate for a number of a number of contexts and suitable for a number of pedagogical goals needs always to be evaluated in terms of one's course goals. They argue that discussion while not appropriate for "covering significant amounts of content" (28) are "appropriate for higher-order objectives: application, analysis, synthesis, evaluation" (28). And they note that some teachers may be uncomfortable with the diminished control one has in discussion in contrast with the level of control one has in a lecture. But after raising these and other relevant issues regarding the costs and benefits of discussion pedagogies, Cashin and McKnight make a number of cogent and specific suggestions to improve the cognitive, intellectual, and affective values of learning, and to increase participation. Here again, the suggestions are couched as specific behaviors that any teacher from the newest recruit to most experienced veteran can adopt and adapt. For instance, they suggest that we ask students to clarify and support their opinions with information and argument, that we ask open-ended questions that permit and encourage students to elaborate and think through their answers. I have found their suggestion to rephrase questions that elicit no or off-point answers by focusing on the material at hand to be a powerful tool in my literature classrooms because rephrasing helps me reinforce the very techniques of inquiry that I attempt to model. Repeated in this essay also is perhaps the single specific technique that is most important to effective learning through discussion: giving the students time to reflect and think through their responses. I found the discussion of the affective aspects of learning thought provoking and challenging but convincing; after all, we are or probably should be in the business of educating the whole person, a value-laden enterprise. The authors present a short, thoughtful check-list of specific classroom behaviors that work toward addressing our concerns (and those of the students) with feelings, interests, and values. Of these, I think especially wise the admonition to challenge the students but not to threaten them, a sometimes difficult balance to achieve, and the advice to use personal anecdotes in moderation to show the students that we are, after all, human, and share a common ground from which we may all advance. [Editor's note: See "Self-Reference and Instructor Disclosure: Is Gossip Easier to Remember?" on this topic in this journal.] The essay also reminds us of the importance of gate-keeping behaviors in stimulating and managing effective discussions.

The second third of the volume deals with improving our use of questioning as an effective classroom technique for stimulating learning. The premise for this section is simple yet powerful: "the cutting edge of knowledge is not the known, not in knowing but in questioning" (Ralph Thompson, "Learning to Question," 61). If questioning is the essence of the business of learning, if inquiry is the route to knowledge, then why is it, Thompson asks, that so many college graduates are seriously deficient in their ability to formulate and ask good questions. One thinks of those graduate students who are unable to come up with stimulating topics (questions to investigate) for their theses or seminar papers, indeed, of undergraduates who lack the ability do posit fruitful queries for term papers. The answer, Thompson suggests, lies with the too heavy emphasis on the didactic and deductive approaches to instruction and too little "upon the hypothetical and inductive . . .too much attention to answers and too little . . . to questions" (61). Thompson argues that professors ask very few questions that require students to think. While helping students understand "the modes of questioning appropriate to a field of study," the creative teacher will go far beyond the merely appropriate questions to penetrate "the core of disciplined thought and [dislocate] some of the core elements, [to be] disruptive [and] . . . disinclined to hold steady and remain respectable" (62). In fact, as Thompson points out, the "questioner must know a great deal about a field of study to ask sophisticated questions" yet must not wait until he or she has "mastered the field" to begin the questioning. In fact, the ability (and the courage) to pose significant questions should be in evidence at every level of study. Nonetheless, instructors rarely evaluate this ability, evaluating instead the ability of the student to answer the question that they pose and thus creating a behavioral prison by what the Brazilian educator, Paulo Freire famously termed "the banking concept of education," from which the student and teacher alike find escape difficult. The challenge for the teacher then is to foster in the classroom the freedom to question, the challenge to question, the leading into questioning through analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. (I note here that William Fawcett Hill's Learning Thru Discussion, mentioned earlier attempts this very thing.)