Reflecting Teaching Development
My approach to teaching has evolved significantly throughout my career, reflecting both my growing experience and responsibilities as well as shifting theoretical perspectives. In the early stages of my teaching journey, I primarily emphasized content mastery for my students and delivering informative, well-structured lectures for my teaching. My primary concern was ensuring students received comprehensive information about the subject matter and that I preseented myself as a trustworthy expert. Reflecting on this, I think my relative youth for various teaching roles (teaching college test-prep classes when I was 19, beginning to teach Master’s level university courses and co-supervise Master’s students when I was 23 and freshly out of my own undergraduate studies) led to some insecurity on my part as a teacher which I mitigated by tring to present as extremely prepared and knoweldgable.
An early point of development for me as a university teacher occurred when I assumed greater teaching responsibilities as a graduate student, delivering lectures using materials developed by experienced faculty members. This role allowed and required me to look beyond content alone and recognize the importance of facilitation, discussion, and the social aspects of learning. I began to understand that effective teaching involves creating spaces for knowledge construction rather than simply transferring information. This shift aligned with my growing appreciation for the social-constructivist view that learners actively construct their own understanding rather than passively receiving information.
My next phase of development as a teacher came when I joined the Learning and Education Technology (LET) lab, where self-regulated learning is a core theoretical focus for research. This environment fundamentally reshaped my teaching philosophy. I became increasingly aware of and committed to developing students’ regulatory and metagocgnitive skills which, when applied successfully, empower students to take control of their own learning processes. The power of self-regulated learning and its utility across domains redirected my focus as a teacher toward developing these skills rather than focusing primarily on subject-specific content. This shift reflected my belief that by fostering metacognition, I can empower students to become self-regulated learners.
Most recently, my teaching has beend developing durther through participation in university pedagogy courses, which have refreshed and deepened my understanding of pedagogical and learning science concepts. These studies have prompted more deliberate reflection on how I put these theories into practice, particularly regarding feedback and assessment and their alignment with learning objectives. This has led to a more thoughtful approach to development of my lessons and the courses they are parts of, as well as a smore cientifically-grounded approach to supervision. I now strive to create learning environments where problems are challenging, but students feel safe to try new approaches and to fail. I likewise have committed myself toward a teaching orientation to supervision in which I identify learning goals for students who I supervise, aiming for constructive alignment between these goals and the supervisory strategies I deploy.
My current teaching focus likewise centers on acheiving constructive alignment between learning goals, learning tasks, and assessment methods. I’m particularly interested in how these alignments support my broader educational values around self-regulated learning, constructivism, and student empowerment. A significant challenge and opportunity for developing teaching for me and many colleagues is developing meaningful assessment approaches in contexts where students heavily rely on generative AI tools for both metacognitive reflection and for task enactment. My recent efforts have been toward developing teaching tasks which facilitate students developing their own metacognitive skills and asseessments which meaningfully reflect learning goals even when technology aids their completion. This focus reflects my goal in facilitating students actively taking control of their own learning, helping them become more reflective, self-regulated learners in increasingly technologically-mediated learning environments.
This evolution in my teaching approach reflects my commitment to creating learning experiences that are student-focused, agentive, and constructive, adapting my methods as both theoretical perspectives and technological environments continue to evolve.