Teaching dossier/statement

Owned by Cassie Harrison
Last updated: Nov 04, 2024 by Linda Liu
7 min read

This content has been written in collaboration with the Centre for Teaching Excellence (CTE). To gain feedback on your teaching statement or dossier, please contact TA training and writing support at CTE. Learn more about professional development opportunities for graduate students and post-doctoral fellows offered by the CTE.

 

What is a teaching dossier?

A teaching dossier is a portfolio of your teaching experience that demonstrates your reflective approach to teaching.

It typically contains three components:

  • a teaching statement of your overall beliefs about teaching

  • a narrative providing evidence of your teaching

  • artifacts from your experience

A teaching dossier should not repeat what is in your curriculum vitae (CV) but instead, provide the reader a sense of what it is like to be a student in your classroom.

Note: A teaching dossier can reflect all your teaching experience as a teaching assistant, lab instructor, guest lecturer or course instructor. You can still prepare a teaching dossier even if you have not taught your own course.

Teaching dossier is the preferred term in Canada, but you might also hear the document referred to as a teaching portfolio if you apply to institutions outside of Canada.

 

How does a teaching dossier differ from a teaching statement?

A teaching statement (also called a teaching philosophy statement or a statement of teaching interests) is a one-to-two-page statement of what you believe and value in teaching as demonstrated through specific practices, supported by evidence of effectiveness.

The teaching statement is also the first section of a teaching dossier. You can think of the statement as an overview of who you are as a teacher, further supported by the narrative of the dossier and appendices. A good teaching statement can stand alone but also align, and be supported by, the remaining sections of the teaching dossier.

 

Below are four suggestions for gaining and preparing materials for your teaching dossier:

  • Collect evidence of your teaching:  Start a folder to save materials you have developed for teaching. Things like lesson plans, lesson slides, teaching and learning activities, teaching evaluations (formal or informal), assessments you have (co-)developed and syllabi you have (co-)developed.

  • Seek out teaching opportunities:  If you do not teach tutorials, labs, or a course, guest lectures are a great way to gain teaching experience. Let instructors in your department know you are interested in guest lecture opportunities.

  • Seek feedback on your teaching:  Even if you do not receive formal course evaluations, there are many ways you can get feedback on your teaching, including asking your students to give you mid-term feedback or having someone observe your teaching. Check out CTE resources on tools for reflecting on your teaching and using mid-term student feedback for suggestions on collecting this feedback.

  • Consider professional development opportunities for teaching:  CTE has professional development opportunities for graduate students  and  post-doctoral fellows who want to develop their teaching skills.

 

Recommendations for the length of teaching dossiers vary, but for academic job applications, they tend to be no more than 20 pages (10 pages for commentary, 10 pages for appendices).

Here is one structure you could use for a teaching dossier, but we encourage you to include sections that fit your experience and the institution you are applying to:

Section

Details

Section

Details

Teaching statement (1-2 pages)

What are your teaching beliefs and values? What examples from your teaching show you put these beliefs and values into practice?

Teaching experience

What courses have you been involved with? What was your role in these courses?

Teaching strategies

What teaching methods have you used in your courses? What types of assessments have you used?

Evaluations of teaching

In this section, you should reflect on and interpret the feedback you have received. What feedback have you received on your teaching? What changes have you made based on this feedback?

We encourage you to include evaluations from different perspectives such as students, instructors, and teaching centre staff.

Professional development

What professional development opportunities have you participated in related to teaching? What did you learn from them? How did they shape your teaching?

Future goals

What are your future goals as an instructor? What are your goals for your students? This section should be tailored to the specific position you are applying to.

Appendices (10 pages maximum)

Be selective when choosing appendices. Your appendices should provide evidence for the claims you made in your teaching statement and the body of the dossier.

Consider including:

  • Teaching evaluations (from students, colleagues, professors, teaching centre staff)

  • Teaching materials (e.g., syllabi, lesson slides, assignments, handouts, case studies, concept maps, media)

  • Awards or professional development materials

Since teaching dossiers are meant to be reflective and narrative, paragraphs are strongly encouraged over bullet points. There may be portions where bullets are used, but we strongly encourage using paragraph style for most of the document.

 

It is valuable to include feedback on your teaching from multiple perspectives, such as students, instructors and teaching centre staff. Student feedback can come from various sources. 

Student feedback from course evaluations: An effective way to present quantitative data is by aggregating student ratings for each course you have taught in the form of means or percentages. You can also include qualitative data from open-ended questions.

Student comments: When determining whether to include student comments in your dossier, consult instructors in your discipline to determine whether these would be considered valid sources of evidence by a hiring committee. When selecting student comments, consider whether they provide evidence for the claims you made in your teaching statement or dossier. If you include comments, they should be unedited. Unsolicited comments from students (i.e., emails from students) should only be included in your dossier if you have permission from the student to use the comment in your dossier. 

Student feedback from mid-term feedback: If you collected mid-term feedback from your students, you could provide a summary of the data or findings.

 

While there is no specific format for a teaching statement, one way to structure the statement is: 

  • An introductory paragraph stating three key teaching beliefs of values.

  • Three body paragraphs that each focus on one key teaching belief or value. State the belief/value, provide one to two examples of how you put this belief into practice in your teaching, and if possible, explain the impact of these practices on your students.

  • A concluding paragraph that summarizes your beliefs and states your commitment to teaching. 

The statement should focus on you as an instructor and your students, rather than comparing yourself to other instructors. Use first-person and present tense to highlight what you do in your teaching, rather than what you did or what you will do. Try to incorporate examples from your discipline to give the reader a sense of what it is like to be a student in your classroom.

 

There are several reflective exercises and tools you can use to help you determine your core beliefs about teaching. Try some of exercises and see if they help identify your beliefs:

 

A teaching dossier can reflect all your teaching experience as a teaching assistant, lab instructor, guest lecturer and/or course instructor. You can still prepare a teaching dossier if you have not taught your own course. Here are some suggestions:

  • If you have limited academic teaching experience, consider writing about other teaching opportunities you may have had through your research (e.g., facilitating training or community workshops) or extracurricular activities.

  • Seek out teaching opportunities: If you do not teach tutorials, labs or a course, guest lectures are a great way to gain teaching experience. Let instructors in your department know you are interested in guest lecture opportunities.

  • If you find you have limited teaching materials to include as appendices, consider designing a syllabus, teaching activity or assessment for a course you would like to teach in the future and include the document as an appendix.

 

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