Teaching Objectives

Huxley’s mission statement frames its instructional approach. The education Huxley College offers aims to enable responsible environmental problem solving by offering knowledge from across the disciplines in an integrative and innovative manner. I strive to meet this challenge through an approach to teaching that adheres to a sound teaching philosophy, using a wide range of teaching techniques in my varied classes, and immersing myself in the scholarship of teaching. 

 

A sound philosophy of education embodies a view of teaching as a cognitive learning process, where the learner is placed at the center of the educational process.  The learner comes with life experiences and goals as well as strengths and weaknesses as a learner. The goal of education is for every student, with the guidance of the instructor, to assume primary responsibility for their learning.  Huxley College is a learning environment that stresses experimentation and applied learning, where the student is largely responsible for his or her own education and development.  Many of the important educational gains occur when a student is challenged not only intellectually, but also socially, through interactive group assignments and projects, which helps to enable the student to function effectively in a social setting.  This is particularly pertinent for students choosing to enter the professional field of planning and public policy.

 

My goal in teaching is to help prepare students for effective careers in planning practice. This means introducing students to the academic subject content while concurrently immersing them in the dynamics of real world issues and the interdisciplinary dimensions of problem solving.  This approach fosters the preparation of a specialist who is prepared to deal with complex and multi-dimensional problems. This includes broad based disciplinary knowledge as well as knowledge in the processes of public decision making, dispute resolution, critical thinking, social communications skills and an acute awareness of divergent social values and public policy conflict.

 

Although the learning process is driven by the individual learner, the teacher must also create a supportive and dynamic learning environment by providing a structure to ensure that effective learning occurs.  The instructor sets the conditions where the students encounter knowledge and helps the student to understand the multiple dimensions of that knowledge. Selecting topics, materials, activities and assessing the gains are part of the learning environment that contributes to effective learning.  I emphasize interaction in each of my classes, beginning with encouraging interactive discussions in my lecture-based Introduction to Planning course, in each of my seminar classes and in my applied studio capstone classes.  The teacher’s role, I believe, entails more than deciding on the content of the syllabus, indeed, insight is needed into the individual students’ comprehension and awareness of the learning material.  This requires direct dialogue with the student and an ability to be a thoughtful listener to student perceptions and concerns.  I try to be self-critical and reflective in my teaching practice, seeking to continually improve my own knowledge and ability to facilitate the learning of my students.

 

My objective in teaching touches on many dimensions, including the interdisciplinary nature of planning education, problem solving and the social and political dimensions in public policy action.  I seek to introduce students to the integration of knowledge from different disciplines, the framing of complex problems, the skills needed to deal with complexity and conflict, the process for formulating alternative solutions to problem and techniques for working with others in dynamic group settings.

 

Teaching Philosophy

Simply stated, my approach to effective teaching is by inspiring my students. I seek to help them to understand and appreciate both the difficulties and the importance of planning as a process that endeavors to guide society towards a better future. I help students attain the necessary skills as well as a conceptual understanding about the complexities and the competing interests that occur in the public interest domain. I introduce them to the necessary methodological skills and theoretical context and help them to shape their own philosophical orientation that they will need in order to make successful contributions to public policy as they prepare to enter professional planning practice.

 

My teaching method in planning education is based on the concurrent development of the skills, core knowledge and values that will enable graduates from our program to enter professional practice with a conscious awareness about the responsibilities of stewardship in the public realm. My approach to teaching integrates the historic and contemporary literature in planning education and practice along with insights that I have acquired during my 35 year career in professional practice. I emphasize the development of those skills that are most necessary for understanding and working within complex and divergent social and political settings; the settings within which public decision making occurs.  My teaching style encourages students to assume an increasingly large degree of responsibility for their own learning as they advance from the Introduction to Planning course into the applied capstone courses during their senior year. I try to facilitate an engaging learning environment by creating an atmosphere and structure that promotes student participation and stimulates active learning in a trusting classroom environment. Class discussions pose critical questions to challenge students to think independently and critically about complex social issues and to encourage creativity in thinking about alternative approaches to solving multidimensional problems.

 

My philosophy in working with my students is largely based on creating a natural critical learning environment.  “Natural” critical learning infers an approach that recognizes what matters most is for students to approach tasks in a way that they can personally identify with, that is, they can personally relate to issues as their own concerns as they learn to make decisions, define choices, and to make and embrace errors in their learning process. By thinking critically, students learn to reason and develop a capacity to ask probing and insightful questions.

 

In my approach to natural critical learning, I employ several different teaching methods, including interactive discussions in formal lectures, structured class discussions, the use of case study,  applied field work and community service learning and other techniques, depending on the particular planning course and its objectives, as well as the particular dynamics of the cohort group of students.  Natural critical learning engages students in deeply considered learning processes because it challenges them to compare, apply, evaluate, analyze and synthesize information which they can then apply to real life contexts.  I use examples from local, national and global current events in classes to relate curricular topics to policy and planning events that  occur in current situations.  This helps to ground the students’ attention in issues that are in development – issues that they can relate to as being real and evolving. I challenge my students to critically consider alternatives to particular problems being discussed and to also relate their emerging views to the theoretical context. Senior students are challenged to develop their own project research methodologies and critical path to solve problems, which I then use as a learning contract guiding their achievement.

 

Effective teaching also requires commanding the attention of students and holding that attention by helping them to understand how they personally can affect policy issues under investigation.  This is the challenge of personally “vesting” students in the knowledge that we seek to learn in the classroom.  I explain to my students that their decision to enroll in my classes means that they are serious about undertaking the responsibility of learning as they seek to become serious and responsible planning professionals.

 

I use class time to challenge students to think about the grey matter in planning involving divergent norms, conflicts in attitudes and values, and political considerations. I have found this approach helps students build an understanding about concepts and processes, as dependent variables in public policy, rather than expect them to simply memorize independent facts.  Our assumption is that trained students will know how to use both methods and information more effectively once they have developed independent reasoning skills to know how to apply information into useful constructs.