Teaching Philosophy

In my twenty-plus years as an environmental educator, I have worked with many different audiences – urban to rural, toddlers to adults, students and educators. My doctoral work on educator environmental literacy has helped provide a sound theoretical underpinning to the practical knowledge I developed in those experiences. This is reflected in my approach to teaching, which includes not just content, but pedagogy. It is important that we not only develop educators’ environmental literacy, but also their skills in developing that of their students.

My approach to teaching reflects my social-cultural perspective on learning, my contextual perspective on environmental literacy, and my commitment to an equitable learning environment. We as educators are knowledgeable collaborators with students. We bring expertise, but must work alongside them to assist in their learning. We must do to learn, to develop the practices essential to translating knowledge and dispositions to identifying and taking action on environmental issues in multiple contexts as well as develop the practices of a high quality educator. To do that, there must be inquiry, experience, and reflection.

Inquiry can take many forms in the college classroom, and it is important that it be scaffolded to support student learning. It is vital that students learn to not only ask questions, but reflect on their own knowledge to know which questions to ask. For example, when I taught the upper level Informal Science Education class at Rutgers University, I brought students into a local science museum to observe visitors. In advance of the trip, they created their own research question based on our readings, then I worked with them to improve and refine the questions and decide what type of observational data would help them answer their questions. At the more advanced levels of inquiry, my research with teachers used problem-based learning professional development around an environmental issue, non-point source water pollution. Participants worked collaboratively to identify what the core issues in a scenario were, identify what they needed to know and how to learn it, then used their new knowledge to create a plan to address the issue with an emphasis on the social-ecological nature of the issue, along the way. These skills germane to inquiry – asking questions, identifying how to address those questions, and what data will best suit the situation, are key not only to environmental literacy in multiple contexts, but also our practices as educators in assessing our students both formatively and summatively. After engaging in the problem-based learning, teachers spent half a day planning how to use it in their own classrooms. This combination of experience and application was popular, with one teacher provided feedback that the best features of the program were “modelling the process we want our students to use” and the “closing to evaluate the process allowed for sharing of professional expertise.”

Experience is important to learning because it is through working alongside more knowledgeable people that students develop more advanced practices. By teaching with observation and feedback from a professor or mentor, for example, students can connect their classroom learning to the actual practice of teaching. I strive to provide my students such experiences. In Informal Science Education, students worked in teams to revise and improve exhibits in the university’s Geology Museum. As a co-instructor in Environmental Education and Communication, students taught short lessons to groups of peers in the first half of the semester, and designed a communication project on environmental content in the media of their choice in the second half. Finally, as the instructor in Educational Psychology, I provided students the opportunities to teach small groups as part of a jigsaw method, and facilitate discussions during the course of the semester. One student commented “I really liked how Professor Hunter used the classroom management skills, instructional strategies etc. that we were learning in her actual teaching of the class. It was great to see these in practice. I also really liked the structure of the class and how we got opportunities to practice what we were learning.” In my professional development work, I believe it is important for educators to experience problem-based learning, a new pedagogy for them, as the learners before revisiting it and discussing the how and why of facilitating it.

Reflection is necessary for integrating new knowledge and experiences into meaningful learning. This can be something as simple as weekly reflections on readings in a learning management system, or as deep as a final project. Since I believe student choice is important in learning, in my Educational Psychology class, students were given a choice in final assessment. They could watch and analyze a classroom research video, applying the theories we had learned and the classroom management principles, or they could do the same to a learning episode they had experienced in a K-12 or college classroom. A pre-post reflection I used with my Informal Science Education students was making personal meaning maps about informal science education at the beginning and the end of the semester, and let them compare their maps to see how their understanding had grown. One student commented “This course has set me on the path toward what I want to be when I grow up. I learned a lot of valuable information that I will take with me as I continue in the field.”

Reflections such as these can be a useful part of a holistic assessment strategy. I believe that assessment must be integrated and aligned with instruction, and as authentic as possible. Assessment should be an additional opportunity for students to learn about the material and themselves, but also provide the instructor or program coordinator with information about the success of the program as a whole. Assessment should be two-way, as well, providing instructors information on our own work. I consistently get high ratings in both end of course evaluations as well as at the check-in points I build in to the semester. When the feedback shows that students are struggling with some component of the course, I take that seriously and do what is possible to improve their learning experience.