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Faculty professional development is an important lever for change in supporting instructors to adopt research-based instructional strategies that engage students intellectually, foster learning-supportive attitudes and habits of mind, and strengthen their persistence in mathematics. Yet the literature contains few well-rationalized models for faculty development in higher education. We describe the rationale and design for a model for discipline-based faculty development to support instructional change, and we detail our implementation of this model as applied to intensive workshops on inquiry-based learning (IBL) in college mathematics. These workshops seek to foster post-secondary mathematics instructors’ adoption of IBL, to help them adapt inquiry approaches for their classrooms, and ultimately to increase student learning and persistence in science and mathematics. Based on observed faculty needs, four strands of activity help instructors develop a mental model for an IBL classroom, adapt that model to their teaching context, develop facilitation and task-design skills, and plan an IBL mathematics course. Evaluation data from surveys and observations illustrate participant responses to the workshop and its components. The model has been robust across 15 years of workshops implemented by three generations of workshop leaders and its features make it adaptive, strategic, and practical for other faculty developers.
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This content will become publicly available on February 25, 2026
Inquiry-based learning in gateway mathematics: Its roots, status, and promise
Inquiry-based learning (IBL) is a form of active learning that engages students in cognitively demanding tasks—involving students’ attention, reasoning, problem solving, and communication. In the rest of this article, we look at IBL—past, present, and future. IBL has a storied history and a growing literature of theory and research to support its efficacy as a method for teaching for entry-level postsecondary (i.e., gateway) courses in mathematics. The 20th-century roots of teaching mathematics via IBL built a foundation for recent theory-building and for research that demonstrates how IBL teaching improves students’ mathematical proficiency, their ownership of and confidence in their own thinking and reasoning, their level of classroom engagement, and their success in mathematics class and throughout their lives. Despite this positive evidence, the mathematics teaching community faces challenges in implementing IBL in the classroom. Thus, we provide practical information on overcoming obstacles to IBL teaching, examples of IBL tasks, and tips for implementing IBL instruction. With the backing of AMATYC, its sister organizations—the American Statistical Association, the Mathematical Association of America, and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics—and the growing number of IBL practitioners and researchers, the future for IBL seems bright.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2216197
- PAR ID:
- 10586410
- Editor(s):
- Debrecht, Johanna; Alexander, George; Nabb, Keith
- Publisher / Repository:
- Amerixan Mathematical Association of Two-Year Colleges
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- MathAMATYC educator
- Volume:
- 16
- Issue:
- 2
- ISSN:
- 1947-279X
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 4–12, 59–60
- Subject(s) / Keyword(s):
- Inquiry-based learning Gateway mathematics Cognitively demanding tasks
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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