Teaching Statement

Teaching Statement 2023

July, 2023

As parents, we find ourselves nurturing our children's natural curiosity, guiding them through a world that is vast and ripe for discovery. While they glean a substantial part of their knowledge from the structured environment of schools, a significant part also depends on the lessons we impart at home. The task of choosing an appropriate school for children is a daunting one, shared by parents globally. In the context of the United States, and specifically the Chicago region, there exist four distinct types of public schools - neighborhood, selective, magnet, and charter schools - beyond the realm of private institutions. It's a sobering realization that despite generous funding, public schools are increasingly falling short of delivering on their responsibilities.

This deficiency isn't limited to primary and secondary education but extends into higher education, specifically undergraduate programs. Students are expected to become self-reliant, placing their trust in the educational institution and its faculty. While elite colleges continue to yield successful graduates (without a clear definition of success), a majority of other colleges are witnessing a downward trajectory. My concerns stem from the fear that these institutions may be losing sight of their foundational commitment to students. I believe the role of teaching is not just pivotal to individual institutions, but to society at large, particularly in today's context.

This leads us to a series of questions: What are the objectives of teaching, and what knowledge should we impart to our students? Should we focus on teaching demanding hard skills that secure them rewarding, high-income jobs? Or perhaps focus on strategies to excel in academia, preparing them for a PhD? Is it better to teach the application of subject matter in real-world scenarios, equipping them with practical knowledge that will be beneficial in life? Or should we focus on the technical and mathematical aspects of a subject to pave the way for their exploration of new subjects? Should we expose them to a wide array of topics within a subject to help them discover their interests? Or should our ultimate goal be to teach them how to be better individuals?

In my perspective, teaching should encapsulate all these facets, and it's the teacher's responsibility to strike a harmonious balance. Overemphasizing any one aspect could leave students lost, unable to see the forest for the trees. (Should the goal be mastery in one particular aspect, there are more effective ways to pursue that.)  Achieving this balance is what makes the role of a university professor challenging, and it's perhaps why we rarely encounter truly exceptional teachers at the collegiate level.

The concept of balance in teaching bears profound implications, particularly at the undergraduate level, for three primary reasons. The concept of balance itself has very deep meanings, meriting its own separate discussion beyond the scope of this note. First, undergraduates hail from diverse backgrounds, each carrying unique ambitions. Their professors often represent the first significant influences they encounter outside their family to help them realize these ambitions. Second, some topics offer short-term benefits, while others have long-term implications. These could be the only remnants of the course that remain with the students after a decade. Short-term accomplishments can be more readily assessed through traditional examination methods. Lastly, the element of surprise - those "aha" moments of clarity and understanding that can dramatically alter a student's perspective on a subject. These moments can occur unexpectedly, triggered by a mathematical derivation, a real-world example, or a coding exercise.

Teaching, thus, needs to be comprehensive, not narrowly focused on a single aspect of a subject at the undergraduate level. It falls to the educator to balance these different facets and forge connections between them. The seeming decline in appreciation for this balanced approach might be attributed to a societal trend over the past few decades: the overvaluing of specialization at the expense of generalization. For most people, specialization is unattainable without reaching a critical mass or threshold of being among the top 0.01% in a specific area. For the rest, the skill lies in striking a balance, in becoming adept generalists, particularly given the scarcity of time.

After identifying the essential areas or aspects of the subject to be taught, it's important to establish the foundational structure of the course. The foundation should contain the basic, fundamental ideas and critical learning points that students need to understand or learn from the course. If students don't master these, the course becomes a waste of their time. These foundational concepts/points are critical to their understanding of the subject matter. Consequently, class discussions and homework exercises should revolve around these points. These can range from broad concepts such as 'comparative advantage' to nuanced details, like understanding a specific step in a mathematical derivation, which allows us to use the equal sign from one line to the next. Teachers should provide students with ample content to stimulate thought about these points. They should illustrate how previous students thought about these points, potential pitfalls to avoid, and provide real-life examples and hands-on coding exercises. Effective teachers invest time in contemplating how best to explain these points, examining them from different angles, and developing a range of examples and metaphors to aid students' understanding. It's important to bear in mind that our cognitive processes vary significantly; an approach that seems straightforward to one person might not resonate as easily with another. Simply adhering to standard textbooks and utilizing multiple-choice questions is unlikely to foster an enriching learning experience. The process of teaching and learning should ideally be among the most rewarding experiences we undergo as human beings. It represents a profound interaction where people come together to exchange thoughts, essentially epitomizing the pinnacle of human communication. Treating students like assembly-line workers is a generally misguided approach.

