In our most recent "Ask a search-committee member" thread, Postdoc writes:
I'd like to know how search committees read teaching statements. I'm familiar with the standard advice on teaching statements from The Professor is In (give concrete examples, don't be saccharine, keep it down to one page), but I am curious what people on the other end are actually looking for. What can a search committee learn about a candidate from their teaching statement? What role – if any – does a teaching statement play when determining whether a candidate would be a good teacher? And, for good measure, what are some things that SC members find annoying?
Great questions! As readers may know, we've discussed teaching statements a few times. However, Postdoc is asking for a more detailed indication of what search committees look for. So let me offer a few thoughts and then open things up for other search-committee members to weigh in.
Two things I expect search-committee members at institutions like mine are looking for are real thoughtfulness about pedagogy and probably some originality of teaching style. Although this is just impression, my sense is that a lot of candidates coming out of good PhD programs can look like they treat teaching as something an afterthought. If your research statement is really involved–making it clear that you take your research very seriously–but your teaching statement a melange of basic teaching practices (Socratic dialogue and diagramming arguments on a whiteboard), then I think you run the risk of looking like someone who has never thought about let alone tried alternative teaching strategies, especially when a search-committee comes across someone else's teaching statement that makes it clear that they have thought a great deal about teaching and do some original things in the classroom.
Let me be clear here. There's nothing wrong with a traditional Socratic lecture. I even know some colleagues who do it. However, my sense is that the problem with a teaching statement like this is three-fold. First, if your teaching statement just says you do traditional Socratic teaching–particularly if you don't demonstrate anything particularly striking about how you do it–then you run the risk of 'blending into the woodwork' of the other hundred or so other candidates who say more or less the same thing. Second, you run the risk, again, of not looking particularly thoughtful about pedagogy–since it might look like you've just never bothered to think about other ways teaching. Finally, and this is important, my sense is that students, tenure-and-promotion committees, and administrators at schools like mine generally expect more than this from full-time faculty. Indeed, although I haven't done anything like a formal poll, my sense is that the vast majority of full-time faculty at my school do some combination of powerpoint, creative in-class group assignments, and so on. In part this is because of how long our courses are (1:15-meetings three days per week or 1:50-meetings two days per week). Having tried Socratic teaching when I first got here, I can say from experience just how difficult it is to keep a class of intro students engaged by two straight hours (!) of it. Consequently, even if you do Socratic teaching, my sense is that it is probably advantageous to either show that you do it in some kind of unique and thoughtful way, or that you conjoin it with some other things.
Aside from this, my sense is that some search-committee members care a great deal about overall course-structure, the kinds of texts one assigns in courses, and forms of assessment (do you just have exams and term-papers, or other assignments?). However, I'm not sure that all of these things need to be touched on in a good teaching statement. Anyway, to make a long story short, my sense is that the #1 thing one should want to do in a strong teaching statement is to stand out as someone who has clearly thought about teaching a great deal and whose practices–whatever they are–have a clear and well thought-out pedagogical justification. Finally, on what's "annoying", I guess not giving any concrete details might be a bit annoying. You can say you do this or that (e.g. in-class group assignments)–but if you don't give any details on what those assignments are like, you can leave your reader wondering what in the world it is that you actually do!
But these are just my thoughts. What do other search-committee members out there think? What do you look for in a teaching statement? And what is annoying?
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