First and foremost, I must express my gratitude for monthly writer's group meetings with Mike Land and Sarah Cavanagh, during which I received incredibly wise and helpful feedback on every chapter of this book. Mike and Sarah served perfectly as advanced and interested readers, and they made this a better book in every way possible. Special thanks to Sarah for helping me avoid glaring errors in my use of terminology and theories from her home discipline of psychology and for pointing me to numerous articles that helped thicken my research.
I had the opportunity to present the research from this book—and to test out its applicability to instructors—at many colleges and universities while I was drafting and revising the manuscript. So thanks to my hosts and workshop participants at Olds College (Canada), Misericordia University, Regis College, the University of Denver, Fisher College, Florida Institute of Technology, King's Academy (Jordan), MacEwan University (Canada), Indiana State University, the DeLange Conference at Rice University, the University of Texas–San Antonio Health Sciences College, Bucknell University, Georgia Tech, and Columbus State Community College.
The seeds for this book were first planted at a meeting with David Brightman at the Teaching Professor Conference in New Orleans, and he was an excellent guide as I worked my way through the conception and proposal stages. His commitment to higher education and to publishing excellent books made him an ideal editor. Pete Gaughan and Connor O'Brien proved equally dedicated to the project, and my thanks especially to Connor for his developmental notes on the first draft of the book. Two outside reviewers also helped improve the book in many important ways, and I am grateful to them as well.
Assumption College gave me the sabbatical that enabled me to draft the book and to meet my deadlines, and many colleagues there, both faculty and administrative, have been supportive of my work.
I wrote the vast majority of this book at Nu Café in Worcester, Massachusetts. Thanks for all the green tea. It seemed to help.
I come from a family of teachers; it must have been something in the water where we grew up. I continue to find inspiration especially from my sister, Peggy, who has served as both teacher and principal to urban student populations in Chicago, and from my brother, Tony, at whose heels I have been tagging along as a student and teacher and writer and human being since we were childhood bunkmates.
Much of my extracurricular thinking about learning happens as a result of observing the experiences of my children, to whom this book is dedicated, so thanks to them for the enthusiasm they have always shown for learning both in and out of school.
Even more of my thinking about education happens as a result of my conversations with my wife, an elementary school teacher. During part of the time that I was writing this book I spent Friday mornings volunteering in her kindergarten classroom, and I was reminded each week of the incredible value of teaching as a profession and of the selfless commitment that so many teachers make to their students. Those reminders continually renewed my inspiration to write this book.
So a final and most heartfelt thanks to Anne—for everything.