How to Document Effective Teaching

Know Who’ll Be Looking at Your Teaching Materials, How, & Why

Before you proceed, review the institutional materials on annual and tenure/promotion evaluations:
— the College of Liberal Arts Faculty Bylaws, Article VIII “Faculty Appointments and Evaluations” (pp. 11-27)
— your department’s criteria
— the evaluation materials list
— the evaluation timeline
— guidelines from the Faculty Evaluation Committee/FEC

Seeing Your Teaching through Four Lenses

Teaching is multi-faceted, and much of the work is hidden. How can you more fully represent your teaching beyond course numbers, grade distributions, and student evaluations? In Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher,* Stephen Brookfield identifies four lenses through which you can best see (and critically reflect on) your teaching: yourself, your students, your peers, and the literature on teaching and learning. While Brookfield writes about self-inquiry, his framework can also be used to ensure systematic documentation and evaluation of teaching, by using multiple kinds of evidence from multiple points of view.

* Here’s an article in which Brookfield summarizes these lenses, and here’s a good summary.

Use the four different lenses below to represent your teaching more fully.

In materials submitted for evaluation, you have the opportunity to represent your teaching through your own lens, allowing you to make your case & tell your own story. Click here for how.

Students’ experiences are central to the picture of your teaching effectiveness, so your materials should reflect your understanding and response to students’ perspectives. **Click here for how.**

Support or frame your teaching through the literature on teaching and learning in higher education, to help others see the depth of your intentions and practices. **Click here for how.**

Peers also provide a lens into your teaching, so your materials can demonstrate the role of peer expertise in your growth as a teacher. **Click here for how**.

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Nancy Chick, Endeavor Foundation Center for Faculty Development at Rollins College, 2021