What's my teaching philosophy?

Over the past couple of weeks, I have been considering my teaching philosophy. It's the driving question of the exit interview for PIDP 3100: Foundations of Adult Education and we spent some time discussing a variety of models in PIDP 3210: Curriculum Development over the past two weekends.

It's a tough question for someone with minimal practical teaching experience so in my usual fashion, when I feel uncertain about something, I research. It's my comfort zone. To this end, I took the Teaching Perspectives Inventory and can't say that I was too surprised by the results. My highest perspective was Nurturing, which states that "effective teaching assumes that long-term, hard, persistent effort to achieve comes from the heart, not the head" (taken from the TPI website). An important aspect featured in this perspective is not to fear failure and to support "effort as well as achievement" which I would agree is a definite component to my teaching and my learning. Even in my own learning, it's not about getting the best grade but rather being able to see improvement and effort which leads to a sense of pride in the work I have accomplished. My next highest result was Developmental which believes that "effective teaching must be planned and conducted 'from the learner's point of view' and this aligns with the philosophy George Siemens discussed in his interview with Howard Rheingold. We need to help learner's create their own paths to knowledge in order to make learning meaningful to the learner. In the words of the TPI, help create bridges to knowledge.

Along with the Teaching Perspectives Inventory (TPI), I picked up a copy of Pratt's book to read and I was struck by his observation that often as instructors, while it is important to think about new teaching techniques and different ways of assessing learners; an "important way in which we develop as instructors ... is through critically reflecting on what we believe about teaching and learning" (Pratt, 1998, p. 12).

Pratt, D.D. (1998). Five perspectives on teaching in adult and higher education. Malabar, FL.: Krieger Publishing.