Abstract:
At some point in the teaching career, educators are expected to develop
a teaching philosophy statement (TPS). This could be during the initial teacher
training programme; when applying for a teaching post or when seeking promotion.
It could also be a component of a continuous professional development programme
that teachers undergo or a component of a teaching portfolio they have to submit
for a specified purpose. This paper explored the extent to which articulating
a teaching philosophy statement promotes reflective practice and also advance
the professional development of higher education teachers. Narrativism was
employed as the over-arching paradigm for this study. A qualitative approach was
adopted, and data was collected through an online qualitative or open ended
questionnaire, in which the participants were requested to narrate their teaching
philosophy statements. Thematic analysis was utilised to analyse the data. The
findings revealed that writing a TPS does, to a large extent, enable a reflectivepractice. Furthermore, the exercise promotes professional development by allowing
teachers to rethink their practices.
