March 14, 2004
Getting Some Perspective on Your Teaching
I have just taken the online "Teaching Perspectives Inventory" -- an excellent self-evaluation questionairre that determines what your perspectives are on the goals of teaching. It gives you some sense of how well you are fulfilling them, too. The primary teaching perspectives are seeing teaching as a form of: transmission, apprenticeship, development, nuturing, and social reform. (They are >not< always mutually exclusive).
I was very surprised to discover that "developmental" and "nurturing" beliefs, intentions, and actions dominate my view on good teaching and that the "transmission of information" model informs my perspective the least. "Developmental" was way dominant in the results of my profile. What this means is that I believe that "effective teaching must be planned and conducted from the learner's point of view" and that I assume that "long-term, hard, persistent effort to achieve comes from the heart, not the head." My belief that effective teaching seeks to change society came in a close third place.
This test was a real eye-opener for me. Before taking this profile test, I would have guessed that an "apprenticeship" perspective -- a belief that effective teaching socializes students into new behaviors and ways of working -- lurked behind my assumptions of what makes effective teaching. I'm not sure how many of my students would consider me a "nurturer" either...I'm fairly aggressive in presenting intellectual challenges in the classroom. But who says this isn't a form of nurturing?
The explanations of the five major perspectives on what makes for "good teaching", and the free articles on the site -- particularly the .pdf file on "Good Teaching: One Size Fits All?" by Daniel Pratt -- are all worth reading on their own, whether or not you take this test.
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Comments
Hi Mike--seems like a long time since I've commented on your blog but I have been reading. I always appreciate your posts because they are filled with information, provide lots of excellent links, present your own insights on the subject (grounded in your own experiences) and always leave me reflecting on my own beliefs and practices. Once again I followed your links and decided to take the TPI. I'm not surprised that I also am strong in developmental and nurturing teaching styles--but I am surprised that I scored lowest on social reform (quite a shock for a sociology major and one who always works on causes.) But, reflecting on it further, I realized that my 39 score on "Apprenticeship" probably relates more to my sociological perspectives--that knowledge and action go hand in hand--than the idea of teaching to create "social reform." This realization will really help me write up my personal teaching philosophy in a much more authentic way--linking the ideas that effort based learning practices that focus on the needs of diverse learners, and are tied to real world projects, empower students to approach a problem, design a solution, and take effective action. Hmmm…not bad for an hour’s work. Thanks Mike!
My scores were also high on the developmental scale, transmission fell below the "recessive" line, and the other three all fell about midway between dominant and recessive. I wonder if we could find some way to turn this questionnaire on its head and get students to take it. It seems pretty important to get students to understand faculty's perspectives, and t'other way 'round.
I tend to think that a plurality of students would view the transmission perspective as the dominant one. Maybe that's a little cynical, but it certainly reflects my experience among both FY comp and advanced writing students.