Statement of Teaching Philosophy

“Créer le navire ce n’est point tisser les toiles, forger les clous, lire les astres,

mais bien donner le goût de la mer (…).”

"When you want to build a ship, do not begin by gathering wood, cutting boards, and distributing work,

but rather awaken within men the desire for the vast and endless sea."

Antoine de Saint-Exupery, Citadelle


Purpose of Education

During the last terms of my studies I received the rare chance to work in a project located at a state museum where I was integrated in a group of young researchers focusing on the very same site I dealt with in both my master's thesis and later dissertation. This inspiring milieu and a subsequent contract offered me the well-appointed opportunity to work as a full-time researcher. Right from the start I was also asked to give periodic lectures at conferences and for public. On the one hand this gave me a certain routine in lecturing, on the other it always was a joy when I felt that the own enthusiasm and commitment for the field could become transferred to the audience. However first contacts to teaching were already made due to the requirements of our EU-funding and a series of holistic seminars we were obliged to give to student groups from various universities covering site and artefact studies, geographic information systems, geophysics, conservation, museology, public relation, fundraising, exhibitions and full-scale reconstructions. Yet while working on my PhD myself at that time this rather seemed a necessary deed and distraction and I was glad when I could return to research and feed my own curiosity as a researcher. This perception changed in the last couple of years when first interest led my colleague and I back to university to give a seminar as teachers ourselves. Another key-event was a field school during a survey campaign, where I was to give an introduction to the site and on current research goals. I felt that I was not only getting through to the students, but also could raise their interest and inspire them for the topic. It almost seems like a personal ripening as a full-time researcher that finally brought me to appreciate the mediation of knowledge to students.

In respect of learning theories I generally share the perspective/paradigm of Constructivism (cf. Piaget 1968; Vygotsky 1978) regarding learning as active process of constructing subjective knowledge where information is processed and linked to the learner’s individual previous knowledge. Herein I tend to follow the theory of “Communities of Practice” (Lave & Wegner 1991; Wegner 1998), where devoted people with a common concern or passion for a subject (domain) interact and engage regularly in sharing information (community) and over time develop a common repertoire for the assessment of sources and interaction (practice).


Role of the Teacher in Education

To start off with to my mind teaching should not only be based in a profound knowledge in the respective field which is rather a prerequisite, but also about dedication as well as the interest in communication and interaction with the students. As our discipline is embedded in the humanities apart from the factual knowledge on chronological frameworks, sites and artefacts as well as methodological and theoretical approaches to me it is an important goal for student teaching to ultimately equip the students with basic skills of our general academic discipline that is the autonomous appropriation of knowledge, to prepare and give lectures on specific topics and to writes scientific articles with respective references. At an advanced level students should be encouraged to step away from the textbooks, think critically and to build up their own opinions within a controversial discussion. Ultimately my personal ambition is to transfer my own commitment to a fantastic and exciting field of research to the class and to address to everyone’s own curiosity. One of the general challenges in teaching is the fact that this education the students are passing through will prepare and qualify them for any job in the field and at the same the awareness that job opportunities in fact are rare. Therefore the overall approach based in the methodological framework of the humanities will also enable the students to a broader basis for the later job market. However it is equally important to highlight that true dedication always will find its way even under difficult conditions. This point touches upon another key challenge that is the targeted training qualification (BA/MA/PhD) as well as the heterogeneity of classes in terms of different background knowledge and grades of motivation. While the targeted training qualification – which always can develop in to course of education – will be best encountered with a broad and solid groundwork at an early educational level, different personal backgrounds and motivations should be challenged individually. Also gender and equal treatment and opportunities have to be monitored within a teaching context but ideally neither sex or background should make any difference in the treatment of students from the classes’ or the teachers side. In relation to the students educational level I rather see a spectrum of possible approaches circumscribed best in the Transfer-, Shaping- or Travelling Theory discussed by D. Fox (1983). According to the respective theory teaching is ranging from a basic, more subject-focused approach that is the initial mediation of hard facts and thereafter learning by comprehension to a more student-focused approach with studies open in result and the gradual withdrawal of the teacher to mentor function. This process reflects the idea of the “Legitimate Peripheral Participation” in Situated Learning Theory (Lave & Wegner 1991) where a novice on its way to become an expert step by step moves up from the periphery to the centre of the respective community of practice. Ideally at the end of the tertiary education I as a teacher have made myself obsolete. In order to reflect on the success of my own given course aims at the end of the term I ask the students to give a feedback in terms of what they appreciated and what could be improved the next time.

