University Teaching & Learning 5000

Teaching Philosophies and more

Yesterday I mentioned that graduate students completing the CST’s Teaching Practicum submit portfolios to the CST containing teaching philosophy statements and that these might be available there. I asked Stephanie Marston from the CST and she confirmed that anyone in the class is welcome to come in and look over the dossiers that have been completed; the only restriction is that they can not be removed from the Centre. You can contact Stephanie by e-mail at smarston@yorku.ca, by phone at (416) 736-2100, x22117, or in person in 1050 TEL.

I also mentioned yesterday that I would post a link to the full “Seven Principles” article by Chickering and Gamson. I have decided to ask you to read the article for Monday’s class, so a link is posted on the May 12 page; but you could also go straight to it from here. If you are interested in the use of technology in teaching you might enjoy a followup article by Chickering and Ehrmann on how various technologies can be used as a “lever” in implementing the seven principles.

The following is the reference for one of Nevitt Sanford’s book’s on higher education:

Sanford, N. (Ed.) (1962). The American College: A psychological and social interpretation of the higher learning. New York: Wiley. (online version available here)

Sanford is the person I mentioned in conjunction with the notion of support and challenge in teaching. I used this notion with respect to the expectations we set for learning in our courses. Sanford used these terms more in the sense of challenges that university presents for personal growth and the support that a university should provide to facilitate meeting and growing from those challenges. Sanford was a psychologist and was interested in personality development; his philosophy of education emphasized that education environments be conscious of and seek to develop the whole person. His view of personality development can be found in:

Sanford, N. (1966). Self & society: Social change and individual development. New York: Atherton Press.
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Another of his books on higher education is

Sanford, N. (1967). Where colleges fail: A study of the student as a person. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
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A briefer account of his ideas about the aims of higher education can be found in:

Sanford, N. (1967). Education for individual development. New Dimensions in Higher Education, 31. Available here

I have copied out a few paragraphs from various sources about Sanford’s ideas and placed them here.