Department Statement about the Place of Teaching

GUIDELINES: Objective

Learning and teaching effectiveness can only be measured within a specific academic environment. Consequently, a brief statement by each department that articulates its instructional goals and evaluation procedures can meaningfully contextualize the junior faculty member’s instructional contributions.

Because teaching and learning occur in a variety of situations, the statement should be comprehensive in scope, marked by flexibility of outlook, inclusiveness in strategies, and acceptance of innovation and creativity.

GUIDELINES: Characteristics

Flexibility: The plan should accommodate varying styles, instructional talents, and emphases. It should encourage diverse profiles of instructional contributions rather than designing a standardized template into which all faculty must fit. The case for, and value of, such flexibility was presented in an earlier analysis of instructional evaluation at ASU. (See Section II of the 1994 report, Instructional Evaluation at ASU.)

Inclusiveness: The plan should recognize the broad range of kinds of instructional contributions that represent the department’s contributions to the mandates of a Research I university. A large list of possible kinds of contributions is offered in order to acknowledge the very broad range of activities that should be acknowledged as instructional efforts (See Table 2 of the 1994 report, Instructional Evaluation at ASU.) Individual faculty will undoubtedly have different profiles of activities, but should not be expected to contribute in all of the possible ways that may be listed.

Creativity: The plan should recognize creativity and efforts to improve one’s instructional skills. It would be important, for example, to acknowledge efforts to develop, employ and assess learning objectives as part of one’s instructional arsenal. (For more information on learning objectives, see the Course Planning section of CLTE’s Teaching Resources page.)

The importance of innovation and self improvement was stressed in the introductory comments to the 1994 report:

“We emphasize the importance of innovation and encourage experimentation because we believe that there has not been sufficient encouragement in the past and because there is a vast literature on higher education that can be used for instructional improvement. But this is not meant to imply criticism of those of us who competently pursue more traditional approaches to teaching. The charge to individual faculty is to find what works best for them in the context of departmental needs, and simply to consider ideas for instructional improvement as they may serve those needs.”

The 1994 report also expressed concern that efforts to broaden and improve evaluation procedures should begin at the departmental level. The individual department is the best place to start defining its own role in the broader mission of the university. The report expressed special regard for the utility of the “teaching portfolio” for instructional evaluation, with de-emphasis of the role of traditional student ratings.

Department Statement Models (PDF)

• Department of Family and Human Development
• School of Art
• School of Design
• School of Justice and Social Inquiry
• Department of Management