Students' Learning Development

In order to reach that goal to guide my classes to become self-aware and critical students of course I need to activate the students for their own learning. This I do by bringing in my own commitment which I try to mediate. However as a teacher I do prepare myself in order to be the students a good teacher in return I expect the class to likewise do an effort within the course, to prepare themselves and to participate actively in the discussions in terms of the students’ learning development. As I pointed out above I believe that personal backgrounds and motivations in each class are heterogeneous and thus should be challenged individually – both in terms of guidance and support were needed, but also by stimulating existing metacognitive competences and challenging students in self-adjusted learning. Similarly there is no universal and generally excepted teaching method which motivates the students and responds to curiosity, challenge, choice, control or collaboration. The seven principles for education and teaching – (1) activation of previous knowledge; (2) development of flexible and functional knowledge to connect previous to new knowledge; (3) development of metacognitive competences to reflect on own abilities; (4) education based on problems and cognitive conflicts/confusion; (5) education based on authentic/practical exercise and context; (6) education based on participation and challenge (learning by doing/discovery); (7) education based on articulation and associations as well as abstraction – as emphasized by R.C. Pettersen (2008: 115-26) and borrowed from Constructivism can contribute to analyze teaching methods and lend themselves as point of origin for an appropriate education strategy.

In a course apart from general lectures given by myself so far I gave away pre-defined topics to single students or groups to prepare for an oral presentation that in a second step should be fixed in written form according to scientific writing. When needed students were supplied with a couple of basic references to start off with and were asked to present their ideas to me the week before the very presentation in front of the class. When difficulties should come up earlier in the students’ working process I offer my guidance and am regularly available after every seminar. Each presentation is being discussed subsequently by the class to learn from parts still worth improving, but also in terms of the very context to stimulate critical thinking. Students which are more reluctant in the discussion are being address explicitly and asked for their opinions in order to integrate those individuals. If possible the classroom should occasionally be enhanced by additional practical elements as e.g. excursions to sites or museums. Seminar papers as means to train scientific writing were to be handed in at the end of the course and after supervision discussed with the students to be able to give additional advice. At the end of the course the class should not only have acquired knowledge according to the topic of the seminar, but also learned to expound the problems of certain subjects and maybe even develop own research questions. Another goal is the insight that even in academia not everything printed in black on white is necessarily true and it is always giving trying to change perspective. Contrariwise not everything that is worth knowing is easily accessible and much but not everything is available on the internet. As some information may even be printed in non-English foreign languages additional language skills should be comprehended as a benefit.

Own Learning Development

In terms of my own growth as a teacher and supervisor I feel it is my responsibility towards the students to actively pursue my professional developments. As a university teacher one probably never is fully educated pedagogically, but it can be looked upon as a perpetual process: The own experiences enhance by every seminar you give, every class you teach and every individual you supervise. On the other hand education science is an academic discipline in itself and is constantly developing the current state of the art. At the moment I sense that I rather might be bound to classic teaching methods as taught on German universities and would like to look into other approaches in order to improve my teaching pedagogically. At the same time I keep it with Heinz von Foerster who stated: “Lehrer können nur Lehrer sein, wenn sie Forscher sind” (Teachers can only be teachers if they are researchers). I feel that I should keep up with some amount of research of my own to be able to develop further as a researcher in my own field, too, which – after all – is the very basis to my teaching in front of the class.


References

  • Fox 1983: D. Fox, Personal theories of teaching. Studies in Higher Education 8:2, 1983, 151-163.
  • Lave & Wegner 1991: J. Lave & E. Wenger, Situated Learning. Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Learning in Doing: Social, Cognitive and Computational Perspectives (Cambridge 1991).
  • Piaget 1968: J. Piaget, Six Psychological Studies. Translated by A. Tenzer (New York 1968).
  • Pettersen 2008: R.C. Pettersen, Kvalitetslärande i högre utbildning. Introduktion till problem- och praktikbaserad didaktik (Lund 2008).
  • Vygotsky 1978: L.S. Vygotsky, Mind and Society. The Development of Higher Mental Processes (Cambridge 1978).
  • Wegner 1998: E. Wenger, Communities of Practice. Learning, Meaning, and Identity. Learning in Doing: Social, Cognitive and Computational Perspectives (Cambridge 1998).