Teaching Philosophies

1. Teaching Philosophy

People believe that a good teacher is one who has a lot of academic knowledge, and some people argue that a good teacher needs to have a strong philosophy in a specialized field. However, I disagree with those opinions. A good teacher needs to have not only the academic knowledge but also experience. Of course, it could be different according to objectives of teaching. In this writing, I would like to mention engineering fields in the university.

Nowadays, technology is rapidly changing, so if professors do not keep up with new modern technology, they cannot catch up even with students who study specific fields. If professors are not familiar with new technology, they cannot guide students such as graduate students. It is hard to know very specifically every new technology. However, professors need to consider the tendency of modern technologies. If they have a lot of academic information, they can easily understand when they encounter new topics. Therefore, academic knowledge is one main factor which a good teacher needs to have.

Moreover, I think experience is also necessary to be a good teacher in the university. As technology and information increase, the gap between industry and academy is getting larger and larger. So, professors need industrial experience for better education and research. It is also related with academic knowledge. With industrial experience and information, it is much easier to apply academic education. After students graduate from the university, most of them work in the industrial field. If teachers apply their experience to academic classes, students could easily understand what they learn.

In conclusion, I believe that it is necessary for professors to have both academic knowledge and industrial experience. If professors know only one side, it is difficult to teach students efficiently. (M.K.)

2. Statement of Teaching Philosophy

My goals as a teacher are first, to develop student’s skills to think critically, examine their own beliefs and write clearly; and second, to introduce students to basic concepts, central issues and contemporary debates in philosophy.

To think critically students need to know the logical structure of arguments; fallacies; and the differences between reasoning and expressing their opinions. Also they should be able to make useful and meaningful distinctions, to criticize their arguments and compare them with common sense. The best way to teach them the logical structure of arguments is to help them detect those structures in the philosophical texts. When I present an article or book chapter I detect premises, conclusions, claims and arguments and try to show them the logical structure of the article. Also, I draw their attention to the methods philosophers use to convince their readers, such as making distinction and analogies. Class discussions are opportunities to teach them how to avoid fallacies, because they usually use them. Well-guided discussions also show them that they believe many things without having thought about them, without evidence or good reasons. Therefore, I rely on a combination of lectures and well-guided discussions to attain my pedagogical goals.

To develop students’ skills to write argumentative essays, I extensively comment on their papers. For their first paper I require them to submit a draft. I comment on their draft to show them how they should organize their paper, what Ideas need clarifications and what claims are unsupported. Drafts are not required for other assignments, however, they are encouraged to write drafts and discuss them with me.

In my Introduction to Ethics course, I teach them three theories and apply each of them to two contemporary problems. In teaching theories I rely mostly on lectures, but the problems are discussed with students. Economic justice is the problem I always use in my classes. This is the issue about which many students hold unjustified beliefs.

I use a mixture of in-class reading quizzes and take-home paper assignments to evaluate my students’ progress toward the learning objectives of the course. Reading quizzes are given on a weekly basis to encourage students to do the reading assignments. But the best way to evaluate their progress in philosophical thinking is paper assignments. I assign two short papers and a final paper. When it comes to writing, you can clearly see that students have different attitudes towards learning philosophy. Some of the students think learning is a matter of finding right answers; they refer to encyclopedias, dictionaries, and the Bible, and quote from famous people, to show that, for instance, Aristotle’s conception of happiness is not true. Some of them just express their opinion and feelings; their arguments usually begin with sentences like “I don’t like his idea…”and “I feel that …” These students are “subjective knowers”. Some of them always agree with the philosopher they are dealing with. They have an adequate understanding of the basic concepts and the structure of arguments and know how to play with them. These students are “procedural knowers”. Finally a few of them are independent and critical thinkers who evaluate different ideas and argue for their own views to convince the reader. I use different commenting strategies for each of these groups. Comments should help the first group of students to clearly understand the key concepts, the structure of arguments and how they can defend or rebut a specific argument. Comments on subjective knowers’ essays should ask them support their ideas with evidences and argument. They need to learn the difference between expressing their ideas and argue for their ideas. Comments on procedural knowers’ essays should ask them to consider the consequences of the view they are defending and the relation between this view and other views they have defended in their previous essays.

