Teaching Statement
My philosophy of teaching is that significant teaching and learning are essentially interrelated, innovative, and involving. I was a management consultant and trainer, having at least ten years of teaching, lecturing, and coaching experience. One of my lectures, a six-hour talk at the School of Economics in Peking University, was published by Peking University Press in 2010. I was also a preacher, Sunday School teacher, Guqin (a classical Chinese musical instrument) teacher, and Jeet Kune Do (a kind of martial arts) instructor. Across these contexts, I have supported students to develop self-awareness of their learning process. Throughout my diverse teaching experience, I have been convinced that every student is a unique human being who needs a caring, stimulating, and secure environment in which he or she is encouraged to express oneself honestly, think critically, and be involved actively. It is my desire to establish this kind of learning environment where students can meet their full potential to mature intellectually, socially, and spiritually. Caring about students, I expect and demand high levels of students’ performance concerning action. I desire to be an excellent performer and storyteller who always catches students’ attention and awakens their curiosity, engineering learning experiences that maneuver students into the driver’s seat rather than sitting in the front passenger seat. In this sense, my teaching philosophy can be presented as three educational principles that, I believe, are necessarily conducive to significant teaching and learning.
First, teaching is a relationship. Teaching is not just about delivering ideas but an interactive process. It, therefore, is essentially relational. Accordingly, I start with a good understanding about my students. For example, whether I lectured a large class for two hours or teaching a small class through a whole semester, I generally started by building a relationship with students. I usually asked questions before teaching something to them. I listened to them before starting to make an effort to provoke them to think differently. I observed students’ reactions in response to my questions so as to understand my students well. The point is that I build a good relationship with my students by understanding myself as a teacher and knowing the students well, bridging the gap between not only what I teach and what students expect to learn but also what students expect to learn and what they ought to practice concerning their unique personal contexts.
Second, critical thinking is the key to academic success. It is one of the most crucial skills that we need to build and develop in our academic studies, for we are in the age of emergent change and disruptive innovation. Hence, I promote learners’ critical thinking skills by creating a natural critical learning environment, in which everyone is inspired to be inquisitive and innovative. In practice, based on my teaching experience, I find the following five elements of natural critical learning very helpful: 1) start with a challenging question; 2) demonstrate the significance of the question; 3) stimulate students to think about the question differently; 4) show an example of making a critical argument; 5) end with questions concerning the initial question. Since the five elements summarized above are also effective ways to make students involved, I will demonstrate them with examples in relation to my third educational principle.
Third, significant teaching is concerned with involving rather than telling. I believe that learning is not merely to know something but to be significant to many constituencies (e.g. students, teachers, society, etc.). In this regard, learning must involve application and action. I thus not only tell my students what “to be significant” means but that it involves them. To promote critical thinking and student engagement, I like using images, telling stories, and asking thought-provoking questions. For example, when explaining Schopenhauer’s famous claim that “the world is my representation,” I interpreted with an interesting image of a column about which the students had different views on looking at the same thing. I asked students to raise their hands if they saw the circular column or the cuboid column. Then, I explained why they viewed things differently, for some of them looked at the top of the image, while others looked at the bottom. Then I asked questions: when those of you only look at the bottom and see the circular column, does the cuboid column exist or not? In what sense, does it exist; and in what sense, does it not? I demonstrated the significance of the questions, making them relevant to the issues of our society. I also told some thoughtful and inspirational stories regarding my questions, attempting to stimulate students to engage the question critically. After that, I showed an example of how to make a critical argument and finally ended with some questions.
The three principles above are especially vital to teaching the subject matters in humanities and social science, e.g., philosophy, theology, and religious studies. Admittedly, teaching a course in these subjects is challenging, for many philosophical concepts are abstract and intricate. Students will likely lose focus in class if the teacher fails to catch their attention and make them involved. Considering my experience, whenever I engaged students in multiple teaching/learning methods such as storytelling, debating, and performing, their attention was always to be caught so that their curiosity awakened. With their passionate wonder, they raised challenging and crucial questions to make critical thinking possible. In short, to put my teaching philosophy into classroom practice, I attempt to build a good relationship with students, provoke them to think critically, and engage students in multiple learning activities.
Jizhang Yi 