I consider myself a pedagogist, i.e. someone who is interested in gaining expertise in the art and science of teaching and learning. Some scholars use terms like instruction and training as well but I find them somewhat indicative of the inherent hierarchy (better captured in the term pedagogue) in the current educational systems. The role of a pedagogist is to collaborate with teachers & educators to create inclusive and equitable learning environments for our students & learners to be, know, and do with autonomy and intention. I work for and with teachers and scholars toward creating a space where people’s motivations in education are not fueled by a need to increase existing power differentials, but rather by the will for creating a fair society in all regards of existence.
With a dream as big, I believe in sharing the responsibility of achieving social justice and equity through education. Thus, as a teacher educator and scholar, I am in interested in helping teachers consciously design and create inclusive and creative environments for learning, innovatively & critically using technology to steer systems that perpetuate injustice.
On the intersections of social power, creativity, and technology, I am interested in better understanding how human beings use tools to make sense of our world, express themselves in it, and transform it. As we create ourselves with and through texts and tools, we create an understanding of our realities, too. With these, how do we find meaning for us and our world? And what meaning do we create?
Teaching Philosophy
My approach to teaching comes from a rich array of lenses— deeply connected to my background, interests, and my stance towards education. My background in engineering, passion for transdisciplinarity as a way of knowing, love of cinema as a medium for expression, and my understanding of the socio-cultural nature of learning have all influenced how I approach the art of teaching. Thus, I value learning that is both grounded in knowledge of the discipline yet is not bounded by it. At heart is an understanding of the deeply humanistic nature of learning and thus seeks to address the learner in a holistic manner.
Therefore, I seek to critically address multiple ways of being, knowing, and doing through an emphasis on three approaches that have held true: humanizing pedagogies, enacted within multiliteracies framework to mobilize knowledge. To me, each of these provides a unique perspective on the process of learning even while being deeply interconnected with each other. Throughout my teaching, irrespective of the format, I have attempted to create humanizing learning environments that encourage multiple voices and multiple ways of being, knowing, and doing. I encourage my students to reflect on where they stand in the society, critically question what they know about the world, and contribute their understanding back to society. For this reason, I situate dialogue with my students within critical issues of race and gender equity, media literacy, scientific literacy, creativity, and the role of technology.
Perspectives
Being a transdisciplinary critical scholar, I am conscious of colonial influences on identity and literacies and seek inclusive and non-normative ways of thinking about education. Thus, my broad interests blended with my personal and educational experiences takes various forms and raise interdisciplinary questions that cut across multiple methods and approaches. To organize my work, I label them under two overarching categories: critical educational technology, which includes writings on decolonizing and humanizing teaching and learning with technology and rethinking what it means to be/become literate today, and transdisciplinary thinking, which includes writings on the topics of creativity, aesthetics, morality, what STEM education means and how it is different from imagining STEM disciplines, and finally what knowledge is considered of most worth.
For more details on my academic work: vita
For more details on my art work: art
To connect or collaborate: contact
