I have been teaching for over 15 years across a spectrum of educational and culturally diverse contexts involving secondary schools, technical colleges and universities. Over the years, through my continuous reflection and development, I have articulated a philosophy in relation to teaching and learning and the elements of each that are effective in the classroom. While now my teaching aims vary depending upon the course and content, my philosophy fundamentally serves to inform my practice. I would need an entire book to tell my full story, but I will try to summarize the key points of my philosophy.
Student-centered learning
I believe that successful learning occurs most effectively in an environment in which students are active and reflective. Such an environment is student-centered; that is, every student is engaged in interaction, use of curriculum material, collaboration, creation of learning artifacts and construction of knowledge. In this environment students see the curriculum content to be directly relevant to their own lives. At the same time, they undergo transformation in their knowledge, thinking, attitude and abilities to learn further. While students ultimately take responsibility for their own learning, a teacher can inspire their desire to learn. I feel that I have responsibility to work hard in the service of my students’ education; however, this responsibility is pleasurable and gives me a wonderful sense of satisfaction that I have been able to leave something memorable and positive in the lives of many students who have passed through my classes.
A teacher as a designer and a facilitator
I see the role of the teacher as a designer of an effective learning environment and a facilitator of students’ learning. In this designer role, the teacher creates contexts for students’ activities, reflection and engagement. Thus, the teacher’s focus is switched from planning instructional procedures to design of learning activities that prompt students to work with curriculum material and ideas, collaborate, use technologies, etc. As a facilitator, the teacher participates in learning interactions, monitors students’ activities, stimulates their engagements, acts as a consultant in projects, evaluates artifacts created by students and orchestrates conditions for learning to proceed in productive directions. However, there is also an emotional dimension. A teacher must be empathetic with students and their needs and constraints, and able to provide counseling to individual students when appropriate and beneficial. This is particularly important when working with research students who are likely to have to navigate a “bumpy” road of personal transformations through their learning. It is important that such students feel welcome in approaching a supervising teacher and have trust that the student-teacher relationship is founded on mutual respect and partnership in learning.
Integration of assessment and learning
I place high importance on formative or on-going assessment of students’ learning. I believe that through integration of learning and assessment teachers are able to readily identify areas of improvement to target in order to ensure that students’ learning is maximized and their differences addressed appropriately. This is most effectively done when assessment includes project work (e.g., design of a product, problem-based learning, or a case study). The project is segmented in stages, each of which is aligned with part of the content of a curriculum to be covered in a module/course. Each of the stages is linked to some deliverable artifact (e.g., a physical product, a theory or an idea). Production of these artifacts requires students to work together and interact, using the teacher as their project consultant, drawing upon curriculum material, and apply existing and emerging knowledge. The artifacts are delivered at appropriate stages in the module and feedback is sought from other students as well as given by the teacher. This allows students to extend their learning by considering each other’s artifacts, ideas and mistakes. These deliverable artifacts need to be carefully planned in order to provide the teacher with information about students’ learning, misconceptions and gaps in knowledge up to a particular stage in the module. Through this understanding the teacher can plan formative action, provide any additional material, and assist students with the module content according to their unique learning needs. This also prompts a teacher to reflect on the learning process and improve on it in the future. One strategy that I find to be highly effective with students is to involve them in negotiating assessment criteria at the end of the course. I provide initial criteria for assessment and invite students to challenge these, provide comments, and otherwise negotiate the final list.
Extending
learning beyond
the classroom walls and prescribed curriculum
In recent years, the amount of contact time allocated for our teaching module has been reduced. At the same time, outside the University there are ongoing and rapid developments in information and knowledge, and there is thus a growing need for learning to keep pace with these developments. Further, we need to equip our students with non-traditional knowledge and skills (e.g., digital fluency, creativity, visual literacy, information literacy, multi-literacies). Emerging innovative applications of technology, globalization, movements towards a knowledge-based economy, shifting expectations from industries, and multiple other factors create challenges for us at the University and demand certain transformations in order to maintain our teaching as relevant. Simply, our class time might not be any longer sufficient to provide students with appropriate levels of exposure to useful knowledge and experiences. In this context, I strongly believe that we, as individual teachers, must make the effort to expand our learning beyond our classroom walls and prescribed class time. One effective strategy serving this aim is to make use of information and communication technologies and to engage students in on-line environments that can be accessed any time and anywhere. Teachers must stimulate students’ desire for learning and facilitate their continuing engagement in environments outside the class (e.g., cyberspace). In addition, teachers must be flexible and responsive to emerging issues and allow learning to expand beyond the prescribed curriculum content.
