I still remember walking into my first teaching seminar. Only a few years older than the students I was teaching, I was astonished when they went silent as I came through the door – I never got used to that! But, from that first seminar, I realised I loved teaching.

There’s something about addressing a problem with students – understanding how they approach it and what ideas, tools and gaps in knowledge they bring to the table – before exploring various different approaches to answering it that I find hugely rewarding.

Although each student’s needs are different – and will thus require a constantly adapting teaching practice – I generally adopt a problem based learning approach. This mimics how we approach the world: as a series of problems for which we must gather resources and techniques in order to address.

Problem-based learning

An educational approach that uses identified issues within a scenario to increase knowledge and understanding (Wood 2003).