I believe that a teacher’s role is to guide students toward intellectual freedom. This means fostering hands-on exploration of knowledge and tools that are applicable beyond the classroom. To facilitate each student’s journey, I employ scaffolding—providing support structures that assist at various stages of learning. This scaffolding is dynamic, allowing for tailored assistance that can be added or removed as a student progresses. My commitment to this teaching philosophy has been tested and refined through my vast experience. From my early days as a teen volunteer reading stories to 5th graders, to establishing a music school in Mexico, and finally, to leading courses on advanced engineering topics like signal processing and deep learning at Stanford. Today, as an academic at Queen Mary University of London, I deliver graduate-level computer science courses covering a wide array of Artificial Intelligence topics. My teaching always underscores the social implications of knowledge, ensuring students not only master the material but also understand its broader impact.
Theoretical foundation
My teaching practice is primarily influenced by the writings of educational theorists Lev Vygotsky and Paulo Freire. Through my early experiences teaching music in Mexico, I became interested in studying educational theory. As an undergrad at the University of North Texas (UNT), I took education courses where I discovered Vygotsky’s concept of the “zone of proximal development” (ZPD), the distance between what a learner can do with and without help. This principle helped me understand patterns I observed in music students, who were able to learn how to play an instrument upon finding a balance between motivation, challenge, and support. Parallelly, in Freire’s writings I discovered the importance of dialogue, praxis, and problem-solving in a classroom setting, creating an environment where students actively engage with and interrogate the material. My approach, which includes methods like interactive live-coding sessions and project-driven assignments, integrates Vygotsky’s scaffolding within the ZPD and Freire’s active learning. This combination fosters not only continuous student growth but also their evolution into independent, critical thinkers.
Teaching Approach
In my decade-long journey as an educator in higher education, I’ve recognized that effective teaching depends on student motivation. To maximize this variable, my approach highlights three principles: 1) applied relevance of course content, 2) scaffolding to aid learning of technical concepts, and 3) tying learning to hands-on student-defined projects.
Applied Relevance.
Throughout the years, I’ve prioritized driving student engagement via demonstration of the course content’s applied relevance. For example, in my microbiology course at UNT, students learned to induce mutations in model organisms to be able to see their gene expression with their naked eyes. Similarly, at Stanford, while teaching signal processing I demonstrated how socio-technological shifts, like the advent of the internet and autotune, have impacted traditional singing styles, particularly outside the western world.
Technical Learning.
The assignments I craft use Vygotsky’s ZPD. They blend the familiar – reinforcing class-covered concepts – with the discovery of new ideas. However, recognizing that students learn at different paces, I’ve always made myself accessible outside class time for one-on-one discussions. As a teacher I am always willing to augment scaffolding to find each student’s ZPD, often via targeted dialogue, customized tutorials, or supplemental exercises catered to each student’s needs. This individualized approach can transform initial setbacks into “aha, I get it!” moments.
Research Integration.
I weave cutting-edge research perspectives into my teaching, inviting students to recognize and take note of knowledge gaps. By analyzing research articles and news stories, students get a chance at understanding the broader impact of the classroom content. I also encourage them to see the feedback they get from me on their projects as actionable insights that could turn these into published scholarly work. This philosophy has borne fruit: after a course ends, I have had the privilege to mentor students to turn their projects into publications. Through these experiences I am convinced that for some students a course may be the launchpad that propels them into research careers.
© 2024 Iran R. Roman