2 - Initiating a SoTL Investigation

Summary

Introduction

In Chapter 1 we defined SoTL as

the intellectual work that faculty members do when they use their disciplinary knowledge (in our case, mathematics) to investigate a question about their students' learning (and their teaching), submit their findings to peer review, and make them public for others to build upon.

This chapter considers questions and situations that might prompt a SoTL study. It presents a taxonomy of SoTL questions derived from the work of Carnegie scholars that can be useful in guiding the development of a project. We discuss how disciplinary knowledge can be brought to bear on framing SoTL research questions. We describe how literature searches can inform SoTL studies and give suggestions for conducting a search. The chapter includes illustrative examples and points to additional examples in Part II.

A Typical Starting Point

In one of the formative articles of the scholarship of teaching and learning movement in the United States, Randy Bass (1999) discussed the different reactions that “teaching problems” and “research problems” typically garner from faculty members, with the latter engendering far more positive interest and reaction. He posited that one of the tenets of SoTL is that a teaching problem should be viewed as an invitation to a scholarly investigation, similar to how most faculty members view a research problem.

Here is a problem that any teacher can relate to:

My students aren't as prepared for class as I would like them to be.

An attempt to fix the problem might lead to the following sequence of thoughts or actions.

1. • What if I give my students reading assignments in the textbook? (Few will actually read and those who do won't read carefully enough.)

2. • What if I give them reading questions for the assigned reading? (They may read just enough to answer the questions.)

3. • What if I also ask them to generate their own questions after reading? (I probably won't be satisfied with the questions they ask.)

4. • How can I get them to ask better questions? (What do I mean by better questions?)

5. • What kind of questions are they asking now?