“The job of an educator is to teach students to see vitality in themselves”

― Joseph Campbell  

My teaching philosophy is grounded in my cultural experiences growing up as a Polish immigrant in the culturally diverse city of Toronto, Canada. While I spent most of my childhood years attending a French immersion school, at thirteen years of age I moved with my family to Poland, where I attended school in a new cultural environment for two years. Thereafter, my family decided to return to Toronto, at which point I enrolled in an English-speaking high school and continued my college education in Canada. My immigration experiences helped me see how educational contexts can take diverse forms that carry different implications for student learning. Moreover, I grew deeply interested in, and appreciative of, cultural diversity. As a result, I focused my graduate training in socio-cultural and theoretical psychology; and I have taught courses focused on social psychology, culture and human development, and qualitative research.

My teaching philosophy builds on both my immigration experiences and graduate training, as I deliberately attend to students’ unique backgrounds and seek to build stimulating learning environments that engage students’ unique interests as well as guide them in developing their own academic voices. I consider my teaching to be successful when I see my students take interest in course materials, grapple with core concepts, and find ways to apply ideas from class to their lives and the world at large. In what follows, I elaborate on five basic principles that guide my teaching and illustrate how I apply each of these in the classroom.  

Teaching Principles

1.     I seek to inspire students to take interest in course materials by connecting coursework with their unique interests and goals.

 I firmly believe that college education is not merely a route for social mobility, but an opportunity to gain knowledge and skillsets to help students become active and contributing members of society. Thus, I consistently seek to show students how the ideas we discuss in class can help them identify pertinent issues as well as develop solutions to these. Thus, for instance, whenever I discuss theoretical frameworks in research, I regularly emphasize the practical and pragmatic role of theory, which informs what we see in the world, the questions we ask, and consequently, how we go about addressing various real-world problems.

Further, to help stimulate students’ interests and make course materials relevant to their lives, I create assignments that give students flexibility to explore their unique interests and aims. For instance, in my qualitative methods course, students are instructed to design a research project to respond to a question of their interest (vs. a predetermined topic chosen for the whole class). Similarly, in my graduate seminar on culture and human development, I ask students to write a conceptual paper that examines a topic of their interest from a sociocultural perspective. I have found that graduate students often appreciate this exercise because it helps them think through the ways theoretical frameworks shape the questions and approaches they take in their thesis projects. Finally, in my undergraduate course in culture and human development, I regularly ask students to reflect on their own cultural development using concepts discussed in class, which helps them deepen their understandings both of the concepts and their own development.

2.     Viewing knowledge development as a social practice, I encourage students to engage in dialogue and debate to become competent and respectful thinkers and interlocutors.

 Each of my courses introduces science as an intellectual and social practice and based on this, I explicitly welcome students as fellow interlocutors in the scientific community. My goal is to help students see value in engaging their intellectual voices and encourage them to share their perspectives in the practice of knowledge construction. Notably, earlier in my career, I would often emphasize these points in lecture but had limited success engaging students in dialogue during class. Over time, and particularly as I completed various instructional trainings and workshops, I learned to develop my pedagogical strategies, which ultimately led me to lecture less and facilitate discussions more. One go-to strategy that I have found especially successful to keep students on track with readings and eager to engage in class is to assign weekly “reading responses” made up of a handful questions focused on the readings. These are low stake assignments that are graded primarily for completion; however, I have found that they not only give students enough incentive to read before class, but the assignment questions also help students learn how to read research more effectively. With greater confidence in their understanding of the course materials, I have seen my students not only engage more frequently in class discussions, but also increase the quality of their contributions. This has allowed me to rely more on seminar-style class sessions than lectures. Students in turn have expressed their appreciation both for the reading response assignments, which help them stay on track with the reading materials, and for class discussions, as these allow for deeper dives into questions that matter to them. 

3.     I guide students to think critically about course materials and to develop their own academic positions of the subject matter.

 I view critical thinking as a three-part process: (a) learning a particular research domain; (b) questioning its assumptions and certainties; and (c) articulating a unique perspective based on this knowledge. To help students reach these goals, I scaffold my course assignments in ways that allow students to spend time grappling with core concepts and their implications before articulating their own theoretical positions based on this knowledge. For instance, in my graduate course on culture and human development, students first (1) read theoretical papers about basic concepts in social and cultural developmental theory, after which they (2) evaluate research studies that apply these concepts, (3) use selected concepts to critically analyze a research topic of their choosing; and then they (4) articulate their perspective in a final paper. I also create ample opportunities for students to ask questions and discuss their perspectives during class time, which helps them develop increasingly sophisticated positions on their topics and write stronger papers as a result.

 4.     I teach students how to practice reflexivity and examine how their unique social and theoretical positions shape their thinking about research and others.  

I use various approaches in each of my classes to help students understand how knowledge is a social practice that carries implications for how various groups are understood and treated in society. In my qualitative methods class, reflexivity constitutes a central thread in the course, as students reflect on the role of researchers and write individual reflexivity statements as they design, execute, and report on their research projects. In my other courses, including social psychology as well as culture and human development, I contrast readings that use differing theoretical and methodological approaches to the same topic (e.g., identity, moral development) to discuss with students how these differences shape the questions and knowledge generated. Finally, I deliberately incorporate readings exploring the lives of diverse social groups (e.g., immigrants, LGTBQ+ youth, etc.) not only to ensure students are familiar with their experiences but also to reflect on how these groups’ lives tend to be portrayed through different research lenses (e.g., comparing deficit vs. strengths-based perspectives).

5.     I practice being reflexive of my own teaching practice and am committed to ongoing self-improvement.

 I recognize the significant role I play in the lives of my students and deeply value the opportunity to have an impact on their thinking and development. Accordingly, I strive for excellence in my teaching both through professional development opportunities and regular reflection on my engagements in and outside of the classroom. For instance, I completed a 3-week training offered by Sacramento State to support equitable online instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic. I also completed a week-long institute focused on course design, which helped me develop strategies to keep students on track with their readings and engage them in reflection on the course materials. I am especially aware of the need to counter racism and other forms of discrimination that arise explicitly and implicitly in the classroom and on campus. In an effort to reflect on my own biases, I have attended anti-racist trainings at Sacramento State as well as completed a month-long anti-racist, Buddhist meditation course that helped me reflect more deeply on my own biases. Moving forward, I am committed to ongoing reflection upon my teaching and ensuring that my courses are relevant and accessible to all students.