Teaching Style
I understand teaching and learning as a two-way mirror, in which knowledge,
information and methodology reflect back and forth between the teacher and the
student. Indeed, to teach is to communicate through text, examples, and thoughts in
order to trigger a shift inside the student in both physical and logical way. In other
words, the classroom as a set space is not limited to its predetermined boundary, for
example: field trip, research and non-hierarchical dialogue should be put in place in
conjunction with the teaching of skills and reasoning. I see the role as a teacher not
merely as a performer of knowledge but also offering an experience, which is part of the
student’s everyday life. This experience involves the student’s self-identification and
disidentification with the teacher’s methodology and logical processing, as well as the
sensual and perceptive domain of transmission.
The intention of teaching is to trigger questions goes in and beyond the subject of study.
For example, the systematic reading of design could be taught in conjunction with a
semiotic way of reading everyday signs, and a walking field trip could be employed. Thus,
the questions regarding to the actual understanding of design exists in multidimensionality,
where intuition, reasoning and production responds to each other
reciprocally.
The goal of my teaching is to demonstrate the potential of the subject, i.e. design, could
be applied in multiple aspects of the student’s personal work and life. The main focus is
to deconstruct the layers of design into concept, content and context. Thus, the
process of learning is dissembled into developing a systematic way of reading the subject
to generating one’s own methodology, finding personal influence through research, and
collecting as well as constructing content from historical and present phenomena.
During the process of learning, the student is triggered to take upon different roles
when facing the subject of study, from a selection of researcher, maker, collector,
curator, librarian, media master, thinker, etc. These roles function as catalysts for the
student to respond to their own work from different perspectives and testing different
format of thinking and production, including but not limited to the directions of
fictional, functional, idealistic, pragmatic, experimental, etc. As a result, the student will
be equipped with a deeply understanding of themselves both as a learner and a director
of their potentials. This collectivity within oneself together with the peer energy will
engender a think-tank of circling inquiry of the subject of study and a dynamic of the
teaching and learning environment.