Every field is shaped by the questions it asks—and SoTL is no different. At the heart of SoTL lies asking questions that matter, both to us as teachers and to our students as learners. But what makes a question “meaningful”? In this chapter we argue that strong SoTL questions often start with something troubling or surprising in our classrooms, are deeply consequential, push us to gather new insights about learning, raise more questions than they answer, and connect to bigger issues in education. Meaningful SoTL questions don’t seek easy fixes, rather they embrace the messy complexity of teaching and learning and invite us to reflect on power, privilege, and purpose.

The chapter highlights that SoTL questions come in many forms. Building on Hutchings (2000) it describes four typical types of SoTL questions: What works? (testing the effectiveness of certain approaches), What is? (describing current complex learning experiences), What if? (experimenting playfully, trying something new), and those that generate new frameworks, Visions of the possible. Importantly, context and identities matter—so the chapter also encourages readers to ask also where, when, and for whom.