Lecturer and Research Fellow at Atlantic Technological University
Who am I? I am a researcher in statistical modelling, a lecturer, a supervisor, and a student. I am passionate about statistics, data science and software engineering. I teach by encouraging and inspiring each and every one of my students: both in academia and outside of it. I teach brazilian jiu jitsu to adults since 2010 and statistics to level 9 students since 2020. To better understand why I teach the way I teach and to back up my beliefs by research I will look into the philosophy statement, its definition and try to formalise it. Severals deliverables which were produced in a course of the Teaching and Learning Certificate programme will be highlighed in the following sections.
I believe in the power of motivation, both intrinsic and extrinsic.
Encouragement is oxygen to the soul - George M. Adams
Towards a personal philosophy statement
Behaviourism
Behaviourism is one of the earliest established theories that had a direct and profound impact upon education (Wollard, 2010) . This educational theory is concerned with human behaviour and shaped by rewarding desirable behaviour via positive reinforcement and discouraging undesirable behaviour via negative reinforcement. J. B. Watson (1878-1958) and B. F. Skinner (1904-1990) are the two principal originators of behaviourism. Watson's view of learning was based in part on the studies of I. Pavlov (1849-1936) who was well known for his research on classical conditioning through studying the digestive process and the interaction of salivation and stomach function. In his experiments with dogs he found out that learning occurs when a neutral stimulus becomes associated with a stimulus that naturally produces a behaviour.
Social Cognitive theory
Cognitive theory places emphasis on making knowledge meaningful and helping learners to be more organized and able to relate new information to existing knowledge. Cognitive theory focuses on memory, self-reflection, thinking and motivation to learn while emphasising thought process (e.g. reflection, and abstraction) and its importance (Petersen, 2014). According to the founder of this theory Piaget, the ability to learn and the process of learning is different during each developmental stage (Evgeniou & Loizou, 2012). A social cognitive theory which in part paid homage to Piaget’s earlier work was proposed and developed by a Canadian psychologist Albert Bandura (1925-2021).
Theories applied to teaching statistics
Drawing on behaviourist and social cognitive theories students work for things that bring them positive feelings and for approval from people they admire. Behaviourism impacts how students react and behave in the classroom and therefore influence the effectiveness of their learning. An important social constructivist notion that I apply in my classroom is that of situated learning (Dawley, 2014). For example, when I introduce new concepts I try to make it directly relevant to real problem within a context that is familiar to the students and how it can be applied in the future. As a teacher I notice that students tend to obtain most of their knowledge from challenging experiences and assignments (explicit learning) and only a small part by attending lectures (implicit learning). To enhance their learning experience, I design materials to capitalise on explicit learning in a way that students have a variety of continuous assessments throughout the course.
Digital Learning Objects incorporated in classes allow to facilitate learning and develop student's engagement. An example of a Reusable Digital Learning Object (RDLO) that I have developed can be found here. This RDLO is called Jupyter Notebook and it is a software tool which is used to support learning. Jupyter Notebooks belong to the Project Jupyter which is a broad collaboration that develops open-source tools for interactive and exploratory computing. It is a platform to use in the classroom, to develop teaching materials, to share lessons and tutorials. Notebooks are documents containing text narratives with images and math, combined with executable code (many languages are supported) and the output of that code. Jupyter Notebooks allow to engage students. For more information on usign Jupyter Notebooks in education please refer to this website.