PUBLICATIONS Inside Illinois Vol. 20, No. 5, Sept. 7, 2000

Course turns into book, students become authors

Andrea Lynn, News Bureau Staff Writer
(217) 333-2177; a-lynn@illinois.edu

When UI professors Judy DeLoache and Alma Gottlieb embarked on their new team-taught course in the fall of 1995, they had no idea how successful it would be -- that it not only would offer a wonderful teaching experience for them and their students, but also spawn a book.

"It was the first time for either of us that a course directly turned into a book, with students as authors -- in general, this doesn’t seem to happen too often," Gottlieb said.

Their book is meant to attract many diverse audiences -- from undergraduate students to graduate students to general readers. It is unusual for a book with such distinct audiences to result from -- and grow out of -- a university-level course.

Beyond the publication, the course also was successful in and of itself, Gottlieb said, "insofar as it was an interdisciplinary effort, and the somewhat distinct perspectives that Judy and I brought to the course from psychology and anthropology, respectively, made for an intellectually dynamic experience for the students, as well as for us."

The students also came from different disciplines -- anthropology, psychology and education. "This was by design," Gottlieb said, "and they themselves brought excitement to the course." The book-spawning course, "Infants and Young Children in Cross-Cultural Perspective," was cross-listed in both the anthropology and the psychology departments. DeLoache and Gottlieb developed the course with a joint campus grant from the then UI Program for the Study of Cultural Values and Ethics -- now the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities.

Five of the authors of the book’s seven main chapters were graduate students when they wrote their chapters. Two of the students, Marissa Diener and Sophia Pierroutsakos, have since gone on to become professors. One student, Huynh-Nhu Le, now is a postdoctoral scholar. Two other students, Michelle Johnson and Debbie Reese, are completing their doctorates -- in anthropology and in education, respectively.

Five of the authors’ chapters began as term papers in a creative assignment that asked the students to transform a series of shorter, more conventional papers that they wrote earlier in the semester on child-care topics in given societies, into an imagined, Dr. Spock-style child-rearing manual that would be appropriate for that society.

The results were so compelling that DeLoache and Gottlieb were reluctant to return the term papers. Instead, they seized on the idea of publishing the five strongest as a book -- adding an additional chapter in the same format by a colleague at Stanford, Carol Delaney, as well as one by Gottlieb. DeLoache and Gottlieb then guided the graduate students in significantly expanding and revising their papers, partly through a graduate seminar the next semester.

Because the course was so successful, DeLoache and Gottlieb taught it again last spring, using the book’s galley proofs as one of the texts.

Is there a sequel in the works?

Too soon to tell, the professors say, although they do hope that the course will be taught "in one form or another" in the future.