Teaching+Philosophy+2

from http://www.uregina.ca/tdc/TeachingPhilosophyAp00.htm = = =Connect Teaching to Your Discipline =

What draws you to your discipline? What is it that you want students to understand about life through the lenses of your discipline? Ontologically, what connects you, your students, and your discipline? What does your discipline imply about teaching and the teacher’s role? How does your scholarly research animate your pedagogy?

‘Learning, as the reduction of illusion and ignorance, can help free us from domination by hitherto unacknowledged constraints, dogmas and falsehoods’ (Sayer, 1997, p. 252 ). I have tried to identify the most critical quality of teaching but find that, in my view, there are three aspects of equal weight: 1) the importance of learning as an emancipatory process, 2) the need to respect and value the position of other and 3) the significance of imparting an enthusiasm for the process itself. This means that I must find a way to incorporate all of these aspects into my approach to teaching… .. Have the practical tools to use knowledge between integrated into the learning process? Is there a sense of the empowerment of knowledge?…To every learning experience we [must bring] an understanding that knowledge is socially constructed, and therefore may be, for example, euro-centric, ethnocentric, or gender-biased, and in need of questioning. For me these are all critical elements of teaching sociology. (Christina Burns, Department of Sociology, University of Regina)

// "To simplify legal issues without distorting the law is a skill which I have developed through practice and experience. One of my objectives as a law teacher is to demystify the law and make it more accessible to a broad audience….Another important theme of my teaching is to emphasize the value of critical scholarship, which not only clearly describes the present state of the law but explores what the law should be. I encourage students in their research papers…to make constructive suggestions for law reform. It is important for students and teachers to realize that pedagogy and scholarship are allies rather than enemies in the academic enterprise." // (Wayne MacKay, Faculty of Law, Dalhousie University)