When we think of college and university teaching, we generally think of it in terms of our own teaching—the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values we share with our students; the pedagogy we use to share these things; and the strategies we use to measure whether our students have learned them. If we are fortunate enough to teach in a department that genuinely values teaching, then we may think of teaching as more of a collective effort and conceptualize our teaching by how it contributes to the overall mission of the department or institution. To be sure, though, relatively few of us think about teaching beyond the borders of our home institutions.

Nonetheless, the sphere that we call college and university teaching exists in myriad multidimensional forms throughout the world. Colleges and universities may be found in every nation, and they all have the same raisons d'être: to educate students with the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values necessary to be productive members of their society, to be competitive in today's global job market, and to assist students to become lifelong learners. These goals are not mutually exclusive, although the former tends to be emphasized more than the latter in many, if not most, of the world's institutions of higher learning, especially in those college and universities that have adopted the student-as-consumer perspective of education.

Although most college and university teachers view teaching as a localized activity circumscribed by the needs of their institutions and communities, more and more students are traveling internationally to earn their college and university degrees. Having international students on campus— regardless of students' places of origin or the nation on whose campus they might now be studying—brings with it an infusion of multicultural perspectives, traditions, and values. Some teachers welcome the challenge of teaching these students, whereas other teachers are more reticent, unsure of how or what to teach or even how to interact with students who do not look like them or have the same native tongue.

But learning how to teach international students in our classrooms and helping them feel welcomed and supported in their host countries is not the only reason why we should broaden our perspectives on teaching and learning. Indeed, we can learn about the craft of teaching by seeking and [Page xvii]understanding how teachers outside our own culture approach the challenge of educating the next generation of their students, many of whom will shape, for better or for worse, both the global economy and global politics.

As editors, we believe that, as the world “gets smaller,” there is a growing and important need to pay attention to higher education at the cross-cultural, cross-national level. The globalization of higher education is a reality that has far-reaching consequences that call for increased awareness and modification of teaching and learning practices. The globalization of higher education has created universities where national boundaries are irrelevant; where the movement of students, teachers, ideas, and instructional methods crosses physical, cultural, and pedagogical barriers. According to Ben Wildavsky (2010), the consequences of globalization include

Beyond the economic and political impacts of this trend, why does globalization matter generally and to the individual university instructor? Nations around the globe have invested huge sums of financial and human capital to create higher education systems to capture their share of the educational market. As a result, competition for students and the faculty to teach them is increasing dramatically. The very notion of what it means to be an educated person is changing, in that such a product of our educational systems must be exposed to ideas, behaviors, cultures, and people that transcend physical space. Faculty members must also be exposed to the ideas and educational transformations occurring around the world so that they are better equipped to translate and transfer this knowledge to their students. Globalization of higher education represents a new kind of free trade, free trade in minds that should be embraced, not feared (Wildavsky, 2010). Globalization is not a zero-sum game where one country wins and another loses because the increase of knowledge benefits all.

Thus, we asked teachers from around the world to share with us, and with you, their perspectives on college and university teaching. Our authors rose brilliantly to the challenge. Some crafted chapters that address classroom teaching per se. Others contributed descriptions and perspectives of how national and global factors influence classroom teaching, learning, or curriculum development in their country. Still others offered theoretical perspectives on teaching accented by their culture. Finally, others shared their empirical research on issues of critical importance to teaching and learning at their universities. Thus, this volume presents international perspectives on [Page xviii]critical issues affecting teaching and learning in a diverse range of higher education environments in the attempt to understand teaching and learning from multiple, although admittedly not all cultural perspectives.

Our volume is framed around James Groccia's seven-part model for understanding teaching and learning discussed in other publications (Groccia, 1997; Groccia, 2007; St. Clair & Groccia, 2009) and described in more detail in Chapter 1 in this volume. Using this model as the organizational structure of the book provides a guide for systemic thinking about what actions one should take, or suggest others take, when planning activities to improve teaching and learning, curriculum development, and assessment. The model indicates that college and university teaching consists of, and is influenced by, seven complex and interrelated variables: learning outcomes, teacher, learner, learning process, learning context, course content, and instructional processes. More specifically, these variables may be conceptualized as follows:

• Learning outcomes: The desired results of teaching, in short- and long-term learning outcomes, should be identified during the course design process, before teaching, and assessed on a regular basis throughout the instructional process. One can also include classroom assessment techniques as formative measures of learning outcomes.
• Teacher: Teachers differ, and their backgrounds, preparation, and individual characteristics influence why, when, and how they teach. Understanding who teachers are as individuals and professionals and what they bring to the learning situation can affect the quality of that experience.
• Learner: Learners differ in the same ways that teachers differ and their backgrounds, preparation, and individual characteristics influence why, when, and how they learn.
• Learning process: Knowledge of teaching and learning research and learning theory provides a foundation for good practice transfer of learning.
• Learning context: Learning context includes the emphasis an educational institution places on instruction, its mission and purposes, and the process of resource and reward allocation, which can influence what faculty and students do in and out of the classroom. Local, state, provincial, national, and international priorities shape what is taught, what our students learn and know, and how we teach.
• Course content: With the ever-increasing expansion of knowledge in many disciplines and the corresponding demands that it places on students, faculty need to ensure that what is taught in their courses is necessary, challenging, and well organized.
• Instructional processes: The most obvious variable in this model describes what faculty as teachers and students as learners actually do in the instructional environment: teaching strategies, teacher behaviors, and student learning responses.

We believe the contributors to this volume, many of whom are not native English speakers, did a marvelous job in so generously sharing their knowledge, experiences, and wisdom with us, and now you. We thank them for their willingness to contribute chapters to this volume, and doing so with good cheer. Indeed, as editors, we feel, on the one hand, that our world—our intellectual world—was enlarged substantially by our contributors' insights into college and university teaching. On the other hand, we feel our world—our social and cultural world—was shrunk substantially by the information shared as well as by the contributors' warm demeanor, graciousness, and goodwill.

Without the tireless efforts of several outstanding people at SAGE, this volume would not have come to fruition. We especially thank Senior Acquisitions Editor Christine Cardone for her unwavering support for this book despite several setbacks along the way. She is a marvelous friend and a magnificent editor. Sarita Sarak, Chris's talented and trusty editorial assistant, was faithfully by our sides all along the way. We thank her for taking care of the hundreds of the details that must be skillfully handled to bring this book into the light of day. We also offer our heartfelt thanks to Marketing Manager Liz Thornton for her excellent work in making sure that this volume made it safely into the hands of our readers. Our incredibly skilled copy editor, Robin Gold, did a wonderful job ensuring that every word in this volume is clear and understandable—and that was no easy task given that so many of our authors write and speak in a native tongue other than English.

Finally, our deepest appreciation is respectfully expressed to our wives and families for their patience and support through all phases of this project. The idea for this book is quite a simple one, but transforming that idea into words on a page, and hundreds of pages at that, meant that we spent many hours away from our families while we solicited and edited the draft manuscript and prepared the final manuscript. Special thanks to each of you.