Exercises and examination questions should be tailored around these key learning points across all aspects of the subject. These assignments should also be categorized by their level of difficulty. One criterion for determining the difficulty level could be the time required to thoroughly understand these points. Time, of course, is another profoundly complex concept. If students can successfully complete exercises and questions at the basic level across all areas, they should be deemed to have passed the course. Students who can accomplish the most challenging tasks in one or two areas should be considered deserving of an 'A' for the course. Encourage students to allocate their time to the areas they wish to delve into deeper, after having achieved a basic understanding in all areas. Some students might excel in coding, others in mathematical derivations, and yet others might be adept at writing policy recommendations. At the undergraduate level, I consider all of these skills to be extremely valuable.

When these critical learning points become the focus of your class, and these key points cater to a diverse range of student needs, your class should be straightforward to manage - or I'd argue it would naturally capture student interest, or at the very least, pique their curiosity at some point during the lesson, if not the entirety. While this note is not primarily about classroom implementation techniques, I must underscore their importance. For instance, explaining the intuition of a problem through simple examples or metaphors, leaving blanks in teaching slides, emphasizing teaching students 'how' rather than 'what', outlining all mathematical prerequisites along with related practice exercises at the outset of a semester-long course, providing them with additional exercises when these prerequisites surface in actual contexts, and employing inquiry-based teaching approaches for certain topics. At this point, I wish to emphasize two aspects.

Firstly, let's consider repetition. If you take a look at the examination questions for an undergraduate microeconomics class, you'll often find many questions involving supply and demand graphs. The questions appear similar, and so do the responses. The exam queries bear resemblance to practice questions, albeit perhaps more intricate, or they may focus on a scenario not previously exposed to the students. Engaging with the same or similar questions repetitively undoubtedly has its merits in the learning process, and this holds true for nearly all learning exercises. However, while this method can help students reach a certain level of understanding, it often falls short in enabling most students to attain a higher level of comprehension, such as grasping the key essence of a problem or equipping them to tackle real-world questions. Every teacher needs to reflect on how much time should be allocated to repetition, identify which questions benefit most from repetition, and determine the most effective method to present repetitive material, such as through videos.

Secondly, the sequence or the delivery order of learning materials is an aspect that is often overlooked and undervalued. It is crucial for educators to consider how to logically and effectively organize the teaching materials. Many traditional textbooks present content in a poorly structured manner, and if teachers blindly follow these textbooks, they often find themselves unable to cover the essential learning aspects before the end of the semester or course - a common occurrence. At times, initiating with simple examples and progressing towards complex ones may not be the best approach for learning. Learning can be aptly compared to Butcher Ding's methodical dismemberment of an ox. Just as the butcher presents the full complexity of the ox before gradually revealing its underlying skeletal structure. A crucial role of the educator is to guide students through this process, enabling them to eventually visualize the fundamental structure of a problem or be able to conceptualize it when confronted with a similar challenge in the future.

At last, I would like to shed some light on the subjects I am passionate about teaching and am equipped to instruct. During my doctoral studies, I've had the opportunity to serve as a Teaching Assistant for various courses such as graduate-level Econometrics, Machine Learning, and Financial Evaluation - all of which I found engaging. However, my personal favorite is Bayesian Econometrics. Given the opportunity, I would love to introduce Bayesian Econometrics to undergraduate students. In addition, I'm keen to teach the undergraduate Microeconomics sequence and Macroeconomics sequence. These courses are particularly appealing as they bear a strong relevance to real-world problems, and students stand to gain a great deal from these sequences. My professional journey prior to my doctoral studies also contributes to my teaching prowess. Having spent a few years in the financial services industry, I've accumulated practical knowledge and experience that enrich my teaching of these courses. Furthermore, my diverse background equips me to competently teach all finance-related courses at the undergraduate level.