Teaching Philosophy

My teaching philosophy is centered on lifelong adult learning- that involves understanding their unique characteristics, needs, and motivations, recognizing, and honoring their diverse backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives and treating them as partners in the learning process.  I believe that as an educator my role is to provide adult learners opportunities for self-directed exploration and discovery empowering them to take ownership of their learning journey. 

I design learning experiences that are relevant, practical, and applicable to adult learners' personal and professional lives.  I connect course content to real-world challenges that allow learners to immediately apply new knowledge and skills. I incorporate adult learning pedagogies including case-studies, and experiential learning practical field-based activities to provide opportunities for application of learned concepts.

This philosophy has helped me to actively engage diverse adult learners ranging from policy makers to grass-root workers and extremely experienced practitioners to early career beginners. 

On reflection, for me the ultimate satisfaction of a successful teaching session is to ignite curiosity, critical thinking, and openness to new ideas, that fosters a solution identification mindset and take learners forward on their journey of discovery. I encourage discussion drawing on the wealth of adult learners' experiences to enrich the learning environment and promote a two-way learning exchange between facilitators and participants.

I always endeavor to create a conducive teaching learning environment devoid of any discrimination or prejudices.  I strongly believe that learning is a two-way process as every participant brings in a wealth of ideas, diverse expertise, and vast experiences to contribute to the learning process. Through encouraging active participation, I engage students to make them comfortable to discuss their perspective and raise critical questions – the type of questions that we may not readily have an answer for! For accomplishing this, I generally open my teaching sessions by asking questions to assess participants baseline understanding of the core concepts I must cover in a particular session. This helps me to determine the path and pace I need to follow for achieving the session objectives. 

‘Respect’ for participants and teachers is a core academic professional value for me. This involves respecting diverse backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives, treating each other with dignity and acknowledging everyone’s intrinsic worth as individuals. ‘Empathy’, I consider, as the second essential core academic value for understanding students' needs, challenges, and emotions. I am always sensitive to their feelings and experiences and provide support and encouragement to them when needed. I strongly believe that mentorship is vital in the learning process.  Mentorship supports students in managing their learning, socio-economic and cultural challenges that they might be facing. As a director of the graduate program, I introduced a formal Mentorship Programme in 2018.

As a graduate programme lead, I closely observed how socio-economic and cultural impact academic performance of graduates. Some of the graduates belong to other provinces and remote parts of the country and undergo a tough time adjusting to the fast-paced life of a city like Karachi while trying to grapple with the academic pressures. In such situations, mentorship from faculty is a life-saving measure for them!

Continuous improvement in teaching and learning is my motto. I am always evaluating my own performance through students’ feedback acquired through both formal and informal means.  This helps me identify areas for improvement. As a graduate program director, I always encourage students to openly communicate their concerns and issues about all the courses they take.  I chair and supervise graduate program committee meetings to ensure that students’ valuable suggestions are incorporated, and their issues are adequately addressed. Moreover, I also encourage faculty to bring innovation in courses based on the current needs and market demand.