Personal Notes on My Teaching

Why deal with growing old?

It also pays off for young people to learn about growing old. Firstly, growing old is a cross-sectoral issue in social work since people in social work in all fields are getting older. Social work with families, social work with mentally ill people or people with a high risk of addiction, social work with children and young people or social work in communities. Secondly, growing old is an incredibly diverse topic: does it feel like time is passing more quickly when you are old? If yes, why? Will people with dementia become kids again or can parts of themselves become sedimented in their bodies, so they stay themselves? Is the meaning of love different than in younger years? Thirdly, you can also benefit from it personally if you occupy yourself with a phase of life you have yet to face. You can deal with basic questions that are also central for young people: how can I cope with dependency and physical and mental vulnerability? What really matters in my life? How can I be close to other people? How can I deal with conflicts and feelings constructively? How can I cope with difficult life situations?

My idea of teaching

Significance of social work as university studies

Social work is a university study course. The degree is an academic degree. That’s why the university teaching and studying can’t just stop at the exchange of everyday experience. Goals of academic education are:

• the ability to make science-based decisions in the practice of social work
• professional reflexivity: what makes my actions professional?
• the ability for lifelong learning in your profession: also during professional practice, I need to deepen, extend and update my knowledge
• the awareness that scientifical knowledge is not completed
• the ability to critically examine the coherence of theoretical positions and practice to develop a professional position

Didactic principles

• I give input but also try to design the learning process as helpfully as possible in my position as a learning guide
• I try to motivate by highlighting the relevance of topics for the subject area, the study degree and the profession
• The theories discussed don’t need to be applicable directly: the benefit of scientific knowledge needs to be newly assessed in each individual case of social work practice through comparison with the present situation and interpreted professionally (theory-practice interrelation). The main goal is to question theory and practice critically. The study course is not limited to job training
• In general, there can’t be ‘recipe knowledge’ on the requirement level of academic professions, only a repertoire of methods. (v. Spiegel: ”In sum, the professional art of skilled workers is to use their skills, knowledge and professional positions according to the case and context” (p. 253))
• The students work on theoretic contents with my support. After that we reflect together on the possible consequences
• In specialist discourses, technical terms are also important. But I don’t just query definitions. Students acquire theories, models and technical terms in a way that they can explain them in their own words, understand their historic development, differentiate between them and weigh their strengths and weaknesses.
• I establish routines, to apply scientific terms in various contexts, so daily knowledge can be replaced or become integrated (see below).

How do I understand my role as a university teacher?

As a university teacher I am responsible for the selection and preparation of teaching content. Insofar, I am responsible for shaping the teaching content in a way that makes it more approachable. You work on the professional knowledge and the action competence – I accompany you. In the end, everyone must learn and integrate new knowledge into their lives by themselves. My task is to arrange learning situations in a way so you can connect your prior knowledge with specialist scientific knowledge so both can be integrated instead of standing next to another. Through the confrontation with scientific knowledge or the demonstration of contradictions I want to irritate your (and my) everyday ideas. In addition, impressive experiences and exciting theories lead to our wish to learn more about them.

This process can be didactically organised as a spiral curriculum – from the level of separate lectures to a whole study course – where prior knowledge is continuously challenged by new knowledge and action competences, temporarily integrated to be irritated and newly integrated in other contexts and higher levels.

What’s not my role?

Since the university is part of adult education, not in terms of system of education but in terms of the age of the student, I don’t understand my role as disciplinary or pedagogical. In adult education, recourse to educational measures is seen as an attack on the dignity of adults. Significant is the principle of voluntariness (see below). That means that I won’t ask you to speak up if you didn’t raise your hand.

Role of students

My role as a learning guide corresponds to your role as an independent learner who is willing to acquire learning content with my support. I assume your basic willingness to engage with a subject so you can say whether it suits your interest in learning. If that is the case, I also assume that you prepare yourself for the seminars. Since new knowledge can only be integrated on the basis of our prior knowledge, it is necessary that you ‘construct’ the content in a form that you can understand. This is why you can’t expect me to only present teaching content myself. You must be ready to establish a basis in self-study so that we can use the valuable seminar time to jointly develop content, answer questions and discuss them.