Matthew Gilbert Presents “Doctorious: My Adventures in Academia”

Seven weeks ago I posted the first draft of my teaching philosophy and added a stand-alone page to my blog. Since then I’ve had a chance to rethink and revise it and have posted it below and also updated the previously published page on my blog. While similar to the early incarnation, this version feels a bit more specific and tangible to me. I welcome your comments, thoughts, and suggestions!

Guided by the motto “learn continuously, live generatively,” I define myself as a teacher and a student engaged in an ongoing process of investigation, evaluation and application of information. In my opinion, being a teacher is just a different word for being a student, a concept echoing the ideas of Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard who wrote “to be a teacher in the right sense is to be a learner. I am not a teacher, only a fellow student.”

My goal is to inspire generative learning in my students. In his 1994 book, The Fifth Discipline, MIT professor Peter Senge explains that generative learning “enhances our capacity to create,” (p. 14). I further define it as the process of integrating your existing knowledge about a subject with new information you acquire about it. The result is a deeper, more personal, and ultimately more meaningful understanding of that subject. Achieving generative learning requires engaging information, taking ownership of it, and converting it into knowledge.

Dedicated to helping students reach this learning state, I embrace Pulitzer Prize winning poet Mark Van Doren’s philosophy that “the art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery.” However, I believe that without relevance a discovery is less meaningful. So, I assign projects that allow my students to solve real issues in their lives outside of school. As a student, I always prefer assignments of this nature and give my students the same opportunity.

Likewise, I want my classes to be meaningful. At the start of each new session I survey my students about their knowledge of the topic, their comfort level with the assignments and what they hope to accomplish in the weeks ahead. After reviewing their submissions I customize the curriculum while making sure to still satisfy the desired learning outcomes. Throughout the term I continue to assess their progress and, whenever possible, make changes. After all, I am delivering a service to my students who, as the consumer, deserve the highest quality!

In the classroom I combine learning with laughter. With youthful enthusiasm and a dry sense of humor I motivate my students while keeping them focused with my more mature traits. Acting as a “guide on the side” and not a “sage on the stage,” I make my students my priority. Following Goleman’s concept of “emotional intelligence,” I remain responsive to them at all times. Having taught students of various ages, ethnicities and socioeconomic backgrounds, I am sensitive to the diverse challenges with which my students might be contending.

In keeping with this idea, I believe that an educational environment should encourage students to compete with themselves, but not with each other. Learning should never be about winners and losers. I prefer to promote a concept called collective individualism: a knowledge management process that leverages the contributions of independent, but interconnected participants to solve a shared problem.

Interdisciplinary by nature, I teach courses in communication, composition, information technology, management and marketing. While each discipline is distinct from the other, I approach them all from the perspective of their shared intersection with humanity, technology and industry. Given my perception of these disciplines I often include elements of one or more of them in every class, regardless of its primary focus.

I enjoy challenging my students to think evolutionarily in an attempt to shatter preconceptions and create meaningful knowledge. It is because of this potential outcome that I am drawn to teaching. I find that it can be as rewarding as it is challenging, but no other professional experience has allowed me to help shape the future of other people while simultaneously giving my own life greater meaning and purpose.