The Teaching Philosophy/Teaching Statement

The teaching philosophy (or teaching statement) is becoming a more common part of academic life for both faculty and graduate students. Graduate students report that colleges and universities often request statements from applicants for faculty positions. Faculty at an increasing number of institutions must develop a teaching statement as they approach tenure and promotion. Instructors at all levels find that writing their statement helps them develop as teachers, since it entails making their implicit views on teaching and student learning explicit and comparing those views to actual teaching practice. The first link contains examples of teaching statements from U-M. The second link in this section offers overviews and suggestions for getting started as well as examples of statements. The third link is a more extended narrative describing the rationale of a teaching statement and topics it can address.

This site contains a library of teaching philosophies from advanced graduate students who have taken part in the Rackham-CRLT May Seminar on Preparing Future Faculty . They are organized by disciplinary grouping.

The site has a carefully designed menu of topics (such as What is a philosophy of teaching? and What are the components of a teaching statement?) that are easy to navigate and give an overview of the teaching statement. The site also contains examples, a list of web links, and a bibliography.

Rubric for Statements of Teaching Philosophy developed by Matt Kaplan, Chris O’Neal, Debbie Meizlish, Rosario Carillo, and Diana Kardia (2005).
http://www.crlt.umich.edu//gsis/onedayPFF2005/TeachingPhilosophyRubric.pdf

A rubric for evaluating teaching philosophy statements created by CRLT. The design of the rubric was informed by our experience with hundreds of teaching philosophies, as well as surveys of search committees on what they considered successful and unsuccessful components of job applicants’ teaching philosophies.

This article (in PDF format) was written with a science audience in mind. However, the discussion of the theoretical and practical issues involved in developing and writing one’s teaching philosophy apply to academics in all disciplines. The article focuses on the teaching statement as a scholarly expression of an instructor’s approach to fostering student learning. Topics addressed include making explicit ideas about how learning takes place, setting goals for student learning, examining teaching methods used to achieve those goals, etc. In addition, the article offers practical advice for structuring a statement and ways to get started.

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