A Philosophy of Teaching . . . and More

Abstract

This article presents one educator's philosophic answer to the question “Why am I teaching?” During the course of this article, principles of servant teachership are presented. In addition, some teaching approaches used by the author are presented.

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“…Gremler, Hoffman, Keaveney, and Wright (2000), see teaching pedagogies which incorporate action learning and experiential based activities, as a positive shift of focus from the teacher to the student. This supports the views of Davis, Misra, and Van Auken (2000) and Chonko (2007), who call for an inquiry-based approach to marketing pedagogy, emphasising the importance of experience on the basis that teaching fails to be excellent if student learning is restricted to only what occurs in the classroom.…”

“…Evidence clearly shows a growing pressure upon UK Higher Education Institutions to offer increased 'value' in the provision of their marketing programmes (Gibson-Sweet, Brennan, Foy, Lynch, & Rudolph, 2010). One element of this 'value' may be understood as improving the employability opportunities of students on the basis that marketing degrees do not equip graduates with the necessary skills for employment (Kamath & MacNab, 1998;Morrison, Sweeney, & Heffernan, 2003); whilst others show concern about the lack of intellectual challenge within marketing programmes (Chonko, 2004(Chonko, , 2007. This requires arriving at the appropriate balance in marketing curricula between academic rigour (Tregear, Dobson, Brennan, Kuznesof, 2010) and the need for industry relevant content (Schlee & Harich, 2010).…”

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“…This commitment recognizes the need for their own personal growth and awareness of their own journey. Consequently, the joy of learning leads to a passion for solving problems (Chonko, 2007). This is where the elements of entertainment and humor come into play for the purposes of catching the attention and interest of the students and in creating informal interaction and relationships within the classroom (Ferreira, 2000).…”

“…Similarly, teacher effectiveness is measured by the gain in learning by the students (Cochran-Smith, 2001). Learning how to learn, according to Chonko (2007) is a means by which students can contribute to creation and resolution of learning disequilibria. These behaviors are at the same time regarded as academicenabling behaviors (McMillan, Myran, & Workman, 2002).…”

“…The role of the teacher in developing this kind of student initiative should be overlooked. Such initiative on the part of the student best operates in the context of teaching-learning partnership or what the Japanese collectively call as kyosei which demands a dedication to service and stewardship and the advancement of mutual interests over self-interests (Chonko, 2007). Cranton and Carusetta (2004), in their study using grounded theory approach, found that the relationship between teacher and student includes helping students to learn.…”