Review and Reflection

Allen Appiah-Boateng

4

Integration of Faith and Learning

Teaching Philosophy

My teaching philosophy embodies my faith, learning experiences, and teaching beliefs. Cognitive Development Theory, Conceptual Level Theory, Deliberate Psychological Development (DPD) and Integration of Faith and Learning provide the framework. As a Christian and counselor educator, I believe my role in the learning environment extend beyond transmitting knowledge to mentoring and disciplining. Subsequently, I believe my role as a Christian educator is to create an empathic and nurturing environment that facilitates the holistic development of students through harmonious integration of faith and learning, critical thinking, creativity, collaborative risk taking, and student empowerment.

Theoretical Framework

Generally, leading human sciences courses at the graduate and college level involves the teaching theories, facilitating independent thinking, and promoting professional development. It emphasizes a conceptual shift, resulting from psychological and cognitive development. Thus, students need a complex cognitive structure to organize volumes of information into a comprehensive, integrated, differentiated, and meaningful explanation to solve societal problem. Moreover, the learning process is fundamentally self-directed and extremely collaborative. Furthermore, the research show psychological growth leads to cognitive development, and cognitive development is the consequence of cognitive structures (Sprinthall, Peace, & Kennington 2001). However, cognitive structures evolve along a hierarchy, from a less complex to a more complex structure. Thus, cognitive transitions occur when new concepts are integrated into existing cognitive framework. Following this understanding, I facilitate students’ exposure to new information, critical examination of the merits of the new information, information-processing skills development, and creativity to enhance their integration of faith and learning experiences.

Thus, I encourage students’ freedom of choice for learning goals, content and process. In doing this, I focus on establishing an environment conducive for learning, creating collaborative systems for planning syllabus, assessing and identifying students’ learning needs. In addition, I collaborate with students to formulate interventions to meet their learning needs, design patterns of learning experiences that reflect the disparate learning styles of students, and implement these learning experiences with suitable techniques and materials. I conclude the process evaluating the learning outcomes and re-diagnosing students’ learning needs based on the various learning style.

Also, Dewey (1956) posited that students learn better when educators are able to incorporate ecological experiences resonate with them into the course content. I strive to understand students’ learning experience from a broader context, including multicultural context, and incorporate into my interaction with them. Taken together, these theories help me in facilitating the scholarly and professional development through the construction of a learning environment that supports and challenges students.

Learning Environment

As part of my approach to creating a learning environment, I start a new class with a mini performance assessment and information gathering exercise. In the performance assessment, I provide students with a variety of scenarios related to the course. Students provide answers based on their existing knowledge about the course. This assessment exercise combined with information gathering exercise—comprising information such as their life experiences, career goal, learning style, cultural background and significant cultural experiences—helps me understand students from a broader context. It also helps me identify students who may need a structured learning environment and those who may not. Additionally, I have observed that when students perceive the professor as approachable, available to answer questions, and genuinely invested in their academic and personal success, they tend to pursue their learning with enthusiasm and their development is pronounced. As a result, I strive to be student-focused, competent, flexible, and aware of uniqueness amongst my students, including cultural differences.

Culture and Diversity Issues

As cultural beings, students often hold attitudes and beliefs that can detrimentally affect their perceptions of and interactions with individuals or clients who are ethnically and racially different from them. However, as the multicultural literature suggests, when educators deliberately model cultural sensitivity in the classroom, students feel safe and comfortable to talk to about cultural and diversity issues (Aasheim, 2009). Therefore, I encourage students’ multicultural awareness by challenging students to confront their cultural biases at the front end of the learning relationship. For example, I start my first class session sharing my personal cultural experiences including my biases and spiritual struggles. In doing this, I focus on critical multicultural sensitivity/responsiveness issues and how to deal with them. This exercise often allays the discomforts of students in sharing their own multicultural experiences. Additionally, throughout the course, I encourage students to consider every case from a diverse cultural and biblical lens. This approach challenges students to think beyond their preexisting knowledge and beliefs and that often enriches class discussions.

Instructional Planning & Assessment

At the core of the teaching process is curriculum and instructional planning. From the DPD model, active learning engenders students’ growth and cognitive development. And active learning involves curriculum that emphasizes experiential learning, critical thinking and critical reflection (Sprinthall, 1978). The DPE model outlines five elements of instructional planning: role-playing, guided reflection, balance, support and challenge, and continuity. My teaching approach emphasized role-play, peer-to-peer feedback, educator-student feedback, and guided reflection. My approach also emphasizes weekly reflective journal posting that highlights students learning experience. Along with this, I use a variety of small and large group discussion formats, including think-pair-share activities, jigsaw groups, fishbowl, and concentric circles to enhance students’ critical reflection processes. I observed during my co-teaching experience that these activities promote critical thinking and case conceptualization significantly as noted by many of my students.

Fostering critical thinking skills involve engaging students in new ways of thinking and feeling that often create cognitive disequilibrium. I have observed that providing appropriate amount of support and challenge is essential. This requires the ability to quickly and creatively adjust to disparate learning style of students (Lucas & Marry, 2002). Also, I have learned from my teaching supervisors not overemphasize grades, but rather adopt a flexible grading approach. Thus, offering students different ways to demonstrate course material comprehension helps accommodate the different learning styles of students. In other words, I will ensure students understand course objectives and expectations by providing rubrics to aid students’ writing exercises and class presentations, distributing it to students, and promptly posting grades with detailed feedback.

Classroom Management

Research shows that people behave differently when they are in a group (Diana, 2000). My approach to classroom management depends on the students. However, I lean towards minimum to low control classroom management protocol (Diana, 2000). Thus, I want a classroom where I am both a facilitator and member. I want to foster students’ ability to take responsibility for their actions and learn how to manage their own classroom learning in the future (McKeachie, 2011).

Conclusion

As a new educator, I continue to learn and improve my work in order to increase my effectiveness in the classroom. For this reason, I undertake regular assessment of my own teaching method. I use feedback from students to help me improve my teaching style after each semester. Teaching and learning both require hard work. They both consist of iterative and reciprocal processes that never cease to challenge and inspire all those involved, and that is what draws me to teaching.