I want to teach because I want to make this world a better place. I had the privilege to be taught by the most passionate teachers, it is to them that I owe the formation of my own teaching philosophy. Many of my teachers volunteered to work in remote locations, sacrificing their lives to the art of teaching and devoting themselves to the art of education. Their belief and unfaltering support of my endeavours keep me motivated today when I am on the other side, an educator with the responsibility for my own students.
I want my students to realize how fortunate they are to live in the era where so many learning materials are at their fingertips, I want them to unlock their potential, grasp the available opportunities, and aspire for the heights which are within their reach, be it in sociology or any other discipline of their choice. One of the ways that I try to accomplish my teaching aspirations is through teaching projects. Since 2015, Dr Silvia Bartolic and I have been working on a flipped-classroom project “Quantitative Arts: Scientist by Nurture.” The idea was born in a research methods class, where we came to realization that so much could be done to improve the current curriculum and how research design is taught to Arts students. With the view of making the quantitative research methods more accessible and with the generous support of the UBC Teaching and Learning Enhancement Fund and the American Sociological Association’s Carla B. Howery Teaching Enhancement Fund, we are currently working on developing online tutorials and a new technology-laden curriculum for the research methods classes. With teaching projects like these combining teaching and research, I hope to help students to open their eyes to all what they can become and show them the joy of knowledge and of science.
The why question above sires another, which is of no less significance: how to teach? I believe that strategies of teaching should be fluid and rigid at the same time depending on the desired outcomes and the needs of the audience. This is where I am most pragmatic in my philosophy. I want to experiment with as many teaching strategies as possible, finding out empirically what works for my students. Traditional methods of teaching must be combined with new experimental ones because it takes a lot of innovation to figure out what type of teaching style suits these particular students in this particular context. There is no ‘one size fits all’ method of teaching, no single best style of teaching. Everything depends on the context. Within the “Quantitative Arts: Scientists by Nurture,” Dr Bartolic and I have developed a tool to assess attitudes toward research design courses and quantitative methods in general, which we plan to use in assessing the effectiveness of a variety of teaching styles. We have already assessed our control group taught in the traditional way and their change of attitudes toward statistical methods and research design throughout a semester. We will assess the experimental group with the flipped-classroom teaching style in the next semester. It is the experimental and practical side of the challenge that I love about teaching. With that said, however, my own preference in style of teaching would be the flipped classroom strategy where students learn the concepts and materials outside the class (using, for instance, video tutorials) while the absorption and analysis of material (problems, quizzes, and discussions) happen in class. Nonetheless, I have the experience of teaching a traditional classroom as well. I worked as a sessional instructor (adjunct professor) at the Sociology Department, UBC, for two consecutive terms, teaching a social psychology class (SOCI 240 Introduction to Social Interaction). It was a big class of about 80 students with traditional lecture style of teaching. Additionally, I volunteered at teaching two terms of the Japanese class for the graduate students at UBC. For the Japanese class, I decided to engage an activity-based style where students, the instructor, and teaching assistants could have a lot of time practicing the common expressions and words in Japanese. I have taught the beginners’ level Japanese language material, managed a team of three teaching assistants, and invited five speakers to the class.
The final question is the “what to teach.” Here, my teaching philosophy is postmodernist and highly eclectic. No topic is less important than others, no course is less challenging or less interesting. Even though I have developed my experience and skills more around quantitative side of research and teaching, I would not limit myself or my students to a single area. On top of regular teaching, I often mentor my students from the research methods class to help them publish their work in undergraduate research journals. One of my students have recently published his work in the Sojourners, UBC Sociology undergraduate journal and was awarded the Undergraduate Sociology Award. I have also mentored for the PhD Connections Initiative organized by the UBC Faculty of Graduate and Postgraduate Studies, where senior PhD candidates mentor first-year PhD students to navigate grad school and avoid pitfalls; led a teaching assistants’ training session for sociology graduate students on grading undergraduate papers; organized professional development seminars together with Dr Richard Carpiano at the department in 2013-2014. I also enjoy teaching by delivering lectures as an invited speaker. Thus I have presented on “How to Thrive in Grad School” for the 2014 UBC Graduate Students Orientation and on the Sakha identity and Being a Global Citizen for the Global Scholars Luncheon, an initiative launched by the UBC International Scholars program. Overall, I want my students to know that there are many ways that they can take in any career and that the world abounds with unsolved puzzles and opportunities, all equally interesting and challenging, it depends on them to take the first step and see where a path leads them.