What Does Active Learning Mean for Mathematicians?

Abstract

This call is part of a broad movement to increase the use of active and student-centered teaching techniques across science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines. A landmark 2014 meta-analysis published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences [2] highlighted the efficacy of active learning techniques across STEM disciplines. In mathematics specifically, a comprehensive study of student outcomes for inquiry-based learning [3] has further established that active learning methods have a strong positive impact on women and members of other underrepresented groups in mathematics. This movement extends beyond the academic community—for example, at the federal level the White House STEM-for-All initiative [4] includes active learning as one of its three areas of emphasis for the 2017 budget. While robust support from education researchers, funding agencies, public policymakers, and institutions is a critical component of effective active learning implementation, at the end of the day these techniques and methods are put into practice by mathematics faculty leading classes of students. Thus, mathematics faculty need to be well informed about active learning and related topics. Our goal in this article is to provide a foundation for productive discussions about the use of active learning in postsecondary mathematics. We will focus on topics that frequently arise at the department level, namely: definitions of active learning, examples of active learning techniques and environments used by individual faculty or teams of faculty, things to expect when using active learning methods, and common concerns. An extended discussion of these issues and a substantial bibliography can be found in the six-part series on active learning [5] written by the authors for the AMS blog On Teaching and Learning Mathematics.