Here's a slightly illegible screen capture from my TPI Results page (http://teachingperspectives.com/drupal/tpi/tpi-results?nodeid=3424&name=Carrie). Even though the graphics are fuzzy here, I think that keeping this visual on hand will help me improve my awareness of my own teaching perspectives - including ways I hope to improve the connectedness between my "intentions" and my "actions". When I read through the interpretation of what "teaching-world-view" each of the 5 perspectives encompasses, I felt most drawn to the Developmental perspective. I think that this kind of came out in the wash when my highest "intentions" rating was in the Developmental category - however, I scored a couple of points lower in the "actions" sub-category for the Developmental perspective. Another aspect of my results that caught my attention was that I scored evenly in the Apprenticeship and Developmental perspectives, which might indicate that I answered some questions in contradictory ways. I'll be interested to take this assessment again after having given more thought to my teaching goals (I'm still feeling a little rusty thinking about my teaching methods, goals, and beliefs, as I've been away from teaching for 2.5 years now). Many of the questions in the inventory were thought-provoking, and I found myself having a hard time choosing an answer on many of the questions - in part, I think this is due to the difficulty of partitioning beliefs and methods into so many supposedly mutually exclusive categories. It seems like the best teaching approach would combine all five perspectives, transitioning fluidly between the approaches associated with each perspective depending on the level of the students' prior knowledge and experience, and the material being presented. It's hard to imagine an Ecology class being taught without any "Transmission"-style teaching, because there is a certain amount of content that all students need in order to move to higher-level problem solving and complex thinking about issues. It's also hard to imagine teaching an Ecology class without acknowledging that a major part of my motivation for teaching is that I want students to understand how ecosystems work so that they can see the value of protecting them from further damage, hopefully inspiring some kind of "Social Change".
You are absolutely right about using methods that are appropriate to your topic and audience. That is why you should choose a specific course when completing the TPI. However, while topic and audience influence your actions, intentions, and beliefs about teaching, there are other influences as well. Balance comes in your methods, not necessarily your perspective.
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