Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

M.A. in History with a concentration in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

As history educators, we study and teach past events. But how many of us study our teaching of past events?

Imagine your lesson as an historical event.

• What evidence can you collect to help you discover the learning that happened?
• How can you most effectively interpret that evidence to discover how well your students understood the past and grasped the essential skills in thinking about history?
• Where did the bottlenecks and missteps occur in your students’ understanding of history?
• How can your teaching unclog their learning?

SUNY Cortland’s innovative concentration in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning History (SOTL) can help. SOTL is a dynamic and emergent field in history that asks breakthrough questions at the nexus of teaching and learning history. Grounded in evidence, SOTL helps history teachers diagnose their students’ (mis)understanding of history and create teaching approaches best designed to nurture habits of mind framed by the discipline.

Why Enroll?

• This is SUNY’s only graduate history concentration in SOTL.
• You’ll connect with scholars at the leading edge of research and thinking about history education with this unique approach.

The concentration is perfect for social studies teachers, curriculum designers and instructional support specialists, and for those pursuing interests in educational policy who need a solid grounding in the research informing best practices in history education. Teachers become scholars of their students’ learning, leading to improved practice, expanded classroom experiences and enriched student understanding of history.

Two Options

• Enroll in SUNY Cortland’s M.A. in History with a concentration in SOTL.
• Enroll as a non-matriculated student and take only the three-course concentration, earning nine hours of graduate credit.

Courses in the Concentration

HIS 647: Scholarship of Teaching and Learning History

An introduction to the scholarly literature in the field to identify best practices promoting history teaching and history learning at the secondary school level. This course also models research in SOTL to help you launch your own “action research” investigation.

HIS 560: Teaching U. S. History

A course combining content and SOTL research designed to help you understand how historians and history educators frame the big issues in American history: when does American history begin, who and which topics do we include and exclude, how can we best structure the teaching of American history and how do we make those historical and pedagogical decisions?

HIS 561: Teaching Global History

This companion course to “Teaching U.S. History” investigates similar issues but from the perspective of teaching global history. How can we promote student understanding when the topic is as broad as “global history”? What historical and pedagogical considerations should guide history educators in framing a global history to accommodate state standards and expectations and best practices?