Theodora's Teaching Philosophy

Theodora Issa's personal teaching philosophy

It is always my belief that good teaching lies in establishing a context that encourages students’ good learning. I believe in student-centered, constructivist learning, where students are given responsibility for their own learning. My way in dealing with my students is through respecting their needs, appreciating their situations, and encouraging them to excel by facilitating an open forum of discussion relating to the topics being taught displaying fairness and care. The ultimate aim is to build those students’ characters to be productive and moral citizens in our society.

In an age where complexity and uncertainty are the rule rather than the exception, we, as tertiary educators, are charged with great responsibilities towards our communities and society. These responsibilities come in two fold: (a) support the corporate world in time of crisis, and, (b) prepare our students (the leaders of tomorrow), for the aftermath of the current uncertainties, or as Middleton and Porter (2009) posit, prepare students for the next downturn. This simply means that we, as part of the society, are faced with a set of ‘adaptive challenges’ rather than what we used to be faced with earlier ‘technical problems’. In this respect, Heifetz, Kania and Kramer (2009, and 2013) identify the characteristics of these challenges: (1) challenge is complex, (2) answers are not known, (3) implementation requires learning, and, (4) stakeholders must create and implement the solution themselves. Further, John Ebersole and in an article published in Forbes (2014) highlighted issues relating to the responsibility of higher education of having graduates with the necessary skills and competencies. Who in his book of (2015) under the title “Courageous Learning: Finding a New Path Through Higher Education” took a closer look at the needs of adult learners and provides a clear, comprehensive assessment of the adult higher education landscape, which is on the increase due to the change in economic situations, and the need of businesses to promote those with higher education.

Heifetz, Kania and Kramer (2009) contend that ‘adaptive problems’ are often complex multi-faceted issues that can seem overwhelming to the stakeholders involved. Framing the issues so that people can comprehend the opportunity and the challenges that they face is one crucial role. To allow the smooth transformation and proper adaptation to such an ambiguous and uncertain situation, we as academics need to adopt the ‘adaptive leadership’ style, which simply does not presume to provide the answer or have a predetermined vision of the results. Instead, according to Heifetz, Kania and Kramer (2009) this style of leadership enables the people involved with complex issues to figure out and implement solutions that will ultimately require changes in the way of doing business, thus keeping the interested parties productively focused on the problem at hand. This continues to be the same these days in 2022.

Yes, this is the situation; it is ambiguous, uncertain, and risky. However, I am proud to state here that I am involved in a teaching team that is passionate about tackling this problem and share my goal of preparing our students for a better future, deriving from the crisis; it is our duty to take lessons from and trying to prepare the students for any future crisis. Examples are already recorded in the literature:

‘One of the things we saw that’s very important with this crisis is connecting the dots for students,’ says Amir Ziv, vice dean and accounting professor at Columbia. ‘Our goal is to prepare students for what will happen in the next crisis.’ (Middleton & Porter, 2009)

‘At orientation, finance professor Wei Jiang speaks for 90 minutes to roughly 500 incoming students about how lessons from their core courses can help analyze the meltdown, with ways to assess risk, evaluate gaps between share price and value, and make tough calls with limited information. ‘It’s very important that we show students how to make decisions under uncertainty,’ Ms. Jiang says’. (Middleton & Porter, 2009)

McMillan (2009) reinstates the need for a closer look at strategy. Though, McMillan’s call is for the corporate world to adopt a strategy to cope with the threat of globalization, he contends that even top-ranked business schools themselves need to change, including changing their curriculum, hiring foreign faculty, and cultivating new networks.

Yes, this is our responsibility, and it is my belief that building a proper and sensitive character of our students might hold the key to cultivating better environments at contemporary businesses, which would ultimately reduce the risk of future lapses.