Excerpts

More than three decades ago, I walked to the other side of the desk and began teaching. The classroom had always been my arena of competition, and I was routinely successful as a student. If I ever gave any thought to other students who were not as successful as I, I just assumed they were lazy. It was not until I began to teach that I noticed many of my students tried to learn but failed nonetheless. Suddenly, teaching was not as easy as I had assumed it would be. It was not simply a matter of presenting content. Each day during that first year of teaching brought questions. Was I teaching if they did not learn? Why was learning difficult for some students? Why was it so easy for me? The questions continued to pour in. Clearly, many of my students were intelligent, and I could witness their effort, but why did they often struggle to learn? What was the cause? It would have been simple to retreat to the ivory tower and proclaim that their high school preparation was poor, that they just didn't try hard enough, that not everyone could benefit from a higher education. Instead, I started to ask real questions. How do we learn academically? Could anyone learn more effectively? The journey that started so long ago led me back to graduate school, then on to decades of teaching, and now to this text. Along the way, I have been blessed with dynamic and innovative colleagues, challenging and adventurous students, honest teachers, and administrators who knew when to turn a blind eye to daringly experimental programs. My seemingly simple questions came to have complicated answers. My colleagues and I searched in numerous fields, unearthing both theoretical and research answers. Over the decades, we have been part of this new field of developmental education. Developmental education has emerged in response to the needs of thousands of American students who want to be more successful academically and to the desires of institutions that want these students to succeed. This text is the amalgamation of our experiences. These are the concepts and practices based in theory and research that help our students reach their academic goals. These concepts and practices are rooted in the ideal of an autonomous student, a person fully equipped to meet the learning challenges in academics as well as the work world. IN THIS EDITION We begin this book by introducing the concept of academic transformation and seven principles for becoming an autonomous learner. Chapter 2 focuses on academic motivation, and we propose our own theoretical model along with strategies for increasing and maintaining motivation. Chapter 3 covers practical study strategies to help students get organized, learn and apply different methods of taking notes, and comprehend college-level reading assignments. In Chapter 4, we explore the concept of academic learning through types of knowledge (i.e., declarative, procedural, metacognitive) and levels of intellectual performance using the recently revised Bloom's Taxonomy (cognitive domain). Chapter 5 completes our general review and application of academic success research, focusing on expert and novice learning and levels of commitment and involvement. In Chapters 6 and 7, we take a more introspective approach to learning as we explore the stages of development (i.e., personal and intellectual) that humans share, followed by research and discussion on talents, will, and preferences that make us unique individuals. Our bias about the important impact of self-regulation on student success is reflected in our devoting three chapters to this topic. We cover attaining achievable goals, reducing procrastination, and increasing timeliness in Chapter 8; we discuss our stage model of self-regulatory ability, key routines, time management, and balancing our lives in Chapter 9; and we conclude with stress management and reducing academic anxieties in Chapter 10. The last two chapters of the book are dedicated to achieving academic goals through successful performance. Chapter 11 focuses on neural development, different approaches to learning (i.e., surface, deep, achievement), and strategies for improving attending and understanding. In Chapter 12, we explore the role of critical thinking in study, learning through storage and retrieval, and conclude with a review of techniques to improve test-taking and other academic performance. Excerpted from Academic Transformation: The Road to College Success by De Sellers, Russell B. Hodges, Carol W. Dochen All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.