Reflecting on Teaching: What? For Whom? Why?
Often, the motivation to improve one’s teaching by revising practices or experimenting with new initiatives stems from reflection. This reflection often focuses on feedback received from others, such as student evaluations or peer reviews. Reflection further involves one’s own assessment of experiences, through self-observation and activities that foster self-analysis such as teaching workshops or individual consultations, and/or pedagogical research.
Written reflections on teaching can be used for personal, professional, or pedagogical purposes. At Vanderbilt, promotion and review processes require faculty to reflect on their work and document their progress in teaching, research and service. When reporting on teaching, faculty are encouraged to articulate their teaching philosophy and objectives; describe past and planned course and curriculum development; and explain pedagogical initiatives, innovations or experiments, and their results.
The CFT provides one-on-one consultations on evaluating and documenting your teaching. We will work with you to reflect deliberately on your practice as a means of deepening your understanding of pedagogical goals and methods, and linking those goals and methods to student learning.
For more information, please stop by, or call, the Center for Teaching (322-7290) or visit our set of teaching guides on the topic.
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