As an instructor, I feel committed to academic teaching rooted in three guiding principles: individual accountability, collaborative action, and critical (self-)reflection.­

One of my main goals is to create a learning environment where students are encouraged to assume responsibility for their learning. This means that participants are led to abandon the commonplace notion of students as passive receivers of knowledge and to take an active role in planning, organizing, and managing their own learning process instead. I understand learning here to also mean learning with and from one another. Therefore, I foster student collaboration in the sense of mutual engagement and interaction among participants. To these ends, I implement student-centered teaching formats and methods aimed at holding students accountable for their learning – both as individuals and as members of the class as a community. These formats and methods offer opportunities for self-directed and self-regulated individual study and also include in-class and out-of-class peer instruction activities such as student presentations, student-led discussions, or peer evaluation and feedback. Last, but not least, critical inquiry lies at the core of my teaching philosophy. My goal is to empower students as future teachers of English by supporting them in their efforts to cultivate a habit of critical (self-)reflection. On the level of self-reflection, I routinely invite students to review how personal beliefs, experiences, and expectations influence their professionalization. What is more, I encourage students to scrutinize the institutions and practices of (English) education and their embeddedness in complex networks of political, social, and cultural forces.  ­

My strategies in course design are geared towards making use of the benefits of blended learning. My preferred course format is therefore web-enhanced, i.e. a format that integrates web-based technology, specifically, the functionalities of the e-learning platform Moodle, to facilitate learning.­

True to the precept of lifelong learning, I strive for continuous refinement and improvement of my teaching practice based equally on student feedback, collaboration with colleagues, and self-monitoring.