Michael Goldberg
Associate Professor, University of Washington, Bothell
Statement of Teaching Philosophy
I believe the job of a university professor is to give students the opportunity to gain the skills, knowledge, and experience that will help them to expand their personal horizons, to become more effective and active citizens, and to have the ability to take the next step toward a range of possible vocations. I base my teaching philosophy on the assumption that students can accomplish more than they believe possible. My task is to encourage and nudge them to take the intellectual risks that are fundamental for their success. In order to accomplish this, I try to empower students as much as possible by making them active participants in their own education. In my classroom, I do not offer a single point of view. Instead, I present multiple perspectives and narratives linked to several unifying themes. I then challenge students to take these "pieces of the puzzle" and fit them together to form their own view of the course material. While I often employ interactive lectures and large group discussion, I also make use of small group work in which students take on more responsibility for their own education. Carefully structured research projects, often a combination of individual and group efforts, provide a meaningful way for students to undergo their own intellectual explorations in a supportive and cooperative environment. These projects usually have a presentation component to them so that students can share their conclusions while gaining competency in delivering oral and/or visual presentations.
I make student outcomes the organizing focus when I design my courses, then proceed to choose the assessment practices, teaching and learning processes, and texts that have the best chance of facilitating these outcomes for a broad range of students. Having been trained in a Writing Across the Curriculum program, I thoroughly integrate the teaching of critical thinking, reading, research, and communication skills in my courses. I work closely with staff from the Writing Center and the library to construct assignments and workshops which make clear that these are not separate activities, but are all part of the process of learning. Whenever appropriate to the targeted outcomes, I employ computer technology to facilitate communication as well as access a variety of materials available on the Web. I am increasingly turning to a broader range of teaching assessment instruments beyond standard course evaluation forms to gauge the effectiveness of technology specifically and my teaching generally.
I teach disciplinary, interdisciplinary, and multidisciplinary courses, choosing the approach that best fits the outcomes I hope to achieve. In general, I use interdisciplinary methods when there is a problem that can only be solved by bringing together the approach of more than one discipline. (For example, I bring together history and film studies so that students can explore the conscious and subconscious fears, hopes, and desires of specific historical audiences and authors.) In order to succeed in these courses, students must bring the necessary background in one or more of the disciplines. These courses tend to be very rewarding to students with the required training because they are able to build on past learning experiences to solve complex problems. Because I teach a range of methodological approaches, from more social science-oriented history courses to courses heavy in textual interpretation, students should read carefully the Online Course Descriptions provided as part of the Time Schedule so that they know what to expect from the course.
While I am committed to teaching analytical and communication skills, I also try to push students out of their "comfort zone" by challenging their preconceptions and assumptions. To have students simply master skills or content without expanding their horizons or "unsettling" them seems to me a betrayal of the ideal of a liberal arts education. As part of my commitment to providing new orientations to students, I work to "de-center" my teaching as much as possible away from presenting mainstream cultures as unmarked "norms." Within a course, I will integrate an understanding of cultural relations while also focusing on specific cultural groups. Further, I challenge the dichotomy between simplistic notions of race, class and gender that ignore categories like "male," "white" and "middle class" in understanding how cultural categories are developed and maintained. Instead, I employ a model of "distributive power relations" that stresses the contingent and unstable nature of power depending on context, while including the way long-standing structures of power operate within American culture. This approach allows me to render more complex the differences and commonalties that both fracture and strengthen our nation and our world.