The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning ― A Guide for Scientists, Engineers, and Mathematicians

The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: A Guide for Scientists, Engineers, and Mathematicians shows college and university faculty members how to draw on their disciplinary knowledge and teaching experience to investigate questions about student learning. It takes readers all the way through the inquiry process beginning with framing a research question and selecting a research design, moving on to gathering and analyzing evidence, and finally to making the results public. Numerous examples are provided at each stage, many from published studies of teaching and learning in science, engineering, or mathematics. At strategic points, short sets of questions prompt readers to pause and reflect, plan, or act. These questions are derived from the authors' experience leading many workshops in the United States and Canada on how to do the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL). The taxonomy of SoTL questions-What works? What is? What could be?-that emerged from the SoTL studies undertaken by scholars in the Carnegie Academic for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning serves as a framework at many stages of the inquiry process. The book addresses the issue of evaluating and valuing this work, including implications for junior faculty who wish to engage in SoTL. The authors explain why SoTL should be of interest to STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) faculty at all types of higher education institutions, including faculty members active in traditional STEM research. They also give their perspective on the benefits of SoTL to faculty, to their institutions, to the academy, and to students.

Jacqueline Dewar, Professor Emerita of Mathematics, Loyola Marymount University,Curtis Bennett, Dean of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, California State University,Matthew A. Fisher, Associate Professor of Chemistry, Saint Vincent College

Jacqueline M. Dewar, is Professor Emerita of Mathematics at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. She received the Mathematical Association of America's Haimo award for Distinguished Teaching, was a Carnegie scholar, co-edited two books, co-authored several undergraduate mathematics textbooks, and has more than 15 publications related to faculty development or undergraduate teaching and learning.


Curtis D. Bennett is the Richard D. Green Dean of the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics at California State University, Long Beach. He received the Haimo award for Distinguished Teaching from the Mathematical Association of America, was a two-time Carnegie Scholar with the Carnegie Foundation's Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, and has over 30 publications in research and expository mathematics and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.


Matthew A. Fisher is an Associate Professor of Chemistry, Saint Vincent College, Latrobe PA. He received his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1990, was named a Fellow of the American Chemical Society in 2015, was a Carnegie Scholar with the Carnegie Foundation's Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning and has over 15 publications in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.