Also, evaluation is an opportunity for me to evaluate myself. It can show how successful I have been in helping them to attain the learning objectives of the course. Just like the evaluation, for me, teaching Philosophy is an opportunity to learn and deepen my understanding. Teaching requires that I present philosophical positions in many different ways and answer many different questions; in this process sometimes I find that my understanding of a subject was not perfect. That is why I think teaching Philosophy is always rewarding: besides the pleasure of having students to think critically, I can learn new things about subjects that I would have never come back to, if I had not been a teacher. (-H.S.)

3. Teaching philosophy

Sometimes I dream of becoming a good teacher in my hometown, of educating more children, and making them become more knowledgeable and skilled. How to be a good teacher? I have some of my own opinions.

I think first of all, a good teacher must have patience. In a class, there always are bright students and students who are not so smart; a good teacher should not treat those students differently, or pay more attention to or have more patience with those who are not so smart. I think this is the key to becoming a good teacher. What is next is to show respect to students and make students more confident. If I am a teacher, I’ll provide more recognition of my students than rebuke. I’ll never easily get angry at all, and try to keeping smiling all day to make my students feel more freedom and happiness in the class. I’ll try my best to make my students more motivated in their learning.

As a next step, as an educator, I'll try my best to improve my students' academic performance by creating a better environment for students to learn and ask questions. For the students’ questions, I would use more understandable and interesting ways to make students easily understand and remember. I will be well-prepared for every lesson; on the lessons I’ll use time efficiently and ensure that each lesson is successful.

Last but not least, my students should be encouraged to take opportunities to explore the world around and gain new knowledge from the side. So I will focus on training my students’ teamwork and innovation in my class. I will also expand my knowledge by learning from books and getting more information from internet, and finally showing that new knowledge and information to my students. (Q.K.)

4. Teaching Philosophy

Having been a student for the last twenty years, I have realized that being a teacher not only requires an in depth understanding of the material but also requires knowledge and skill in how to teach that subject. The second part of the requirement, knowledge and skill in how to teach, is also a must; this I think is what makes teachers effective and efficient. Effective teachers should be able to help students to apply strategies and also increase their achievement. The write up below not only summarizes the qualities that make an efficient and inspiring teacher, but also presents my teaching philosophy.

Teaching practices should not only be a critical method to empower students in taking ownership of their education, but also help them realize that they are responsible for their learning outcomes. Academic success and progress I believe can be achieved when students takes this step. Having only the enthusiasm for the sciences would not suffice to inspire the students, but a teacher should also be able to convey his own enthusiasm; it is this enthusiasm that makes it contagious enough that students become engaged in learning. Being able to think critically about ideas and the connecting concepts to everyday examples helps students transition out of memorizing formulas. Problems cannot only be solved by following a methodology, but can be solved using creativity; helping them realize this creativity helps them to think beyond conventional boundaries and seek the meanings of a concept and its importance. These are the skills that have facilitated the greatest advances in science, and having imparted them to the current students would not only help them to contribute to the field of science, but would also foster personal and intellectual fulfillment. Education I believe is the most important method of providing the current generation with a skill set, and teachers help not only by providing this skill set but also help them to function knowledgeably in a society where rapid technological advances constantly pose new questions and ethical challenges. University education should go beyond passing on information. It should be a place to involve the students in rigorous training, where they learn to develop methods, analyze information and also be able to successfully communicate this knowledge. Imparting this knowledge should extend well beyond the classroom. Informal discussions and first hand lab experience as a means of knowledge transfer, is one the most effective ways for students to learn. (R.S.)

5. My Teaching Philosophy

Teaching Italian at Texas Tech has been a very challenging and rewarding experience, which I hope is the beginning of my future career. The curiosity revealed by my students’ questions, and the willingness to know more about my country made me realize that I had the responsibility to nurture the interest they showed towards Italy, and make them want to visit, speak the language, and interact with local people. Also, I felt that how I taught would influence their perception of the country, which stimulated me to give my best every single day and strive to transmit my enthusiasm.

