This question is echoed in discussions on campuses across the country. This article focuses on questions that faculty members ask as they take up the topic of the scholarship of teaching and learning, and it reports some steps in answering those questions. Like most intriguing intellectual questions, however, there are multiple answers, multiple ways of logically looking at the same issue, and multiple ways of doing work that addresses the questions. So as you read, consider how you might address these questions.
Effective teaching is the goal of most college professors.
Whether they teach often or infrequently, faculty members want their students to learn and want to figure out how to help them do so. At a recent campus meeting I attended, one faculty member complained aloud that scholarship of teaching belonged in the School of Education, not in his school. He, after all, was trained in the intellectual work of his discipline and not in how to teach. He didn't intend to switch gears mid-career to take up a new kind of scholarship. He may find at another point in his career, however, that a question about teaching or learning ignites his scholarly curiosity.