Teaching Strategies:
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.
CRLT Occasional
Paper #23, Writing a Statement of Teaching Philosophy for the Academic Job Search,
(O’Neal, Meizlish, and Kaplan, 2007)
http://www.crlt.umich.edu/publinks/CRLT_no23.pdf
This CRLT Occasional Paper is designed to help experienced graduate students write a statement of teaching philosophy. The authors offer a rubric for writing an effective statement based on research into the use of teaching statements by academic search committees.
Rubric for Statements
of Teaching Philosophy (Kaplan, O'Neal, Meizlish, Carillo, and 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.
Examples of Teaching Philosophies from
U-M Graduate Students
http://www.crlt.umich.edu/tstrategies/tstpum.html
This link contains examples of teaching statements from U-M and consists of 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 discipline.
Developing a Philosophy of Teaching Statement (Ohio State)
http://ucat.osu.edu/teaching_portfolio/philosophy/philosophy2.html
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.
How to
Write a Teaching Philosophy for Academic Employment (American Chemical Society)
http://portal.acs.org:80/portal/fileFetch/C/CTP_005351/pdf/CTP_005351.pdf
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.
The Parts of a Teaching Portfolio (University of Saskatchewan)
http://www.usask.ca/gmcte/portfolios/parts.php
The Gwenna Moss Centre for Teaching Effectiveness outlines the parts of a Teaching Portfolio. This site includes a section dedicated to writing a statement of teaching philosophy, and several sample philosophy of teaching statements from a variety of disciplines.
Writing Your Teaching Philosophy: A Step-by-Step Approach
(University of Minnesota)
http://www1.umn.edu/ohr/teachlearn/tutorials/philosophy/index.html
Tutorial on writing a teaching philosophy with resources to help you each step of the way, including reflective prompts, a teaching philosophy template, and three different rubrics for evaluating your statement.
Statements of Teaching Philosophy (Goodyear and Allchin, University
of Texas at El Paso)
http://sunconference.utep.edu/CETaL/resources/stofteach.html
Well-defined teaching philosophy is essential to creating and maintaining a campus culture supportive of teaching. Presented in this paper are reasons for statements of teaching philosophy as well as descriptions of how the statements are beneficial to students, faculty, and university administrations. Described are ways of creating a statement of teaching philosophy and dimensions that may be included in such statements.
Please also see:
Teaching Portfolios and Course Portfolios
http://www.crlt.umich.edu/tstrategies/tstpcp.php