Teaching Philosophy
As a teacher, I see my role as a facilitator of discussion and a supporter of students’ learning processes. As such, my teaching is student-led, oriented around exploration of new concepts and strategies, empowering students to reflect on their learning strategies and practice important metacognitive skills. I believe that a teacher should create an environment in which students feel safe to explore new ideas and try new strategies, without fear of failure. Through this process of exploration, students develop not only an understanding of a concept, but also skills in regulating their approaches within the domain of that concept. In this way, my teaching of any given topic is less concerned with knowledge transfer around that topic in particular, and more concerned with fostering students’ abilities to construct deep understanding of the processes and strategies which are effective for them for solving problems within the domain of the topic in question.
Fundamental to my teaching philosophy are concepts of regulation of learning (see Panadero, 2017), situativity of learning (Greno, 1998), and a social-constructivist view of learning (Vygotsky, 1978). I believe that learners actively construct their own understanding. Rather than passively receiving information, they engage in reflective processes, create mental representations, and incorporate new knowledge into their existing schemas. To this point, I recognize that prior knowledge plays a crucial role in learning. Learners build new knowledge upon their existing understanding. This foundation influences what they construct from new learning experiences. I believe learning is situative, in that learners not only shape knowledge through interactions with content and peers, but also with the learning environment and context. As such, real-world problem-solving is a critical active experience through which learners should hone their expertise.
I believe good teaching involves creating a learning environment which is modelled on real-world contexts for content, where problems are challenging, but students feel safe to try new approaches and to fail. In such a learning environment, students are encouraged to participate actively, collaborate, and engage in meaningful activities that promote deeper learning. Students learn from each other, co-constructing understanding within their social and a situated context which promotes knowledge transfer to problems outside of the classroom.
I value student development of metacognitive skills. Metacognition refers to thinking about one’s own thinking, monitoring learning processes, and regulating cognitive, emotional, and motivational processes. As such, my role as a teacher is to create a learning environment as described above, and then to encourage students to actively participate, to reflect on their learning strategies, set goals, monitor progress, and adjust their approaches. By fostering metacognition, I empower students to become self-regulated learners and learners who can socially share in regulation of their learning. By encouraging students to actively take control of their own learning and in the learning of their peers, I strive to make learning a truly student-focused, agentive, and constructive experience.