Preface

Summary

The scholarship of teaching and learning is a growing field of inquiry in which faculty members bring disciplinary knowledge to investigate questions of teaching and learning and systematically gather evidence to support their conclusions. Submitting the results to peer review and making them public for others to build on have generally become expected components of the scholarship of teaching and learning, or SoTL. Individual faculty members, their students, departments, and institutions can all benefit from this work. As one of the contributors to this volume (Edwin Herman, Chapter 8) observes: “The process of doing SoTL research can be even more important than the results obtained. Framing and researching a question and designing a project encourages the researcher to experiment within the classroom, much as a painter experiments with styles on a canvas. As the project progresses, the question (or questions) become more refined, more interesting, and the answers can both inform and improve the way you teach” (p. 83).

This Notes volume is written for collegiate mathematics instructors who want to know more about conducting scholarly investigations into their teaching and their students' learning. Faculty members in related disciplines, such as engineering, computer science, or the sciences should also find the book of interest, as should high school mathematics teachers. Conceived and edited by two mathematics faculty members, the volume serves as a how-to guide for doing SoTL in mathematics. It contains information and resources for undertaking scholarly investigations into teaching and learning, and includes many examples.

SoTL is a topic of increasing interest in the mathematics community. Well-attended MAA minicourses on how to get started in SoTL have been presented at the 2006, 2007, and 2008 Joint Mathematics Meetings and at the 2009 MathFest. Successful SoTL paper sessions have been offered at the joint mathematics meetings annually since 2007. Project NExT fellows have shown interest in the topic by inviting speakers to address SoTL on panels they organized for the 2009, 2011, 2012, and 2013 Joint Mathematics Meetings.