Readiness to challenge students
Readiness to challenge in a meaningful way students’ basic assumptions and provide them with opportunities to think differently is also critical for effective learning. Throughout my career I have come across colleagues who shied away from practicing this out of their concern that issuing such challenges would negatively reflect on students’ evaluation of their teaching at the end of the semester. In fact, my experience tells me that although initially students may feel threatened by having their assumptions challenged, in the long term they come to greatly appreciate and reflect on such challenges, which they recognize as facilitating their learning. In addition, challenges can lead to debates, constructive discourse and negotiation by creating disturbances in students’ mental models – mental models that inhibit their learning! My belief is that every student’s learning is enhanced by their being personally challenged by their participation in a module/course.
Teacher’s subject matter expertise
I believe that a teacher must be experienced, knowledgeable and skilled in his or her specific discipline/profession. Only then, will the teacher be able to provide students with fully effective support in project work, expert advice and professional role-modeling. I do not mean to imply that a teacher should lean on his/her expertise to simply tell the students the best way to approach a task. Rather, a teacher’s expertise should ensure that s/he is able to effectively deal with students’ gaps in knowledge and misconceptions. Possibly, this assumption is strongly related to the nature of my own specialist area, which requires a good knowledge of a spectrum of tools and the ability to apply these (I previously received industry awards for my professional work). However, a teacher must ensure that his/her knowledge is relevant and up-to-date. This is particularly important in today’s dynamic times, where a lot of new knowledge is being created while older areas of knowledge are rapidly becoming obsolete. Effective modern teaching practice should aim at providing students with the knowledge and skills they need for today and the future. In addition, I strongly believe that teachers at the University are uniquely positioned to link new knowledge to students’ learning by using their research, that of their colleagues and relevant research elsewhere for quick application in their teaching. In particular, I think it is vital to emphasize the importance of this nexus between one’s teachers and research. Research should in no way remain an activity isolated from teaching. Other academic roles such as research should contribute to the enrichment of one’s teaching.
Skills in using educational technology
Today’s teachers must be prepared to integrate educational technology into their teaching. Educational technology is not only providing important tools to make teaching more effective, but is also an expectation of students, who expect to see it being used in their learning environment. Key skills include the ability to facilitate learning in cyberspace, moderate online discourses, utilize digital repositories and web resources for learning and develop effective presentations (I refer to these skills as teachers’ digital fluency). I strongly believe that a teacher also needs to develop skills to utilize technology in preparing quality educational material to aid their teaching. Over the years, I have developed the understanding that visuals have a unique power to support teaching and learning. Visuals can be created to represent key concepts from a discipline, to illustrate processes, to portray metaphors and analogies, and for many other purposes (see examples of my teaching materials at http://daniel.cite.hku.hk/examples). Presentations in the class are a key teaching aid and these must be more than just lines of bulleted texts and statements. Visual affordances of technology allow us to communicate ideas in powerful ways that can help to maximize learning. Contemporary technologies allow almost everyone to create material in highly visual formats. The growing processing power of computers and emerging user-friendly applications, as well as easy-to-use, effective and inexpensive digital cameras and even camera-enabled mobile phones enable anyone to become a photographer and empower ordinary teachers to easily create visual content.
A
teacher’s continuous learning,
ability to reflect and improve, and global-local attitude
A teacher must continuously engage in lifelong learning activities, research and exploration of new technologies and methodologies, as well as keeping up with developments in his or her field (e.g., engineering or medicine) in order to sustain the ability to design currently relevant learning experiences and prepare students for the world outside the University. At a time in which we are witnessing a growing need for professional teacher development, institutions are to a certain extent constrained in their ability to keep up with these demands. However, teachers themselves must do more to independently continue their learning, explore innovative pedagogical models and develop skill in the use of information technology for teaching and learning. Ability to reflect is another factor leading to continuous improvements in one’s teaching practice. This ability must include being open to new ideas and flexible to change. In particular, it is important for teachers to reflect on their experiences with their students and to consider various forms of feedback such as that collected by the course evaluation instrument at the end of a semester. In addition, it is important to reflect upon professional criticism from colleagues , whether that be offered casually or formally through processes such asa university’s formative and summative evaluations.
I would like to emphasize that a teacher must be aware of global developments while remaining sensitive to local circumstances. Global developments are rapid and teachers must be flexible in transforming their traditional ideas and accepting or adapting what is successful elsewhere. Sensitivity to local circumstances is particularly important for expatriate teachers. Teaching in a foreign country requires us to remain sensitive to cultural issues and accommodate our teaching to students whose culture, learning approaches, language background, attitude and work habits might be different from those with which we are most familiar. This local awareness must also include sensitively to the culture and politics of the home institution.
September 2007