Professional Documents
Culture Documents
The information contained on this web page accompanies the CAPSL workshop,
“Writing a Teaching Philosophy Statement” facilitated by Ciara O’Farrell,
Academic Developer who will take you through the process of writing a
Statement, help you articulate your Teaching Philosophy, examine some
structural and content issues, and begin an initial draft statement.
Where do I begin?
The following PDF contains some excerpts, and full statements for your perusal.
Please note that these are not chosen for their excellence, but to show you the
range of choices of styles, structures and content that comprise teaching
philosophy statements.
When you read through the extracts, think about the following:
• Are the author’s personal beliefs about learning and teaching cogent?
• Does theory inform practice?
• What words reveal the writer’s teaching values?
• What will you remember most about this statement?
What is useful about this inventory is that it can help you define your primary role
as a teacher. The goals may also spark some ideas with you about specific skills
you would like to write about in your statement.
http://www.uiowa.edu/~centeach/tgi/
A good starting point for teaching philosophy statements is the following article
written by Gail Goodyear, the Director of the Center for Effective Teaching and
Learning at the University of Texas at El Paso, and Douglas Allchin, an historian
and philosopher of biology.
http://academics.utep.edu/Default.aspx?tabid=32483
Schonwetter, D.J. Sokal, L., Friesen, M. and Taylor, K.L. (2002). Teaching
philosophies reconsidered: A conceptual model for the development and
evaluation of teaching philosophy statements. The International Journal for
Academic Development, 7(1), 83-97.
There are many guiding questions that can be included in a teaching philosophy
statement. Because of length restrictions, it is not advisable to squeeze too
Descriptive: What you do when you teach, types of activities you use
when you are teaching
Analytical: Why you teach in the way you do, how your thinking about
teaching has changed over time
Empirical: Experiences or observations of student learning on which your
decisions about teaching are based
Title / Thesis (declarative) statement/ Narrative
Theoretic framework: goals / design / implementation / assessment /
evaluation…
1. Conceptualization of learning
Ask yourself such questions as “What do we mean by learning?” and “What
happens in a learning situation?” Think of your answers to these questions based
on your personal experience. Chism points out that some teachers have tried to
express and explain their understanding of learning through the use of metaphor,
because drawing comparisons with known entities can stimulate thinking,
whether or not the metaphor is actually used in the statement. On the other hand,
most instructors tend to take a more direct approach in conceptualizing learning,
i.e., to describe what they think occurs during a learning episode, based on their
observation and experience or based on current literature on teaching and
learning.
2. Conceptualization of teaching
Ask yourself questions such as “What do we mean by teaching?” and “How do I
facilitate this process as a teacher?” Chism suggests that personal teaching
beliefs on how the instructor facilitates the learning process would be appropriate
for this section. Again, the metaphor format can be used, but a common practice
is a more direct description of the nature of a teacher with respect to motivating
and facilitating learning. Along with the questions above, you may also address
such issues as how to challenge students intellectually and support them
academically and how the teacher can respond to different learning styles, help
students who are frustrated, and accommodate different abilities. Furthermore,
you may talk about how you as a teacher have come to these conclusions (e.g.,
Gail Goodyear and Douglas Allchin (1998) have made suggestions for structuring
the statement of teaching philosophy in a somewhat different way than Chism.
A final exercise is to think about what a reader will remember the most about
this teaching philosophy statement? Is this what you want them to remember?