Book Review: Learning With and From Others: A Review of The International Handbook of Collaborative Learning

What’s a handbook for? (Or, to put it another way, what about a handbook would justify plunking down more than $100 for more than 500 paperback pages of text?) Answers will vary, of course, depending on where one sits with regard to the field being reviewed. There are, however, some desiderata in theoretical and pragmatic terms. In theoretical terms, a handbook should offer a definitive summary of the state of the art for people who work in the field and an overview and introduction to the field for those outside it. It should give a bird’s-eye view of the territory, so that readers get a sense of the enterprise as a whole, while zooming in on particularly interesting parts of the landscape. And it should move the field forward by identifying what’s known, what’s controversial, and what’s next—with regard to both findings and methods. In pragmatic terms, the goal is simpler: Will readers learn things that enable them to conduct research or produce interventions more effectively?