Teaching Philosophy
My approach to teaching is based on active and motivated learning environments. I strongly believe that people (students) learn more through activation and inspiration, as this can be one way to motivate students to take responsibility for their own learning. In doing so, I believe it is important to create a trustful space – whether it is in a 1:1 supervision session or in the greater classroom. I see this as a balance of relating to students’ level of knowledge and expertise and making them curious about gaining new knowledge and learning new skills. I find that using myself and my work from my professional development as examples in my teaching assists in building confidence. Also, I find that this creates the foundation for a joint learning space. I believe in creating a shared space for exploring and learning together, especially, in teaching at the Master’s level, as these students have built a solid base of knowledge and skills in design. But I also invite students at the beginning of their education to engage in discussions and experimentation that I work with in research projects. The effect of this mutual learning through research-based teaching and partnership inspires me and is a great driving force in my teaching.
Active Learning
Since my Lecturer Training in 2021, I have been experimenting with active learning by developing activities in teaching as a way to engage the students for an increased level of reflection. Working with active learning has increased my curiosity and awareness about my teaching approach in different learning spaces and I continue to experiment with it. Especially in the development of teaching approaches through hands-on activities. This focus has overlapped with my work on the projects FashionSEEDS Learning Activity Tool and Memory of Textile Crafts:
The FashionSEEDS Learning Activity Tool consists of 24 teaching activities that have been formalized to supplement teaching in fashion design and sustainability. Whilst each activity can be used as a stand-alone tool, they can also be combined within specific themes and for specific teaching contexts. Each activity is developed with the intention of providing a scalable format where the progression can be adjusted to the time available as well as the level of education.
Memory of Textile Crafts is a card game developed as a tool to be used when teaching textile techniques to emphasize active learning in the classroom through interactive and dialogue-based activities. The game can be seen as an advanced version of a traditional memory game, where sets or ‘matches’ are to be made. Here matches are made of specific textile techniques. The idea behind the memory game has been to propose a tool to support knowledge creation and reflective reasoning when introducing textile materials and textile practices in teaching.
Memory of Textile Crafts is at the stage of being tested by tutors and textile practitioners to provide us with feedback on it as a learning tool. Please reach out if you are curious and want to know more.