A Personal Teaching Philosophy 
David L. Phillips

Professor
Urban and Environmental Planning
School of Architecture
University of Virginia

Surprise:

Both students and I gain knowledge and insight when we find ourselves surprised. Formally my scientifically oriented colleagues anticipate surprise by seeking evidence that might suggest the need to rethink the premises of investigation. On the other hand, my designer colleagues are surprised when the beauty of the whole overtakes the accumulated contributions of individual elements. Teaching is the process of creating situations and providing materials that leave both students and me open to surprise.

Teaching in the eclectic field of urban and environmental planning and in particular exploring the quantitative and computer assisted methods of the analysis can lead to both kinds of surprises.

Difference:

Intellectually and perhaps emotionally we are surprised by differences. Presenting material in lectures, readings or exercises in ways that permit comparisons and draw parallels or contrasts help students think, analyze and communicate. It opens up the opportunities for differences to be discovered and tested.

Students are different and have different learning styles. My students come from different backgrounds I need to recognize them and affirm them. Because they have different learning styles, I find I need to present material in words, numbers, charts, diagrams and pictures. I attempt to create computer exercises and assignments that do the same and that allow the students to be tactile when working with quantitative information. I also want to provide opportunity for the individual exercises or tasks to build toward some larger whole. Some times this is a presentation, sometimes a project, or sometimes a portfolio.

My own children, now adults, have taught me much about differences. They are very different in their approach to data, information and values. My son has had to have considerable accommodation to his learning process deficiencies. Coping with these were not my finest hours. I have discovered that my graduate students are just as diverse and some have as much need for learning accommodations.

Our students will likely be engaged in professional planning practice and thereby be serving different “publics”. They will need to listen and communicate with those publics just as I need to listen and communicate with my students. I need to model different approaches to thinking and communication as I teach. I also ask students to write or talk with different voices, to be reflective and to be “other-oriented” rather than “self-oriented” when doing so.

The Whole and the Parts:

Planners work in teams and on committees partly because of the differences in stakeholders, partly because of different talents and specialties of the professionals and partly because of the complexity of urban and environmental planning issues. Consequently I allow many of the problems in my courses to be larger than any individual can manage. My students need to work in teams or committees. They need to learn the art of diplomacy and be surprised by the results of cooperation. Yet I need to work at providing a balance between evaluating the work and accountability of the group and that of the individual student. I have come to seek presentations and results to be a group product, but I also ask that students maintain their own portfolio of work which we discuss two or three times during the semester.

Progression and Interweaving:

Part of producing the environment for surprise is having course material progress throughout the semester. I try to have topics grow in detail, complexity and sophistication throughout the semester. I also try and have the early material hint at broad frameworks that allow the later material to be placed in a context. I am seeking to let surprise emerge from new ideas but also from the beauty of seeing the whole.

Service:

Planning is a profession that serves people and places. Teaching is a profession that seeks to serve students and scholarship. I hope to model what it means to serve so that my students, my profession and my community benefit. Consequently I try to be available after classes, hold regular office hours and spend time getting to know students during advising as well as in class. The experiences I have in working in Christian community development in local neighborhoods have confronted me with much wider differences than I experience in the classroom or in scholarship. I am surprised by how much need I have to learn about people, about how to serve and about how to be served. Consequently, I encourage my students to find ways to serve outside of the classroom and the University. I hope they will be surprised too.

January 13, 2005