A teaching philosophy is an important narrative for higher education teachers, lecturers or academics. Internationally, teaching philosophies are an essential part of academic job applications. In Australia they are important in promotion applications, teaching citation applications and increasingly, following the international lead, as part of academic job applications. More importantly a teaching philosophy defines and directs you as a teacher, it frames your teaching beliefs and describes and justifies how you teach.

The TATAL workbook steps you through the process of developing a teaching philosophy. This may be done with colleagues in order to facilitate collaborative reflective conversations or individually following the prompts and activities in the workbook. The workbook includes educational theories that underpin the TATAL approach to philosophy development, teaching philosophy approaches or frameworks, teaching philosophy examples, and a series of activities that culminate in a first draft of a teaching philosophy statement.

The TATAL approach to teaching philosophy development has been successfully utilised for a number of years in HERDSA conference workshops, communities of practice, and in on-campus university teaching philosophy workshops.