Dr. Jacqueline Dewar

Professor of Mathematics

Carnegie Scholar, 2003-04

Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, CA

Sharing the Teaching Commons: SoTL and RUME

The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) owes its name to Boyer (1990) and can trace its roots back even further (Cross, 1986). SoTL, as an evolving international and multidisciplinary movement, has had many, and sometimes distinctly different, descriptions. SoTL practitioners view the classroom as a site for inquiry. They ask and seek to answer questions about their students’ learning both to improve their own classroom practice and also to advance the larger profession of teaching. SoTL converts teaching from “private to community property” (Shulman, 1993) and can assist with important initiatives such as assessment, accountability and student success (Hutchings, Huber & Ciccone, 2011). The boundaries between SoTL and RUME are not always sharply defined. After describing SoTL’s history and giving examples of SoTL questions from mathematics, this talk will attempt to illuminate goals SoTL shares with RUME and explore ways that the two communities can jointly tend the “teaching commons” to their mutual benefit and that of their colleagues and students. 

Special Session