Dr. Elliot Ennis (Chemistry) teaches his Creative Inquiry class on pseudoscience.
What is a teaching philosophy statement and how it can be evaluated?
If you have ever asked yourself these questions, it would be important to point out that teaching philosophy statements are ideally not just a few paragraphs describing existential issues linked to the classroom or how you feel about a particular topic in your course. On the contrary, these statements are more accurately presented as teaching reflections that seek to describe your values, goals, methodologies, and expectations as they relate to teaching and student engagement. These documents may also serve as a rational and critical assessment that examines specific components of your teaching style and pedagogy and provides a framework to understand how your teaching practices contribute to your professional and academic goals. As such, these statements can be quite dynamic, reflect professional growth and can be critically important for both the faculty member and the institution.
Given the potential of this tool, it is important to provide some guidance on what types of information might be included, so that these statements can be leveraged toward as a meaningful measure in demonstrating teaching effectiveness (we will come back to the issue of evaluation later). It is important to note that these are personal accounts and only you can write your own story, and use your own authentic style.
Most scholars approach teaching philosophies as a repository and a genuine reflection of:
- Your values and core beliefs related to teaching and learning in your courses
- A summarized description of your teaching practices, why you teach that way, and if/when/how those practices have evolved
- What courses you have taught, how many students have been in your classes, teaching support or instruction you have received over the years, what policies you have used in the classroom (referencing to examples of course syllabi), grade distribution (if relevant), and teaching evaluations.
- What alternative/innovative approaches you have adopted into your courses, why you have adopted them, and what are the outcomes
- Any comments or reflections related to a difficult topic (to teach or to learn) and how this issue was addressed in the class
- A description of how these activities provide a contribution to the students’ development, to the field, to the institution, and to the community.
- Inclusion of relevant scholarly citations related to best practices in pedagogy, classroom management, teaching style, etc.
In conclusion, it may be a misnomer to call this document a philosophy, it can be much more than this. Developing a teaching reflection or assessment can be a meaningful tool for your own faculty development and also serve as a useful evaluative tool for your annual evaluation and promotion processes.
If you want to start working on this document, you may consider the resources from our Office of Teaching Effectiveness and Innovation. In addition, we recommend reading this post from the Office of Professional and Continuing Education at University of San Diego, that provides a series of prompts including basic aspects, skills, student advocacy, preservation in the classroom, learning and education, and goals. Moreover, the Graduate School at Cornell University provides an excellent series of components that they recommend addressing in teaching statements, summarized here:
- Teaching values, beliefs, and goals (content mastery, engaged citizenry, individual fulfillment, critical thinking, problem solving, discovery and knowledge generation, teamwork, self-directed learning, experiential learning)
- What criteria are used to judge your teaching? (student-teaching roles and responsibilities, student-teacher interactions, inclusiveness, teaching methods, assessment of teaching, assessment of learning)
- How do you provide evidence of your teaching effectiveness? (peer review, students’ comments, ratings, portfolio, syllabi, teaching activities)
Examples of Teaching Philosophies
Perhaps the most important aspect of a teaching philosophy is that it should reflect a personal journey, as the faculty member develops and becomes more experienced in teaching. As such, using someone else’s statement as templates is a very dangerous strategy. Thus, the following links are only provided to show examples, to illustrate how faculty members at other institutions have approached this task.
- https://scs.illinois.edu/system/files/inline-files/Teaching%20Philosophy%20Examples.pdf
- https://teaching.uwo.ca/awardsdossiers/teachingphilosophy.html
- https://crlt.umich.edu/tstrategies/tstpum
- https://faculty.uwmedicine.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Sample-Teaching-Philosophy-Statements.pdf
- https://cei.umn.edu/teaching-resources/writing-your-teaching-philosophy
- https://teach.its.uiowa.edu/sites/teach.its.uiowa.edu/files/docs/docs/Philosophy_of_Teaching_Statement_ed.pdf
Our own repository
The Office of Faculty ADVANCEment is developing a local repository of teaching statements and we will soon be able to share this with faculty. If you would like to share a document, please upload it to the following folder: https://clemson.box.com/s/rgknvmxmh0yigbdxt7rhkoz6pxzwgo9x
How soon do I need to start working on this?
Clemson University has recently adopted a model where the evaluation of teaching must include feedback from instruction and course evaluation forms completed by students, where no single quantifier from these forms may substitute for a wide-ranging review of the responses (Chapter V, Section E.2.e.), and that requires the inclusion of at least two additional metrics (Faculty manual, Chapter VI, F.2.k.i). While dossiers are not expected to be immediately compliant, faculty should consider this as an on-going process that will require at least this year for transition. It is thus recommended to start developing teaching reflection statements as soon as a faculty member starts teaching. In this way, the faculty member can start collecting information about each of the courses they teach and begin to provide a repository of things they try and evaluate in their classroom over time.
Additional Resources
- Teaching philosophies reconsidered: A conceptual model for the development and evaluation of teaching philosophy statements (link)
- Statements of Teaching Philosophy (link)
- The Teaching Philosophy Statement: Purposes and Organizational Structure (link)
- Constructing a teaching philosophy: Aligning beliefs, theories, and practice (link)
- Guiding Reflective Practice: An Auditing Framework to Assess Teaching Philosophy and Style (link)
- Activating a Teaching Philosophy in Social Work Education: Articulation, Implementation, and Evaluation (link)
- Framing the Teaching Philosophy Statement for Health Educators: What It Includes and How It Can Inform Professional Development (link)
