Polishing for impact: Connecting teaching evidence to institutional priorities

Your teaching philosophy statement is a living document, updated to reflect your growth, experiences, and evolving goals as an educator.

When preparing a statement for processes such as tenure or promotion, your teaching philosophy may need to evolve beyond personal reflection alone. In addition to describing your teaching approach, the statement should demonstrate how your teaching practices, contributions, and impact align with institutional values, strategic priorities, disciplinary expectations, and faculty goals.

Effective statements do more than repeat institutional priorities; they demonstrate how those priorities meaningfully shape teaching practice and student learning. Alignment should emerge authentically from your teaching practice rather than through institutional language alone.

This resource is part 1 of the Polishing for Impact series, designed to help you transform your initial teaching philosophy draft into a compelling narrative:

Strategies for Success

Successful teaching philosophy statements are shaped by both reflection and context. In addition to articulating your beliefs about teaching and learning, strong statements demonstrate how your teaching practices, decisions, and contributions connect to disciplinary expectations, student learning, and broader institutional commitments.

The strategies below can help you identify meaningful evidence, frame your experiences effectively, and tailor your statement for different audiences and purposes.

Know your audience

Before selecting your evidence, consider the specific lenses of your reviewers:

  • Faculty colleagues: They often look for how your teaching practices align with and advance the faculty's curriculum, disciplinary expectations, and educational priorities.
  • University-level award committee: They may seek evidence of broader educational impact, alignment with institutional strategic priorities, and contributions to the university’s teaching and learning culture.

Aligning with institutional priorities

To demonstrate strategic alignment, you must show that your teaching contributes to the U of A’s mission. Your reviewers want to understand how your teaching practices, course design decisions, mentoring approaches, and educational contributions support broader institutional priorities. Teaching philosophy statements should reflect engagement with core institutional commitments, including Braiding Past, Present and Future and Changing the Story. Rather than trying to address every priority in the same level of detail, focus on where these commitments are most clearly reflected in your teaching practice, disciplinary context, and evidence of impact.

Consider the university’s key strategic plans and how your teaching practice may align with them.

The SHAPE strategic plan is organized around three primary pillars. Review these pillars and identify which 2–3 specific goals (listed below) most closely connect with your approach to student learning and disciplinary context:

Pillar 1: Shape Futures (Educating with Purpose)

  • Global Citizenship: How do you prepare students to be "creative, collaborative, and confident global citizens"?
  • Transformational Learning: How do you use high-impact practices (such as internships, undergraduate research, or community service-learning) to meaningfully shape student learning and development?
  • Enrolment Growth: How does your teaching support the university’s goal of growing the student body while maintaining academic excellence?

Pillar 2: Shape Ideas (Research with Purpose)

  • Interdisciplinary Collaboration: How does your teaching bridge disciplines or bring cutting-edge research directly into the undergraduate classroom?
  • Solving Global Challenges: How do you frame your curriculum around complex contemporary issues, such as sustainability, artificial intelligence, health, energy, or social transformation?

Pillar 3: Shape Trust (Engagement with Purpose)

  • Uplifting Communities: How do your students engage with projects, partnerships, or learning experiences that benefit local or global communities?
  • Partnerships: How do you create or support collaborations with industry, government, community organizations or professional partners through your teaching?

Examples of phrasing that align with SHAPE:

  • "I challenge students to engage with complex social and disciplinary questions by…”
  • "I foster collaborative leadership and creative problem-solving when I…”
  • "Students in my course apply disciplinary concepts to contemporary social and environmental challenges through…”

Braiding Past, Present and Future is organized around three primary strands that reflect the responsibilities of the Sweetgrass Teachings. Review these strands and identify which 2–3 specific goals most closely connect with your learning environment, student community, and educational practices:

Strand 1: Looking to the past

  • Indigenous ways of knowing: How do you weave Indigenous worldviews, histories, and perspectives into your curriculum?
  • Foundational knowledge: How do you support your own and your students’ foundational understanding through resources such as Indigenous Canada, other learning opportunities, or community engagement?

Strand 2: In-powering the present

  • Tackling barriers: How does your teaching practice actively work to remove barriers for Indigenous students?
  • Safe and welcoming spaces: How do you foster a classroom environment that is safe, welcoming, and free from anti-Indigenous racism?

Strand 3: Imagining the future

  • Community partnerships: How do you create opportunities for students to learn from or highlight the practices of community-recognized Indigenous Elders and Knowledge Keepers?
  • Reciprocal relationships: How does your teaching contribute to Good Relations by building equal, respectful, and mutual partnerships with Indigenous nations and organizations?

Examples of phrasing that align with Braiding Past, Present and Future

  • “I include [specific article/book/case study] to weave Indigenous knowledge systems that have been historically erased or marginalized.”
  • "Recognizing that reconciliation is a journey, I have committed to ongoing self-education through [insert activities] and regularly audit my syllabus to ensure it reflects diverse Canadian Indigenous worldviews.”
  • "I designed [specific assignments/assessments] to cultivate a reciprocal ethic, where students actively contribute to the Indigenous communities they impact. By considering a generational framework, they learn to navigate their professional practice in ways that contribute to community health and help steward resources for those yet to be born.”

