Teaching Experience
Previous teaching duties in Russia
- supervising theses in social, developmental and educational psychology
- supervising Ph.D dissertations in social, developmental and educational psychology
- serving on committees for graduate research
- advising and supervising graduate students
Undergraduate courses taught include:
- introductory psychology
- research methods in psychology
- developmental psychology
- educational psychology
- introduction to psychology careers
- senior research
Graduate courses taught include:
- research methods and statistics
- educational psychology
- theory and methods of teaching psychology
Recent teaching duties in the USA
Undergraduate courses taught include:
- introductory psychology
- research methods in psychology
- history and systems of psychology
- child development
- life-span development
- cognitive psychology
- social psychology
- cross-cultural psychology
- senior research
Teaching Philosophy
I believe that development of critical thinking of students within a course is the most important goal of instruction. I don't think that overwhelming the students with a mountain of information within class session is a good teaching strategy. Instructors should point out the key points of topics, explain and exemplify them, letting the students read the rest material in the text on their own.
I like to use the different types of activities promoting students' learning, in particular, solving problems, demonstration of psychological experiments, computer simulations, group discussions, inventories, questionnaires, and survey for students' self-cognitions.
I like to employ psychology experiments and labs in my classes since they greatly reinforce the mastering of theoretical knowledge from empirical approach.
I prefer the interactive style of teaching because this strategy effectively engages students in active learning. I don't like monotone lecturing. Therefore, when I assign students to read a relevant chapter I try to stress and organize the key points of the topic, comment them, and supply vivid and animated examples to inspire the critical thinking in the class. Chapter guidelines can help students to focusing their reading. So I usually post a supportive material of this type in local network before a class.
My lovely saying in psychology classes is «It depends...» I introduce this guideline to students from the very beginning of my class. I explain that any answer in psychology often depends on different factors and aspects of situation or personality. This guideline follows us in our class later. When I present ambiguous situations or problems to be solved, this statement helps students stay alert to critical thinking opportunities. When asking a question later in class I like hearing from students: «It depends...» (They like this joke also). This is a good starting point for discussion of the issue in detail.
I use several strategies to keep my students motivated to learn. I motivate students with use of questions around the concepts and problems they read in the textbook (or auxiliary texts) and then discuss their answers. I am sure that questioning in a class anyway maintains students alerted and motivated. I regularly employ a sense of humor, improvisation, and a little expression in my classes. My teaching evaluations suggest that students appreciate my humor. I am aware that not all students have strong cognitive motivation. I use positive reinforcement strategies purposefully to keep them involved.
Motivation related to fair grading practices is also important for most students. Regular quizzes or interim exams are important to stimulate students for regular study; it is especially essential for freshmen and sophomores. They are very willing to get extra premium tokens, which I assign for correct answers. Such an incentive system increases achievement motivation in classes. It seems such a technique keeps students alert, especially when they expect that they may be awarded with psychology tokens for this activity. The process of operant conditioning works well in the case: they pay more attention in class. I add these premium points to their final grade. So this type of in-class activity gives them a chance to enhance their final grade. I noticed that students become more responsive in class activities later even not being reinforced by premium tokens.
I like to explore new possibilities, which new media and computer technologies give to a teacher. I use PowerPoint presentations to deliver teaching materials. The usage of both visual and auditory modality in material delivery is certainly good. Students gave me the feedback that it is good to see on the screen the main points and concurrently listening the comments, examples and explanations. I don't encourage students to write word-by-word class notes from my talking as well as from PowerPoint slides. I encourage them to listen and critically think. PowerPoint gives an excellent opportunity for demonstration and activities in psychology. After a class session I post the PowerPoint presentation in a local Network folder designated for this class. So they may use it for further learning of material. I also post additional reading and video materials at these Network places I am interested in web-delivered and hybrid courses. They give an excellent opportunity to teach and learn from anywhere. They save time and money, give writing and editing software in hand, but they might be mostly valuable for advanced students (with developed intrinsic motivation) at upper level and graduate courses.
Regular feedback from students is important to keep me in tune with students' needs. I ask students to informally evaluate my course for my own information, requesting that they identify the strengths and weaknesses of my teaching strategy and technique. The most typical responses are positive evaluations, emphasizing that the course is comprehensible and enjoyable due to my enthusiasm and animation.
Being a good teacher is very rewarding to me. It doesn't matter what kind of students I have. I like to see the personal or professional growth of students. It is not problem for me to adjust my teaching to students with different learning styles and to inspire their interest in psychology in one or another way. I show positive attitudes to all students. I think that knowledge is accessible to all students; however the level of their access can be deep or shallow depending upon their personal goals. I try to persuade those inclined to be shallow learners to want to learn at a deeper level.
I like to connect mind, research and everyday experience for psychology students. I succeed when I see their joy of discovery in psychology as a science.
Involvement of undergraduate students in small research projects very motivates them to study psychology in depth. So I prefer such a research-based strategy of teaching that supplies active learning and application of knowledge. This might be an assignment of literature review, or little experiment within a course, or senior research project. Group projects give students the experience of cooperative work.
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