Sample Weekly Session Plan


Session 7:
Drafting a Teaching Philosophy and Creating a Teaching Portfolio


Goals:

  • to give and receive feedback on your mid-semester feedback assignment
  • to find ways to draft teaching philosophies that synthesize course participants’ current understanding of the learning-teaching connection and that are scholarly in tone, discipline-related, well-organized, rich in detail/examples, and succinct
  • to identify specific supporting materials that can be used to construct a teaching portfolio
  • to point participants to resources for creating teaching portfolios, especially on-line portfolios

Class Readings:


Materials:

  • Peter Seldin, The Teaching Portfolio: A Practical Guide to Improved Performance and Promotion/Tenure Decisions, 3rd ed. (Bolton, MA: Anker, 2004)
  • Rubrics for teaching philosophies (Kaplan et al.; Johnson) and for electronic teaching portfolios
  • Sample teaching development philosophy

Activities:

  • Peer review of mid-semester feedback analyses (thirty minutes)
  • Overview of Certificate Assignment # 4: Teaching Philosophy Draft and related rubrics (ten minutes)
  • Discussion of Chism article and Vanderbilt resources (fifteen minutes)
  • Break (ten minutes)
  • Critique of teaching philosophies in Appendix E of PSTII - Which were most useful and/or most interesting to you, and why? (thirty minutes)
  • Other resources for developing teaching portfolios (twenty minutes)
  • Vote on reading for next session
    Proposed:
    1. McKeachie, Chapter 21 "The Teacher’s Role in Experiential Learning"
    2. McKeachie, Chapter 25 "The Ethics of Teaching and the Teaching of Ethics"
    3. Thompkins, "Pedagogy of the Distressed"
    4. Barab and Plucker, "Smart People or Smart Contexts?" Educational Psychologist 37.3 (2002): 165-182. This is available as a pdf from the CAT at University Libraries.
    5. Other?