Why you do the things you do.
GTA Conference 2012
August 22, 2012
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Taking the First Steps to your Teaching Philosophy
Fill in the blanks.
I expect students in my class to _________________________________________________________.
________________________________________________________is the best aspect of my teaching.
I value ________________________________________________________________ in my teaching.
I create learning expectations by _______________________________________________________.
Students __________________________________________________________________________.
_______________________________________________________helps me to improve my teaching.
I know my students have learned when__________________________________________________.
A. Teaching Experiences:
List any teaching experiences you have had in the past (include non-academic experiences, e.g., religious
classes, restaurant training).
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
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B. Teaching Style:
a. What are your global goals for you in the classroom?
b. What are your global goals for your students in the classroom?
c. Do you believe these goals are symbiotic?
C. What are some of the methods you use to teach that you:
LIKE:
1.
2.
3.
DISLIKE:
1.
2.
3.
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D. Teaching Values:
a. How would you describe yourself as a teacher?
b. How would your students describe you as a teacher?
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Topics which are appropriate to include in your teaching philosophy:
Skills you value in students—
Life-long learners, critical thinkers, competency, turn-and-burn, study enough to pass
the test, memorizers
Concepts of teaching—
A coach, a facilitator, an entertainer, a mentor, an authoritarian, a drill-sergeant, an
evangelist, a partner, a boss
Specific curriculum goals—
Teach science to non-science students, teaching to disadvantage students, advocate,
community outreach, teaching critical thinking, teaching memorizing skills
Your methods—
How you assess student-learning, use of technology, use of group work, integration of
activities, homework assignments, simulations how you assess your own success, when
you stand or sit in class, the methods at which you hold students accountable for
before, during, and after class participation
Your future—
Professional goals, methods or ideas you want to try, continued professional
development for self, your role as a faculty member, your role with professional development
with graduate students as a faculty member
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NOTES TO SELF:
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References & Resources:
This packet was highly influenced by the following document:
Heather Doherty
https://curriculumfellows.hms.harvard.edu/sites/curriculumfellows.hms.harvard.edu/files/u12/Teachin
g%20philosophy%20HANDOUT%20for%20PDF.pdf
The Chronicle of Higher Education: Manage Your Career
How to Write a Statement of Teaching Philosophy
By Gabriela Montell
March 27, 2003
University of Minnesota Center for Teaching and Learning
Writing your Teaching Philosophy Online Tutorial
http://www1.umn.edu/ohr/teachlearn/tutorials/philosophy/index.html
Iowa State University
Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching
By Lee Haugen
March, 1998
http://www.celt.iastate.edu/teaching/philosophy.html
Washington University in St. Louis
The Teaching Center
By Beth Fisher, 2007
http://teachingcenter.wustl.edu/writing-teaching-philosophy-statement
The University of Georgia
Center for Teaching and Learning
Future Faculty Teaching Philosophy Statements
http://www.ctl.uga.edu/teach_asst/ta_mentors/philosophy/index.html
Inside Higher Ed: Academic Career Confidential
Views of the Classroom
By Teresa Mangum
http://www.insidehighered.com/advice/academic_career_confidential/mangum10
O'Neal, Chris, Deborah Meizlish, and Matthew Kaplan. "Writing a Teaching Philosophy for the Academic
Job Search." CRLT Occasional Papers. No. 23. University of Michigan Center for Research on Learning
and Teaching. 2007. http://www.crlt.umich.edu/publinks/CRLT_no23.pdf
Deborah Meizlish and Matthew Kaplan. “Valuing and Evaluating Teaching in Academic Hiring: A
Multidisciplinary, Cross-Institutional Study.” The Journal of Higher Education - Volume 79, Number 5,
September/October 2008, pp. 489-512.
Stating a Teaching Philosophy webpage:
http://depts.washington.edu/leadta/hist_ta_web/pages/career/teachphilosophy.shtml
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Philosophy of Teaching in Counselor Education and Supervision (CES)
Linda L. Black, EdD, LPC
Philosophy originates from the Greek term philosophia, which literally translated, means a
"love of wisdom” This document serves as the explication of my professional and personal
beliefs related to my general and fundamental values, knowledge, and skills for academic
and applied instruction in counselor education and supervision. I enumerate the core
concepts that guide my teaching, scholarship, and service to my profession, its students,
and our clients.
Values
Students. I believe the students, with whom I have the pleasure to interact and educate,
come to my classroom with individual and diverse experiences, beliefs, and goals that
inform their interactions with clients, peers, instructors, and the body of knowledge. I strive
to create and maintain an active learning environment that encourages exploration,
evaluation, understanding, application, and synthesis of the material presented. Further, I
expect and demonstrate ethical behavior, authenticity, and accountability in all
professional and personal interactions. I believe that students will come to class prepared
to engage in and be transformed by their learning.
Colleagues. I serve in a discipline with professionals and scholars who seek continuous
improvement in the education and supervision of developing counselors and counselor
educators. I seek support, discussion, evaluation, feedback, and stimulation from my peers
in a dynamic environment of intellect, civility, and respect. I believe our profession is
served best by critical analysis, clear accountability, rigorous scholarship, superior
instruction, and personal and professional reflection. I believe we are role models for our
students and clients.
Profession. The profession of counselor education is one of scholarship and service.
