I started my teaching career as a high school mathematics and science teacher and then taught students at a polytechnic institution in Singapore (similar to a community college setting in the States). I have also taught instructional design and technology related postgraduate modules as well as faculty development training courses at institutions of higher learning in Singapore. In these nine years, I can confidently say that I have grown both as an educator and educational researcher. As a teacher, my instructional practices have been constantly undergoing transformations as I accumulate more insightful experiences from interacting with students, peer educators and other stakeholders within the educational enterprise. These educative experiences have shaped my thinking and approaches towards understanding the complexities of the learning process while making learning more meaningful and relevant for students. At a fundamental level, my teaching philosophy is underpinned by a quote from John Cotton Dana - "Who dares to teach must never cease to learn!" I am convinced that teaching is a transactional endeavor involving the sharing of my ideas and experiences with my students and in turn, learning from them their views and perspectives on issues of concern. The joys of teaching stem not only from imparting what I know but also in learning from my students with an open mind and collaboratively embarking on a journey of self-discovery, meaning-making and fulfillment.
In making my lessons more engaging and interactive, I use questioning techniques – asking students varied questions and eliciting their responses as well as encouraging students to pose peer-directed questions and seek answers to these. Such an instructional approach of structured inquiry forces students to verbalize aloud their thinking, defend the validity of their ideas when challenged and solicit needed clarifications. They have to break out of set patterns of thinking, correct their misconceptions and heuristically process new meanings. I have found that incorporating questioning strategies opens up entirely new avenues for teaching and learning as the learning process now becomes more dialogic and conversational with robust exchanges of opinions and perspectives. This enables students to become reflective and critical thinkers – they have to be analytical and confident in their reasoning before voicing their own views and evaluating the legitimacy of others’ standpoints. I have also noted the shift in attitudes of students towards being more inclusive, accommodating alternative perspectives and becoming tolerant of diversity.
I intentionally design my lessons with learning activities and tasks that encourage the solving of real-world problem scenarios and the analysis of situation-specific case studies. Creating opportunities for authentic problem solving helps students better appreciate the utility of what they are learning and become more strategic decision-makers. The problems and cases function as contextual anchors that enable students to make organic connections between what they already know and new knowledge they need to acquire and apply to resolve the unknowns. This is in alignment with Dewey's principle of continuity of experience which calls for learning to be a continuous process of reconstructing experiences. The principle of continuity posits that "every experience both takes up something from those which have gone before and modifies in some way the quality of those which come after." Since I am a believer of Vygotsky’s principles of socially-mediated learning, I usually organize the problem solving and case analysis activities to be collaborative and co-operative in character. Students have to tackle the given problems or cases in groups of 4-5 students per team and have to present their collective solutions to the class. I have observed that a problem-based learning orientation stimulates greater motivation for learning, promotes joint intellectual effort by members and encourages peer learning. Students become more adept at resolving conflicts through negotiations and consensus building - vital collaborative skills to be mastered in succeeding in the working world. Teamwork prevents students from being locked within their own limited or prejudiced perspectives and creates a repertoire of shared insights they would have been unable to gain on their own.
Being an advocate of the judicious integration of technologies in educational practices, I try wherever possible to embed emergent technologies in my instructional approaches to foster innovation in learning and motivate students to be more focused learners. Technologies alone, no matter how sophisticated and well-designed, will not necessarily deliver desired learning goals or increase the quality of students’ learning performances. What is required is careful instructional planning and design in creating technology-oriented learning environments that are well-aligned with research-based principles of learning. How specific technologies are used in teaching determines the extent of learning effectiveness and success. For example, in my science lessons, wherever applicable, I incorporate interactive simulations to increase learner engagement through active explorations, discovery and inquiry. Instead of being passive recipients of information dissemination by teachers in class, interaction with animation rich simulations provide students with immersive and appealing learning experiences that support the development of deeper conceptual understandings and better appreciation of the real-world relevance of science.
Students have a tendency to focus on the minutiae of details concerning what is being taught and lose sight of the bigger picture that they need to understand. For example, in the biology section of a general sciences lesson I have found students trying to understand the anatomy of the body and being overwhelmed with the details of each organ while missing the key point of the inter-connectedness and dependency of the organs upon one another, ensuring the smooth functioning of the body. They see the discrete parts but not the unified whole in their conceptual orientation. I firmly believe that an excellent teacher is one who can convey complicated concepts in an easy to understand and integrated format without compromising the authenticity of the subject matter being discussed. This is akin to an accomplished artist composing a painting. A painting consists of many associative components such as the strokes, images, symbols, color combinations, patterns etc. The expert artist while carefully working on the details of each of these individual components also focuses on the totality and essence of the emotions or themes being communicated to the viewers of the painting. Similarly, an expert teacher is one who models learning experiences that are holistic and empowers students to be visionary thinkers.