Dr. Olga Lyashevska

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

Educational Philosophy

Towards a personal philosophy statement

The term `philosophy statement' is defined here as a philosophical framework of values, goals and beliefs reflecting my personal approach to teaching and student learning and incorporating a justification for why I teach the way I teach. Through writing statement, I will `engage in deep reflection, create a vision and purpose for my teaching and set priorities' (Caukin, 2017). A statement of teaching philosophy is a cornerstone of reflective practice in teaching and learning and a requirement of applicants to academic, teaching positions or tenure tracks. A personal teaching philosophy is very important as the process offers an opportunity for developmental reflection (Beaty et al, 2009).
While working throughout the essay towards my personal philosophy statement I realised the inherent complexity of this task and appreciated how it shaped my thinking towards my professional values, beliefs and goals. I discovered that my philosophy on teaching practice is deeply embedded in behaviourism and social cognitive theory. I believe people learn better when they are motivated to learn, which can be achieved through positive (or negative) reinforcement according to behaviourist theory. This approach, in combination with social environment and role models as in social cognitive theory, can be very effective. Subconsciously, I have always applied and still apply a blend of these theories to my own learning by constantly looking for new sources of motivation and role models but without being able to verbalise it. I found out that situated learning can be very effective: student obtain most of their knowledge from challenging experiences and assignments. Finally, I am convinced that inspiring others to learn is one of the most important qualities of the teacher and I am aiming to reflect upon this in my teaching style.

  1. Caukin, Nancy G., Brinthaupt, Thomas M. (2017). Using a Teaching Philosophy Statement as a Professional Development Tool for Teacher Candidates, International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, v11 n2
  2. Beatty JE, Leigh JSA, Lund Dean K. (2009). Finding Our Roots: An Exercise For Creating a Personal Teaching Philosophy Statement. Journal of Management Education. 33(1):115-130. doi:10.1177/1052562907310642

Download

Two educational theories that reflect my beliefs and values as a teacher and supervisor are behaviourism and social cognitive theory. I shall briefly introduce them below and demonstrate how they can be applied to teaching statistics.

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.

  1. Wollard J. (2010), Psychology for the Classroom. Behaviourism. Routlege.

Copyright: © Lenny Gonzalez 2006
Albert Bandura

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).

  1. Petersen, K. B. (2014). Learning theories and skills in online second language teaching and learning: Dilemmas and challenges. Journal of the International Society for Teacher Education, 18(2), 41–51.
  2. Evgeniou, E. and Loizou, P. (2012). The theoretical base of e-learning and its role in surgical education. Journal of Surgical Education, 69(5), 665–669. doi:10.1016/j.jsurg.2012.06.005.

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.

  1. Dawley, L., & Dede, C. (2014). Situated learning in virtual worlds and immersive simulations. In J. M. Spector, M. D. Merrill, J. Elen, & M. J. Bishop (Eds.), Handbook of Research on Educational Communications and Technology (pp. 723–734). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-3185-5_58

Teaching and Learning

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.

Good lesson plan is important for professional teaching practice. It provides students with necessary structure and direction. Lesson planning is at the heart of being an effective teacher and it has a benifit of allowing teacher think deliberately about their choice of objectives, the material needed and how long each activity might take. A few examples of lesson plans that I have developed are presented below. Some of the lesson plans were peer reviewed.

Fractional Factorial Design Design and Analysis of Experiments with R

Download Peer Review

Data Analysis in Sport Excercise Size (Part 1)

Download

Data Analysis in Sport Excercise Size (Part 2)

Download Peer Review

Assessment is an integral element of teaching since it determines whether or not the learning objectives are being met. To help students stay on track I design continuous assessment which lead towards the terminal assessments. Various types of assessments can be used, for examples quizes or multiple choice questions, coding excercises and coding labs. An example of continuous assessment is shown below.