Abstract
Michael Lawson brings his decades of experience training Christian educators to his new book, The Professor’s Puzzle. Although perhaps most beneficial for those entering into Christian academics in North America, this book offers great advice for anyone in education whose focus is on ensuring the best experience for his or her students.
The first two chapters focus on the principles of Christian education. The first chapter uses leading questions to aid the reader in formulating a philosophy of Christian education, while the second chapter proposes that Christian education should follow an ‘integrated learning’ approach. For the rest of the book, Lawson focuses on how to approach various aspects of education. The third chapter surveys ten different learning theories: learning domains, advanced organisers, brain research, time on task, hierarchy of need, learning styles, multiple intelligences, cooperative learning, andragogy, and motivation. The remaining seven chapters cover syllabus creation, content mastery, classroom management, student assessment, lecturing, interpersonal relationships, and ‘institutional realities’.
This book is a mine of information for an aspiring or new educator. Lawson has clearly researched learning and teaching theories extensively and offers the fruits of this research along with his own experience in the classroom this easily accessible book. Furthermore, footnotes direct the reader to free online resources with more detailed explanations of various points.
The reader should be aware, however, that Lawson writes solely from his own particular theological perspective and further admits a predominately negative experience as a student (p. 236). These two influences contribute to occasional combative rhetoric, which gives the impression that he sees little of value in education which is neither overtly Christian nor adheres closely to his theological or educational perspective. Such rhetoric not only distracts from his otherwise sage advice but has the potential to alienate readers with different theological or educational convictions.
Ultimately, a patient reader can overlook the rhetoric of this book and appreciate its immense usefulness as a consolidated handbook for new and aspiring educators. Many postgraduates leave their programmes greatly underprepared for the transition from student to educator, and The Professor’s Puzzle is a great aid in making that transition a little easier.