 Hi there, welcome to this video on articulating your beliefs in a teaching philosophy statement. My name is Dr. Isabel Iqbal. In this video, we're going to take a look at belief statements, specifically what they are and also a few samples from faculty members. This video was created for instructors who work in higher education environments. In the first video, we define the teaching philosophy statement as a written statement that communicates your beliefs about teaching and learning. It also includes evidence from your teaching to show the relationship between the beliefs and your practice. So we're going to zero in on the belief statements today and take a look at what we mean by belief statements within this context of a teaching philosophy statement. When we refer to belief statements, we typically mean your beliefs about teaching, learning, and potentially about knowledge. Your beliefs are definitely connected to your values, but for the sake of simplicity, we're just going to refer to beliefs in this video. Now most people, when they think about articulating their beliefs, are somewhere along the continuum between feeling excited about getting their thoughts down or feeling overwhelmed and they start to wonder if they can even know what their beliefs are. It can be helpful at this point to see how others have articulated their beliefs in a teaching philosophy statement, and we're going to do exactly that. The first statement we're going to look at is an excerpt from Dr. Sarah Levitt at the University of British Columbia in the Creative Writing Department. Sarah starts her teaching philosophy statement by writing, I assume that all of my students are capable of making comics and that their individual points of view and voices are valuable and worth sharing. So as a belief statement, this could read, all my students can make comments, comics, and all my students have valuable points of view that are worth sharing. Here's another example, and this one is from Dr. Jonathan Verrett in Chemical and Biological Engineering at the University of British Columbia. So let's take a moment to read this section of Jonathan's teaching philosophy statement. He writes, In Ken Bain's book, What the Best College Teachers Do, one chapter describes the importance of trust between instructor and student. Through openness to dialogue and feedback, I show my students that I have their best interests at heart and that I want to see them learn and succeed. So take a moment here to pause the video and read that again, and then formulate a belief statement in your own head. So here's one that I came up with. The belief could be, I believe in showing my students that I have their best interests at heart. Okay, let's summarize what belief statements do, and then I'll leave you with a few prompts. Belief statements provide a rationale for your teaching practices. They uncover your purpose, and they also localize teaching in your context. I'd like to leave you with three prompts that can help you uncover your beliefs. What matters most to me in my teaching and learning? As I think about strategies I use in my teaching, what do they say about my beliefs? And the third, what do I want readers to remember most about my beliefs? You can journal about those or have a conversation with a colleague and see what comes up, and use that for your own teaching philosophy statement. Thanks so much for listening and watching, and you can check the notes for additional resources. Thanks.