Teaching context and philosophy

I teach undergraduate and postgraduate optometry students with a special focus on pre-clinical skills and core competencies such as handling and fitting contact lenses. 

Based on my personal experiences, I believe learning is a continuous process and happens through professional and personal experiences. Even though concepts and philosophies are taught to provide fundamental knowledge, the learnt concepts are put only to practice at the beginning. Eventually, personal experiences takeover through practice by their strong convictions and not by conventions. For this reason, I believe the real world demands professionals with experience. That is why, I strongly in support of ‘Experiential Learning’

I think my role as an educator is to provide students ‘experience’. I ensure I deliver this by teaching conventions through theory and complement theory with practice through a series of hands-on practical sessions, simulations and tutorials.

Building on the confidence students gain through my pre-clinical courses, they build further experience in their clinical courses to become a real world professionals who are not only competent and but are safe.