Assessing the Impact of a Faculty Book Club on Self-reflection and Teaching Practice

Andrews University, a small liberal arts institution, has had a Faculty Book Club (FBC) for the past three years, where each semester interested faculty read a scholarly book on higher education pedagogy and meet three times to discuss ideas from the current book. We wanted to assess the impact of FBC on the way teachers thought about teaching and on how it impacted their actual classroom teaching practice, so we conducted qualitative interviews with eight FBC participants and analyzed the results. It appears that, for relatively low cost, FBC encouraged changes in both self-reflection about teaching and actual teaching practice, and it additionally forged bonds between teachers across campus and is strengthening the teaching culture at the University.