TEACHING STATEMENT

Evan W. Faidley
Higher education is a professional field that requires students to understand and apply
discovered theory and research into practice. My teaching philosophy provides thought-
provoking challenges in the development of scholars and practitioners of higher education to
apply learned concepts into real-world settings. Through my facilitative, student-centered
pedagogy, students are guided to reflect on their past, present and future contributions as change
agents to their respective areas of interest within higher education.
I value in fostering learning through a connection between the professor, subject matter,
and students; I present exercises that challenge students to reflect on not only content and
concepts, but also indirect and direct experiences with similar or exact scenarios that lead them
to re-evaluate their approach to issues. For example, in HIED 76660: Faculty Roles and
Responsibilities, one of the topics is Faculty Roles as a Teacher in the Classroom. I divided
students into groups to define their definition of a university teaching professor, which served as
a conversation catalyst in small groups and then collectively as a class. Understanding the
student perspective of teachers and then associating those experiences to designated readings
through the teacher perspective afforded students to construct their definition of university
teaching and their own teaching philosophy. I prioritize the students experience in my classroom
with complex situations that necessitates them to refer to literature, personal experiences, and the
experiences of others in pursuit of positive outcomes. In doing so, I avoid lecture and formal
classroom activities to where I provide transformative, communicative opportunities to student
learning. Integration of technological material such as personalized and research videos,
interactive audience response systems, and the universitys learning management system is
imperative to my effective teaching style to spark interest and support students make
connections.
I often start a class with a question that frames the class discussion for that day. For
example, when beginning class with simple discourse analysis of French passages in FR 23202:
Intermediate French II, I ask students how word order and word choice make a different in what
they are reading and understanding diverse political, social, economic, and cognitive contexts. I
pair the course reading of Le Mariage de Loti, an autobiographical novel by late nineteenth
century French novelist Pierre Loti, with modern French texts, such as poetry and legal
documents written in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, to illustrate evolutionary change in
civilization, differences in writing styles, and various perspectives held over one concept or idea.
To offer students multiple access points to better understand the stance that they have versus that
of their peer or other subject authors, I ask students to analyze a written critique, that I provide,
of the novel, which depicts the marital system in French Polynesia and the idea of love for the
benefit of the main character, Rarahu, and her people. Use of Foucaults critical discourse
analysis gives students a framework and criteria on analyzing the inclusion of terms and
foreshadowing what lead to be understood from what may have been omitted.
From students classroom experience in my curricula, students will walk away with
growth in two skills: the ability to write academically and the ability to think critically about
their role as a change agent in the higher education system. Through non-stop constructive,
dialogue, ideas, and feedback between the student and myself, students will feel encouraged to
think critically about issues and make better decisions as higher education scholars and
practitioners.