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What kind of teacher are you?

I'm "teaching" a new "class" this semester - the quotes are because the "class" is a faculty seminar and it's really more like I'm 'facilitating' than 'teaching'. But the work I'm putting into it feels very much like prepping a course and I had forgotten how much work this is! The seminar is on "High-Impact Teaching", which is really just a term I made up, mostly to appeal to those in my administration who are all about High-Impact Practices, and which I am using to encompass scholarly teaching and using evidence-based pedagogy (if anyone is interested, the details are here).

Anyway, the first meeting was Thursday and in preparation, the participants were asked to complete the Teaching Perspectives Inventory (TPI) and the Teaching Goals Inventory (TGI). I thought I'd share these tools with you all because I think these are both really interesting tools for thinking about who you are as a teacher. The items on the TGI measure your affinity for one of five perspectives: Transmission, Apprenticeship, Developmental, Nurturing and Social Reform; what I found particularly interesting was the breakdown of Beliefs, Intentions and Actions within each perspective. The idea is that no one perspective is "best" - it's just useful to better understand whether what you think you are doing actually lines up with what you want to be doing and what you believe is important. The TGI is similar but breaks things down a little differently and focuses more on the goals you believe are more or less important.

I wasn't particularly surprised that I scored highest on the Apprenticeship and Developmental perspectives on the TPI, which is also consistent with my highest rating on the TGI falling in the cluster emphasizing 'Higher Order Thinking Skills'. But I am not sure what to make of the fact that my average rating on the TGI was lowest in the cluster representing 'Liberal Arts and Academic Values'...

If you've never used done this sort of self-evaluation, I'm curious what you think of your results. Feel free to come share in the comments!
 

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