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Dr. Brookfield has written, co-written or edited eighteen books on adult learning, teaching, critical thinking, discussion methods and critical theory, six of which have won the Cyril O. Houle World Award for Literature in Adult Education (in 1986, 1989, 1996, 2005, 2011 and 2012). He also won the 1986 Imogene Okes Award for Outstanding Research in Adult Education (AAACE) and the Philip E. Frandson Award for Literature in Continuing Higher Education, (2013) awarded by the University Professional Continuing Education Association, (UPCEA). His work has been translated into German, Korean, Finnish, Chinese, Japanese, Polish, Farsi, and Albanian. In 1991, he was awarded an honorary doctor of letters degree from the University System of New Hampshire for his contributions to understanding adult learning. In 2001, he received the Leadership Award from the Association for Continuing Higher Education (ACHE) for "extraordinary contributions to the general field of continuing education on a national and international level."

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He currently serves on the editorial boards of educational journals in Britain, Canada and Australia, as well as in the United States. During 2002, he was a Visiting Professor at Harvard University. In 2003, he was awarded an honorary doctor of letters degree from Concordia University (St. Paul). In 2008 he was awarded the Morris T. Keeton Award of the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning for "significant contributions to the field of adult and experiential learning." He was also awarded the Coin of Excellence from the General Army Staff Command College.In 2009 he was inducted into the International Adult Education Hall of Fame and in 2010 he received an honorary doctor of letters degree from Muhlenberg College.

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After 10 years as a Professor of Higher and Adult Education at Columbia University in New York, he now holds the John Ireland Endowed Chair at the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota where he recently won the university's Diversity Leadership Teaching & Research Award and also the John Ireland Presidential Award for Outstanding Achievement as a Teacher/Scholar.​
 

 

 

Dr. Brookfields Workshop
 

Our current strategic plan makes the following statements about teaching and learning:

· student-centredness;

· deep learning (including enhanced co-op and service-learning opportunities); · teaching excellence;

· supportive teaching and learning environments;

· a rich institutional learning culture (including opportunities for part-time faculty to engage in the academic life of their departments, as well as strategies to integrate staff more fully into the academic enterprise.)
 

One form of engaged, student-centered, deep learning that is used across all the faculties at the Mount is classroom discussion.  The workshop on “Using Discussion Method to Create Inclusive Classrooms” will appeal to teachers throughout the institution.  Here is the description of the workshop:

 

Using Discussion Methods to Create Inclusive Classrooms
 

Discussion is often promoted as a democratic, active, participatory teaching method that students will warm to as they engage emotionally as well as cognitively with subject matter.  But for some discussion is seen as a meandering interruption to the real business of higher education – finding out what’s in the teacher’s head and reproducing that to secure an ‘A’. 
 

For others participating in discussion is an anxiety-inducing experience in which the purpose is to perform by impressing peers and professors with the profundity of their insights. Students don't speak in discussion for fear of looking foolish, because of mistrust or racial and cultural suspicion of the teacher, because they have been inadequately prepared for dialogic exchange, or simply because they are introverts. In addition, power differences associated with different student racial, cultural and gender identities mean that supposedly open discussions have certain voices and perspectives disproportionately represented.

Drawing on his acclaimed books on discussion based teaching, Stephen Brookfield will introduce ways of engaging students in discussions that prevent them going off track or becoming a game of ‘guess what the teacher thinks’. He will introduce methods to stop a minority of overly articulate students from dominating the conversation and demonstrate ways of hearing from every person and considering multiple perspectives. Over the course of the workshop participants will be taken through a sequence of exercises that parallel the increasing complexity of discussions that happen over the course of a semester. The intent is for every workshop participant to leave armed with several new discussion techniques they can try out immediately in their classrooms that will get all students participating.  

Lecture 
 

Mount 2019 Making a Difference also talks about “extend(ing) our commitment to social responsibility through collaborative work … on behalf of social justice.”  The public lecture on “What Constitutes an Inclusive Adult Learning Space? Uncovering White Supremacy and the Pedagogy of Narrative Disclosure,” will address the issue of institutional racism in higher education and the strategies to work for social justice.  The CASAE East planning committee will be working with the Buddy Daye Learning institute and other local groups on a response panel to his lecture.