teaching philosophy.

Anyone who stops learning is old, whether twenty or eighty.  Anyone who keeps learning stays young.  The greatest thing you can do is keep your mind young.  (Mark Twain)

 

I believe my fundamental responsibility as an Instructor is to facilitate student learning and engagement with the material, and I recognize that doing so is a challenging task.  I meet the challenge by providing students with opportunities to practice and apply the skills they learn within the structure of assigned course work.  The ability to practice skills will help translate this knowledge to subsequent courses and to their future workplaces.  My pedagogic approach demands my method is highly interactive and flexible, engaging students in an active ontological dialogue, and often putting students into conversation with one another (Baroustas, McGregor & Mills, 2015). 

 

Major Claims:

 

Skill Acquisition

I really like teaching new skills, but I love allowing opportunities for the class to teach and develop skills in a peer-to-peer environment.  I begin by asking myself what my students should know and be able to do at the end of each class, and then move on to designing a class that allows them to contribute to the actual class content.  In both Rugby and Strength Training, I divide the class into two types of working units: a). Dyads responsible for warmups and games or b).  Groups of five or six, depending on class size, responsible for teaching and developing a “new” skill in each class.  Adopting this framework has decreased the amount of transmission style teaching in my classes, increased actual game play time, and provided an opportunity for future teachers an opportunity to instruct.

 

Recognizing Diversity

Students arrive in courses with varying levels of skill and experience.  Students learn skills best through an interactive teaching style that demands their participation and challenges their abilities.  For example, I pair the most experienced and knowledgeable students with the least skilled (National Rugby players were paired with novices).  I also work to make my classroom a safe environment for experimentation which helps with the development of some level of intrinsically motivated curiosity (Hodge, Lieberman, & Murata, 2012).

 

Reflective Practice

One of the most important tools I use, for developing as a teacher, is writing in reflective practice journal (Purcell, 2012).  The process of reflection should never end.  It is an opportunity to know myself by examining my strengths and weaknesses on a regular basis.  When did I inspire students?  When did I feel ineffective?  It is important for me to position myself as actively involved in a partnership.  The practice of reflection and exploration is a deeply personal process that allows me to refine individual courses and improve as an instructor.

 

As a direct result of the practice of self-reflection, I enrolled in the Learning and Teaching Higher Education (LATHE) certification program, which runs concurrently with my PhD program.  I look forward to the influence the program will have on my teaching at the University of Victoria and the doors that it will open to in my future

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In summary, I wish to model the qualities which influence my professional development, skill acquisition, recognizing diversity, and reflective practice in my academic life.  I hope to nurture curiosity and love of learning in students and develop innovative teaching pedagogy with teachers.

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