My university encourages faculty development and I am presently enrolled in a Master Teacher course, for folks who want to be better teachers.
The homework before the next session involved taking the Teaching Perspectives Inventory.
After I took it, so I would have some idea what it meant, I went to the article “Development and Use of The Teaching Perspectives Inventory (TPI)” by Pratt, Collins, and Selinger.
My dominant mode is apprenticeship. I am not surprised by this, as that has been the metaphor I have used within my classrooms since at least the second year I was teaching, decades ago.
Apprenticeship:
Effective teaching is a process of enculturating students into a set of social norms and ways of working.
Good teachers are highly skilled at what they teach. Whether in classrooms or at work sites, they arerecognized for their expertise. Teachers must reveal the inner workings of skilled performance and must now translateit into accessible language and an ordered set of tasks. Learning tasks usually proceed from simple to complex,allowing for different points of observation and entry depending upon the learner’s capability. Good teachers knowwhat their learners can do on their own and what they can do with guidance and direction; namely, engaging learners’within their ‘zone of development’. As learners mature and become more competent, the teacher’s role changes, andover time, teachers offer less direction and give more responsibility as they progress from dependent learners toindependent workers.
My recessive mode is Social Reform, also not a surprise.
I think this was a useful tool for discussion.