Good day! In this blog, I’ll be sharing to you my personal and professional values as an instructor. To help me flesh out my professional identity, I took the teaching perspectives inventory and reflected on my results.
Before talking about my TPI result, I’d like you to know more about TPI. Refer to the series of videos below.
My TPI Profile
My dominant teaching perspective is apprenticeship which focuses on providing opportunities to learners in performing authentic tasks. Within the apprenticeship perspective, there is no internal discrepancy – that is, my beliefs (what I believe about teaching and learning), intentions (what I try to accomplish in my teaching), and actions (what I do when I am teaching) have fairly similar scores. In all of my classes, I make sure that the learning materials and activities are directed towards letting the learners gradually experience how these are applied at work. For example, in analyzing data sets, the goal is to create a data analysis report with me guiding them on what to do. After several reports, I give the responsibility to them to lead their own project and create their own report.
My backup perspectives are nurturing, developmental, and transmission. Within the nurturing perspective, my beliefs, intentions, and actions are fairly consistent. In relation to the data analysis task, I emphasize that a supportive learning environment, hard work, and positive attitude toward learning are key components for successfully completing the course. Hence, support from the peers who understood the learning materials and support from me as a teacher to clarify concerns are put in place to help the learners.
Within the developmental perspective, I noticed that my intentions and actions are fairly similar but discrepant (2-5 points higher than) with my beliefs. With this, I intend to and behave in ways to address individual learner’s needs – if the learner is having a difficulty in interpreting the results, I am available to help him/her understand what to do. On the other hand, I believe that developing a better understanding of the learning materials is first and foremost the responsibility of the learner – I am just there to give him/her the opportunity to do so.
In my transmission perspective, I noticed that my intention is the lowest (3-4 points below) compared to beliefs and actions. Because the field of research in psychology has systematic ways of doing things (and I believe in most of the fields), I cannot do away from providing the learners activities that can facilitate mastery of the content. It is not my main intention to spoon feed them with all the necessary information which reflects my low intention score. Nevertheless, I need to make sure that they have the opportunities to develop content mastery themselves.
My recessive perspective is social reform. In social reform perspective, my beliefs, intentions, and actions are fairly consistent. Although I believe that the ultimate purpose of learning is to contribute to society, this can be the one that the individual learners discover for themselves and attend to outside of the classroom.
In terms of the 10 truths that Brookfield (2015) shared, I resonated with the idea on simplifying concepts through examples, anecdotes, and autobiographical illustrations. I notice that when I share real-life examples which I also personally experience, students become more engaged and ask more questions than I expected. This makes the discussion in-depth and interactive. It makes me happy that at the end of the course they usually say that I was able to simplify difficult concepts – what I just usually did was to provide real-life examples and be vulnerable to them.
So, there it is. I hope you are able to know me better as a teacher. You may also refer to my teaching philosophy.
References
Brookfield, S. D. (2015). The skillful teacher: On technique, trust, and responsiveness in the classroom. John Wiley & Sons.
Pratt, D. P., & Collins, J. B. (2020). Teaching Perspective Inventory. http://www.teachingperspectives.com/tpi/
flowjame 