Situating SoTL Within the Disciplines: Mathematics in the United States as a Case Study

Abstract

After two decades of work, many in the SoTL community are pondering the future of the SoTL movement. Will it sustain its influence? Will it continue to attract new participants? What role should the disciplines play? From the perspective of mathematics, this paper examines efforts by the Carnegie Academy and individuals within the mathematical community to build disciplinary support for the scholarship of teaching and learning. The authors, both mathematicians and Carnegie scholars, restrict their observations to the efforts undertaken in the United States during the last decade and examine the situation in mathematics in greater depth than has heretofore appeared. They shed light on particular complications they have observed for SoTL in their discipline and offer suggestions for improving the situation within mathematics. Practitioners in other disciplines, or those involved with SoTL at a “meta-level” may find their observations applicable in other venues.

Keywords

• Scholarship of teaching and learning
• SoTL
• Disciplines
• Mathematics
• Future of SoTL