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Personal Philosophies of Teaching: A False Promise?
Self-reflectiveness makes professors better. Sometimes, however, statements of teaching philosophy make better boxes than ladders.
By Daniel D. Pratt
Increasingly, college and university faculty are asked to articulate their personal philosophies of teaching when they are reviewed for reappointment, tenure, or promotion. For many faculty members, the task is unfamiliar and daunting. It forces them to articulate what they typically take for granted—their beliefs about knowledge and learning and the implications of these for their role as teachers.
Few within the academy argue against statements of teaching philosophy. Most assume they will provide a better understanding and more equitable judgment of a faculty member's teaching. Still, although many institutions use statements of teaching philosophy to good and fair purpose, other institutions (my own included) offer false promises in requiring them. This article examines those false promises and disentangles the assumptions that lie behind them.
As worthy as the teaching statement may be, the requirement to produce it for periodic review holds within it at least two implied promises: (1) that the review process will be open to more than one philosophy of teaching, and (2) that one's philosophy of teaching will be given serious consideration within the review process. As with the tantalizing aroma of freshly ground coffee beans, these implied promises may suggest more than will be delivered.
These promises have within them at least four unspoken assumptions. First is the assumption that everyone agrees on the form and substance of an acceptable statement of teaching philosophy; second, that all acceptable philosophies of teaching should be "learner centered"; third, that the reviewers' own philosophy of teaching will not prejudice them against other philosophies of teaching; and, fourth, that student evaluations of teaching will have fair regard for a plurality of acceptable philosophies of teaching. Let me take each of these assumptions in turn.
Four Assumptions
1. A consensus exists as to the form and substance of a statement of teaching philosophy.
Trying to find a structure that would help faculty articulate their orientations to teaching, University of British Columbia graduate student Gay Maddin scoured the Internet to see what others had used. She searched for sample statements, definitions, and guidelines, hoping to find recommendations that would be helpful without being too deterministic about what is acceptable. She described her findings in her 2002 master's thesis, "Philosophies of Teaching: Can the Web Provide Guidance?"
Initially, many of the samples and guidelines looked similar. As she looked closer, the reason became clear: many universities had borrowed their guidelines from another institution (often with due credit given). In the United States, Ohio State University's Web site provided more than a dozen sample statements and was cited as a source by other university Internet sites. In Canada, the University of Guelph had fewer samples but was a source of guidance for other universities. In the United Kingdom, the University of Nottingham's site offered guidance and structure for other universities. Nottingham's advice differed from most others in one important respect: faculty were asked to reflect on their values and beliefs and the underlying question of "why" in their teaching. These three universities were not, of course, the only ones cited; nor were they used only by institutions in their own countries. Their samples were, however, widely adopted or adapted by other universities and thus contributed to an emerging consensus about how faculty should think about a statement of teaching philosophy.
Setting aside a few sites, such as Nottingham's, the substance included in the samples was often less than would be necessary if the statement were to be used in a critical review of teaching. Although the guidelines often encouraged faculty members to describe their view of the nature of learning—and many samples did say something about learning—few faculty members talked about the nature of knowledge in their field, profession, or discipline, or the imperatives that guided their teaching. Many focused on the aims of teaching and the means to achieve them. Little was said about the underlying values or beliefs that justify those aims and means. Thus, although a statement of "philosophy" was requested, most products were more descriptive than analytical. This fact could be critical if a person's approach to teaching differed from the norms within a department.
In an evaluative review, a personal philosophy of teaching should help reviewers (and students) better understand the logic and the heart of someone's teaching. More than a mere description of aims and means, a philosophy of teaching statement should reveal the deeper structures and values that give meaning and justification to an approach to teaching. As of yet, we see little to suggest agreement about the substance of a statement of teaching philosophy that would be useful in rigorous peer reviews of teaching.
2. Acceptable philosophies of teaching should be "learner centered."
Across North America and increasingly elsewhere, there is a move toward a single, dominant philosophy of teaching, usually labeled "learner centered." The argument for learner-centered teaching is, at least in part, a reaction against the teacher-centered instruction that dominated much of higher education for the past forty years or more.
