Guiding Reflective Practice: An Auditing Framework to Assess Teaching Philosophy and Style

Abstract

Growing as an educator takes hard work and commitment. It requires the educator to engage in regular, objective self-examinations of instructional beliefs and behaviors. Although this task can be daunting, and unwieldy, due to the complexity of the teaching—learning exchange, it can also be undertaken in a systematic manner. This article proposes a framework of five elements that appear essential for assessing instructor beliefs and behaviors: content, learner, educator, social setting, and physical environment where the instruction takes place. A teaching-style audit is demonstrated to show how the systematic and thoughtful assessment of an educator’s teaching philosophy and style can be undertaken. This research contributes to the professional development of marketing educators by (a) providing a unifying framework to guide reflective teaching practice and (b) proposing that an auditing approach should be used to reveal incomplete or underdeveloped areas of instructional belief and identify inconsistent or incongruent teaching styles.