for 5931 folks: statements of teaching philosophies

For our February 15 meeting, we're asking you to post -- on your blog -- rhetorical analyses of the teaching philosophies of others. We're asking you to do this for two reasons: thinking more on rhetorical analyses for your teaching of them and thinking toward your own teaching philosophies.

Below are links to advice given by various teaching centers from various universities about what statements of teaching philosophy are supposed to do and how teachers are supposed to achieve all that. Such statements have multiple purposes (which makes them good for rhetorical analyses): they are a form of reflection for teachers, to help them clarify why they do what they do in classes; they can be public documents sent to hiring committees as part of a job application.

Below are also links to samples of statements, some from rhet-comp and some from other fields.

So: WHAT TO DO
Read through the guidelines, and draw up for yourself an understanding of the purposes, contexts, and audiences for statements of teaching philosophy. Use your sense of purposes, contexts, and audiences to post on your blog a comparative analysis of two statements. You can analyze two statements from rhet-comp, or one from rhet-comp and one from another discipline. (Lots of samples from other disciplines are linked from the general guidelines pages.)

GENERAL GUIDELINES ON WHAT STATEMENTS OF TEACHING PHILOSOPHY ARE AND DO
from Ohio State, with linked samples lower down on the page
from The Chronicle of Higher Education
from Iowa State
from the University of Michigan, with lots of links to example from other disciplines
some comments by MetaSpencer on Statements of Teaching Philosophy

STATEMENTS OF TEACHING PHILOSOPHY examples from RHETORIC AND COMPOSITION
John Walter
Judith Van
Laura Nutten
Susan Miller-Cochran
Mine

PS -- Know that I put all this together while Dennis watched a Richard Prior DVD in the background, as, um, research for a section in a class on rhetorics of humor.