The Graduate School Education Cluster organized an international webinar geared towards providing educators with a repertoire of teaching models and new developments in pedagogical scholarship that they may adopt and/or adapt to their unique situations with the goal of achieving quality learning.
Two renowned professors shared their experience and expertise in exploring different teaching models through the lens of their own theoretical perspectives and their attended methodologies and research-based strategies during the virtual event titled “Global Educators as Bridge-builders to Innovative Teaching Practices” on November 16, 2022 via Zoom.
Prof. Gerald Walton Fry, Ph.D., a distinguished international professor at the University of Minnesota, highlighted the importance of holistic education as part of his leadership Theory H during his discussion titled, “Learning from the Indigenous and Non-western Worlds: A New Theory H of Leadership for Educational Excellence and Human Well-being.”
“In terms of my new Theory H, it emphasizes humanistic leadership for happiness, harmony and health and we need to humanize technology so that we don’t become prisoners of technology. In terms of education, it’s so greatly important that we have holistic education,” said Fry.
The Pew Fellow also mentioned that the world is on fire and that the people are already living in the VUCA age, so it is a must for teachers to have incredible flexibility and adaptability to prepare their students in facing the demands and challenges of the VUCA world.
Meanwhile, Prof. Peter Joseph Esperanza, Ph.D., a faculty member of Barstow Community College and West Coast University, talked about how technology can be combined with traditional learning and how it can be used as a resource in enhancing students’ learning experiences in his lecture titled, “Flipping Your Classroom Across Different Teaching Modalities.”
“One of the things that I require my students to do is to submit their handwritten notes because even if innovation is good for the majority of the time, we still need, as instructors, to give them a little bit of traditional learning,” said Esperanza.
The math professor and YouTube content creator also shared that it is very important to design your courses smartly in teaching in an online environment and to establish the core even if it is very difficult to achieve that in the virtual settings.
During his opening remarks, Assoc. Prof. Rodrigo Litao, Ph.D, the UST GS Education Cluster Lead, emphasized the importance for educators and scholars to continue to find platforms and discuss typically global issues and concerns that affect curriculum and instruction.
“The change in the educational landscape is inevitable and brought about by the countless internal and external forces including the effects of the pandemic, and these have implications on how we deliver curriculum and instruction for our students and other stakeholders,” said Litao.
Assoc. Prof. Lilia de Jesus also mentioned in her speech that teaching models and methodology is an endless discovery and surge of learning and teaching strategy that will capacitate the teachers’ maximum potential to make learning happen.
“In order for us to be the real purveyors of genuine and authentic education, we are reminded to be always fully aware of the world we inhabit and the realities that come with it — the reality of the changing social, cultural and environmental order and the digital reality that now dominates the global sphere,” shared de Jesus in her closing remarks.
More than 400 educators from different countries including Indonesia and the Philippines registered for the virtual event.
