Statement of Teaching Philosophy

Like a growing number of my peers, I reject the perspective that holds teaching to be information transmission and learning reception. In IT, a discipline where fact-based content changes more-or-less continuously, the old learning-as-information-acquisition model is not only inadvisable but also an exercise in utter futility. Modern problems do not go unsolved for want of information. I hope ultimately to provide my students not facts but agency.

I believe a key challenge to that end is to instill in students the ability to put external knowledge to productive, generative end. Students must know what they need to know (a tall bootstrapping order in its own right), where to find what they need, how to evaluate whether what they’ve found against their need, and how to use what they’ve found. Ability alone is insufficient; I’m with Plutarch that the mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled. To me this means not only that first among the duties of teaching is to instill a passion for learning but also that learning must be generative. I hope to provide students with a platform – the skills, the mindset and the context – to construct new knowledge and to take charge of their own future learning. I’m also a believer in creativity and imagination; they are the keys to our advancement. While I’m not yet sure they can be taught directly, I demand their practice in my classes and praise students’ creativity lavishly.

Valuable learning is acculturation. It’s how students acquire the means to participate in the communities they seek to belong to: communities of engaged citizenship, communities of professional practice, communities of scholarship. Language enables this acculturation, so communication in all forms is crucial, and so too is collaboration. Collaborative practice is the very fabric of professional communities; technology-facilitated collaborative problem solving is among the key skills of the future. Thus I want my student to speak and write clearly, to think critically and to collaborate well. Along with a passion for learning, these skills engender lifelong learning and personal agency in the information age. In IT specifically, I want students to appreciate the possibilities software and information systems afford and to know how to design them to empower people, organizations, and society at large. Students should also understand the contexts in which information technology is situated – the legal, commercial, social – and how our technical architecture interacts with those contexts to regulate human behavior.
I avoid the “sage on the stage” mindset; learners do the work and must remain at the center of the process. At the same time, I see teaching on some level as performing. Theatricality and humor have their places as means to engagement. I strive to balance student-driven active and collaborative learning opportunities with meaningful guidance and structure through mindful teaching. I’ve learned that active and collaborative learning absolutely needs to be wrapped in adequate content knowledge and context to “prime the pump” so to speak. For me an enthusiasm for constructivist approaches does not preclude lots and lots of teaching.

In the classroom I try to engage-by-example by being prepared, spontaneous, and passionate. Establishing a classroom community and a sense of connection with and among my students is a top priority. One of the easiest means to such connections is to recognize what is for me one of the essential truths of the profession: teaching is learning. Not only by way of reflective practice but also as an opportunity to engage ideas and issues with my students and share in their insights do I find learning in teaching. Students seem to respond positively to the fact that what they say and write in my classes can and often does influence my own perspectives. That sense of possibility engages and motivates. When a student knows her participation may shape the nature of the class’ discussion or even change the way the instructor sees things is I think an exhilarating prospect. I endeavor to make clear to my students that that prospect is very real in my classroom.

Over the past eight years I’ve taught students from 15 to 56, majors and non-majors alike, of widely diverse cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds. I acknowledge, accept and accommodate students where I find them. I have learned to teach the students I have in front of me. My goal is to enable students to go as far as they can, without undue regard to their initial preparedness, which is ultimately external to the equation of the classroom here and now. Creating a safe, comfortable, supportive environment is critical. This is not to say that my expectations are not high. I ask the world of my students, if for no other reason than to respect the fact that I’m not certain they won’t provide it. I try never to underestimate any student; surprises abound.

My assessment strategy is to give aggressively demanding tests and assignments – the toughest I can imagine a student being able to address – and grade them with realistic (perhaps even merciful) expectations and scads of partial credit. Students often characterize my grading as especially fair and reasonable, perhaps because I give them more credit for a given answer quality than they think they deserve, plus I get good grade distribution and often extraordinary effort as a result.

Teaching is in a way not unlike personal training. What students have to do is difficult, for some a painful and unnatural struggle. An aversion to inordinate effort is perfectly normal; natural selection seems to favor it. In the classroom I accept and expect this, and work to overcome it. I struggle to make the hard work invigorating and fun. Infecting students with my own excitement, curiosity and awe sometimes overcomes their inertia. Affect helps: amusement, fear, or anger can motivate very well. Rarely do I see students work harder than when I’ve made them mad and they are trying to prove me wrong.

I’ve come to accept that students will focus on that which is graded. I realize that this focus is not some sort of moral deficiency, it’s human nature, and while I have real distaste for grading, I do try to leverage it to productive end. I communicate my expectations clearly and repeatedly (maybe even stridently) and I grade what matters. I spell out in my syllabus exactly what I expect a student to accomplish to earn the grade they seek.

Metacognition and self-reflection are engines of growth and mastery, and I require (and grade) self-evaluations and reflective journals often. Meaningful opportunity to reflect and act on formative feedback clearly enables learning, so I regularly require and grade drafts and resubmissions. I also aim to be a reflective practitioner myself, and pour over end-of-course surveys as well as more narrative interim evaluations of my own design. The ever-present opportunity for improvement through reflection keeps me interested and hopeful. A sense of hope is my ultimate reward in teaching, a hope that the future will be shaped by more capable minds than our own.