Teaching Perspectives Inventory: An Introduction (Sept. 17, 2019)
The Teaching Perspectives Inventory (TPI) allows teachers to examine five key areas related to teaching through the completion of a free online questionnaire. The TPI addresses the following key zones every teacher must acknowledge and incorporate into their daily practice:
The five areas of the TPI are then broken down into beliefs, intentions and actions within each area to offer insight into what an individual believes about teaching and learning; what a teacher is attempting to accomplish in their daily teaching practice; and what an educator is actually doing when they are leading a group of students.
The TPI is a valuable tool for reflecting on one’s own teaching practices to remain engaged in the life-long learning process that is vital to the teaching profession. Additionally, the TPI can be used to continually transform one’s teaching philosophy as teacher’s encounter different job assignments at different grade levels throughout their career. Self-reflection is central to refining one’s teaching as education is constantly evolving, especially in the 21st century with the ever-increasing demand for technology implementation and integration in the daily classroom routine. Through the constant redefining of your own teaching philosophy to address personal strengths and challenges, a teacher is setting their students up for success by remaining actively connected to their own ability to upgrade individual teaching skills.
The Teaching Perspectives Inventory (TPI) allows teachers to examine five key areas related to teaching through the completion of a free online questionnaire. The TPI addresses the following key zones every teacher must acknowledge and incorporate into their daily practice:
- Transmission - An individual educator’s mastery of their subject area and the knowledge each teacher possesses.
- Apprenticeship - Teachers must offer their students learning opportunities that allow them to construct knowledge over a period of time.
- Developmental - Students will move from introductory learning goals to more complex learning tasks.
- Nurturing - Students require a nurturing classroom environment for their academic development.
- Social Reform - Teachers need to explicitly teach students how to become critical thinkers in order to examine ideas, issues and problems from various points of view.
The five areas of the TPI are then broken down into beliefs, intentions and actions within each area to offer insight into what an individual believes about teaching and learning; what a teacher is attempting to accomplish in their daily teaching practice; and what an educator is actually doing when they are leading a group of students.
The TPI is a valuable tool for reflecting on one’s own teaching practices to remain engaged in the life-long learning process that is vital to the teaching profession. Additionally, the TPI can be used to continually transform one’s teaching philosophy as teacher’s encounter different job assignments at different grade levels throughout their career. Self-reflection is central to refining one’s teaching as education is constantly evolving, especially in the 21st century with the ever-increasing demand for technology implementation and integration in the daily classroom routine. Through the constant redefining of your own teaching philosophy to address personal strengths and challenges, a teacher is setting their students up for success by remaining actively connected to their own ability to upgrade individual teaching skills.
Teaching Perspectives Inventory: A Reflection
Apprenticeship, Developmental and Nurturing were my three dominant traits from the Teaching Perspectives Inventory with a solid balance between beliefs, intentions and actions. Three years ago I moved from being a Grade 7 classroom teacher offering my students ELA and Social Studies lessons to a Literacy Support Teacher. As a Literacy Support Teacher, I work with junior high school students to improve their reading skills by providing support in a small small-group setting. We examine reading skills such as summarizing, inferring, predicting, the author’s intended message and how an author attempts to maintain the reader’s interest throughout a fiction or nonfiction text.
The TPI offered me interesting results as Nurturing scored as my most leading trait. I do not find this surprising in my current role as I am working in a small-group setting (3 or 4 students) to develop and strengthen reading comprehension skills; therefore, the students’ development is a top priority and this is taking place in a nurturing environment due to the small-group instruction. I have a clear understanding of each individual student’s strengths and challenges related to reading as I conduct reading assessments with the students, using the latest Fountas and Pinnell Assessment Kit to discover their current reading level. Our small-group sessions are aimed at developing the reading comprehension skills that are challenging and require guided support. Additionally, the fiction and non-fiction books we read are chosen based upon the students in the group and their own personal interests.
The one aspect of the TPI that was unexpected to me related to Transmission as this explores a teacher’s depth of knowledge in a subject area. In my position, I collaborate with my five colleagues and two supervisors, for eight full-day professional development sessions as well as two half-day sessions throughout the academic year. During our time together, we engage in discussing professional readings we are required to dissect; discuss the reading comprehension data we are gathering from our small-group instruction and classroom support; and explore new ways to positively impact the students’ reading performances. These professional development opportunities allow me to engage other educators seeking similar knowledge. Our PD sessions clearly allow us to continually build a mastery our specialized field; therefore, the low score in this area was surprising.
Bates (2015) asks the question, “What is the role of the human teacher, and can/should/will the human teacher be replaced by technology?” I know that in my position as a Literacy Support Teacher, technology cannot replace the nurturing individual on the instructional side of small-group sessions.
References:
Bates, A.W. (15 April 2015). Teaching in a digital age: Guidelines for designing teaching and learning. Creative Commons.
Pratt, D., & Collins, J. (7 September 2019). Teaching perspectives inventory. Retrieved from
http://www.teachingperspectives.com/tpi/
Apprenticeship, Developmental and Nurturing were my three dominant traits from the Teaching Perspectives Inventory with a solid balance between beliefs, intentions and actions. Three years ago I moved from being a Grade 7 classroom teacher offering my students ELA and Social Studies lessons to a Literacy Support Teacher. As a Literacy Support Teacher, I work with junior high school students to improve their reading skills by providing support in a small small-group setting. We examine reading skills such as summarizing, inferring, predicting, the author’s intended message and how an author attempts to maintain the reader’s interest throughout a fiction or nonfiction text.
The TPI offered me interesting results as Nurturing scored as my most leading trait. I do not find this surprising in my current role as I am working in a small-group setting (3 or 4 students) to develop and strengthen reading comprehension skills; therefore, the students’ development is a top priority and this is taking place in a nurturing environment due to the small-group instruction. I have a clear understanding of each individual student’s strengths and challenges related to reading as I conduct reading assessments with the students, using the latest Fountas and Pinnell Assessment Kit to discover their current reading level. Our small-group sessions are aimed at developing the reading comprehension skills that are challenging and require guided support. Additionally, the fiction and non-fiction books we read are chosen based upon the students in the group and their own personal interests.
The one aspect of the TPI that was unexpected to me related to Transmission as this explores a teacher’s depth of knowledge in a subject area. In my position, I collaborate with my five colleagues and two supervisors, for eight full-day professional development sessions as well as two half-day sessions throughout the academic year. During our time together, we engage in discussing professional readings we are required to dissect; discuss the reading comprehension data we are gathering from our small-group instruction and classroom support; and explore new ways to positively impact the students’ reading performances. These professional development opportunities allow me to engage other educators seeking similar knowledge. Our PD sessions clearly allow us to continually build a mastery our specialized field; therefore, the low score in this area was surprising.
Bates (2015) asks the question, “What is the role of the human teacher, and can/should/will the human teacher be replaced by technology?” I know that in my position as a Literacy Support Teacher, technology cannot replace the nurturing individual on the instructional side of small-group sessions.
References:
Bates, A.W. (15 April 2015). Teaching in a digital age: Guidelines for designing teaching and learning. Creative Commons.
Pratt, D., & Collins, J. (7 September 2019). Teaching perspectives inventory. Retrieved from
http://www.teachingperspectives.com/tpi/