For your last application paper, I am assigning you to write a Teaching Statement. A Teaching Statement is an essay that allows you to reflect on your own teaching beliefs and practices. Your teaching statement
For your last application paper, I am assigning you to write a Teaching Statement. A Teaching Statement is an essay that allows you to reflect on your own teaching beliefs and practices. Your teaching statement should also include concrete examples of the ways in which you enact or would enact these beliefs in your classroom. For this assignment, you should provide a clear and concise message about your teaching beliefs and practices by briefly discussing how at least one learning perspective (cognitive psychology, contextual theories, behaviorism, or social cognitive theory-see p. 400 for overview) informs or would inform your approach to teaching. I also expect for you to discuss strategies you would use to promote at least one form of motivation in the classroom (i.e., expectancies/high self-efficacy, achievement values, mastery approach goals, adaptive attributions, sense of belonging, growth mindset, lowering of anxiety see p. 458 for overview). Please provide concrete examples of instruction or activities that make it easy for me to understand how your instructional approaches or activities are informed by a particular learning perspective and/or motivation theory.
Below I am providing you with an example of a Teaching Statement that I wrote earlier in my career. You will notice that mine is too long but I wanted you to get a sense of what a teaching statement looks like. This is just one example and I am not claiming that it is the best example. ? There are many other Teaching Statement examples on-line. Do not be afraid to be creative with your own Teaching Statement. As long as you include the information I am requiring, it is fine if you personalize your statement a bit. This assignment will give you an opportunity to think more deeply about your beliefs about teaching and learning and what you aim to accomplish as a teacher. Please let me know if you have any questions about this assignment.
Formatting criteria: 1-page, double-spaced, and one-inch margins. Your name should be included in the header. No title page is necessary.
Grading criteria: For this piece, you will be graded on the following areas:
Clarity and comprehensiveness: You will be graded on how clearly you communicated your teaching beliefs and practices. Be sure to discuss at least one learning perspective and one motivational concept in a way that clearly demonstrates your knowledge and understanding of these perspectives and concepts. In addition, communicate your ideas so that others within the education field understand your position and topics discussed.
Required references: You will be graded on the inclusion of information that is referenced in your textbook. This piece does not need to be in APA format. Required References: Textbook information
Grammar/style and Organization: You will be graded on your ability to communicate effectively using grammar conventions and an appropriate style. You should communicate clearly and directly, have a cohesive and organized structure, and communicate without grammatical or typographical errors.
Connections with Course Material: You will be graded on your ability to make explicit and appropriate connections between learning perspectives and motivation concepts with concrete examples of teaching.
Creativity: I will also grade you on the extent to which your statement is attention grabbing, insightful, and/or interesting to the reader.
Teaching Statement Example
The increasing anxiety and irritation on Gretchen’s face was palpable as she slammed her pencil down on her homework assignment replete with mostly unsolved polynomial equations. “I’m no good at math and I hate it!” she said. This was her third time taking college algebra; the one course she needed to graduate. Gretchen, my cousin, was a first-generation college student and I knew how important it was for her and our family that she obtain an undergraduate degree.
However, at this moment as her math tutor I felt I had reached an impasse in my ability to motivate her to persist through this course, similar to the type of agony I had endured as a long-distance runner hitting the proverbial wall. The arduous struggle to motivate Gretchen to learn college algebra many years ago stayed with me and eventually drove me to become an educational psychologist specializing in the study of student motivation. It also informed my philosophy of teaching that centers on building students’ self-efficacy and intrinsic motivation for learning so that they, in turn, are more likely to become life-long independent learners. This idea of teaching is consistent with a social cognitive theoretical perspective, as I believe that teachers have an important role in enhancing students’ self-efficacy and value for academic coursework—two central motivational beliefs that influence academic success. To promote my students’ interest and value for learning, I focus on enhancing the relevancy of course material, and to develop students’ confidence, I focus on providing them with emotional support and autonomy to make decisions about their learning. Informed by my own research and the research of others, I accomplish this by enacting several practices and activities in my own classrooms. Achievement motivation research provides unequivocal evidence that enhancing the relevancy of course concepts leads to improved student motivation and academic achievement and some studies have indicated that enhancing the personal relevancy of academic subjects can have the most powerful impact among those students who begin a course having little interest in the subject matter. Therefore, one strategy that I implement to assist me in the personal relevancy of academic concepts in my own courses is to administer a short survey to my students on the first day of class that asks them about their personal interests, hobbies, and academic/career goals. I refer back to this personal information and weave these interests into my lessons as much as possible throughout the semester. For example, many of my former college students have reported being avid sports fans. Thus, when covering a lesson about frequency distributions and histograms in my introductory statistics courses, I have asked students to plot the frequency distribution of the number of wins for the 32 NFL teams in the prior season. Moreover, when covering measures of central tendency, I have had students visit the ESPN website and calculate the mean and standard deviation of the rushing yards completed by their favorite running back (e.g., Adrian Peterson) in a particular game.