To some, this transformation makes infinite sense, but it troubles me. The commitment to learners and to learning is not worrisome; a discussion of learners and learning should be an essential part of any philosophy of teaching. But the way in which this view of teaching is constructed and promoted in higher education assumes that everyone agrees about what "learner centered" means, and that our personal conception of the phrase is (or ought to be) everyone's conception of it.
This dominance of one view quickly approaches an orthodoxy that excludes variations on "good teaching" that don't fit within it. Consider, for example, societies that have a Confucian heritage and that conceptualize learning and learners differently from Western societies. The work of several researchers provides evidence that Chinese faculty and students commonly understand learning in terms of four stages: memorization, understanding, application, and questioning or modifying of what is to be learned. Within these societies, students are expected to move through the four stages in the prescribed order. Each stage is therefore a valid form of learning, because it prepares the learner for the next stage.
Memorization is the stage most often misinterpreted by Westerners, especially when contrasted with our preferred notions of learning. From a Chinese point of view, how-ever, memorization serves two legitimate functions. First, through drill and repetition (as a means to memorizing), students begin the process of understanding and, hence, initiate the second stage of learning. They may read the same material several times, each time making the content more familiar, while also focusing on different aspects of it. Second, through memorization, students demonstrate respect for the knowledge of their teachers and their texts. As such, memorization is not an end, but a means toward understanding the content as it is authorized.
Some teachers in North America confuse and frustrate foreign students when they disparage memorization and encourage students to move quickly toward the far end of the chain (questioning and critique). Foreign students often struggle to develop on their own the structure that seemed useful and legitimate for earlier stages of learning in their home country. It is not that they are incapable of learning in the Western way; they are simply unused to starting at this further stage of learning without having been guided through the preparatory stages. In addition, many such learners may see it as disrespectful to challenge or question the text (or teacher), especially when they have little assurance that they understand that which they are to critique.
In their version of learner-centered teaching, Chinese professors guide students through content, down a well-defined sequence of steps, toward mastery of it, fully confident that they, the teachers, are in control of the knowledge and the stages of learning. Students, in turn, are willing recipients of the teacher's authority. Together, teacher and students enter into a well-defined set of reciprocal roles that give further meaning to learning and offer alternative forms of effective teaching.
Current notions of learner-centered teaching may also exclude many of our own memorable teachers, those whose passion for a subject ignited our interest and redirected our lives. In short, "learner centered" has become the mantra of faculty development across our institutions in the absence of acknowledgment of variations on its meaning and corresponding views of effective teaching.
3. The reviewers' own philosophies of teaching will not prejudice them against other philosophies of teaching.
Most departments either have considered or are considering ways to conduct peer reviews of teaching. Such review is founded on the assumption that one's peers are the best judges of how well the discipline or the profession is represented in course readings, lectures, tests, assignments, and so forth. Peer review is an important, but often neglected, part of the evaluation of teaching.
Yet within disciplines or professions serious divisions of thought can occur about what is to be learned and the role of a teacher. Some teachers see their primary responsibility as transmitting an established body of knowledge accurately and efficiently. Other teachers see their main role as socializing students into behavioral norms and professional ways of working. Still others see their chief duty as awakening students to privilege or oppression embedded in the discourse and practices of a field or profession. These differences are fertile ground for prejudicial judgment in peer evaluations of teaching.
If peer evaluations of teaching are to genuinely accommodate different philosophical orientations, those involved must discuss what content, questions, issues, debates, and authors are included or excluded from a course, what is emphasized or minimized, what forms of knowledge are valued, and how these decisions relate to a faculty member's philosophy of teaching. Unfortunately, in all too many evaluation schemes, little or no discussion of such issues occurs, giving little guidance to direct peer evaluation. Instead, an unspoken assumption suggests that those who have passed the test of tenure will be able to judge the teaching of others. For example, when University of British Columbia graduate student Angella Henderson reviewed the evaluation procedures and policies of postsecondary institutions in British Columbia for a 1997 master's thesis, she found no precautions against the possibility that peer reviewers might have different orientations to a discipline or a field of practice. Nor did she find any advice about how such differences might be discussed within the evaluation process. Nor did she discover any attempt to encourage evaluators to make explicit their own beliefs, commitments, or philosophy related to teaching and learning. Across most of the institutions she surveyed, almost no guidance was available to ensure that reviewers would be open to different ways of thinking about a discipline or different philosophies of teaching. No evidence since that study suggests that peer reviewers are now encouraged to disclose their own views of "effective" or "good" teaching, or to be cautious about the possible intrusion of those views on the evaluation of peers.
