Teaching Philosophy
Teaching Philosophy
My role as a teacher is to help students move beyond learning isolated facts and become independent problem solvers able to apply their knowledge in novel ways to unforeseen issues. In my mental shorthand I think of this as striking a balance between the ‘what’ and the ‘why’.
If I focus only on transferring fundamental facts (the ‘what’), I may produce students who are adept at ‘listing major ways to treat wastewater’ but who lack the ability to diagnose a problem not covered on their flashcards. Conversely, if I only focus on the bigger picture and principles (the ‘why’), I will also do my students a disservice – they may be able to expound at length about the potential meanings of different chemical concentrations in effluent, but would be at a loss if asked to actually measure those same chemicals.
So, how do I find a balance between the ‘what’ and ‘why’, especially when confronted by a large classroom full of students, each with a personal learning style?
I believe that the best course of action is for students with complementary learning styles to work together. My most common approach is to alternate short lecture periods with small group discussions in which students apply what they just learned to either solve a concrete problem or evaluate a specific statement. My teaching page gives examples of my approach, including lecture slides which deliver facts related to specific learning objectives and activities designed to reinforce the use of those facts.
My major task during these discussions is to circulate between groups and provide direction so that the various personalities within the group interact in complementary ways. Active learners get to dive into a problem, while reflective learners get a moment to think. Non-majors get insights from majors, while majors are reminded of the perspectives held by people outside their discipline. I often ask students to take a minute at the end of a class to write down anything that was confusing, fun, or clear and turn it in. It is very common for me to read that my active learners enjoyed the chance to make their learning concrete by applying it immediately. Feedback on the very same activity has shown that my reflective learners enjoy the chance to ‘take a breath’, or ‘talk it over with my neighbor’.
I favor this approach because I have found that students are engaged when they are actively involved in discussion, and as I have learned from other educators formally observing me in the classroom, I am skilled at creating an environment which is relaxed yet on topic.
There are many benefits to these discussions, but their primary goal is to cause students to work out the ‘why’. By challenging them in this way, they are forced to go beyond memorizing a fact and must explore its implications. It’s particularly enlightening for the students when groups disagree; they often ‘get it’ while I help them try to integrate competing viewpoints.
Those sorts of disagreements can crop up during most activities, but I’ve found I can encourage them to happen most reliably by presenting graphs from actual publications and having groups attempt to interpret them. A particular favorite of mine is showing a microbiome census from the home (Dunn, 2013) which shows that both toilet seats and pillowcases harbor similar microbial communities. Asking student groups to discuss why that might be the case, how they would test their hypotheses, and what the implications of the similarity are has invariably generated engaged, interesting, and often conflicting ideas.
Although I’m happy to have found this approach, it was mainly accidental. I am always trying to improve my teaching and the opportunity for specific, directed development coupled with professional feedback is one of the reasons I’m enrolled in the Teaching and Communication Certificate program. For example, while I’m good at on-the-fly assessment during discussions, I appreciate the practice it has given me in designing effective formal assessments and in interpreting their results. Further, and reflecting my belief that students learn by doing, it has provided me with many hours of important in-class experience.
By continually practicing my own skills, I continue to learn new ways to help students not only retain individual facts, but learn how to actually use their knowledge.