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Introduction
Teaching Philosophy
Description of Teaching Responsibilities and
Activities
Teaching Methods and Materials
Assessment of Teaching Effectiveness
Goals
Appendices
Introduction and Teaching Reflections
Introduction
This teaching portfolio is designed to
provide insight into how I think about and engage in teaching at the
undergraduate and graduate levels. In this portfolio, I describe my
beliefs about teaching in my teaching philosophy. I describe the kinds
of courses I have taught or co-taught at the undergraduate and graduate
levels as well as the kinds of materials and methods I have employed in the
classroom to facilitate learning, including how I have evaluated student
learning. I include the instruments for assessing my effectiveness as
an instructor and how I see student ratings as reflections of my teaching
philosophy. Finally, I describe my goals as a student of pedagogy, as I
strive to become a more effective teacher.
In each of my reflections, I refer to
supporting evidence I have provided in the accompanying appendices. I
included representative materials of all kinds, including my course syllabi,
in-class activities and out-of-class assignments for my students. At
the beginning of each appendix, I describe the organization of the included
materials and how I see those materials as tangible examples of my teaching
philosophy in action.
Teaching Philosophy
My teaching philosophy can best be
described by three words: “excite, engage and empower.”
Although I have many goals as an instructor of sociology, I desire most that
the students become excited about the material, are engaged in our
discussions in the classroom and are empowered to take responsibility for
their learning through discussions and outside activities which interest
them. To this end, I have organized my courses such that they are
reading and writing intensive. For my students to become excited in the
material I believe they need to have read sociology from a variety of
viewpoints and should be able to articulate their engagement via their
writing. Sociology to me is not simply regurgitating major theoretical
or epistemological perspectives; I believe sociology entails learning to use
a critical perspective for understanding the social world. This
includes learning to think critically about oneself and one’s surroundings.
However, I also believe that this learning should not be perceived as a drudgery. I show the students that I am excited to
be in the classroom with them and that I intend to learn from them as well as
guide their learning. I see our environment as a community of neophyte
scholars and try to use our time in the classroom together to excite, engage
and empower them as such.
To facilitate the students’
becoming excited, engaged and empowered, I strive to provide an environment
where students feel comfortable expressing their views, including those which
may be different from my own. I have found, though, through my
course evaluations, that I think I am providing this type of environment, but
occasionally fall short of this goal. Some students, generally those in
my lower-level undergraduate courses (as shown in Appendix
A), have commented that I am so engaged with the material I am
teaching that they feel I may not be as open to views which differ from mine.
However, their comments also suggest that as individuals they would have felt
comfortable and did to some degree, speaking out when they had views which
differed from mine in the classroom. I consistently receive evaluations
which note that the students appreciated the opportunity to speak their
minds, even when they did not agree with my interpretation of the
readings. I consider this evidence of my providing a safe learning
environment.
My primary goals are for my students to
become excited about looking at the world through a sociological lens, to
become engaged in intellectual discussions regarding the social world and to
become empowered to create (small) social change if only in their own
lives. When one of my students meets any one of these goals, I consider
myself an effective teacher. I am most rewarded when my students report
that my course has opened their eyes to something in the social world they
did not see before. As noted in Appendix A,
several students have commented that my course has given them a new
perspective. I especially appreciate the unsolicited
e-mails and letters in which my students articulate how my course has
changed their lives. Those are the moments that remind me how being an
effective instructor can make a difference in someone's life.
Description of Teaching Responsibilities and
Activities
As evidenced in Appendix
D, I have been the instructor of record for four undergraduate courses,
including the department's required undergraduate research methods and
statistics course and one senior level seminar. In addition, I have
co-taught two graduate level seminars. I have also “guest
lectured” in several colleagues’ classes, including two
undergraduate courses and the graduate level introductory statistics
course. Appendix C includes evaluations of my
performance as a guest lecturer in these courses. Appendix
H describes my participation in the Preparing the Professoriate program,
where one of my responsibilities was to co-teach a course.
I have changed the way I teach in my
undergraduate Sociology of the Family course, as I have moved from the use of
research monographs to using a reader that includes a wider variety of
research topics and writing styles. In all of my undergraduate courses,
I use a mixture of texts and published research articles and, beginning in
2002, newspaper articles. My changes are the result of student comments
on the accessibility of the readings and their desire to see sociological
concepts in everyday life. I use a balance of qualitative and
quantitative work. One area in which I could improve is in the
use of video media in the classroom. My undergraduate students have
commented that they enjoy using videos as examples of important
concepts. In my Fall 2002 Sociology of the Family course I included one
video as an introduction to material and one movie-length video (Ma Vie en
Rose) upon which my students were asked to write a short paper applying
course concepts (see Appendix F for this rubric).
