ABSTRACT
This volume focuses on faculty development around teaching in developing and fragile regions. 2 More specifically, we look at examples of faculty development activities aimed at expanding the use of active learning techniques in classrooms in colleges and universities in under-resourced areas around the world. The vignette above gives a sense of a traditional, lecture-based class, where the instructor is front and center, dispensing knowledge to her students. Although this particular example is from a classroom in Palestine, it is important to emphasize that while we have chosen to focus on the challenges of improving teaching in higher education in a particular context, we by no means wish to suggest that faculty who teach in institutions in the Global North, such as at our university in the United States, do not also struggle to move beyond traditional, lecture-based styles of teaching. Indeed, wherever you may find yourself in the world, the transition from teacher-centered to learner-centered instruction is very much a work in progress. However, the
overarching challenges of improving teaching are made that much more difficult in areas with extreme resource constraints, ongoing political upheaval and violence, environmental crises, and the ongoing effects of colonial educational structures, all of which impact the ability of instructors to shift the way that they teach.
