Teaching Perspectives Inventory

Today I completed my Teaching Perspectives Inventory (http://teachingperspectives.com). I must admit that I was a bit incredulous as I was taking it, but I have to say that my results probably fit me fairly well. My dominant perspective came out as Developmental (Effective teaching must be planned and conducted "from the learner's point of view") with Transmission (Effective teaching requires a substantial commitment to the content or subject matter) not far behind. I think that these suit me fairly well because I like to stress key concepts that underlie patterns observed in nature (which I relate to examples within the context of the course in question) and I love to over-prepare for every lecture (both in terms of studying all of the literature associated with the content I plan to present, and in trying to make the presentation interesting enough to capture the attention of the class). It's interesting to me that a lot of the traits discussed under these two perspectives are things that I already had in my teaching philosophy, although I didn't identify them at the time as being associated with any particular perspectives.

As to the things that have influenced my teaching perspectives, I think that the years that I spent as a naturalist on a snorkel boat have probably had a long-term effect on my teaching strategies; since the passengers came from all types of backgrounds I would try to start all of my presentations with some key concepts upon which I could build (e.g. how islands form for the Hawaiian islands presentation or how the isolation/size of islands influence their biota for the reef life presentation), and as a large part of my job there was to get the passengers excited I focused on making my presentations as interesting as possible. Additionally, since people would ask you all types of questions, from "what was that fish with the long nose" to "why is the ocean that color" I felt that I had to be constantly learning all kinds of information in order to prepare for their questions.

As for why I apparently identify less with the other teaching perspectives, even then, when I was working educational trips for a conservation organization and was supposed to attempt to inspire people toward social reform, I found it hard to stress the importance of social action; I always felt that if I could get people excited about how interesting marine life was that that part would fall out on it's own. I guess that's why social reform didn't come out as one of my top perspectives! Apprenticeship and nurturing came out fairly low, as well; probably because I think that biology topics generally involve things that everyone should know (whether or not they are going to use this information at their jobs) and I feel that there should be professional distance between an instructor and their students (I want everyone to succeed, but I probably stress accountability over nurturing).

I have never blogged before, and I certainly never thought that I would ever do so, so hopefully this entry isn't too much of a disaster!