My courses are reading and writing
intensive. I believe that critical thinking cannot be taught without
application; therefore, we do a substantial amount of out-of-class reading
and writing to practice the use of the sociological imagination. This
can be seen in the kinds of activities my students perform both in and out of
the classroom, as noted in Appendices E and F.
I also believe that neophyte scholars need to feel comfortable in their
intellectual endeavors. I have my students work in groups, both informally
in the classroom and formally in out-of-class projects, such that they are
both learning the material and sharing skills with one another in a way that
is mutually beneficial. I also require class presentations to give my
students practice in honing their oral communications skills which will be
necessary in their career choices.
Teaching Methods and Materials
I am honest with the students about who
I am and my personal beliefs in how they shape the way I see the social
world. Further, I hope to provide a comfortable environment in which
the students can practice the same behavior with me and one another.
Through open discussion in the classroom, students are given opportunities to
learn from their own experiences as well as those experiences of others as
they relate to the content of the course. Through these opportunities,
I encourage students to be more sensitive to different types of life
experiences than their own. This is fostered through students working
together in and out of the classroom. This has worked to the
students’ benefit on many occasions. Student reports in
evaluations have suggested that the group activity times have allowed them to
speak when they otherwise would not have, and that they were more comfortable
engaging in dialogue around course material in smaller group settings than in
the larger class discussions (see Appendix A).
As the instructor I have certain
responsibilities toward and expectations from the students. I clearly
define learning objectives and evaluative criteria for both the overall
course and individual activities, as evidenced by the syllabi in Appendix D. Specifically, I prepare individual
activity rubrics so that the students know in advance exactly what I am
expecting out of their assignments and the criteria upon which they will be
graded. The rubrics for many of my assignments are included in Appendix F. Students have the right to know what
is expected of them both on the intellectual level and in their preparation
for evaluation. I do not use evaluation as a means of supporting
competition among students or as a means of pressuring students to
perform. Grades are not given to make students “feel
better.” Instead, evaluation is used to highlight the
students’ achievements in the classroom and to offer constructive
criticism for further learning. Thus, the students receive evaluative
comments frequently during the duration of the course. This allows them
to gauge their understand of the course material and
track their progress toward the learning objectives for the overall course
along the way. One specific opportunity which I provide to all students
is the opportunity to submit a rough draft of any written assignment to me
for formative feedback in preparation for the final draft of the
assignment. This allows students the opportunity see the strengths and
weaknesses of any written assignment prior to receiving a grade so they may
have the chance to improve within the course of preparing a particular
assignment.
As noted above, my classes are reading
and writing intensive. Most assignments in-class and all out-of-class
assignments are designed for the students to become engaged with the material
and articulate that engagement via their writing. Examples of
activities as well as my instructions to my students can be found in Appendices E and F. In all group activities, I
now have my students evaluate their and their group members’
participation via a peer rating sheet. This is also included in Appendix F. This reminds all students that they
must earn each grade they receive in my courses.
I have handled my graduate classes in a
slightly different manner. In the graduate level statistics course, I
used interactive lectures, focusing primarily on the course instructor's
notes but stopping to ask questions to verify the students understood the material.
As noted in the evaluations for Introduction to Sociological Analysis in Appendix H, several students appreciated my taking the
time to make sure they did understand the material. Further, my
attention to student understanding was complimented in the evaluations for
the graduate-level Quantitative Sociological Analysis course, also in Appendix H. My reasoning for altering my
presentation style in this class is described in more detail in the
introduction to Appendix H. In the graduate
level Sociology of Gender seminar, the instructor and I generally split
leading the course each week. I usually began with questions based on
the material and led to more broad discussion questions linking readings
together.
Assessment of Teaching Effectiveness
I encourage frequent feedback from the
students on the progression of the course. As we are on the path to
learning together, their evaluations of what is being taught, how it is being
taught and their learning experience are important to me. I employ a
mid-semester evaluation; I use their feedback on this evaluation to tailor
the direction of the course. This evaluation instrument is included in Appendix B. In addition, I inquire as to what my
students see as “good” teaching and “effective”
learning, as well as the level of responsibility that is in the hands of the
individual students and in my hands as the instructor. This feedback
gives me a sense of the specific needs of each individual class, as well as
the chance to talk about teaching and learning in general.
In conjunction with the required
departmental teaching evaluation instrument, I also employ a teaching
effectiveness questionnaire at the end of each course. This
questionnaire asks directed questions as to how the students felt during the
course regarding the representativeness of voices
within the course and my responsiveness to their concerns. This
instrument is not one of my own design, but more
directly evaluates my effectiveness as an instructor to meet the goals of my
teaching philosophy. As with all teaching evaluations, I request that
students answer the questions anonymously so they may be more honest in their
responses.
