A Teaching Statement is a purposeful and reflective essay about the author’s teaching beliefs and practices. It is an individual narrative that includes not only one’s beliefs about the teaching and learning process, but also concrete examples of the ways in which he or she enacts these beliefs in the classroom. At its best, a Teaching Statement gives a clear and unique portrait of the author as a teacher, avoiding generic or empty philosophical statements about teaching.

What Purposes Does a Teaching Statement Serve?

A teaching statement can be used for personal, professional, or pedagogical purposes. Because hiring committees for academic jobs cannot observe the teaching of every applicant, they rely on other means of evaluating a candidate’s teaching. These alternatives may include a teaching demonstration during a campus visit; a teaching portfolio consisting of student evaluations, sample syllabi, etc; and/or a teaching statement. By illustrating a candidate’s teaching experiences and philosophy with concrete examples, a teaching statement helps the hiring committee imagine what it would be like inside the candidate’s classroom.

While Teaching Statements are becoming an increasingly important part of the hiring and tenure processes, they are also effective exercises in helping one clearly and coherently conceptualize his or her approaches to and experiences of teaching and learning. As Nancy Van Note Chism, Professor Emerita of Education at IUPUI observes, “The act of taking time to consider one’s goals, actions, and vision provides an opportunity for development that can be personally and professionally enriching. Reviewing and revising former statements of teaching philosophy can help teachers to reflect on their growth and renew their dedication to the goals and values that they hold.”

 What Does a Teaching Statement Include?

A Teaching Statement can address any or all of the following:

• Your conception of how learning occurs

• A description of how your teaching facilitates student learning

• A reflection of why you teach the way you do

• The goals you have for yourself and for your students

• How your teaching enacts your beliefs and goals

• What, for you, constitutes evidence of student learning

• The ways in which you create an inclusive learning environment

• Your interests in new techniques, activities, and types of learning

“If at all possible, your statement should enable the reader to imagine you in the classroom, teaching. You want to include sufficient information for picturing not only you in the process of teaching, but also your class in the process of learning.” – Helen G. Grundman, Writing a Teaching Philosophy Statement

General Guidelines

Make your teaching statement brief and well-written. While Teaching Statements are probably longer at the tenure level (i.e. 3-5 pages or more), for hiring purposes they are typically 1-2 pages in length.

Use a narrative, first-person approach. This allows the teaching statement to be both personal and reflective.

Be sincere and unique. Avoid clichés, especially ones about how much passion you have for teaching.

Make it specific rather than abstract. Ground your ideas in 1-2 concrete examples, whether experienced or anticipated. This will help the reader to better visualize you in the classroom.

Be discipline-specific. Do not ignore your research. Explain how you advance your field through teaching.

Avoid jargon and technical terms, as they can be off-putting to some readers. Try not to simply repeat what is in your CV. Teaching Statements are not exhaustive documents and should be used to complement other materials for the hiring or tenure processes.

Be humble. Mention students in an enthusiastic, not condescending way, and illustrate your willingness to learn from your students and colleagues.

Revise. Teaching is an evolving, reflective process, and Teaching Statements can be adapted and changed as necessary.

Getting Started: Brainstorming

Before you begin writing your teaching statement, it can be useful to think more generally about your teaching philosophy. Once you’ve brainstormed some ideas, you can then focus on how to clearly and succinctly communicate those thoughts in a teaching statement. The following questions will help you brainstorm more specifically about your teaching philosophy:

• What goals do you set for students in your courses?

• How do you enact those goals?

• How do you evaluate how well those goals are being met?

• What is your plan for developing your teaching? What other aspects of pedagogy would you like to develop in your practice?

• What can a student expect to experience in your class?

• What is the relationship between your teaching and research?

• What are the unique challenges or opportunities to teaching in your field?

• What is your favorite aspect of teaching? Why?

• What is your favorite course to teach? Why?

• How do you effectively teach students with diverse identities and backgrounds?

• How do your beliefs about student learning affect your instructional choices?

Struggling with Brainstorming? 

Try this "quiz": Teaching Goals Inventory, by Thomas A. Angelo and K. Patricia Cross from their book, Classroom Assessment Techniques. This “quiz” helps you to identify or create your teaching and learning goals.

*These questions and exercises are meant to be tools to help you begin reflecting on your beliefs and ideas as a teacher. No single teaching statement can contain the answers to all or most of these inquiries and activities.

Evaluating a Teaching Statement

Both search committee and instructors can use this rubric from the University of Michigan's Center for Research on Learning and Teaching for guidance in evaluating teaching statements. The design of the rubric was informed by experience with hundreds of teaching philosophies, as well as surveys of search committees on what they considered successful and unsuccessful components of job applicants’ teaching philosophies.