Teaching with Technology: Remediating the Teaching Philosophy Statement

Teaching philosophy statements are ubiquitous at a particular moment in our intellectual and professional lives (i.e., the job search); we might, however, resituate them as living documents to multimediate, remediate, and use as a reflective space in our teaching careers. Although this particular genre is commonplace across disciplines in the Humanities, teaching philosophy statements are undertheorized, perhaps because they are typically situated in a particular moment. Because of the ubiquity of these documents, and also because of the lack of historicizing how they are prepared, how they are produced, and how they function—professionally and intellectually—in this manuscript we first provide a bit of background and context of teaching philosophy statements. We review the limited existing work on this important genre before we argue for why and how they might be attended to and rethought, especially in light of today's digital tools and multimediated ways of representing our work—and especially in the context of larger discussions about media work and professionalization. In the second section of this manuscript, we present examples from and reflect on our processes of remediating a specific type of teaching philosophy statement; we created teaching with technology philosophy statements, then remixed and remediated these traditionally prepared statements into slideshow presentations, Web sites, digital–visual collages, and digital movies. We describe the reflective and transformative work that can occur through such an activity by addressing four “emergencies” that occurred as we engaged this work. We conclude with comments about both the value of remediation and about the future of teaching philosophy statements in a multimediated world.