In the comments section of our most recent "how can we help you?" post, Grad Student writes:
Since it's that time of year, I was re-visiting your excellent Job Market Bootcamp. One question I have concerns the teaching portfolio. What should one do if, at the time of application, one is in the middle of the first teaching semester? Although I have a teaching philosophy and syllabi, I have no teaching evaluations to use for 'proof' of my teaching competence. Further, although I have several semesters of TA experience, there were no discussion sections for which evaluations could be provided. Any advice would be much appreciated.
Excellent question – and I'm curious to hear what everyone thinks!
I'm inclined to say that in this case, the best way to establish teaching competence is for one's portfolio to include many detailed teaching materials, such as syllabi, a sample lecture outline (or Powerpoint), examples of assignments (term-papers, daily assignments, etc.), and so on. As someone who has served on two search committees, my sense is that a person's materials say a lot about them–about how much time and thought they put into their teaching, how competent and/or innovative their teaching methods are, what their classroom is like, and so on. Indeed, as someone who knows people who are skeptical of the value of student evaluations, I suspect there may be a good number of search committee members who will attach more weight to a candidate's other materials as "proof" of competent or good teaching. The key here, though, is for one's materials to actually be very good–so I would also suggest working really hard to develop really well thought-through syllabi, assignments, and so on.
I also cannot help but wonder whether a creative job-candidate in a situation like this might, in a manner of speaking, "make their own" informal student evaluations. I've known people who have students fill out surveys early in the semester to solicit feedback similar to the kind elicited in teaching reviews (viz. questions such as "How would you rate the instructor's overall teaching effectiveness thus far?", etc.). While I've never actually seen a job-candidate include anything like this in a teaching portfolio, I wonder whether–in cases like this (where a person literally has no past teaching evaluations)–it might at least provide some evidence search committees might find relevant. I'm really just throwing this possibility out there to see what people make of it.
Anyway, what do you all think? What should someone in this person's position do to best establish their teaching competence?
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