Teaching Perspectives

Overall my scores on the TPI test http://www.teachingperspectives.com/ are that Nuturing is my dominant teaching perspective at a score of 42. I truly believe that without a good self-concept there is very little learning. This is followed closesly by Apprenticeship at 39. I believe that an effective way to learn is through association and collaboration with others. It is a social constructivist viewpoint and I am not surprised that this score is very high. Most of the scores are in the 30 to 40 range except Transmission which is a recessive perspective for me at 26. Developmental seems to be my back-up perspective at 35 which is not surprising as I believe that this is the constructivist beliefs building in my perspective.

When I look at the subscores for Beliefs, Actions and Intentions I find that for the Transmission perspective they are very wide. I think that my beliefs are changing and yet I think that my practise has not so much yet. This is a bit of a concern for me as I want to be able to correspond what I believe and what I intend to do into action in my teaching practise. I am thinking that part of the problem is the system that we are forced to teach in. For instance, evaluation that insists that we give exams means that students will have to master the content in a way that I do not believe is effective. I would much prefer to have a project based learning environment where students show how they can work together to solve problems but at some point students must write that almighty departamental exam. I think all educators wrestle with this issue to some degree. All the other perspectives show that my Beliefs, Intentions and Actions are aligned. My highest intentions and beliefs are in my dominant perspectives. I think that this is good but I need to give more attention to my actions or my beliefs and intentions when it comes to the transmission perspective.

I agree with the results of this inventory because when I read the summaries of my dominant perspectives I know they align with my thinking. According to the subscores, this corresponds to what I do in the classroom. It is interesting though because the last time that I took this test was in May of this year. Transmission and Social Reform perspectives have gone down. Transmission has gone down a lot (from 32 to 26)! I am not surprised at the social reform perspective because my belief is that if we change the individual we in turn effect the society but what has changed my perspective when it comes to transmission? If anyone has any ideas about what might cause this shift, I would like to hear them.

I think I shall take the test again soon to see the results. I want to use this with my staff in the fall so that they might begin to see their perspectives. It would be nice for the whole staff to do this inventory again in the spring to see how their perspectives might change after a year of professional development.