Teaching

• Qualitative methods
• Research methods
• New literacy studies
• Adolescent development and learning

I enjoy my university teaching enormously because of the interaction with adult learners that it affords. The diversity of those learners makes teaching richly involving, intriguing, challenging and immensely rewarding. I take pride in the quality of the teaching and learning experiences I provide, and enjoy that students enjoy me. One of my great strengths is that I am able to communicate concepts at levels accessible to students at different stages of their development. I am patient, responsive, flexible and committed to students maximally benefiting from the teaching and learning experience. I am enthusiastic about my subject areas and I am committed to fostering student achievement. I have experience and expertise in teaching undergraduate, postgraduate and higher degree students in different modes of interaction including on-campus, off-campus and off-shore in Singapore .

My current research program operates at the nexus of teaching and research and my most rewarding teaching is informed by research, encourages enquiry and often opens up new avenues for research and scholarship (see for instance, two of my current research programs: motivations for choosing teaching as a career, and literacy practices across the disciplines in undergraduate education).

Teaching in multicultural secondary schools, and in socio-economically depressed areas, as well as working with students from a variety of countries and cultures in my university teaching, has heightened my sensitivity to the social and cultural needs of individuals. I especially take pleasure in the challenge of working with students less prepared for tertiary education, and seeing them succeed in that context. More broadly, I believe that eduction can make a difference to a person’s life chances and that universities have to find ways of opening up their doors to new cohorts of people whose life trajectories have seen them take a circuitous path to the front door of a university. I have had experience with the benefits of recognition of prior learning (RPL) as a motivational force for some adult learners.