What the best college students do /

Bain (academic affairs, Univ. of the District of Columbia; What the Best College Teachers Do, 2004) reports on research about highly "creative," productive, and socially conscious students and how they negotiated college to attain their goals. They developed a "deep," transformative learning orientation, tenaciously pursuing what mattered to them over high grades. He reports that these successful students turned failure/mistakes into learning opportunities; learned to make choices/decisions in murky situations by reflecting and learning from past experience; and maintained self-esteem, which sustained them through failures or setbacks on their way to achieving goals. Bain writes in noncomplex language and artfully weaves scholarly literature and rich narratives from dozens of interviewees into a provocative, interesting, and fast-moving book. A chapter-by-chapter notes section contains references for works cited and elaborations on experiments reported in the text. This title is reminiscent of publications such as Paul Tough's How Children Succeed (CH, May'13, 50-5134) and other works about learning for personal and social transformation/emancipation, and learning from experience. This book is informative and beneficial not only for current and future college students, but also professors, researchers, and parents and caregivers who strive to foster successful learning in children. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readership levels. D. Truty Northeastern Illinois University

Bain (What the Best College Teachers Do), the provost and vice president for academic affairs at the University of the District of Columbia, weaves a narrative from a series of interviews with a group that includes physicians, lawyers, politicians, Nobel laureates, and MacArthur "Genius Grant" winners to create a qualitative study of the habits of people who distinguish themselves in their postcollege careers. These interviews are supplemented with sociological and psychological research on the characteristics of a "good" student. Common threads include passion, creativity, and flexibility. Indeed, the diversity of Bain's subjects, including comedian Stephen Colbert and engineer (and Palm Pilot inventor) Jeff Hawkins, adds veracity to Bain's arguments about embracing curiosity and failure on the path to making an impact. In the last chapter, Bain offers more concrete advice to college students, but again, the author challenges these future leaders by framing his collected wisdom in the form of questions and considerations. Rejecting the notion that a liberal arts education leads to becoming "jack of all trades and master of none," Bain finds that broad brushstrokes allowed the most successful among us to draw connections between the world at large and a chosen specialty. This straightforward book about learning habits should appeal to the teenager heading off to college and mindfully planning his/her approach to education. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.