Toward a Philosophy of Faculty Development
My individual and collaborative faculty development commitments have ramped up in 2025, and with this comes the itch to draft a new philosophy of faculty development. Like writing a teaching philosophy statement (see my thoughts on navigating this challenging genre here), a philosophy of faculty development (FDP) requires sustained critical reflection on our vision, practices, and outcomes.
scenes from a recent FDP brainstorming session
Writing a FDP helps you capture and distill the inner voice— informed by many years of scholarship, professionalization, and experience— that intuitively guides the choices you make when planning, delivering, or assessing a program or workshop.
If you’re anything like me — teaching-track faculty whose service to the profession is rooted in or centralizes faculty development — drafting this document gives you thoughtful language and material to supplement your public portfolio, promotion dossier, annual review materials, or applications.
Guiding Questions to Prompt Reflection
If you are taking a stab at a first draft or are refreshing an outdated statement, let these guiding questions prompt your reflection:
Taking Stock of My Beliefs, Values, & Experiences
What keywords or values do I want participants to associate with my programs, materials, and deliverables?
Then, what words or phrases have been used to describe my facilitation style and materials? Think about what colleagues have said, coupled with any formal feedback or exit survey data you’ve gathered.
What are my core beliefs about faculty development as a practice? About working with faculty as complex learners and professionals with diverse needs?
Flip the script: What do I as a participant want to get out of the professional development that I attend?
Then, how do these goals or desires shape my approach to developing and delivering my own programming?
What scholarship has informed my approach to faculty development?
In the Room
What strategies or best practices do I consistently model across my faculty development programs? How do I classify or characterize them?
How do I engage multiple audiences when I facilitate or propose programs?
Don’t take for granted your various stakeholders. Your workshop may be intended for new faculty, but what are you signaling to the administrator who may be in the room?
How do I assess the value and impact of my faculty development work?
How do I see faculty development as an important form of service, to my institution, communities, and broader field?
Your FDP is a Living Document Requiring Iteration
It’s also helpful to think about your FDP as a checklist of sorts. Read your FDP against your latest programming proposal, materials, or survey data.
“Am I living out my values in this new program or initiative I’m developing or leading?”
If your answer is no, or not quite, or if something has changed in the way you approach faculty development (and this is not a bad thing!), take some time to consider how and why your FDP is evolving.
Drafting this statement is an iterative process: it will require adjustments and updates from time to time, especially as you attend and develop innovative programs and read new scholarship.
For instance, there are two experiences that are currently shaping how and why I’m refreshing my FDP:
Participant materials & exit survey data from a workshop series I’m co-facilitating this week. Whether the workshop is individually or collaboratively led, I want to make sure my professional values are coming through.
Do my participants see my content and approach as creative, energizing, and clearly scaffolded? Are participants, regardless of their rank or experience level, leaving with a clear “ah-ha!” moment?
Does this program inspire future conversations, foster networks, and create the conditions for collaboration?
I’m starting Tolu Noah’s new book Designing and Facilitating Workshops with Intentionality later today, and I’m excited to see how this might inform the programming I’m leading at IU and beyond this fall.
How often you sit with and reflect on this philosophy is up to you, but it’s worth checking in at least once a year, perhaps at the start or end of the academic year. I like to take stock of my professional identity, core career documents, and portfolio each summer, and this means lots of journaling and updates to this very website.
What Inspired This Post
This post was inspired by a few exciting developments over the last two weeks:
the public launch of Branding Your Teaching Excellence (BYTE), a faculty development framework and initiative I co-created with Miranda Rodak
the publication of “Teaching Excellence Plus: The Teaching Philosophy Statement as Creative Platform for Strategic Self-Promotion” in Documenting Teaching Excellence: Promoting the University’s Vital Mission
the facilitation of a BYTE future faculty workshop series, sponsored by the POD Network’s Graduate Student, Professional Student, and Postdoctoral Development Special Interest Group and attended by graduate students, postdocs, and faculty development professionals
I’ll share more about the experience of leading the POD workshop series later this week. In the meantime, happy reflecting!
As always, thanks for reading. If you have questions about any of my content or have ideas for collaboration, please contact me at gabrielle@gabriellestecher.com.