In the US, Italian is usually taught at college level, and the maturity of undergraduate and graduate students makes the instructor’s job thought-provoking, inspiring, fulfilling and extremely gratifying. When I started teaching, I thought of the many teachers I had had during my school and university years, and how they impacted my way of learning, thinking and shaping my interests. This made me aware that the teachers and professors I remembered with great respect and admiration were those that helped me think critically. Interestingly, I remembered them for how they affected my personal and cultural growth, regardless of how well I scored in their classes. Their example has always been of inspiration to me, and it set a goal I meant to reach.

I also understood that the context you are teaching in shapes the way you teach. You always have to keep in your mind your audience, their needs, where they come from, and the teaching methods they have experienced before college. Teaching to American students the same way you would do to students in your country would inevitably lead to friction and misunderstandings. Therefore, getting to know the environment where you are going to work is important, as it will give you a better understanding of how to adjust your teaching style. (-S.M.)

6. Teaching philosophy

I will narrow down the philosophy of teaching in few points, why teaching? teaching as teaching, teaching skills and methods, and…

Why teaching? This question could also be asked in another way. Do we need teaching? Couldn’t people learn stuff on their own? To answer this question I have to refer to the ways man is receiving information. It should be either of five ways of his senses: looking, hearing, touching, smelling, and tasting. When we are born as a child we start learning flavors by tasting and smelling, but somebody has to point out the names for those flavors, so that we could match those names that we are hearing with what we smelled and tasted, helping us to learn them. So, we have to have some definition “heard” for the natural phenomena we get from our other senses. This builds up our language and ability to speak and later give us the skills for occupations. Basically learning is the ability for human beings that make them different from the moment before. Therefore the ability of learning brings us teaching.

Teaching as carries its name with it is mainly about teaching. There should be some take home points at the end of each lecture or session. But this could be carried on in several ways, either in a traditional way, in which the professor is standing in the front of one or several students, or in a modern way in which there will be new devices like video projectors, instruments for specific subjects and anything that could bring in the full attention and concentration of the students, and of course it could be a mix of the two.

As a last point let me explain what the best way of teaching is. In order to answer this question we have to know how man learns after taking the information by his senses. Man learns by establishing a question in his mind that opens his mind for new facts. Then he memorizes it either in his short memory or long memory, depending on how he analyzes and digests the new facts. So, a teacher who brings the question to students' minds and then walks with them along, analyzing the answers, is the one who teaches the best way, because he puts those facts on the students’ long memory. They won’t forget him as they don’t forget those facts. (N.K.)

7. My teaching philosophy

I never think about being a teacher even though I have a lot of relatives who are teachers. I like math, so if I wanted to be a teacher, I would like to be a math teacher. In my opinion, if you are enjoying a subject, you will spend much time on it, which means you are probably better than others in the subject. I am not saying that everyone should love it, but if anyone wants to get a good grade, it is necessary to spend time on it.

The reason I bring math out is that I want to emphasize math teaching. I think every subject has its own way to teach, so I should focus on one subject. Then, I tell people how my teaching philosophy works. For my teaching philosophy in math, I believe that we should let students think. Therefore, I will separate the time during my class. Leaving some time for students after they face a question is how I have them think. This is the most important thing for them, and they should not check the answers first. If they check the answers first, they will lose their thoughts and follow the answer.

While I am teaching classes, I will introduce the principles of math and start with some questions. I will teach them step by step. I want them to follow my thinking in the class, but I do not want them to follow me while they are having a test or examination.

There is another important thing in the teaching field, which is that I will distribute the level of students' ability, because the students who learn faster than others must answer questions frequently. It will destroy the thinking of other students. As time goes by, those students who learn slowly will not be willing to answer and will feel inferior.

To sum up, the first thing is that I will let my students think and do not give up thinking. The second one is that I hope they can feel comfortable while they are learning something. Likewise, the second one can be used in any kind of field, and teachers can play a vital role in this part. (S.Y.H.)