In my research methods classes, I enhance the relevancy of the course material and provide students with autonomy by having them develop their own research experiments. To do this effectively, I first have students read several research articles that I select primarily based on their areas of interest. After students learn the basic concepts required to conduct psychological experiments, I have them work in groups to develop their own research experiments. In my last research methods course, for example, students selected research topics that included examining the effects of pop-culture and public service announcements on prejudice against Hispanics. At the end of the semester, I had students write a manuscript that includes all of the basic elements of a research paper. I believe that lessons and activities such as these are the reason that students have repeatedly conveyed to me in course evaluations that I made learning the course material
enjoyable and meaningful. Moreover, I have had several of my students ask me about additional research opportunities they could pursue after the semester was over.
My research has also made me aware of the importance of providing students with emotional support to foster their academic success, particularly in classes that involve mathematics like the statistics and research courses that I teach, because many students begin these courses with a high level of anxiety for math. Informed by my background in personal counseling, I provide a sense of universality among my students by having them report their level of anxiety for the course (1 = not anxious; 10 = very anxious) on the first day of class. Students report feeling less anxious after this exercise and it provides me with an opportunity to normalize these feelings with others and assuage their fears about the course. This exercise helps enhance students’ self
efficacy for the course because it gives me the opportunity to discuss the importance of having a growth mindset of learning, which aligns with a belief embedded within my own teaching philosophy that through practice and effort all students are able to succeed. Another way I try to increase students’ self-efficacy for the course is by having them provide justifications for their solutions to statistics problems as this gives me an opportunity to give them positive feedback for the content areas in which they demonstrate competence rather than solely focusing on their misconceptions. Many of my students report to me at the end of the semester that they actually enjoyed taking statistics and that I made the subject easier to learn.
Because I provide students with autonomy over their learning, I know that it is imperative for them to have the strategies that will allow them to thrive in this type of environment. I spend time in my courses giving instruction about self-regulated learning strategies, including cognitive (e.g., outlining notes), metacognitive strategies (e.g., self-questioning for understanding), and motivational regulation strategies and define these strategies in course syllabi. I make students aware of these strategies and encourage them to determine which self-regulated learning strategies work best for them so that they achieve a deeper understanding of the subject matter and become self-regulated learners. I believe that these self-regulated learning strategies are particularly important for students to succeed academically in on-line courses.
In sum, my teaching philosophy focuses on developing students’ love for learning and the confidence they need to succeed academically. It is the hope that they leave my classroom more intellectually curious about subjects that may have been of little interest. Because I attempt to spark this intellectual curiosity, I also try to provide them with the strategies to become independent learners so that they thrive academically long after they leave my class.
Gretchen could not stop smiling as I watched her walk up the ramp onto the stage where she would receive her diploma. She had thanked me earlier that day for helping her get here, but it was really me who should have been thanking her. She pushed me to think about different ways to present those math problems in a manner that would help her learn. She pressed me to make the math more relevant for her to enjoy and to get excited about a subject that she disliked. Ultimately,
she helped me develop my love for teaching and through all my challenges and the struggles in helping her succeed, she taught me to always approach the task of teaching with humility.
Collepals.com Plagiarism Free Papers
Are you looking for custom essay writing service or even dissertation writing services? Just request for our write my paper service, and we'll match you with the best essay writer in your subject! With an exceptional team of professional academic experts in a wide range of subjects, we can guarantee you an unrivaled quality of custom-written papers.
Get ZERO PLAGIARISM, HUMAN WRITTEN ESSAYS
Why Hire Collepals.com writers to do your paper?
Quality- We are experienced and have access to ample research materials.
We write plagiarism Free Content
Confidential- We never share or sell your personal information to third parties.
Support-Chat with us today! We are always waiting to answer all your questions.
