Teaching context and philosophy

Teaching context and philosophy

I believe that all students learn differently and to enable them each to learn to their full capacities, I offer a variety of learning activities to allow for all the individual learning styles.

My role as a teacher, is to help facilitate the best learning experience I can for as many students as possible. I believe that students need to understand rather than just remember and recite. From both my own learning experiences and student feedback, to enable understanding the learner needs to be engaged in the learning process – it’s my aim to facilitate this. Originally being a clinician, I believe my experience in being a new clinician myself, then a mentor and manager for other recent graduates, allows me a more practical understanding of what needs to be learned before graduating.

I have a strong belief that we need to adapt our teaching to cater for students from a diverse range of backgrounds and those with health conditions to ensure their studies aren’t adversely affected by their condition.

Student feedback also plays a very important role in my teaching, with both the course and their compulsory UNSW Medicine and Health Lifestyle Clinic placement changing dramatically as a result of student feedback. This is an ongoing process each term, with verbal feedback sought in face to face sessions for their Lifestyle Clinic placement, written feedback provided through evaluations for all practicum placements, and also anonymous feedback which is received via the myExperience platform. My individual teaching style has also changed dramatically through these processes and is now widely variable according to the student I’m teaching.