My Teaching Philosophy
To me, teaching is a vocation rather than a profession. My teaching philosophy rests on three pillars:
- Academic knowledge is best conveyed through a combination of theory and practice;
- Long-term methodological skills should be given priority over short-term information;
- Education Technology (ET) has an important role to play in the classroom.
Below, I explain how I approach each of these three pillars.
1. Knowledge as a Combination of Theory and Practice
The idea that academic knowledge is best conveyed through the blending of theoretical inquiry and empirical work is often preached but seldom practised. As somebody with both teaching and professional experience who strives to combine academic, policy, and media work, I am often surprised at the gulf that separates the suppliers and the consumers of academic knowledge. Indeed, I have sometimes left lecture theatres with the impression that the teacher came from Venus and the student from Mars, two aliens who meet on neutral territory (the Earth) and share a space (the classroom) but little else. Since academia is the planet of ideas and students ought be taught to take ideas seriously, this is not entirely surprising.
However, problems emerge when teachers confuse information and knowledge, the former being a commodity in ever-greater supply whereas the latter is a method and, as such, is far more difficult to acquire and transmit. Conveying knowledge rather than information is the challenge of the conscientious teacher and is, in my experience, best achieved through a combination of theoretical inquiry and practical exercises. Academia tends to excel in the former while the ‘outside world’ focuses on the latter, with the result that students are often stuck in the middle. The teacher must bring these two worlds together. But how?
This is where I draw the most from my professional experience. For me, the best way to make learning interesting for students is to combine the theories of international relations with the everyday practice of it. This is why my classes are often divided into two parts: the first ensures that students gain a good grasp of the IR theories we are discussing, while the second teaches them to apply those theories to an international issue.
The two parts complement each other but are structured differently: the first, theoretically informed one comes in the form of a Socratic dialogue between me and my students. Since my experience is that the mere explanation of theoretical concepts is as tedious as it is easily forgotten, I prefer to adopt a question-and-answer approach whereby I start with the discussion of a basic document (a political statement, an excerpt from a peace treaty, or a newspaper article) and then guide my students—through sustained questioning—to see how different theorists of international relations are likely to perceive that document and issue.
We then consider a case-study, which I draw on my professional experience (including at the UN) and often involves role-playing (we recently simulated a Security Council session on Syria). Again, I try to show my students the theoretical implications of that case-study, so that theory and practice become almost blended.
This is not always straightforward: my classes and seminars tend to be challenging affairs in which students are trained to acquire their theoretical skills through the discussion of specific case-studies. As I suggest below, however, student feedback on this method has so far been encouraging.
2. Long-Term Knowledge versus Short-Term Information
The second pillar of my teaching philosophy is that long-term methodological knowledge should take priority over short-term factual information. This is especially so for first-year students: like immigrants knocking at the door of academia, they are applying for citizenship to the ‘Republic of Letters’, and the teacher must help them obtain it (full admittance will only come on Graduation Day). This is a serious process and one where students should first and foremost be assessed on the basis of their methodological skills.
First-year applicants to the ‘Republic of Letters’ tend to be unsophisticated in their approach, but they are quick learners and offer a fertile soil upon which to build. Hence my unrelenting emphasis, from day one, on the three key methodological skills of critical thinking, academic writing and class discussion.
Critical thinking is the most important but also the trickiest skill to convey, for students come with a black-and-white approach that the teacher must undo, while instilling in them the merits of polite disagreement. I try to do so by picking a polarizing issue (such as whether Sharia law should have equal standing with domestic law, or whether abortion is a public or private matter) and by randomly dividing the class into groups, each of which is asked to defend a given position regardless of the personal views of its members. Once the groups defended their pre-assigned views, I ask each group to subject the other to sustained criticism (to which I add my own questioning), something that aims to show students how reality is rarely black or white.
The second skill I stress, academic writing, it is best acquired through the correction of bad practice. This is why, when possible, I like to give students class exercises: I ask them, for instance, to write a short paragraph on a certain issue which they must email me and which I return to them with my corrections. This way, structural mistakes are corrected ahead of any assessed work and recurring methodological problems–such as adopting a descriptive rather than an analytical approach, bad practice and poor referencing–are rectified.
Thirdly, class discussion is not a standalone skill but one that I try to develop on a continuous basis through a Socratic method of questioning inspired by the Oxford tutorial system and aimed at rigorous reasoning. It is my experience that, with this system, even the quietest student becomes more confident. To be sure, there is a delicate balance to be struck here, for impose this questioning on a shy student and s/he will be put off by the experience, yet apply it to the class at large and only a talkative few will participate.
