The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning History Comes of Age: A New International Organization and Web Site/Newsletter

Society for History Education. California State University, Long Beach, 1250 Bellflower Blvd, Long Beach, CA 90840-1601. Tel: 562-985-2573; Fax: 562-985-5431; Web site: http://www.thehistoryteacher.org/

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4

Historians; Web Sites; Newspapers; International Organizations; Scholarship; Intellectual Disciplines; Networks; Interprofessional Relationship; Global Approach; Publications

0018-2745

In the four decades since the creation of this journal, historians in North America have seen a steady increase in the materials available to assist them in more effectively sharing the fruits of their discipline with their students. In the 1990s this effort was given a new intensity by the introduction into academia of the concept of a "scholarship of teaching and learning" (SOTL). This notion helped bring to the exploration of pedagogical issues some of the prestige and resources that had previously been concentrated on more traditional research. Historians took part in the Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning and in history caucuses at the meetings of the newly formed International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (ISSOTL). They produced programmatic essays that emphasized the responsibility of professional historians to contribute to their understanding of learning in their discipline, the need to develop a more systematic understanding of these issues through studies that build upon one another, and the need to support conclusions with convincing evidence. The time has come to provide institutional support for these efforts and to link this work with that of historians throughout the world who are engaged in the study of teaching and learning history. Two new institutions are currently being created that will fill these functions: an international society for the scholarship of teaching and learning history and a web site and electronic newsletter. To support this new organization and to foster and support scholarship in this field, a web site has been created with funding from the Indiana University Dean of Faculties Office. Operated through the History Department at Indiana University Bloomington, the site and an accompanying electronic newsletter will introduce the field to historians who are unfamiliar with this work, make research on teaching and learning history more readily available, link scholars with one another and with professional opportunities, and facilitate the integration of this field into the institutional structures of academia and publishing. (Contains 4 notes.)

ERIC

2007

EJ765248