Teaching Philosophy

Our teaching and learning philosophy is strongly influenced by the work we conduct with local people in collaboration with Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) and local government agencies. We see teaching as an extension of our work and service as practitioners, which is critical in shaping the content and pedagogy of our university classes. In addition, our teaching is strongly informed by the scope and nature of our research on disasters and people’s participation in development.

Our teaching and learning philosophy embraces five key principles:

1/ for their learning to be grounded, learners must engage with relevant theoretical, policy and practical material;

2/ for their thinking to be critical, learners must be challenged to think creatively, unconventionally and ‘outside the box’

3/ for their learning to be active, learners must engage as much with the process as with the products of learning;

4/ for their learning to be transformative, learners must reflect personally with processes and products of learning to inform their own lives beyond the teaching;

5/ for learning – and teaching – to be engaging, it should be both challenging and fun.