Plan Your Teaching Development
Just as faculty need to plan their research development, faculty need also to plan their teaching development. The first step is to spend some time reflecting on what would be most impactful, informed by the data you can gather. It’s easy to just choose the convenient path, spending hours reviewing new content, perhaps mastering a new educational technology. But is that the most useful? Pause first and, as you review the information you’ve collected, consider:
- What stands out to you?
- What patterns do you notice?
- What was most surprising?
- What would you like to improve or develop?
- What is the one opportunity you want to focus on for improvement?
- What do you need to do to make this improvement?
Ready to Plan?
Strategies for Teaching Development
- Stay current in disciplinary developments and disciplinary-specific best teaching practices. Explore best practices for teaching through research or through reading newsletters like “On Teaching” in The Chronicle of Higher Education, or better yet, by following your own discipline’s pedagogy journals, blogs, and publications.
- Engage in professional development through workshops and resources like those offered by the Office for Faculty Excellence; if you have more time, consider a teaching and learning conference in your discipline or a more general one.
- Assess implicit bias. Even if you imagine yourself largely free of bias and committed in your personal and professional opposition to discrimination, we encourage you to check out Project Implicit and take a test (or two). The test results typically surprise educated professionals, even those of us who are aware that we have biases and believe we can successfully circumvent them. Most test takers receive valuable information to reflect on.
- Make a teaching inventory: Several have been developed that focus on teaching practices. Wieman & Gilbert (2014) provide one model aimed at science and math faculty but adaptable to other disciplines. Here are two key excerpts: an overview of the inventory and a sample inventory (both open as PDFs).
- Pull artifacts for your teaching portfolio. Often curated as part of job search materials or a reappointment process, teaching portfolios also have relevance as evidence of your teaching. Collect artifacts of your teaching such as syllabi, assignments, student work, and your reflection on your teaching practice.