Presented in reappointment professional dossier, August 2022.
An essential aspect of my teaching is to create unique and engaging experiences for my students in each of my courses. I do so by tailoring the teaching pedagogies to the theories and topics of each course. When students can see the coherence between teaching methods and the content, it leads to a more engaging and inspiring learning experience. Since I may be students’ instructor multiple times over, I can encourage student interest, participation and learning by making their learning experience unique and inspiring within each course.
In the following section, I briefly describe the six courses I have taught at UBC. I illustrate how the five key elements of my teaching philosophy – understanding student diversity, promoting accessibility and inclusion, student-centred pedagogies, relevant subjects, and opportunities for practice – underlie the course design.
SOWK201: Introduction to Social Work – 3 credits, 12 sessions, 36 hours
Winter 2019, 53 students and Winter 2020, 49 students – 1 TA
Description – This course introduces the knowledge, values, skills, practices, and ethics of social work, as well as perspectives for understanding the context of individual and social problems. A key component of the course is to help students develop a better understanding of the social and environmental factors that have contributed to their personal development, which is key to developing a professional identity.
Students, Accessibility and Inclusion – Prior to the first session, I surveyed students to learn about the diversity and experiences as a learner (e.g. how do you think you learn best?). This provided me with valuable insight on course design and integrating appropriate student-centred pedagogies. I use UDL principles and techniques into the preparation of the course to enhance learning accessibility for diverse learners (see udlguidelines.cast.org). For example, to help students access knowledge, I employ multiple methods such as lectures, videos, readings, and podcasts to convey content. In addition, my pedagogy was guided by Kolb’s experiential learning model, in which we engage in different learning methods: observation, reflection, conceptualization and experimentation. This also supports diverse learning strategies and offers students a more holistic approach to learning. I use Critical Pedagogy to promote inclusion in the classroom experience by discussing safety, classroom power dynamics, and ways of creating a Brave Space.
SOWK315/316: Integrative Seminar and Practicum – 6 credits, 12 sessions, 36 hours
Fall 2019 to Winter 2020, 16 students
Description – In SOWK315, students learn the core elements of social work, focusing on macro social work practice and social justice. Students also undertake a practicum in a community organization where they contribute to its priorities and work on complex, community-based challenges. SOWK316 is a seminar designed to integrate learnings from field, practice, and theory courses to further students’ professional development. The seminar pushes students to reflect critically on their practicum experience, monitor their practice development and make connections among the ethical, theoretical and skill elements of social work practice.
Pedagogy and Course Design – These courses are conducted through classroom and group discussions during which students engage in critical dialogue with one another on practicum and classroom experiences. I have introduced different aspects of critical pedagogy in this seminar, such as dialogical exercises, exploring the relationship between theory and practice, and building autonomy as SW students.
SOWK335: Social Analysis for Social Work Practice – 3 credits, 12 sessions, 36 hours
Winter 2019, 51 students, Winter 2020, 50 students and Winter 2021, 55 students – 1 TA
Description – This course provides students with an understanding of foundational concepts and ways racism, capitalism, settler colonialism, globalization, and patriarchy intersect to produce social locations, violence, oppression and political resistance. By working with various theories, methods and case scenarios, students become familiar with essential political, social and ideological factors that influence personal and social problems and structural oppressions. This course teaches students how to conduct an informed and critical social analysis of the key personal and social factors within structural contexts. As a result, students develop a progressive theoretical and practice framework within which to approach work with individuals, families, and groups.
Pedagogy and Course Design – Analysis is an essential part of SW practice which often occurs through dialogue with service-users or within teams exploring complex situations. I redesigned the course by integrating the Community of Practice (CoP) learning strategy and dialogical approach to give students the opportunity to practice and mirror this analytical practice in class. Through a CoP structure, students engage in dialogical analysis of complex situations of oppression and discrimination. This approach helps students to engage in collaborative learning while building their own autonomy to undertake situational, locational and structural analyses.
SOWK415/416: Advanced Integrative Seminar in Social Work Theory, Policy and Practice – 6 credits, 6 sessions, 18 hours
Winter 2021, 20 students and Winter 2022, 18 students
Description – This seminar is designed to continue helping students integrate learning from field, practice, and theory courses to further their professional development by building on their third-year practice courses. It provides students with a further opportunity to critically reflect upon their practicum experience, monitor their practice development, continue to develop practice skills within the context of social work values and ethics, and make connections between thinking, feeling and doing in the context of being a social worker.
Course Design, Pedagogy, and Relevant Subjects – In 2022, we transformed SOWK416 from a six to a 10-session seminar. The extended course provided students with a better opportunity to identify, analyze, and address complex ethical dilemmas inspired by their experiences in their placements. Two sessions are devoted to how to process ethical dilemmas with ethical frameworks and SW theories. Students are given opportunities to practice and demonstrate learning by presenting ethical dilemmas and leading peer dialogues exploring possible resolutions of these complex situations.
SOWK440C/529A: Communities, Social Development and Community Organizing: Frameworks and Strategies for Practice – 11 to 12 sessions, 33 to 36 hours
Fall 2019, 9 students, Fall 2020, 21 students and Summer 2022, 21 students
Description – This course critically explores community organizing and social development as components of a broader set of critical social praxis and processes. Students and I work together to create knowledge and skills in activism, social development, social change needed by Community Organizers to address oppression and build healthy communities. Students engage in a Project-Based Learning Pedagogy, developing projects with a Community Organizing lens. Classroom sessions focus on exploring different frameworks, methods, SW tools and applications in different contexts. Through projects, students apply theory directly, build knowledge from experience, and gain real-world experience.
Pedagogy and Opportunities to Practice – This course’s main inspiration is Freire’s Critical Pedagogy, which deconstructs the ‘banking’ concept of teaching and learning in order to reconstruct together a learning environment that acknowledges freedom, power and the democratic possibility of learning. It uses experiential, community-based learning by integrating elements from process-based learning pedagogy. Throughout the semester, students work collaboratively in teams, and plan and complete a community organizing project as their primary assignment. The primary assignment is also the main pedagogy, Critical Pedagogy.
SOWK550: Co-teaching Social Work and Social Justice – 3 credits, 12 sessions, 36 hours
Fall 2020, 37 students
Description – This graduate-level course is designed to help students locate themselves within the constructs of social justice and develop a comprehensive practice framework consistent with Social Work theories, values and ethics.
Pedagogy and Relevant Subjects – I co-delivered this course online in the context of the COVID pandemic. We reviewed the topics, content and readings, and redesigned most aspects of the learning strategy and assignments. We used elements of Critical Pedagogy, which were limited by the online environment (Collaborate Ultra). We invited inspiring guest speakers into the course. To promote student engagement and participation, we used CoP Pedagogy, where students engaged every week in small group discussions to explore topics in-depth and collaborate on final group assignments.