A Formal Teaching Portfolio
Teaching Portfolio for P.Q.*
August 1, 1994
A. Goals
1. Teaching Philosophy
Students should derive long-term benefits from their time in my classes by continuing to grow and develop…. Rather than supply students with static facts, I believe that I will serve them better by teaching them how to define a problem, how to decide what they need to solve it, how to find and evaluate new information, how to recognize their limits, and how to be prepared both for change and to change. I prefer to involve the student in a creative thinking process…. A difficult teaching issue, but an important aspect of clinical practice, is the ambiguous, uncertain, and sometimes contradictory nature of clinical problems…. I continue to learn from experience and from the literature about the dynamics of teaching and about my discipline so I can improve my effectiveness as an instructor.
2. Primary Goal
My primary goal is to have a positive effect on the students’ future professional practice. Part of the impact involves stimulating students to consider situations from perspectives different from those they normally adopt. This goal also involves encouraging students to develop career-long habits of self-motivated learning….
B. Responsibilities
1. Courses taught
[A two-page listing by semester, in detail, of courses taught beginning in 1990, with catalog numbers, titles, number of credits, number of students, number of hours of involvement. The list concludes with a half-page “Special Note” about a senior-level course that was extensively reworked because of widespread misperceptions about the importance and centrality of its subject, and because of the fact that the typical student in the discipline is “relatively innumerate.”]
2. Individual students
[A list of five undergraduate and professional students, and a list of nine postdoctoral trainees, with a short paragraph about each.]
3. Advising
[A short paragraph about the kind of advising done, the number of students advised, and some of the results of this advising.]
4. Instructional Innovations
[Three items are listed: one having to do with introducing aspects of statistics into a graduate program to display the effects of chance on results that involve sampling; and two new or considerably modified courses, with brief descriptions.]
5. Extraordinary Efforts for Under-Represented Groups
I have encouraged several women who were initially unsure of their ability to perform the physical work sometimes required to enter this practice field. This encouragement has included suggesting that they do externships with successful female practitioners.
6. Use of Disciplinary Research
I incorporate my research into my teaching to different degrees, depending on appropriateness for the course [examples]…. I encourage students to become directly involved in…research projects, usually under the workstudy program, and give them opportunities to provide creative input to projects.
7. Evaluation Activities
Participation in advanced degree examinations: [List of four persons, each with a brief description of the student and of the faculty member’s role.]
8. Instructional Service
[List of three college committees to which P.Q. belongs, including names of the committees and their chairs, periods of involvement, and estimates of time spent.]
9. Learning About Teaching
[A rather lengthy essay describing how the author became especially interested in study of the teaching process, read some of the key books (listed), and read “several folders of papers” developed from a search through “over a decade of journals” concerned with education in the field. P.Q. has recently attended several conferences, at least one of them national, on aspects of teaching in this field.]
10. Extramural funding
[P.Q. has been a cooperator in an externally funded educational project for youth.]
C. Teaching Evaluations
1. Student evaluations
[Careful description of the procedure in the college for collecting these data; description of the range of scores; explanations of the lowest scores, and brief indications of plans for doing something about them. There is a well-organized one-page table of numerical results.]
2. Peer Evaluation Summary
All peer teaching evaluations that I have received are contained under supporting materials—teaching. [Several sentences of analysis.] All of the…evaluations contain useful suggestions, which I will implement.
3. Student, Alumni and Employer Letters
A copy of a student letter to the Dean…is included in the appendix…
4. Colleague Teaching Letters
[See C.2 above.]
5. Teaching Awards Received
None [a statement of this kind need not have been included].
6. Self-Evaluation of Teaching Deficiencies
[P.Q. describes a speech impediment believed to detract from lecturing, and measures that have been taken and will be taken to compensate. P. Q. was disappointed by students’ failure to do assigned reading in preparation for class discussions, and is developing methods for correcting this problem.]
D. Teaching Products
1. Student Successes
[Influence on a student in the master’s program is playing a role in that student’s success in a doctoral program at another university, to which P. Q. helped to obtain admission for the student.]
2. Teaching Materials
Included in course materials in the appendix; created on a PC, so easily revised.
[No “Presentations and Publications on Scholarship of Teaching” or “Other Products” were listed.]
Signed:Â P**************** Q***************