The TPI

Here are my results:

I was not surprised that my Transmission score was low and my Development score was high, since I feel like those results align with my teaching philosophy. I was a little surprised that my social reform score was quite low, since I care quite a bit about teaching conscientiousness and responsibility. It does make sense with the way I answered the questions though - since most of the questions asked about my current teaching habits, and I haven't introduced those topics into my practicum teaching yet, I said I rarely take activist stances in my teaching. I expect that to change a little as I get more comfortable teaching though.

One of the topics on the quiz that I was unsure of was apprenticeship - in particular, is it necessary for a teacher to be an expert in their subject area? My initial reaction was yes, at least to some degree. I don't think teachers need to have, say, PhD's, but they should be able to answer just about any question a student asks, and be able to contextualize and extend the material in interesting ways. In my experience, students also get more excited about learning when they know their teacher has a very good knowledge of the subject area. I do think it's possible to be a very good teacher while not knowing a huge amount beyond the course content, so I'm hesitant to say that it's necessary, but it's always better for the teacher to have more knowledge.