On Becoming an Innovative University Teacher : Reflection in Action

"This is one of the most interesting texts I have read for many years ... It is authoritative and clearly written. It provides a rich set of examples of teaching, and a reflective discourse."
Professor George Brown

"...succeeds in inspiring the reader by making the process of reflective learning interesting and thought provoking ... has a narrative drive which makes it a book too good to put down."
Dr Mary Thorpe

"...a delightful and unusual reflective journey...the whole book is driven by a cycle of questions, examples, strategies and generalizations from the examples. In all, it is the clearest example of practise-what-you-preach that I have seen."
Professor John Biggs

This unusual, accessible and significant book begins each chapter by posing a question with which college and university teachers can be expected to identify; and then goes on to answer the question by presenting a series of examples; finally, each chapter closes with 'second thoughts', presenting a viewpoint somewhat distinct from that taken by John Cowan.

This book will assist university teachers to plan and run innovative activities to enable their students to engage in effective reflective learning; it will help them adapt other teachers' work for use with their own students; and will give them a rationale for the place of reflective teaching and learning in higher education.

John Cowan has been an active innovator for the past thirty years, having led in such developments as resource-based learning, Education for Capability, self-assessed learning, and action-research activities for students as well as teachers. He has been much in demand to share his experience in workshops which have linked staff and curriculum development in what has always been the essentially practical approach of someone who wants to help his colleagues to enhance their teaching and their students' learning.

A former Professor of Engineering Education at Heriot-Watt University, and of Learning Development at the Open University, he is a visiting professor at Salford University and the Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, and as a consultant currently chairs the Working Group which is charged to establish personal and professional capabilities as a central feature in the curricula for the courses offered in the University of the Highlands and Islands Project.