Change your lens

It is my passion and motivation for teaching that drives me to discover and question how I can create a highly relevant and meaningful learning experience for my students. Technology and other innovative approaches shape my practice. So how can we continue to develop and bring innovation to our professional practice to support our students in their chemistry learning?

To reflect more accurately on our teaching and its impact, viewing through different lenses which alert us to alternate perspectives and perhaps challenge some of our own assumptions could be very useful. There are four such lenses through which we can view our professional practice and guide this process of inquiry (adapted from Stephen Brookfield): our own autobiography as a learner, research literature, colleagues’ perceptions and students.

Suzanne Fergus, winner of the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Higher Education Teaching Award 2016, discusses how she keeps these four lenses in mind while teaching.