Why teaching is important to me?

I realised the importance of teaching and how much I liked and missed teaching after spending 2.5 years with research organisation. I possessed an academic position in Japan (urban and transport planning) and moved to Australia to join the federal research organisation four years ago. I was happy when I started my job in Australia as a research scientist, but realised that something was wrong - I missed teaching. Siemiatycki (2012) describes that planning academics are assuming ever larger roles as participants in practice, as public scholars, as advisor or consultants, as community-based researchers, or as activists. I would add ‘teacher’ on top of this. It never occurred to me to question myself why teaching is important to me when I was teaching in an university in Japan, where the teaching style/norms and students attitudes are different from Australia. It is common that one-third of students at class are asleep, reading comics, and texting in Japan, where conventional and passive teaching is dominant. There is also a clear hierarchy between teachers and students. So it is rare that students argue or make comments. No feedback like USS is given at the end of semester. What is expected for students are, to listen to teachers and to make note. With this teaching style, not many teachers care how their teaching assists/not assists students’ learning and stimulate their intellectual curiosity.  Because ‘how students learn’ is not regarded as ‘significant’ in this teaching norms. But I realised this teaching style isn’t meaningful in my field- urban and regional planning which is very practical. Therefore my answer to the question ‘why teaching is important to me’ is; because teaching is to nurture urban planners who build our living environment in the future and I am honoured to be responsible for contributing to this. I believe in my field of urban planning, teachers have much responsibility in nurturing future planners because their work directly affect people’s quality of life. The second reason is because teaching is also learning. I believe that teaching brings me a lot of opportunities to train myself, through discussion and being inspired by student’s innocent idea which will lead crystallising research ideas and application to planning practice. The third reason is that teaching is fun. I enjoy teaching. If I don’t enjoy teaching, student would notice this and they wouldn’t enjoy either. If they enjoy learning, that would bring better motivation to them.

My students learning about public private partnership in infrastructure planning.