As I am both an artist, a curator and a scholar, my visions for creation stem from an interdisciplinary manner - theory and practice are always entangled. In my academic teaching, Gender studies is grasped as an interdisciplinary discipline and I invite the students to together trace both the continuities and the mutations in thinking between different iterations of feminist thinking. In my classes, students work on the conceptualizations of gender, feminism and sexuality in a wide range of fields: sociology, history, anthropology, social and political science, economics, psychology, literature, cinema and media studies, law, public health and linguistics.
As I envision teaching to be a collective creation, my teaching philosophy, or, as I would like to call it, my guidance philosophy, is deriving from Eastern experiential learning theory, a constructivist theory of learning, which “encompasses all functions of a total human being - thinking, feeling, acting, reflecting” and by striving to do so, creates an “intrapersonal dynamic between epistemological and ontological knowing” (as mentioned in an essay “Eastern Experiential Learning: Eastern Principles for Learning Wholeness” (2009) by M. P. Trinh & D. A. Kolb). By following the ‘experientialists’, in my courses, I wish to address the course material, while focusing on 3 principles: 1) a “principle of holism” (ideas are interrelated and interconnected), 2) a “principle of contradiction” (reality is complex and full of contradictions or relative polarities), and 3) a “principle of change” (reality is understood as a dynamic fluid process).
As for my expertise, in 2021, I was a teaching assistant for a Gender Foundations II class, led by a brilliant professor Eszter Timar in Central European University (CEU) and designed for approximately ten MA students. I have received excellent feedback from Eszter, complementing my teaching skills, such as my overall approach towards mutual cooperation and ability to encourage students to engage in the (online) classroom space and foster a beautifully flowing discussion in the classroom. However, looking back from within myself, I see that while preparing for the classes, I was very much obsessed and focused on my figure as a teacher rather than keeping my focus on students. I, as Rosemary O'Leary writes in her article “Advice to New Teachers: Turn It Inside Out” (2002), was imagining that in order to be a great teacher, I needed to prepare a perfect lecture that kept the students spellbound. Hence, I knitted together a few rather conceptually mind-blowing, but complicated classes. Due to many great (and challenging) questions from my students, and a further need for an intellectual un-packing, I came to an understanding that simplicity rather than over-abundance might play a big part of what could be called a ‘good’ teaching. When I say simplicity, I mean focusing on the most important ideas and their correlation, and, hence, on the ways to stimulate the critical awareness, creative thinking, openness, self-reflectivity and empathy of students rather than demonstrating my own skills, my oeuvre. During my workshops for Alternative Education Programme of “Rupert” in Žeimiai, Lithuania, both in 2021 and 2022, and my “Critical Matter and Matters of Critique: Experimental Writing Through Feminist and Post-human Participatory Art Approach” workshop in SCS Centar-Jadro, Skopje, in late 2022, I had a chance to practice active listening, while building a supporting, safe and encouraging space for participation and discussion. In this way, I changed the focus from the figure of “me” to the figure of participants, aiming for a “social knowledge”, which is “created and recreated in the personal knowledge of the learner” (A. Y. Kolb & D. A. Kolb, 2009:44). In addition, this led me to successfully produce an interactive, participatory environment by a) being self-reflective and by asking participants to reflect on their own lives experiences, b) encouraging participants to suggest a change in syllabus and/or key readings, c) providing them with a comprehensive and motivating feedback, taking in consideration their individual situations and multicultural experiences. Furthermore, this experience helped me to understand that my unique contribution as a teacher is my interdisciplinary and passionate approach together with my kindness and care for the participants’ well-being.
During June, 2023, I have received a Certificate of Teaching in Higher Education from Yehuda Elkana Center for Teaching, Learning & Higher Education Research, based in Vienna, Austria.