8. Teaching Philosophy

I believe teaching mathematics is the best way to understand mathematics as it is. Therefore teaching mathematics is one of the most interesting parts in my life. My teaching is based on the belief that learning mathematics is not only listening to lectures and reading textbooks, but also working on mathematics and making mistakes with it. To stimulate students’ interest in learning mathematics, an instructor should show his or her knowledge and the confidence about the subject, and should always emphasize the importance of learning subject materials related to their field. A big challenge that an instructor in mathematics has is understanding each student’s learning style and the mathematical background. If the instructor especially in mathematics cannot understand this, students will lose their enthusiasm about the subject.

As a part of my teaching style, at the beginning of each chapter one of my main tasks is explaining the importance of that chapter. And at the beginning of each section, I give a brief summary about what they are going to learn in that section. With this process my goal is to keep their interest, enthusiasm and curiosity on the subject. After explaining important concepts or theorems, I do some examples in the classroom. Before doing examples on the blackboard, I ask them to try their own and monitor what they are doing. Using this process, I believe that I can keep my students in the correct track throughout the class period and I can have quick feedback about my teaching.

Throughout the semester, assigning different assignments, quizzes, homework, and class tests, and making blackboard presentations, I try to make them work on the subject materials and make them to develop their thinking ability. Encouraging them to ask questions, to use my office hours, I try to give students the opportunity to show their different learning styles and their mathematical background. That helps me to give my best part of teaching to them.

Observing my teaching evaluations after each semester, I can have feedback about my teaching at the beginning period of my teaching; one of the frequent comments that I got was, "Most of the time, beyond the subject material, the instructor cannot understand what we are talking about." Once I saw this, I realized that my responses to their questions beyond the subject materials were not satisfactory. Hereafter I am trying to communicate to them very carefully and to make sure I handle those situations correctly. After every semester, I am evaluated by a well-known professor in the department. His or her comments are also very helpful in improving my teaching skills. (C.D.)

9. Teaching Philosophy

Teaching is an activity that happens not only in human society but in other animal worlds as well; thereby, it should be similar in the basic principles. Throughout the history of the teaching profession, there are many perspectives on who should be the central character in this special activity. In the past, people put teachers in the center of the teaching model and all procedures and activities should focus on them. However, the contemporary positions claim that learners must be the core in the teaching processes. In my opinion, the fundamental principle in teaching activity is to help learners achieve their goals. These goals could be knowledge, skills, or practical experiences in practical professions. Therefore, a good teacher is a person who has relative sufficient knowledge and experience in his or field and has an appropriate teaching method to approach learners to help them get their needs. In addition, the interactive communication between teachers and learners should not be one-way; this means that learners are not passive subjects who just receive but do not have any critical responses. On the contrary, learners with their experienced knowledge might contribute to this interactive relationship new ideas which completely are not similar to teachers’ understanding. However, the concept for this perspective should only be applied in a relatively limited situations and levels of education from elementary to advanced. The education in the United States (US) is an open system which allows people a wide range of selections to follow; thereby, the position of learners is more crucial to be respected. Another important aspect in contemporary teaching philosophy is the interdisciplinary nature of education. In the US, this principle has been demonstrated by a free and harmonious relationship among different disciplines in a university or college. Along with that is diversity in academic culture which is achieved by the US’s policy in attracting people all over the world to come to study and to exchange knowledge and scientific initiatives. In general, an effective teaching method which is suitable for contemporary education should incorporate an interdisciplinary approach, a learner-centered method, and an organic interactive relationship. (D.P.)

10. Teaching Philosophy

The best teaching philosophies require teachers to play strong roles. As the leaders of classrooms, teachers cannot simply lead students in the understanding of new information. They must have an in depth knowledge of the subject and must be able to provide information that surpasses the objective understanding being promoted to the students in that course. Teachers must also be able to take command of a large group of learners and encourage the retention of the information they are being presented with. A teacher can do this by having students engage in some sort of process that forces them to employ their newly learned information in realistic or necessary situations.

