Writing Your Teaching Philosophy Statement

There is something about the word "philosophy" that slows people down from writing a teaching philosophy statement. It's an abstract term, and grandiose, too. So maybe we should just substitute "beliefs" and think about writing down what we believe about what makes for good teaching. So let's do that.

Statements about what we believe makes for good teaching have three or four main sections:

1. Introduction situates your teaching within your institutional context
   
2. Connection to learning philosophy (how students learn)
   
3. Connection to your overall goals for education (generally) and your future growth
   

Section 1. I've taught in five different universities in the US and Canada, and the students I found were distinctly different. I've also given guest lectures to hundreds of classes at the University of Alberta, and the students in Pharmacy, for example, were markedly different from the students in Nursing or Sociology. Readers of your teaching statement want to know who you are teaching so that they can judge your philosophies against the context in which you teach. Tell us about your students, your discipline (some business schools use the case method extensively, for example), and your institution.

Section 2. Once you've set the context for your work as an instructor, tell us about what general principles inform your teaching strategies. I believe, for example, that writing is social: it must have an audience or readership for it to exist in any meaningful way. As a subsidiary belief, I also think that students learn by sharing what they are learning with other students. These beliefs lead or connect to classroom practices: I have students read each other's drafts and respond to them because that activity follows from believing in the social nature or writing. What ideas inform your instructional practices? In my case I connect my research to my classroom practices (https://www.wecanwrite.ca/uploads/1/0/0/3/100308630/end_of_career_teaching_philosophy_reflection.pdf). If you haven't done classroom-based research to support your instructional practices, find research that has. 

Section 2 should also talk about how you think students learn: what pactices have been shown to work? This presentation has some ideas to get you started: https://prezi.com/bynu7c8sbb8-/edit/#4_24309637)

Section 3. In this final section, connect the details about your instruction beliefs and practices to what you think the goals are for education. John Dewey believed that education's goal was to support democracy. Do you agree? As you develop your career as an instructor, what new practices do you see on the horizon that you think are promising? I created a blended learning class (part online, part in-person) in the last five years of my teaching career, and that looked then (and now) as a promising new approach (https://www.ualberta.ca/centre-for-teaching-and-learning/grants/uofa-blended/index.html). 

Some documents advise you to add an assessment section to your statement. This section answers the question "how do you know your strategies are working?" To some extent, a discussion of the research about teaching will also do this, but it is always a good idea to think hard about assessing our practices.

Above all, keep in mind that a teaching philosophy statement is a reflection document: it is you showing your ability to critically reflect (that is, reflect in light of research) what you do when you teach. Show readers that you do think hard, that you are aware of research on teaching, and that you are committed to developing your teaching practices.



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