When there is no caution against potential prejudice by reviewers against views of knowledge and teaching that differ from their own, the process of evaluation is open to bias in that reviewers may look only for a reflection of their own philosophies of teaching.
4. Student evaluations of teaching will have fair regard for a plurality of acceptable philosophies of teaching.
Most universities highly value student assessments of teaching. Many use questionnaires to gather data, but the questionnaires are typically either developed in house or borrowed and perhaps slightly modified, with little thought given to the underlying values represented in the constructs that define teaching. Seldom, if ever, do those charged with gathering student data on teaching step back to consider the epistemic and normative values embedded in the items or the conceptual models of teaching that make up those instruments.
In one study involving six departments across four universities in Hong Kong, my colleagues and I found nothing in university policies and procedures that questioned the universal application of teaching evaluation instruments across disciplines. Nor, in our surveys and focus groups, did any faculty member or administrator raise the issue of possible bias in student evaluation questionnaires. Across hundreds of respondents, we found not one instance of concern for how student evaluation of teaching might be examined and adjusted in response to individual faculty members' philosophies of teaching.
There is reason to suspect that these findings are more common than uncommon in universities across North America and around the world. Henderson's 1997 review of postsecondary institutions in British Columbia, for example, showed an absence of awareness about the potential misfit between personal philosophies and student evaluation instruments. Indeed, one reason that student evaluation forms are so widely adopted as the primary (and often the sole) source of data on teaching is that they are easily administered and yield averages, allowing expedient and numerical comparisons within departments and across an institution. It would seem that the expediency of student evaluation trumps any epistemic arguments by faculty who would be so courageous as to draft and submit their own philosophies of teaching.
Conclusions
I fear we are building an overly narrow view of what counts as effective teaching and falsely promising that personal philosophies of teaching will receive serious consideration in faculty evaluations. My hope is that we will not naively yield to those who believe there is but a single viable perspective on good teaching. I wish to honor those teachers who have been memorable but different—those whose teaching was instrumental to our learning and our professional path without necessarily fitting within yet another orthodoxy of teaching.
I am not arguing that all philosophies of teaching are equally good or acceptable. That kind of solipsism is neither defensible nor practical. Nor do I want merely to substitute an old orthodoxy for a new one; I want to see a plurality of acceptable philosophies of teaching acknowledged. If we are to recognize and respect differing views of teaching, we must avoid extremes of "anything goes" or its opposite, "one size fits all."
I derive my argument from more than a decade of research in several countries, where I have studied hundreds of teachers in adult and higher education. Across a range of disciplines, contexts, and cultures, my students and I found a plurality of good teaching, not all of which rests on the same values or principles. Our findings are not unique. They correspond to those of many other researchers around the world, from as far back as 1983 in the United Kingdom to as recently as 1999 at the University of California, Berkeley. Across all these varied studies, no single philosophy of learning or teaching dominates what might be called "good teaching."
As I watch the mounting pressure on faculty members to produce philosophy of teaching statements, I see strategies ranging from genuine reflection on commitments that clarify and justify specific educational aims and means, to simple borrowing of ideas and texts from available samples and sites. For those involved in the review of teaching, it may be difficult to discern the genuine from the contrived, the sophisticated from the naive, or the profound from the prosaic unless we move philosophy of teaching statements from the periphery to the center of the review process. If such documents continue to be peripheral, faculty will have little incentive to opt for the genuine rather than the borrowed as they craft their own statements.
The power and purpose of a personal philosophy statement lies not in its eloquence or its fit with some current discourse of teaching, but in its ability to reveal what is hidden, yet essential, to understanding someone's teaching. At its best, it offers peer reviewers and students a map to the deeper structures of a teacher's values, revealing both origins and destinations of teaching. If statements of teaching philosophy are to live up to this potential, they must not be left on the periphery as unsuspecting instruments of false promise.
Daniel Pratt is professor of adult and higher education at the University of British Columbia. For additional resources related to this article, see www.edst.educ.ubc.ca/pratt.html.
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