Table 1 in Appendix
A shows the quantitative evaluations for my Sociology of the Family
course since 2000. Numbers above 3.00 are seen as evidence of an
effective instructor, while numbers above 4.00 are seen as exceptional.
While I would prefer my quantitative evaluation scores to be higher than they
currently are, I believe the scores for several of the items reflect the
dissonance between my teaching philosophy and student expectations of college
level courses. For example, I score relatively high on items measuring
whether I am a good performer (e.g., clear, stimulating presentations,
interested in the course material, enjoying teaching the course).
However, my scores for being a fair instructor are much lower. In
addition, the students were less likely to report that I was an effective
teacher, but they continued to report I had given them new viewpoints.
I believe these scores, as well as those in Tables 2-5,
reflect undergraduate students’ belief that college instructors,
particularly female college instructors, should be entertaining but not
overly challenging. This is compounded by the material I teach in my
classrooms (a class about families seems like a class in which many could
excel). My lower scores on fairness as compared to my ability to
entertain seem to reflect this belief, especially given the fact that I
instituted the use of rubrics in 2001 specifically so students could better
understand my grading schema. These rubrics, which articulate
explicitly my requirements for assignments, tend to be seen as my being picky
in grading the students’ assignments, as my students have noted in my
Sociology of the Family course evaluations.
I have found that while I may in
general be an effective undergraduate instructor, the graduate students I
have taught feel that my classroom presentations at times seem too
basic. I had changed the extent of my discussion questions but had not
changed the underlying premise that I needed to excited and engage the
students. Graduate students by virtue of being in graduate school are
already more excited and engaged with the course material than the average
undergraduate. As noted in Appendix H, some
of the Introduction to Sociological Analysis students were
not challenged via my presentation of the material, although others
appreciated my presentation style. As the class included a wide range
of students, from students who performed quantitative analyses in their
master’s theses to those who had less than one semester in their
undergraduate program, this kind of “aim for the middle” approach
to teaching seemed to me a necessity. I later found I needed to change the
presentation of the material in the Quantitative Sociological Analysis
course, as the students noted they needed more practical information,
including hands-on practice with the concepts being taught. The
feedback I received during those two graduate courses in particular have
helped me think more clearly about becoming an instructor of both
undergraduate and graduate students.
The Sociology of Gender course too had wide variation
within the students. Instead of asking factual questions to begin a
discussion (which I do in an undergraduate classroom to verify everyone
understood the material), the faculty member with whom I co-taught the course
suggested I should ask opinion or open-ended questions so that the students
would not be placed in a situation where they could be told they were
wrong. I should assume they have the knowledge level understanding of
the material and focus on getting them to move into higher level critical
thinking. The faculty member suggested I needed to “protect the
egos” of the graduate students as their identities are more connected
with their academic performance than the average undergraduate. If I
had never had the opportunity to teach in the graduate classroom, I would
never have thought about this distinction.
Goals
In the future, I anticipate teaching in
both the undergraduate and graduate classrooms. I would like to build
on my prior teaching with undergraduates, taking into consideration that I
tend to be too optimistic at beginning of semester, such that I need to pare
down my syllabi for lower level courses. I would like to use more media
such as films and case studies in the undergraduate classes and have the
students become more invested and engaged in the class by bringing in more
outside examples. During my participation in the Preparing Future
Faculty program (Appendix G),
I observed my mentor's classroom where she organized work groups at
the beginning of the semester and allow students to divide the course
readings among their group members. This encouraged students to work
together and explain the material to one another and allowed for more student
interaction in the small group discussions. I instituted this in a
modified format in my Families and Work class where students work together to
present course material and complete a research project throughout the
semester. The students responded by noting that they did not learn as
much as they would have liked, as they felt I should have been teaching more
of the course material. I may change the format of my lower level
classes in the future to a model similar to the one described above, as it is
consistent with my overall concerns with students becoming excited, engaged,
and empowered in my classroom. However, I will need to find a balance
between my leading class discussions and those led by students.
Further, I would like to experiment with having students choose their own
groups within which to work on research projects, in hopes of reducing some
of the anxiety which tends to accompany this assignment. I hope to have
further opportunities to practice leading graduate classes, both in
presenting new analysis techniques and in substantive discussions, as only
through practice can I become a more effective graduate instructor.
Appendices:
·
Appendix A:
Student Evaluations of Teaching
·
Appendix B:
Teaching Evaluation Materials
·
Appendix C: Colleague
Teaching Evaluations (additional information available upon request)
·
Appendix D:
Course Syllabi
·
Appendix E:
In-Class Activities
·
Appendix F: Out-of-Class
Activities
·
Appendix G:
Preparing Future Faculty
·
Appendix H:
Preparing the Professoriate
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