A Personal TPI (Teaching Perspectives Inventory) Profile Analysis

A little bit of a disclaimer: I took the TPI quiz twice not because I wanted to make sure my results were consistent, but because I forgot to take note of some of the questions that I needed to write this paper. Both instances, however, yielded the same results in terms of my highest and lowest priorities: social reform for the former, and transmission for the latter.¹ 

The disparity between both has much bearing. When I think of transmission in relation to teaching, terms like pedagogy, methodology, assessments, and outcomes come to mind—concepts that, as someone who did not major in education in college, I am neither enamored by nor excel at in making documents for. What I lack on the pedagogical side, though, I try to make up for in content.

 

Prior to joining academia, I was a graduate student taking up an MA in Literature while working a full-time office job. Not being saddled with checking test papers or preparing lesson plans after office hours afforded me the privilege of exploring texts outside of our class reading list and really reflecting on these, making connections where I could find them, and formulating my own takeaways in the process.

 

One such takeaway involved a realization about how literature as a subject was taught to those of us educated under the pre–K to 12 curriculum. In high school, literature was taught merely as a component of the broader English subject, and thus, in keeping with its supplementary-to-language-learning nature, tended to be quite formalist in approach. (According to National Artist Resil Mojares, literary studies in the Philippines for much of the twentieth century was “heavily Anglo-American in methods, language medium, and content.”²) Meanwhile, in college, literature was approached from a more developmental perspective, with teachers focused on how a text could help you as an individual cope with the difficulties of the modern world rather than interrogating the state of things.

 

It was already in grad school, and as I was reading aforesaid additional texts, when an entirely different and transformative approach to literature really concretized for me: that of looking at texts from a historical perspective. (“Always historicize!” Fredric Jameson famously said.³) My making connections between and among all the texts I read proved to be my “starting point of critical elaboration.”⁴ From here developed an acknowledging of myself as a product of history, which, to use Antonio Gramsci’s words, has deposited in all of us an “infinity of traces, without leaving an inventory.”⁵ In other words, when one cultivates a personal habit for historicizing, questions of how we arrived at where we are today—and how we can chart a path for a better future—start to preoccupy the mind. One then realizes that history is comprised less of a sequence of inevitabilities and more of confluence and chance. When teaching or lecturing on Philippine or Cebuano literature, for example, I always make it a point to emphasize that, early in the twentieth century, vernacular languages in the country experienced a veritable golden age in reading, writing, and publishing. The point of this is to highlight the fact that English didn’t always enjoy the prominence it does today, and that said prominence is a direct result of American intervention in our part of the world. Students then are left to wonder how different the Philippines could have been today had circumstances turned out differently. When I thus encountered the question “I want people to see how complex and inter-related things are,” it only made sense for me to click “Agree.”

 

I would like to close by stressing that, although social reform ranks at the top of my preferences, I also do my best to acknowledge the individual learner (hence another “Agree” to the question “I want to provide a balance between caring and challenging as I teach”). It came as no surprise to me then that the developmental and nurturing preferences came in second and third, respectively. When imparting my lessons, I still do my best to ensure that some aspect of the students is developed at the end of each meeting, the most relevant being critical thinking skills. I also try to be extremely patient and understanding in my dealings with the students, to probe into their respective contexts when I can. (This, interestingly, is in line with the pedagogical approach employed by the school I will be teaching in this coming school year and from which I graduated some years ago.⁶) The last thing they need, after all, as valued learners and future leaders is an overbearing instructor whose methods replicate the brutalities of the real world and our nation’s history.

 

 

Works Cited

 

¹ The Teaching Perspectives Inventory (TPI) by Daniel D. Pratt and John B. Collins.

 

² Mojares, Resil, “An Immodest Proposal for Literary Studies,” Interrogations in Philippine Cultural History: The Ateneo de Manila Lectures (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2017), 97. 

 

³ Jameson, Fredric, The Political Unconscious (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1981), 9.

 

⁴ Quoted in Said, Edward, Orientalism (New York: Vintage, 1979), 25.

 

⁵ Quoted in Said, Edward, Orientalism, 25.

 

⁶ Abellanosa, Rhoderick John, “The Ignatian Pedagogical Paradigm” (employee orientation, Sacred Heart School–Ateneo de Cebu, Mandaue City, Cebu, June 23, 2022)