Formulating a statement of personal teaching philosophy

The following is a draft statement of my personal teaching philosophy, a document which applicants for academic posts are often asked to provide, or at the very least, to speak about at interview. I drafted this statement in the recent past.

I would appreciate if readers of this blog could give me some feedback on this statement, and perhaps share their own philosophies of teaching and lecturing:

For me, it has always been important, when teaching, to convey my enthusiasm for my subjects to students of all levels and in all various aspects of French language, literature, translation and culture. I seek at all times to convey my knowledge and learning to my students, in order to transmit the fruits of my study, research and writings, to new learners. This is akin to the manner in which St Benedict metaphorically passed on a torch of intellectual ardour when he founded the first Benedictine monastery many centuries ago.

I seek to be well-prepared for the courses and lectures/classes/workshops/seminars that I deliver, and to transmit my own passion and intellectual curiosity for all aspects of French and English language and literature to my students.

I especially seek to view each student as a unique human being in a Christian ethos of respect and sincerity, and to encourage the students themselves to respect each other, and to treat each other in a collegial and supportive manner. As an Irish Roman Catholic, I have been educated in Christian values of love and community action. It is vital to encourage camaraderie and co-operation among students throughout their learning careers, as opposed to individual competitiveness, thus fostering warmth, and ensuring that hostility is avoided.

I believe that my teaching role is thus to inculcate personal values of Christian friendship and support to my students, through my personal example and expression of values, and giving of advice, in class. This group co-operation will serve my students well throughout their future personal and professional lives, in treating family, friends and professional colleagues well and in being able to work as part of a friendly team, to achieve common goals. In my teaching, I have thus set group projects, e.g. students work together in pairs or in groups of sometimes up to four or five people, on collaborative research and writing on various aspects of French culture, e.g. when I taught French for the Tourism Industry, groups of students completed projects on individually chosen aspects of French tourist and cultural attractions. I generally used to meet each group once a week to discuss progress, give advice and answer queries and concerns, and suggest useful sources of information, online or in hard copy form (books, French magazines, etc.), and to monitor group progress. When these Tourism students were doing French orals, I had them sit their oral examination in pairs, which had prepared together and which made the oral situation less nerve-wracking for students with less advanced language skills. I found that my students enjoyed working with each other and that it stimulated their learning and made study and assignments more engaging and less intimidating.

The spirit of learning and scholarship is inherently collegial and group and community-based. Scholars do not operate in a vacuum; instead, we grow and share knowledge through contributing the findings of our individual research in our writings and conference addresses, and in our teaching. The aim of teachers and scholars should be to encourage the learning and research of others. Thus, students should, as much as possible, work together on common projects in and outside class.

As a French lecturer and teacher, my goal is to develop courses in all aspects of French Studies, based partly on my own research interests and discoveries, in tandem with the overall requirements and course content of the schools in which I work. Thus, for example, when teaching French literary translation practice and theory, I use lots of practical examples of how different writers have had their texts rendered between French and English. This includes sharing my findings of how writers such as Verne have been variously translated over many years, or how J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter novels have been rendered into French. When teaching literature, I include French and English novels, poems and short stories from different eras which have personally inspired me. Using contemporary material like Rowling, and evergreen literature such as that of Jules Verne, from my own postgraduate research, has made the learning process more relevant to the students’ own readings outside college, thus helping them engage more enthusiastically with their course work

This means that undergraduate students are directly involved with the sort of material that I am researching as a post-doctoral level lecturer, and are thus benefiting from and contributing to faculty-level research. This is a very community-centred, university-wide mission sharing.

But in addition to passing on my own knowledge and findings to my students, I believe it is equally vital to foster their own individual creativity and facilitate their own personal journeys of discovery of ideas, thus helping them to feel the joy of learning, reading, writing, discovering newness and sharing their own ideas and opinions in class. This sharing by students of their findings and ideas should take place in an atmosphere of respect and encouragement within the classroom.

Thus, my role as a teacher is not just to transmit existing knowledge and the ideas of other scholars, but equally, to stimulate creativity and intellectual curiosity in each individual student. For instance, students should be encouraged to share their own thoughts and interpretations of a literary text. If translating, say, a French poem, students should be encouraged to develop their own individual use of translational, poetic language, and thus inscribe their translations with their own creative stamp of personal style and interpretations.

Similarly, when writing essays of all kinds, students should be helped to combine rigorous research with their own commentary, for discussion and feedback from fellow students and from myself as a teacher. When learning about other cultures and communities, e.g. different Francophone communities across the world, including, say, post-colonial Francophone communities of immigrants, students should be helped to respect and appreciate difference and diversity in cultural, social and religious practices, but also to share their own cultural values. Respect for a different cultural group does not imply that we always agree with certain practices or values, and this is where individual ideas and class discussion, conducted with an overriding concern for respect of others, can prove very stimulating. For instance, individual students may feel, from their study of Francophone culture and literature, that certain practices such as circumcision are inhumane, or they may have individual views on integration of French immigrants within mainstream French society, on respect for cultural otherness within the host culture, on individuals’ rights to choose their unique cultural identity, or on the value of having a hybrid identity which belongs to more than one culture, as is often the case for second- and third-generation Algerian immigrants living in France, who may have less strong attachments to their parents’ North African traditions, language, cultural practices such as dress, religion, etc. As a lecturer, I strive to study literature such as that written by culturally hybrid writers living in France, and thus help students to empathically understand the situation of these writers. But I then encourage the students to express their own reactions and opinions. Literary texts thus become an open space of interpretation, a launching pad for all sorts of thematic development and reactions. I have found that students of mine feel more engaged with their learning when they have a space to express their own ideas.

Therefore, as a teacher, I consider that I have as much to learn from my students as they from me. I also learn from the fact that my students will come from diverse cultural backgrounds, and this diversity must also inform my teaching approaches to different individuals and groups of learners. The more I teach, the more I can learn about best teaching practice. The teacher is equally a lifelong learner.

I especially enjoy working with smaller groups of learners where there can be individual attention to students and enjoyable interaction. I like to use a variety of approaches and pedagogical practices and materials, and this is especially useful in teaching language, where students have to be nurtured in the four key skills of reading, writing, speaking and listening to/understanding a foreign language. I thus favour the use of varied materials such as online learning, computer-assisted language learning, videos, recordings, diverse reading materials and also giving more advanced French language learners the opportunity to select personally-preferred aspects of Francophone culture for individual study.

Finally, as a teacher, I have a pastoral role in assisting students with personal and academic challenges. This includes being able to refer students to the appropriate sources of support e.g. college counselling, learning support, funding, and so on. It also includes being able to personally assist students in many cases, e.g. learning support. My teaching in the past has included giving additional, individualized attention and academic support to students with learning disabilities.

My Catholicism includes an ecumenical spirit of respect for, and interest in, other world religions and cultures. This ecumenical mindset, in its broadest sense, is something I would wish to inculcate in my students.