A teaching philosophy statement can open doors to career opportunities and help educators to better understand and improve their practice. A strong statement clearly illustrates the values, beliefs and goals (VBGs) that govern your teaching approach and shows how they translate into practice. More importantly, a well-written statement vividly transports the reader into your classroom.
Several strategies can help get there, beginning with identifying and showcasing your VBGs, which I explain how to do in part one of this series. In this final part, I explain how specificity and polished writing can bring your statement to life.
Show me the evidence!
Teaching strategies, learning activities, assessments and anecdotes make your VBGs concrete. They also help to ground buzzwords such as “growth mindset” and “experiential learning”, or direct quotations from education theorists. For instance, if you claim to employ student-centred approaches, use specific examples of what those look like in your classroom. A colleague in the Faculty of Science identifies interdisciplinarity as one of their values and supports this by saying:
“Interdisciplinarity shows up in my teaching both as a means of thinking (ie, systems thinking), as well as through diversity of content and teaching approaches.”
Connecting your VBGs to specific examples adds credibility to your statement and makes it more memorable.
I find it helpful to structure examples like this: value/belief/goal > practice > outcome. For example, “I believe x, therefore I do y, and my students experience z.” Teaching philosophy statement examples that follow this logic include:
“I aim to captivate my students’ attention with memorable and impactful course content and learning activities. For instance, for my fourth-year research methods course, I developed an acronym, “Mines”, to help students remember the features of a good research question – measurement, impact, neutrality, evidence and scope. My students always get exam questions on that topic correct!”
– From my own teaching philosophy statement
“My philosophy is also rooted in the belief that collaboration between academics and clinicians is key to student learning success…I design and incorporate authentic clinical experiences through case studies, scenarios, simulations and patient encounters…I have witnessed how student-led discussions on case studies, teamwork and collaboration in clinical simulations generate more engagement and facilitate in-depth, multifaceted understanding of complex clinical issues in a real-life context.”
– A School of Physiotherapy instructor
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When crafting your teaching philosophy statement, consider its connection to the rest of your teaching dossier. It should serve as the backdrop for it, setting the stage for the rest of your portfolio. The other components, such as teaching activities and contributions, evidence and appendices, should all tell a cohesive story. If someone were to look only at your dossier’s evidence and appendices, and not your statement, they should be able to make a well-informed guess as to what your teaching VBGs are.
For example, an instructor from the School of Communication Sciences and Disorders whose teaching value is applied learning writes:
“Recognising the importance of hands-on learning, I revised the activity into a formal assignment…with clearly defined objectives, expectations and a facilitation rubric.”
They might choose to include the assignment instructions and rubric in their dossier as evidence of applied learning.
Or perhaps an instructor identifies providing effective feedback to students as a value and strength. They can highlight their score for a relevant question in their teaching evaluations and include student comments that reflect this, such as “The feedback that I received was constructive.”
Writing with polish and purpose
Like any essay, your writing style and conventions can impact how readers experience and react to your teaching reflections.
To make your statement feel personal, reflective and dynamic, write from a first-person perspective, in the present tense, and use the active voice. For instance, rephrase “Students are taught x by the instructor” to “I teach my students x.” The only time you should use past tense is when recounting past examples.
Avoid technical jargon, or define it if you use it. Depending on the purpose of and the audience for your teaching philosophy statement, readers might not work in your discipline or field.
Keep it under two pages. A short, well-written teaching philosophy statement will always be better than a long, rambling one. Focus on three or four of your teaching VBGs.
One size fits none
Teaching philosophy statements can often repeat the same rhetoric. Differentiate yourself early on by using a personal insight into how you became interested in teaching. For example, if you have read part one of this series, you will recall that my teaching philosophy statement opens:
“A white teddy bear named Katherine, a Care Bear, and a Cabbage Patch Kid – these were my first students. When I was just four years old, I’d set up a little whiteboard and put my dolls and stuffed animals in chairs and teach them lessons. At the age of eight, I wrote my first lesson plan – proof of it exists to this day in the basement of my childhood home! These are two of many examples that exemplify that teaching is an inherent part of who I am.”
Think carefully about who will be reading your teaching philosophy statement, and why. You might choose to emphasise different VBGs or examples depending on whether you’re using the statement for job applications, tenure or promotion, awards, grants or as a personal reflective activity.
For example, an instructor from the School of Communication Sciences and Disorders identifies five values in their statement: integrating high-quality evidence into teaching; student engagement; collaborative learning; reflection; and self-directed learning. They might choose to focus on integrating high-quality evidence into teaching, reflection and self-directed learning if they are applying for a position where they will be teaching upper-year undergraduate or graduate students.
View your teaching philosophy statement as a living document; revisit and revise it regularly. Your VBGs and the examples you use will often shift as you develop and grow throughout your teaching career. These strategies can help you develop a teaching philosophy statement that not only places the reader in your classroom, but makes them want to stay.
Daniella Sieukaran is the senior educational developer (programme development) at Dalhousie University. She teaches in the department of psychology at Dalhousie and Mount Saint Vincent University.
Special thanks to Kate Crane (educational developer, Student Engagement and Relational Pedagogies) for connecting me with instructors at Dalhousie University whose excerpts appear in this article.
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