Along with my research objective to identify solutions for social inequality, my teaching also aims to portray Sociology as a means for problem-solving and empowerment. Through teaching, I strive to combat presumptions that prevent learning and push students to become self-motivated problem solvers. Below, I discuss my teaching philosophy and teaching methods to achieve my pedagogical goals.
Through my experiences leading discussion sections for undergraduate introductory sociology courses, I found two types of sentiments preventing students from effectively developing sociological thinking. One is the idea that sociology is political indoctrination and not scientific. Meanwhile, some students express frustration after sociology reveals the perseverant structural constraints in their lives, feeling defeated. To overcome both barriers, I incorporated discussions of social issues with wide impact to help students concentrate on real-life problem-solving and encourage students to gain hope through this process. Besides sociological concepts and theories, I consider the methods of learning another important teaching topic to help students become self-motivated learners and producers. Knowing why learning, what to learn, and how to learn helps a person learn more efficiently and have less anxiety when learning new things.Pedagogical Goal 1: Removing barriers of learning sociology by highlighting real-life problem-solving
Pedagogical Goal 2: Motivating learning by offering concrete objectives and tools