Daniel Buffington

Teaching Philosophy Statement

The pedagogical philosophy that I am currently developing focuses on the improvement of critical thinking skills essential to university-level education coupled with the serious engagement of the social world encouraged by sociological thinking. Improving these skills will not only increase the knowledge base of these students, but also better prepare them for real world experiences that often deviate from predictable patterns and thus require critical assessment.

In my experience as both a student and a teacher the classroom is quite often constructed by both parties as a place where the teacher will play the role of expert, providing the “correct answers” to various social problems. While it is a certainty that I come to the class room equipped with a degree and range of knowledge that is different (and perhaps more specifically focused on the subject at hand) than most students, it is equally certain that my students come with all sorts of knowledge that I do not possess. Part of my goal as an educator then is to move beyond constructing the students as subjects who will passively learn from me to realizing students as active learners with their own knowledge base.

Indeed, I believe that sociology is uniquely suited to just such a pursuit. To some degree we are all sociologists in that we all participate within a cultural framework, learning the various written and unwritten rules of behavior. Thus, sociology touches upon various institutions (family, school, work) and processes (life course, racism) that affect our lives daily. Part of the role of sociology, however, is to move beyond these common-sense explanations to more systematic accounts. This requires the development of critical thinking skills that encourage students to engage rather than accept their own assumptions, my assumptions, and the assumptions of the various theoretical positions that will be read and discussed.

Having been influenced by Paolo Freire’s theories on learning, I attempt to build a classroom environment in which knowledge is shared rather than distributed, challenged rather than accepted, and experiential rather than abstracted. This environment is achieved through a heavy emphasis on my expectation that students will participate and that their opinions are essential to increasing our understanding as a class. Secondly, I present all theories and/or approaches to the social world as “Janus faced”; that is, having their both their strong and weak points. Rather than accepting them as whole or even partial truths, part of our job as critical engagers of knowledge is to articulate what the relative strengths and weaknesses of these approaches are. Only after this process is complete can we begin to evaluate each theory for what it does or does not contribute. Finally, complex knowledge is best understood when it can be directly related to ones own life. Thus, I challenge students to engage current events and/or their own experiences through the lenses provided by the concepts, theories, and issues discussed in class. This not only makes the knowledge more relevant, but also facilitates the learning process outside of the classroom. When students can see the value of sociology and critical thinking skills for their own lives they will engage in active learning organically, without the “carrot-and-stick” of grades, deadlines, and other sanctions.