Presented in reappointment professional dossier, August 2022.

Each of us has a unique experience of what it means to be a student. During my youth, my family moved to three different countries with three native languages. As a result, I changed schools nine times before University. For me, school was about constant adaptation and catching up. I often felt I did not fit in and lost the motivation to learn through these challenging and frequent transitions. However, it was when I enrolled in a School of Social Work that I began to understand the significance of learning. My teachers helped me recognize that learning was not about grades, approvals or meeting social expectations. Instead, learning was about understanding how the world functioned, what my role could be, and how I could contribute as a Social Worker (SW). This provided me with a natural motivation, curiosity, and desire to learn. As I enter the classroom as a teacher, I am always looking for this genuine curiosity in students and trying to bring it into our learning experience.

The learning process is complex and can be reflected by three fundamental principles: Engagement, Representation and Action (Novak, 2019). First, individuals must be engaged and motivated to learn. Once engaged, they need access to knowledge and materials to be learned and developed. Finally, learning is only complete when demonstrated; learners need opportunities to practice, express, and show their learning and apply it to real-world situations to better the individual, community, and society. My teaching philosophy enacts these three principles through a course design that integrates five key elements: an understanding of students’ diversity; design promoting accessibility and inclusion; student-centred pedagogies; relevant subject and topics; thoughtful inclusion of opportunities to practice and demonstrate learning.

Understanding Student Diversity, Promoting Accessibility and Inclusion

The first step to building engagement in learning is to understand the diversity and uniqueness of students, their learning strategies, needs and barriers (Fry and Marshall, 2003). Higher Education can be a complex environment for people with disabilities, equity-deserving groups, people in poverty and anyone who did not grow up in a family with a higher education background (Strange and Cox, 2016). These populations experience a disproportionate number of barriers to learning which impact their ability to engage and succeed. I build student engagement and participation in learning by decreasing obstacles that students experience and increasing the accessibility of my courses. To promote equity and inclusion, I continually reflect on my teaching practice, as “[a]nti-oppressive teaching happens only when we are trying to address the partial nature of our own teaching” (Kumashiro, 2004). I also invite students to critically reflect on their own classroom experience, relationships with colleagues, the subjects being taught and their own learning experiences. When discussing safety in the classroom, I acknowledge the risks and challenges of engaging in a learning community and work collaboratively with students to increase safety and create a brave space (Simon and Al., 2022). Adopting accessible learning tools and identifying teaching strategies that can effectively stimulate students’ interests helps them sustain and self-regulate their engagement with the learning process.

Student-Centred Pedagogies

My teaching pedagogies focus on student-centred (Hoidn and Klemenčič, 2020), critical (Freire, 1998) and experiential learning (Kolb, 2005). They de-emphasize teachers as experts and re-centre students as active participants in a Community of Learners. Learning together changes the paradigm of teaching by an expert and makes students become responsible for their learning and making sense of knowledge. As Freire reminds us, “to teach is not to transfer knowledge but to create the possibilities for the production or construction of knowledge” (1998). My role as an Educator is to provide a supportive and conducive student-centred learning environment that encourages critical thinking, shared power, dialogue, and action, in which students can work individually and collectively to assimilate, analyze, and turn information into knowledge. In doing so, we prepare SW students to deepen their ability to understand the complexity of SW, use theory to engage meaningfully in their practice and become critical thinkers.

Relevant Subjects

For teaching and learning to be meaningful, they need to be connected with realness and history. When we learn about how the world functions, we can participate in it and change it for the better. The classroom becomes a space where we can be part of history as it is being written (Freire, 1998). SW is a continually evolving field, and I renew my understanding by positioning myself as a learner with my students when exploring topics in SW. We co-create knowledge, and create, re-create and adapt our understanding of SW.

Opportunities for Practice

Assessments play an essential part in students’ learning, as they “define[s] what students regard as important, how they spend their time and how they come to see themselves as students and then as graduates” (Brown and Pendlebury, 2013). To help students prepare to embrace the complexity of SW practices, I create assignments that simulate “real life” by using self-reflective, active and problem-based approaches that promote deeper learning where students can demonstrate their abilities to understand, apply, analyze, evaluate and create (Bloom’s taxonomy, see Krathwohl, 2002). In this way, learners demonstrate their learning by using it in real-world situations. Doing this allows students to be engaged, knowing that they are becoming SW and contributing to solving real-world problems through their assignments.

Course Design

Robust course design is a way for me to embrace the complexity of teaching and ensure that the principles and key elements are implemented within the courses I teach. Through course preparation, I select the appropriate learning objectives, content, pedagogy and assessments to enhance the student learning experience (Fry and Marshall, 2003). My preparation acknowledges that what we learn is equally as important as why and how we learn. I encourage student engagement in learning by connecting the classroom and the community of learners with relevant, real-world problems, and providing the opportunity to demonstrate and apply knowledge to problem-solving. Good course design simplifies learning by helping students understand the course, navigate the semester-long learning narrative, and become more independent in their learning journey. A healthy course design ensures that these essential principles and key elements of learning are present in my work so that I may focus on the teaching and the learning experience.

Looking back at my personal experience, my SW teachers helped me heal as a learner and become a complete person who found his place as a SW in the world. I understand from this experience that teaching is “about healing and wholeness. It is about empowerment, liberation, transcendence, about renewing the vitality of life. It is about finding and claiming ourselves and our place in the world” (Palmer, 2012). My journey as an educator is now dedicated to creating a space where students can engage in their journey to becoming whole and, together, find meaning in being a SW in this world. Each time I enter the classroom, I am reminded of the privilege I have of being an educator.

• Brown, G. A., Bull, J., & Pendlebury, M. (2013). Assessing student learning in higher education. Taylor and Francis: city.
• Freire, Paolo, (1998). Pedagogy of freedom: Ethics, democracy, and civic courage. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
• Fry, H., Ketteridge, S., & Marshall, S. 2003. A handbook for teaching and learning in higher education: Enhancing academic practice (2nd ed.). Kogan Page.
• Hoidn, S., & Klemenčič, M. (2020). The Routledge international handbook of student-centered learning and teaching in higher education. Taylor and Francis.
• Kolb, A. Y., & Kolb, D. A. (2005). Learning styles and learning spaces: Enhancing experiential learning in higher education. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 4, 193–212.
• Krathwohl, D. R. (2002). A revision of bloom’s taxonomy: An overview. Theory into Practice, 41(4), 212-218.
• Kumashiro, K. K., Taylor & Francis. (2004). Against common sense: Teaching and learning toward social justice. Routledge Falmer.
• Palmer, P. J., (2012). The courage to teach: Exploring the inner landscape of a teacher’s life (10th anniversary ed.). Jossey-Bass.
• Simon, J. D., Boyd, R., & Subica, A. M. (2022;2021). Refocusing intersectionality in social work education: Creating a brave space to discuss oppression and privilege. Journal of Social Work Education, 58(1), 34-45.
• Strange C. C., Cox D. H.(Eds.) (2016). Serving diverse students in canadian higher education. McGill-Queen’s University Press.