Teaching Philosophy
At the early stage of my life, I had strong interest in teaching activities, when I always felt good showing my peers
what I knew. But it was not until my four years of study at University of Connecticut as a PhD student that I became
determined to choose teaching to be my life-long career. I worked as a teaching assistant for a wide range of courses,
including physical ad human geography, GIS, cartography, and globalization. And later, I became an independent instructor
of World Regional Geography
. I not only survived my first time teaching, the positive results also encouraged me to
continue to learn and evolve as a college teacher.
I believe that teaching geography in college is a necessity to prepare students inside and outside of the discipline for becoming competent generalists who may then develop the deep specialties demanded in this increasingly complex world. For a long time now it seems that the main goal of higher education is creating specialists or experts in narrowly defined fields, such as bankers, lawyers, specialized scientists, and even politicians. However, nowadays many students enter college with low levels of geographical literacy and geographical thinking abilities. That not only narrows their scope of knowledge and skills, but also negatively impacts their intellectual growth within their own specialized fields of inquiry. Geographic knowledge is one of the major elements of the necessary foundational knowledge of an educated person. Geography is also a very suitable field for teaching students to engage in complex thinking activities and develop reasoning skills from multiple perspectives, thus helping them advance not only their specialized disciplinary abilities but also proving helpful in their everyday lives as well.
Spatial thinking is an important part of critical thinking that many students are lacking. Spatial thinking and spatial analysis are at the root of geography field, and given the development and maturity of computer and information technology, dealing with spatial problems and analysis is becoming more and more useful. Teaching spatial analysis, as encompassed in geographic information science (GIScience), helps students develop their spatial thinking in a way that can prove very useful in their professional development.
Moreover, by teaching geography, I would like to help students to think of the problems they meet as having different scales-local, regional, and global, because everything happening locally today will also have a regional and even global impact. You can only understand a problem thoroughly if you examine it at all geographical scales. In summary, education in geography goes far beyond telling students where things are-rather it is to help create generalists with specific specialties; it is to provide a powerful perspective for thinking-spatial analysis and valuable GIS skills; and it is also to enlarge the scope of thinking by adding regional and global considerations into everyday life.
In terms of teaching practice, I believe a good course should go beyond lecturing and discussion and that the intellectual level should be higher than just understanding and remembering. I understand the role of good instructional design in successful teaching, especially after studying L. Dee Fink‘s model of integrated course design. So when I plan to teach a course, I will make sure I have clear objectives for students to achieve, know how to assess the extent to which those objectives are achieved, and choose relevant teaching activities consistent with both the objectives and assessment.
In addition, I am also a believer in the use of multimedia and technology in geography teaching. I like to get a variety of media, such as good maps, photos, videos and other sources involved both in and out of the class room. They stimulate the interests of students and facilitate good learning. However, the materials should be organized and presented in a way not to become overwhelming. As a learning technology I think that GIS should be incorporated in courses beyond those focused on spatial methods. This is useful in creating more exciting and effective teaching materials, and it also has the potential to introduce GIS to students who have not been introduced to this technology to the nature of its application.
I like to bring my own research into the classroom when I think it is relevant and useful. This connection usually attracts positive attention from students and it is a good activity to teach students how to conduct academic research. For example, when I taught China‘s economic development, I presented my research on China‘s industrial location, and after some brief description using some maps and figures, it proved a very successful exchange with the students.
Finally, I believe fairness and caring about students are also necessary for success in teaching. I am glad when I hear students say I am doing well on these aspects of the relationship that develops between student and teacher.
Overall, it is always a great feeling when I can help students grow intellectually and mentally through my efforts; and such a sense of achievement is very rewarding to me. However, I have just began to teach in college, so sometimes I will feel it a struggle because it usually takes me so much time to prepare for lectures, exercises, and other assessments, and have to interact with students at the same time. But interest, responsibility, and enthusiasm always encourage me to keep a good balance in the different aspects of life. One of my strengths is that I am always looking for something new to learn and keep improving myself during the process, and I am confident this will sustain me through my teaching career.