A teaching statement has 5 important categories:
- Learning goals: discipline-specific knowledge, skills, attitudes that are important for students’ academic, personal and professional success
- Teaching methods: specific teaching methods and how they contribute to students’ accomplishment of learning goals and align with student expectations and needs
- Learning assessment: specific tools used to assess student learning and descriptions of how these tools facilitate student achievement of learning goals
- Teaching assessment: strengths and areas for improvement of one’s teaching based on evidence, along with plans for continuing development
- Learning Environment: specific ways diverse identities, experiences, etc. are accounted for and integrated into teaching methods
Throughout your career, keep anything and everything related to your teaching! Use an archive (a digital folder or physical folder/box) where you can keep everything and can easily find it! Of particular interest are material personal to you, material from others, and products of your good teaching.
| Personal Material | Material from Others | Products of Good Teaching |
|---|
- List of teaching responsibilities and way courses were taught
- Teaching philosophy statement
- Teaching goals for next 5 years
- Representative course syllabi (and why done this way)
- Description of steps taken to evaluate and improve one’s teaching
- Curricular revisions (new projects, materials, etc.)
- Self-evaluation (esp. if contradictory documents in the portfolio)
- Publications on teaching
- Supervision roles (advising, theses/dissertations, group projects, etc.)
| - Statements from colleagues who have observed your teaching
- Statements from colleagues who have witnessed out-of-class activities
- Student and course evaluations (esp. those that indicate improvements)
- Department statements about your teaching
- Performance reviews as a faculty advisor
- Honors, awards, grants and other recognition of your teaching
- Invitations for papers or presentations on teaching
- Participation in teaching development within your discipline, department, or college
- Teaching-related professional development (workshops, reading groups, etc)
- Teaching research (Scholarship on Teaching and Learning)
- Videotape of your teaching– Student scores on standardized tests
- Student comments, such as in emails
| - Student essays, creative work, lab books, publications, etc.
- Information about student career choices or opportunities that are effects of your courses or help
- Record of students that move to and succeed in advanced courses in your discipline
- Statements from alumni
- Examples of graded student showing range of scores and explanations of why they were so graded
|
There are many ways to organize your evidence after collecting it. For use internally to the University of Oregon, we recommend organizing it around the University of Oregon's Teaching Evaluation Standards. Arrange your evidence in terms of how it reflects your use and development of
- professional teaching practices,
- inclusive teaching practices,
- engaged teaching practices, and
- research-informed teaching practices.
These are what evaluators at UO are going to examine—make it easy for evaluators to find and identify the standards in your teaching.
You can use this same organization for use outside of UO, but may need more clear framing for readers. You could also identify a goal to emphasize in your portfolio, for example:
- Improvement in teaching skills
- Evolution of teaching responsibilities over time
- Breadth of teaching responsibilities
- Particular theme(s) in your teaching
Once you have your goal, refine evidence and prioritize according to your goal:
- Focus on the most pertinent evidence
- Lump less pertinent items together, e.g. “Related Responsibilities”
When writing your reflections:
- Be concise and to the point
- Clarify context of evidence as needed
- Refer to the appendices for details, but include most relevant evidence in the summary
As you write, consider these ideas:
- how the evidence reflects your use of and development around the University of Oregon's Teaching Evaluation Standards
- questions of student motivation and how to influence it
- the goals of instruction, both for individual courses and in general
- the development of rapport with students as a group and individually
- the assessment of various teaching strategies as they related to the instructional goals
- the role of disciplinary knowledge in teaching and how students learn the discipline
- recent innovations in the content of the field and their effects on teaching
You may find that your evidence reveals something unexpected, unspoken, or subconscious about your teaching. Consider a revision of your teaching statement to ensure it reflects the evidence that is in your portfolio.
Share your portfolio items with others and ask for feedback. Similarly, offer to review other's portfolios or teaching materials and provide feedback for them.
If your portfolio is in a online format, indicate the URL link to your portfolio in your CV. You can also refer to your teaching portfolio in your cover letters for job applications, award applications, etc.
- Brevity: keep it concise and to the point
- Context: align with particular university or department mission, goals, etc.
- Criteria: customize according to particular audience – give it what it needs to
- Accountability: be prepared to provide and explain your…
- Philosophy of teaching and teaching goals
- Ability to design courses, materials, assignments, etc
- Style of teaching and how it facilitates student learning
- Student learning outcomes
- Evaluation and reflection on your own teaching
- Documentation: keep everything
- Input: seek evaluations and feedback from others
- Reflection: update regularly
- Assistance: get help from TEP
- Action: start now!
