2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

A teaching philosophy describes an instructor’s collection of beliefs, values, and goals regarding teaching and learning. In contrast, a teaching statement is an articulation of how one’s teaching philosophy is translated into actionable plans in the classroom. Many engineering instructors, particularly those from the traditional engineering disciplines, are not expected to have a formal training in education, and thus, struggle to develop, articulate, and enact their teaching philosophy and statement. While current engineering education graduate programs embed several opportunities in their curricula for students to develop their teaching philosophy and statement, only a few studies have started reviewing pedagogical approaches that support this development.

In this paper, we will examine how the teaching and learning activities in a graduate-level elective course, “Educational Methods in Engineering”, support its students in crafting their teaching statements. Designed for engineering graduate students interested in teaching, this course equips them with the knowledge, attitudes, and skills necessary to be effective engineering instructors. This course attracts graduate students across all departments in the College of Engineering, including those from engineering education. Our central research question is: “How does the instructional design of a graduate-level elective course in engineering education influence the development of students’ teaching statements?”

Throughout the semester, graduate students engaged in structured individual reflections with three key components: personalizing (finding a connection to the topic through their own experiences as a student and/or as an instructor), internalizing (evaluating their new insights about teaching and learning against their prior beliefs), and externalizing (thinking about the practical applications of what they’ve learned). We will conduct a thematic analysis of these reflections and trace the resulting themes to their influence on students’ final teaching statements. With this approach, we expect to evaluate if the course’s instructional design effectively supports the development of teaching philosophies and statements that align with the course's aims. In addition, students’ individual reflections serve as a critical mechanism for making these ideas explicit, making it possible to track throughout the semester how their teaching statements were shaped by their learning experiences in the course. For engineering educators, this paper highlights the importance of aligning the teaching and learning activities to help the students articulate and enact their teaching philosophies. For engineering education graduate programs, this paper presents a replicable instructional framework that emphasizes reflection-based pedagogies.