Possible future directions and areas of focus for your personal / professional development as an educator

I’ve learned many significant points through ‘Tertiary Teaching and Learning’ unit to improve my teaching. But this is just a kick-off of long way forward to develop myself as a teacher. Planning is a dynamic subject which is affected by politics, economy, social change, and technology (Fischer, 2012). There are many practices all over the world. First of all, I would like to keep synthesizing the academic theories and state-of-the-art practices to the component of my teaching as linked with my teaching briefs. The examples introduced in my class should be always updated to follow the dynamic feature of planning. This requires classic readings but also technology such as YouTube, radio, and Skype to listen to the ‘real’ voice of planners from all over the world. Also, as a course convener of Master of Urban and Regional Planning, I am responsible for designing the course structure. I am considering to re-design the course to let students to learn as much effectively as possible to achieve their study goal, but also nurture them as excellent planner. We have accreditation from Planning Institution of Australia but there is room for improvement. As part of this improvement, we are thinking to expose students to more international practices as Australian examples have limitations for students to obtain high-standard knowledge and experience in this field. We will start new unit next year which is called ‘international planning workshop’. We take students to international host institutions every year under one theme each (for example, transit-oriented development for 2013). Students learn and work with the students from host institutions but also industry/governments there to experience real planning. I also discuss with the two students representatives to understand their needs and what should be improved in our teaching. In this way, we can bridge the potential gaps on ‘what the teacher does’, ‘how student learn’, and ‘expected learning outcomes’.

Secondly, I would like to review of my colleague’s teaching activity at times. I reviewed my colleague’s activity as assignment 1 and learned significant points that gave answers to my questions: how could I put students in the practical/professional situation and let them critically explore how they should address the issues of their task?, how could I give students the feedback of their work effectively?, and how could I let students to refer to the readings and reflect on their learning and assignments? I immediately applied what my colleagues do in my teaching and received positive feedback to students.

Finally, I would like to share teaching experiences with my colleagues more often. There are many excellent teachers who are trying to improve their teaching all the time. But we don’t discuss and share our experience so often. When the connection, engagement, and safety are in place, sustainable conversations about learning and teaching are possible (McCormack and Kennelly, 2011). Fortunately our discipline already has these factors. As I think there is no way to miss the opportunities to learn from other teacher’s experience, I would like to keep sharing experiences at staff meetings, morning/afternoon teas where we frankly discuss.