Giving learners some sort of information or skill set and having them retain what they learn should be the focus of any classroom. Although this is true, a teacher can go about doing this in many ways. Personally, I believe that the teacher/student relationship in the classroom cannot be too one-sided. That is, the teacher should not spend every session lecturing and students should not spend the entire time doing activities. The best teachers make the best use of available resources including the learners’ time, and they promote a short-term or long-term strategy that causes learners to gain the most from their classroom experiences. (J.P.)

11. Teaching Philosophy

My passion for teaching and helping people started when I was in high school. We had a lot of homework and endless quizzes to do in high school. Even though I did well in classes, the high school life was still very depressing due to those tedious homework problems. I always finished homework ahead of time, which made me available to some other classmates who needed help. They always came to me when they had hard problems to solve. At the beginning, I couldn't appreciate it because sometimes I needed to explain some very simple questions many times to the same person. However, after a while, I realized that those simple questions sometimes could bring me a lot of new ideas. In addition, my expression skills improved a lot by explaining questions to others and I would not feel nervous anymore when talking in front of many people. I started to like helping people solve their problems. Talking to people made my tedious high school life more fun and also it helped me think of a question and solve it in different ways. After years of teaching and helping people solve questions, I decided to become a teacher in a University where I can teach students and help them grow as what they want to be in the future.

In class, I will encourage students to ask questions. Questions can make students think and give me an idea if I am going too fast and how well those students understand the class. I realized that there are so many reasons for students to keep quiet in class and hide their questions. For instance, a lot of students do not want to ask questions in class because they are afraid of being laughed at for asking simple questions. In order to keep students being active in class, I will give 0.5 point for students each time they ask a question in class no matter whether the questions are simple or not (maximum 5 point each person). Even though some of the students will raise questions only for extra points at first, they still need to listen carefully and think first and then they can raise questions in class. Moreover, after getting used to raising questions, students can eliminate the fear of asking questions and start raising questions when they really want to know the answers.

I will not check attendance in class. Enforcing students to come is not the point. Making my class attractive enough for students is my goal. I believe that if students can feel comfortable while absorbing a lot of interesting knowledge in class, they will not skip any one of them. I am always trying to create a relaxed environment for students where they will feel comfortable instead of tense. A relaxed person can perform better and learn more efficiently than a nervous person. I always keep a smile on my face to make students relaxed and comfortable. Furthermore, I will bring a lot of practical interesting topics into the class instead of dealing with the tedious mechanical engineering textbooks only. Some students prefer reading textbooks by themselves at home because they can absorb everything they need in textbooks and get good grades in exams. I used to be one of them myself, so I understand them very well. But sometimes I have found part of the textbooks hard to understand and I have to look for more information online or ask somebody else. Thus I will try to deal with these problems and make my class irresistible to students. Based on my years of experience, I can use more common language to explain hard core concepts or problems; the textbooks cannot do it. And by answering questions in class, students can digest the difficult problems more efficiently in class. Moreover, taking advantage of my research work, I can introduce the most recently interesting topics in real life to students and they can choose to do some of the work based on their interests. Depending on students' need, I will give some practical projects to students who want to work in industries and some academic research projects to students who want to get involved in academia as researchers. In this way, they will work harder because the class projects can prepare them better for whatever they want to do in the future. (C.L.)

12. Teaching Philosophy

The good teacher knows and understands students, how they develop and learn. The students actively construct and transform their own knowledge based on past experiences and prior learning and learn in the same way or at the same rate.

The good teacher must know her subjects and how to help students learn those subjects and must constantly learn what is new in the discipline.

I think that effective teaching practices encourage student interaction with the text. This requires a highly democratic classroom where power is shared and students are given the freedom to experience the material in ways that make sense to them. Also this requires that the student feels safe and willing to take risks within the classroom.

Finally, I believe the a teacher lives to serve; a teacher is dedicated to learning, to his or her discipline, to his or her students, and to making the future the best possible place for all of us to live. (A.P.)

13. Teaching philosophy

Nowadays, there is a plethora of multifarious methods of learning in diverse countries. I rest on the credence that teachers must recognize what methods of learning influence their students more. There are so many ways to increase a teacher's efficiency.