Innovative and rigorous scholarship establishes and expands a corpus of knowledge upon
which superior instruction relies. Scholarship and the application of knowledge and skill
are the foundation upon which service to clients and students rests.
Knowledge
The knowledge base in counselor education and supervision emanates from the study of
human interactions, psychology, education, and social work. I believe the production and
exploration of knowledge is a dynamic enterprise and thus is mutually constructed through
the interactions of students, instructor, and the professional literature. Graduate education
should incite a sense of inquiry, wonderment, and joy. I believe there is a fundamental
mutuality in the classroom, for which I am accountable. I seek to be a model of continuous
education and refinement of my skill and knowledge base so that I credibly and accurately
instruct my students.
Skills
I strive to purposefully improve my counseling, supervision, scholarship and instructional
skills. I engage in active self-reflection and seek the feedback of students and trusted
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peers. In my classroom, students experience various forms of creative instruction that
include but are not limited to: lecture, seminar discussions, small group work, role plays,
sculpting, student led-discussion, case studies, evaluation, and artistic expression.
Students are invited and expected to actively engage in a range of experiences meant to
extend their learning beyond the written material.
Instruction
All instruction relies on an accurate assessment of students’ prior knowledge, capabilities
and expectations. Prior to instruction, I seek to understand and affirm what students
currently know and they will learn. I base my instruction and students’ engagement in
learning on ethical principles, personal, professional, and accreditation standards, state
licensure guidelines and real world practice. Learning objectives and outcomes are created
to reflect the aforementioned goals, are delivered through diverse learning
experiences/methods, and are assessed through formative and summative measures. I
strive for flexibility in the nature and timing of assignment to maximize students’ potential
for learning.
In sum, my teaching philosophy reflects my personality and value of education. Counselors
and counselor educators serve a vital function in our society and I am privileged to educate
the next generation of professionals who will provide guidance and support to our citizenry.
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Statement of Teaching Philosophy 2012
Deborah Romero, Ph.D.
Through many years of teaching I have come to recognize that my best teaching-learning
occurs when this process is acknowledged as collaborative and communicative activity. My
approaches to teaching-learning are informed by my educational grounding in developmental
psychology and sociocultural theories of human development (Bruner, 1986; Piaget 1962;
Vygotsky, 1963) and critical pedagogies (Dewey, 1938; Freire, 1970) along with a background
in linguistics and digital literacies (Cope and Kalantzis, 2000; Halliday, 1989; New London
Group, 1986). Together these theories and experiences shape how I conceive and seek to
actively engage today’s students. Therefore, I promote collaboration and equity in my classes
and encourage students to work together toward the co-construction of knowledge. In this way, I
strive to make teaching-learning an on-going dialectical process of analysis and reflection for
students and myself alike. I conceptualize and practice teaching-learning as a transformative
process that ultimately stimulates changes in individuals and alternate ways of thinking and
being, including the kinds of social actions that we are able to assume in our worlds.
Effective teaching, for me, means that I situate students at the centre of this process by
acknowledging each of them as unique individuals with diverse cultural and linguistic
backgrounds and identities from whom we all can learn but also as interdependent members of
social groups and networks, as active learners and agents of change. I aim to teach content
knowledge, practical skills and raise awareness sensitively and fairly by recognizing the
resources that are inherent in the multilingual and multicultural diversity that my students bring
to the classroom. Wherever possible I model and create spaces for my students to connect the
language and learning theories with professional practices and with their own lived experiences.
I have found this supports their appropriation of ideas and scaffolds learning since it enables me
to teach to the whole person by integrating their culturally relevant backgrounds into the
curriculum and knowledge construction process.
I have also learned the importance of valuing teaching-learning as a communicative process,
which means I have to listen to and with my students in order to reflect critically and to facilitate
the development of new knowledges. To this end, I intentionally encourage collaborative
dialogue and group learning experiences by challenging and motivating students to accomplish
personal and academic development, as well as promoting an interest in their own lifelong
learning. Wherever possible, I conceive of the classroom as a community of learners (Lave and
Wenger, 1991), of readers and writers with a range of literate practices and expertises, with its
own emergent culture, and thus I value what each individual student brings to the class and
tailor instruction accordingly. One example which I have found to be particularly effective is for
students to develop their writing as a process of analysis and reflection over the duration of
each course. By providing a series of shorter structured assignments, rubrics and on-going
constructive feedback, students are able to build self-confidence and proficiency, gradually
working toward a more extended and organized final paper. More recently, I have encouraged
students to pursue alternative means for communicating their learning through visual posters,
interactive presentations and short video documentaries.
Finally, but of no lesser significance, because I believe that education is ultimately related to
social democratic change my responsibility as an educator is to promote opportunities that
facilitate equity of access and meaningful learning to all my students and their future students.
When students (and in particular pre-service and current teachers) can appreciate multicultural
and multilingual diversity as significant funds of knowledge (Moll, 1992) for students, families
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and local communities, these resources can in turn be incorporated into the classroom and the
teaching-learning process. A fundamental aspect of teaching-learning is its potential to enrich
the scope and complexity of our diverse society so as to guarantee and sustain equitable
access and positive educational experiences, where knowledge, empowerment and agency are
attainable outcomes of academic success for all.
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