How to formulate, refine, and articulate your teaching philosophy.

Podcast notes

The academic portfolio: A practical guide to documenting teaching, research, and service by J. Elizabeth Miller

Miller provides examples of the narrative from actual promotion and tenure portfolios.

What is a teaching philosophy?

Why we teach. Why teaching matters.
Not just a formula for teaching structure, but the rationale behind the structure.

Why is having a teaching philosophy important?

Helps guide our teaching methods. Needed in the job hunting process. Typically part of the promotion/tenure process at most universities.

How to identify, articulate, & refine it?

Questions from The Academic Portfolio (p. 13):

What do I believe about the role of a teacher, the role of a student?
Why do I teach the way I do?
What doesn’t learning look like when it happens?
Why do I choose the teaching strategies and the methods that I use?
How do I assess my students learning?

Questions of my own that I have found useful in articulating my teaching philosophy:

Who are my students? How I describe them says a lot about how I approach my teaching.
Who am I, as an educator? How I describe myself says a lot about my teaching, too.
What is teaching? Is the purpose to convey information, or to facilitate learning (or something else altogether)?

Planet Money episode about young woman becoming a business owner in North Korea.

What are the artifacts of my teaching? Observable things.
What would I see/hear/experience that would be evidence of those beliefs, if I was in your class?
Espoused beliefs vs theories in use. Chris Argyris / Edgar Schein

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Your teaching philosophy: The what, why, and how

Teaching in Higher Ed