The Process
After completing my undergraduate degree in elementary education, I wasn’t entirely sure that teaching was the best fit for me. There seemed to be such a disconnect between my education and my passion. And after being in the world of work for so many years, my professional pathway became very clear. I started working at a community center advocating for Arab youth, transitioned into providing support services in Special Education and landed in higher education working with international students and scholars. I preferred to work with non-traditional populations and advocate for their access to education.
When I started my graduate work, I began in Human Development and Family Studies (HDFS) thinking that this would be a good match for my work with specialized communities and in many ways it was. Yet, for some reason it didn’t feel like a graduate program "home". The program focused on the theory and policy of education, family and community but not so much on the practice. I’m a doer. I wanted to focus on the “doing” of work. I made a big change and transitioned into Ed.D in Education Leadership. Suddenly, the program felt right. I was able to focus on issues and subjects that would support my pathway toward advocacy for non-traditional populations.
When I started my graduate work, I began in Human Development and Family Studies (HDFS) thinking that this would be a good match for my work with specialized communities and in many ways it was. Yet, for some reason it didn’t feel like a graduate program "home". The program focused on the theory and policy of education, family and community but not so much on the practice. I’m a doer. I wanted to focus on the “doing” of work. I made a big change and transitioned into Ed.D in Education Leadership. Suddenly, the program felt right. I was able to focus on issues and subjects that would support my pathway toward advocacy for non-traditional populations.
The Philosophy
When I transitioned to working in higher education, my teaching philosophy and perspective on education completely changed. Instead of approaching education from the context of faculty scholarship, I began to approach education from a perspective of guided inquiry. While I was confident in my ability to design, teach and evaluate coursework; the skills, interests and needs of my students were not being met with an approach of just providing content. I felt my students were highly skilled at information-finding, organizing and attempting to resolve problems, and therefore, I wanted my interaction with them to be focused on critical thinking, problem solving and a developed sense of lifelong learning.
My goal as an educator is to help students develop the mindset and habits of becoming lifelong learners. During the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Education Forum in 2015, a universal education strategy was presented that focused on promoting an education system that facilitated lifelong learning. The framework centered on the idea that with such interdependent and ever-changing industrial growth, students needed to establish skills that would match progress. Ultimately, the framework hoped to produce learners that would be creative and responsible global citizens. As someone who was working within international education for the past 10 years, this was the exact approach that I believed in and knew could be transformational for students.
I found that the skills needed to become a lifelong learner were most aligned with a pedagogy focused on inquiry-guided learning (IGL). This type of pedagogy focuses on skills that include: asking big picture questions, critical-thinking, analyzing and interpreting evidence, and selecting and justifying the best solution to a problem. In her article, “What Is Inquiry- Guided Learning?”(2012), Virginia Lee describes IGL as a way to view curriculum as a framework for learning rather than a framework for scholarship. With IGL, creating and implementing curriculum allows for a stronger tie to inquiry and allows for discovery and creativity as aspects of problem solving.
I relied on this model when developing and co-teaching a Master’s class, EAD 881- Workshops on Education Administration, focused on international students in higher education. Knowing that I wanted students to participate in a final inquiry experience, I started by introducing content with very broad questions and asked students to contribute questions they wanted to try and answer by the end of the semester. As each week progressed, we moved from broad questions to narrowed content so that when it was time for students to present their final inquiry experience, their presentation would be focused on personal and real-life solutions that could contribute toward answering our initial broad questions.
I also use this same IGL method when developing Intercultural Communication and Social Justice presentations for students, campus and community. The idea is to help the audience understand broad concepts on the subject and ask questions of themselves and their communities in order to reflect upon processes and practices for building socially responsible intercultural communities. A sampling of the various presentations on the topics are found on my professional portfolio: http://nicolenamy.weebly.com/programming.html
In my current position with the OISS, I am on the programming team within the department that works to create programming efforts. As a team, we work to promote international understanding and rely heavily on the theoretical foundations based on intercultural communication and social justice initiatives to develop programming. Our mission is to create an inclusive community that allows for both international and domestic students to have meaningful interactions on and off-campus. A sampling of the type of programming I worked to create can also be found in my professional portfolio: http://nicolenamy.weebly.com/programming.html
I believe that my teaching philosophy has been heavily influenced by my family. As immigrants, my parents stressed the importance of education (formal and informal) and its contributions on quality of life. What they asserted was that of all the things that can be taken away from you, no one is able to take away your education. That idea is what I hope to pass along to my students. Within education, theories will continue to develop, best practices will continue to change and technology will forever evolve. Therefore, developing the skills to be a lifelong learner will always be the competency applicable toward all disciplines in life.
My goal as an educator is to help students develop the mindset and habits of becoming lifelong learners. During the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Education Forum in 2015, a universal education strategy was presented that focused on promoting an education system that facilitated lifelong learning. The framework centered on the idea that with such interdependent and ever-changing industrial growth, students needed to establish skills that would match progress. Ultimately, the framework hoped to produce learners that would be creative and responsible global citizens. As someone who was working within international education for the past 10 years, this was the exact approach that I believed in and knew could be transformational for students.
I found that the skills needed to become a lifelong learner were most aligned with a pedagogy focused on inquiry-guided learning (IGL). This type of pedagogy focuses on skills that include: asking big picture questions, critical-thinking, analyzing and interpreting evidence, and selecting and justifying the best solution to a problem. In her article, “What Is Inquiry- Guided Learning?”(2012), Virginia Lee describes IGL as a way to view curriculum as a framework for learning rather than a framework for scholarship. With IGL, creating and implementing curriculum allows for a stronger tie to inquiry and allows for discovery and creativity as aspects of problem solving.
I relied on this model when developing and co-teaching a Master’s class, EAD 881- Workshops on Education Administration, focused on international students in higher education. Knowing that I wanted students to participate in a final inquiry experience, I started by introducing content with very broad questions and asked students to contribute questions they wanted to try and answer by the end of the semester. As each week progressed, we moved from broad questions to narrowed content so that when it was time for students to present their final inquiry experience, their presentation would be focused on personal and real-life solutions that could contribute toward answering our initial broad questions.
I also use this same IGL method when developing Intercultural Communication and Social Justice presentations for students, campus and community. The idea is to help the audience understand broad concepts on the subject and ask questions of themselves and their communities in order to reflect upon processes and practices for building socially responsible intercultural communities. A sampling of the various presentations on the topics are found on my professional portfolio: http://nicolenamy.weebly.com/programming.html
In my current position with the OISS, I am on the programming team within the department that works to create programming efforts. As a team, we work to promote international understanding and rely heavily on the theoretical foundations based on intercultural communication and social justice initiatives to develop programming. Our mission is to create an inclusive community that allows for both international and domestic students to have meaningful interactions on and off-campus. A sampling of the type of programming I worked to create can also be found in my professional portfolio: http://nicolenamy.weebly.com/programming.html
I believe that my teaching philosophy has been heavily influenced by my family. As immigrants, my parents stressed the importance of education (formal and informal) and its contributions on quality of life. What they asserted was that of all the things that can be taken away from you, no one is able to take away your education. That idea is what I hope to pass along to my students. Within education, theories will continue to develop, best practices will continue to change and technology will forever evolve. Therefore, developing the skills to be a lifelong learner will always be the competency applicable toward all disciplines in life.