The Student Experience Action Plan (SEAP) is built upon three foundational principles developed through co-creation with students. Review these principles and identify which 2-3 goals most closely reflect the student learning experiences you aim to create.

Principle 1: Connections are fostered

  • Relational pedagogy: How do you intentionally create a classroom community where students feel a sense of belonging and respect for their diverse perspectives, histories, and worldviews?
  • Mentorship and support:> How do you provide proactive guidance to help students navigate their academic journey?

Principle 2: Exploration is essential

  • Interdisciplinary and experiential learning: How do you encourage students to explore different ways of knowing through experiential, interdisciplinary, or inquiry-based learning, including high-impact practices such as undergraduate research, community service-learning, or work-integrated learning?
  • Academic agency: How do you provide students with the flexibility and information, such as clear, consistent syllabi, that they need to take ownership of their learning and make informed choices?

Principle 3: Challenge accepted!

  • Reducing barriers: How do you work to minimize barriers, such as high textbook costs, rigid delivery or participation formats or inaccessible learning materials, so that students can focus their energy on learning and growth?
  • Holistic safety: How do you cultivate a culture of care in your classroom to ensure students feel physically, psychologically, and culturally safe enough to take academic risks?

Examples of phrasing that align with SEAP:

  • “I prioritize relationality in my teaching by designing collaborative activities that help students build the networks and sense of belonging essential for their success.”
  • “To support academic agency, I provide transparent learning outcomes and use open educational resources to ensure financial barriers do not hinder my students’ exploration of this field.”
  • “I view the classroom as a space for purpose-led exploration, where I challenge students to connect our course content to real-world challenges through experiential learning.”

Changing the Story is organized around four trajectories for action. Review these trajectories and identify which 2-3 specific goals most closely reflect your approach to student learning, participation, and engagement.

Trajectory 1: Supporting uncomfortable encounters

  • Navigating hard conversations: How do you help students remain engaged when conversations become difficult or uncomfortable?
  • Community guidelines: How do you set explicit expectations that support respectful dialogue while upholding the dignity of those involved?

Trajectory 2: Enhancing expansive excellence

  • Navigating hard conversations: How do you help students remain engaged when conversations become difficult or uncomfortable?
  • Community guidelines: How do you set explicit expectations that support respectful dialogue while upholding the dignity of those involved?

Trajectory 3: Ensuring access to academic and community life

  • Removing barriers: How do you look for invisible barriers within your course, like assumptions about a student’s prior knowledge, access to technology, or time, and design your course to be accessible from the start?

Trajectory 4: Nurturing transformative collaborations

  • Mutual flourishing: How do you design group work or peer interactions so that students feel connected to their peers’ success as well as their own?
  • Relational accountability: How do you model vulnerability and openness, showing students that you are also learning and evolving alongside them?

Examples of phrases that align with Access, Community + Belonging

  • “I view my classroom as a space for intellectual pluralism, where I allow students to encounter difficult ideas to help them grow their capacity for critical empathy.”
  • “In my assessments, I allow students to demonstrate mastery through diverse formats, from policy briefs to oral storytelling, that reflect the plurality of communication in the world.”
  • “I begin each unit by acknowledging the unwritten histories of our field, asking students to investigate whose labour was required to build these theories and whose voices were silenced in the process.”
  • “We practice collective accountability for the space we share; students are encouraged to help co-create our learning norms to ensure the environment remains responsive to their specific needs.”

Show the impact

To demonstrate meaningful alignment with institutional priorities, you must show that your teaching beliefs actively drive the key indicators of success defined by the university or your faculty–such as student learning, inclusion, engagement, disciplinary development, or academic excellence. However, a teaching philosophy should not simply list these outcomes. Instead, weave your evidence narratively throughout the statement to demonstrate that your philosophy works in practice.

  • Evidence of student success: Connect insights from Student Perspectives of Teaching (SPOT) reports, mid-semester feedback, or student input directly to your statement in order to show how your approach supported learning.
  • Student achievement: Frame indicators of growth, such as undergraduate research experiences, graduate school admissions, professional placements, or publications, as the direct result of your specific practices and approaches.
  • Peer validation: Use insights from peer observation reports or letters of support to externally validate your teaching philosophy in action and demonstrate how your methods contribute to the U of A’s teaching culture.

Self-Check

Use this checklist to ensure your statement is ready for your intended audience:

  • Is it purpose-driven? Does the statement clearly address the criteria for the award or promotion?
  • Is the alignment explicit? Is it clear how your actions support institutional values?
  • Is it evidence-based? Have you moved beyond “what you do” to “what the impact is”
  • Is the broader context clear? Have you connected your teaching practices to student learning, disciplinary expectations, program goals, or broader institutional priorities?
  • Is it grounded in your teaching practice? Does the statement reflect your authentic teaching values and practices rather than relying primarily on institutional language?

Learn more