The 90 Master of Science in Education students, who intend to work in K-16 education, are preparing for their own research projects on a question about teaching and learning that they want to resolve. "It is important to provide examples of research that study teaching and learning as they occur in grades K-16," says Haroutunian-Gordon.

"Anna Neumann's new book, Professing to Learn, is an outstanding example of research in higher education — well conceived and painstakingly investigated. But it is more. It deals with a problem that all educators face, namely how to cultivate continued passion for the subject that they teach."

In the MSEd 406 classroom, students questioned Neumann about her experience as a researcher, including the process by which she identified her research question, the findings of her study and her perspective as author of the book, which the students had read. "Her comments were thoughtful and most insightful. The students responded with a warm round of applause," noted Haroutunian-Gordon.

Neumann's book focuses on the intellectual experience for professors at mid-career, after having achieved tenure, when diverse duties and responsibilities tug at them. "Part of the intellectual experience is selecting a subject of study that matters a great deal to you and to which you're committed to learning about," Neumann explained in an interview. Her research considers how professors connect with and hold onto a subject that fascinates them in the middle of a very busy university career. "Balancing the scholarly learning with the many tasks of professorial work can be a very challenging time," she said.

"Most of the professors found their subjects of study back in their childhood days — something that fascinated them. In some sense they've been studying it since then," said Neumann, offering the example of one professor who studied language after a childhood of moving from one country to another. Neumann coauthored an earlier book on a similar subject with SESP dean Penelope Peterson: Learning from Our Lives: Women, Research, and Autobiography in Education.

"It's a real struggle to do what you love because in many cases you cannot. A lot of data are about serious struggles and disappointments," she explained.

In class, Neumann described what made her stick with her research question over a decade. "I was intrigued by how people find beauty and make meaning in their lives," she said. "We don't always study what we want to study, but what the field wants us to study." For Neumann, her subject of study "had to be important to me, and then I wanted to teach it back to the field." Her research for the book began in the early 1990s.

"In higher education we haven't paid enough attention to the subject matter of teaching and how teachers can convey that to their students" - how to help students connect to what is the most exciting part for them. She describes this process as "knowing your subject in such depth that it's beautiful and meaningful to you" and you are able to bring your students into the experience.

Neumann found that the experience of visiting Haroutunian-Gordon's class was a learning experience for her as well. "This is an opportunity for me to learn how she does interpretive discussion," she noted.

Haroutunian-Gordon challenges her students to study questioning and discussion so as to identify a "deepest point of doubt." She says, "As they learn to question the meaning of texts that they explore in the course, they come to understand how to cultivate a clear question and how to identify and question resources that can address the question."

Photo: Sophie Haroutunian-Gordon (left), director of the Master of Science in Education program, with Columbia University professor Anna Neumann, author of Professing to Learn.