A Commonplace Book on Teaching and Learning

Book excerpt: The format of the book is a little unusual because I decided to use the structure of a commonplace book, in which commonplace items that one comes across in one's life are jotted down for future reference in a journal. The idea is to let the quotations set up discussions about various aspects of learning. My intent was to end up with a loosely coupled but reasonably coherent set of ideas within each chapter. This goal was pursued by seeing to it that a substantial number of quotations within a chapter are at least somewhat related. One advantage of this format is that the reader can open the book nearly anywhere and find an idea that can be considered independently of other parts of the book. The intent is to provide on every page stepping stones that allow the reader to go a bit further by mulling over an idea