The first and foremost thing is that teachers must know that children are different in learning, and they have miscellaneous abilities. As a prototype, in a class with 12 students, some of them are good at math, and some others are good at literature. Thus, they cannot learn every topic equally. So, teachers must take a multi-dimensional manner, and they should find some ways to explain each topic obviously and clearly. Moreover, teachers should let students take risks. When teachers provide a safe environment for learners, learners are able to take risks. To wit, if teachers create an environment for students to develop, their students' talents will flourish. However, if teachers show negative reflections to the incorrect answers from their students, it may reduce the power of their speech and perspectives.

Furthermore, teachers should repeat important points. Repeating more than once leads students to pay more attention to those points. But an experienced teacher should know how to repeat the points in another way to be more attractive for students. The other successful method of teaching is that teachers should listen carefully to their students' speech. This is because of the fact that the effective learning method is two-way speech. Also, teachers should create situations in which students enter the learning process. Such situations per-se help students to continue their participation in learning.

Finally, teachers should pay attention to the changes. This is the first step to identify the status of students. As an illustration, distraction, fatigue, abnormal action, etc. are the actions on which the student's deficiency does depend. Hence, teachers could minimize the negative effects of these disorders by recognizing and solving them.

As per the points that I declared it could be concluded that there are so many methods teachers can use to have their best efficiencies, such as multi-dimensional manner, safe environment for learner, repeating important points, and recognizing changes. (S.H.)

14. Teaching Philosophy

I base my teaching ESL/EFL Writing philosophy on the idea that teaching as much as possible to many people at a time requires using time very effectively. In ESL/EFL, people are only ready to learn certain grammar points at certain times, so teaching a grammar point to a class at any given time may be of limited effectiveness. In fact, because students need to produce quantities of language and alter the habits they use while producing it, I find it more useful to gear the class toward ways of getting them to produce more while thinking critically about what they produce.

Traditional writing classes have limited the actual production, and increased the amount of attention each student is required to put into a single draft. I have the opposite approach, because I feel that students' first requirement is to have confidence, which they get primarily by experience writing many things in many different environments. Putting too much attention on a single draft focuses them on things they don't know or aren't ready to master, and makes them less confident. Focusing their attention on continual opportunity and more chances to do it right, or improve one's habits, makes them more aware of the skills they carry with them and their own ability to integrate new knowledge into their skills.

With larger quantities of writing, some of it goes ungraded, or not sternly or severely criticized. Yes, that is a price I pay for improving their confidence, getting a quantity of things to compare, and being reasonably sure of encountering a wide range of grammatical and rhetorical choices. Making students into better writers implies, to me, making sure that these positive influences on their writing outweigh the debilitating, negative feelings that result from being told that one's writing is "not good enough." (-TL)

15. Teaching Philosophy

I believe my chosen career as a university professor has provided me with a unique opportunity to contribute to the changing of society and the future. From the earliest opportunities that I had to interact with students, my goal was to make a positive difference in their lives to the best of my ability.

I believe my primary responsibility is to provide students with the skills, knowledge and practical experience necessary so that they can expand their personal skills and have the ability to be successful in their chosen careers and lives. At the heart of my teaching philosophy is my belief that students not only need to be educated but also will gain the opportunities that exist during their college years and then deeply identify their response to these opportunities, in order to make their future satisfaction and happiness. The years spent as an undergraduate engineering student are among the most creative and important in a developing professional’s life as an Engineer.

I believe that teaching is much more than just delivering knowledge to our students. One of my most important functions is to help students learn how to learn, how to effectively solve problems, and how to apply the impact of their solutions to society in sustainable way. I encourage making students active participants in their education by making my classroom lectures consist of asking questions, making them give their own ideas. I also believe in the value of students working in small groups or teams on projects in most of my courses, for instance, on a team design project. In this way students take more responsibility for their own education. This is especially important in engineering education, since people normally work cooperatively. Students are exposed to problems where they must find information and data broadly rather than depend on their textbooks. By carefully designing such special projects, students can explore their own intellectual capabilities in a cooperative environment.

To be a successful engineer means to see life though a very different set of eyes than most people have. (S.G.)