Philosophy of Education
My approach to teaching is the same as my approach to learning, because I believe that teaching and learning are the same. We learn by doing, not by reading books or listening to lectures, so teaching is about getting students to do. In Chinese, that means speaking and listening and reading and writing in as authentic a way as possible. In technology, that means using the tools for genuine purposes, as opposed to using them just for the sake of using them.
Learning is a natural process, and for true learning to take place it is essential that the classroom not be turned into an unnatural environment. For true learning to take place, the class – the students - must be the focal point. Switching the focus to the class is quite straightforward: make sure that most of the time is spent with students working with each other, seated in a circle or in small groups.
Assessment is an ongoing process inseparable from teaching; the teacher is constantly observing the students’ progress. A good teacher knows exactly where a student is at all times, and need not rely on tests. Formal assessments should be genuine, i.e. to the extent possible they should reflect the way things work in the real world. The teacher should be assessing the level of mastery of the subject and not the memorization and recall of facts, and the mastery should be measured against standards.
I believe that high expectations are an important aspect of teacher attitude toward students. A belief that students can and will perform at a certain level leads to just such performance. There is no student who cannot learn.
See below for a presentation about my teaching.
Learning is a natural process, and for true learning to take place it is essential that the classroom not be turned into an unnatural environment. For true learning to take place, the class – the students - must be the focal point. Switching the focus to the class is quite straightforward: make sure that most of the time is spent with students working with each other, seated in a circle or in small groups.
Assessment is an ongoing process inseparable from teaching; the teacher is constantly observing the students’ progress. A good teacher knows exactly where a student is at all times, and need not rely on tests. Formal assessments should be genuine, i.e. to the extent possible they should reflect the way things work in the real world. The teacher should be assessing the level of mastery of the subject and not the memorization and recall of facts, and the mastery should be measured against standards.
I believe that high expectations are an important aspect of teacher attitude toward students. A belief that students can and will perform at a certain level leads to just such performance. There is no student who cannot learn.
See below for a presentation about my teaching.
Above are Wordle analyses of my assignments for the 2012 fall and winter terms. The size of each word is proportional to the number of times it was used.