This is especially so when students comes from different backgrounds, like at all the universities I have been teaching. On this I have learned my lessons: in my first years I tended to be dominant and class discussion suffered. The situation is now different and student feedback tend to reflect such improvement. Like all skills, teaching is a progressive business and practice makes it perfect (although mine is far from it).
3. Education Technology versus Information Technology
The last pillar of my teaching philosophy is that technologically-enhanced teaching can be an important tool in the classroom. This goes against the rejectionist view that technological advancement is more harmful than useful for learning. I see this approach as flawed for two reasons: first, the bigger the exposure of new generations to technology, the greater the expectation from their teachers. Second, this conservative view confuses information technology (IT) and education technology (ET), the first of which is passive and offers students data, whereas the second is interactive and allows them to build their own knowledge.
As I discovered in my first years, transmitting information is far easier than conveying knowledge, but student feedback has allowed me to see the problem. Since then, I try to transform technologically-savvy students into independent learners by turning the gadgets they master so well into interactive learning tools that—like modern-day ‘Trojan Horses’—allow students to interact with each other and share their thoughts both in and out of the classroom. In this, Twitter, Facebook and MySpace proved especially useful.
Twitter is an effective teaching tool that allows instant communication. Especially during my time in the UK, through dedicated Twitter accounts, I used to post a wealth of materials (such as videos of WWII, interviews with prominent IR theorists, data sheets on developing countries and mini-assignments requiring students to interact with each other). This way, students were expected to construct their knowledge collectively through an in-depth engagement with their case studies and by collecting data as they progressed. This data was then offered for discussion online and the results were opened up for debate in the following class or seminar.
4. Student Feedback
Student feedback is one of the most reliable indicators to judge the effectiveness of what I do—and there is evidence that ET has allowed me to improve my teaching. In 2010-11, for instance, 27 questionnaires were received (all for ‘Politics in Europe’), 23 of which gave me a score of 5 out of 5, with top marks for clarity (24 out of 27), availability (25 out of 27), enthusiasm (25 out of 25), essay preparation (26 out of 27) and satisfaction (24 out of 27). Top scores for exam preparation (21 out of 27), essay feedback (20 out of 27) and class discussion (19 out of 27) were lower, although comfortably positive. The ‘open comment’ section were also largely encouraging, with students pointing out, for instance, “the really high quality of the seminars”, “very high standards of teaching”, “the top-notch quality and very engaging teaching style that makes Friday mornings worth getting up for”. On the down side, some students commented that class discussion was at times limited.
As a result of this feedback, in the next few years I changed my method by introducing ET—with encouraging results. As many as 112 feedback forms were received in 2012, for instance, thus providing a more statistically reliable baseline for assessment. Of these 112 forms, 95 expressed an overall satisfaction score of 5 out of 5, 14 rated me 4 out of 5 and 2 students rated me 3 out of 5. All the marks for those areas that were comparatively weaker in Year One (such as exam preparation, essay feedback and class discussion) improved markedly: my exam prep score, for instance, was rated top (5 out of 5) in 93 questionnaires, while essay feedback satisfied an even higher number of students (94), as did the class discussion parameter (96 top marks).
Open comments have been positive: 86 students wrote that my teaching compared “extremely favourably to the other tutors”, with 93 students praising “a great mix of theory and practice” and “the amazing professional experience of this tutor, which makes everything so much more interesting”. Overall, 105 out of 112 students preferred my teaching method to that of other teachers, with the other 7 writing that it was of comparable quality. My weakest indicator—allowing for class discussion—improved in Year 2, with only 4 out of 112 students wishing for more interaction. All in all, the introduction of ET and the availability of more structured methods of student feedback paid off. The following year, I was given an Teaching Excellence Award.
Conclusion
A good teacher conveys information but only a great teacher instills knowledge (a bad teacher, of course, does neither). My aim is to become a great teacher. I believe that teaching is the best possible form of learning and that the teacher is the first student in the classroom, so I am delighted with my pedagogical experiments.
I have found all the universities I taught at congenial places to perform innovative teaching—institutions where I have been able to learn from my students and colleagues while sharing some of the expertise and knowledge I have acquired through the years. As a passionate teacher, I am always committed to improving my skills and I look forward to receiving and taking on board more student feedback in the years to come.
Teaching truly is one of the most gratifying activities I engaged in; it even compares favorably with diplomacy!