Ashley Petrolino

“Tell me and I’ll forget, show me and I may not remember, involve me and I will understand” ~Confucian philosopher Xunzi (Hsun Tzu)
This quote acts as the foundation of my teaching philosophy. According to Andersen and Krathwohl (2001), A Taxonomy for Learning, Teaching, and Assessing, understanding is only the second pillar in the pyramid and is considered conceptual knowledge. I strive to cultivate a learning environment that allows for students to move through the hierarchy of knowledge freely, and ultimately ending at the highest level of the taxonomy pyramid and cognition is known as evaluation and metacognition, respectively. My teaching ideals are grounded in Bloom’s taxonomy and have been shaped by concepts from influential authors like James Lang and his book from 2016 Small Teaching, as well as personal experiences and observations of colleagues in the classroom, laboratory, and simulation settings. In particular, my experience in simulation has helped me think of ways to bring experiential learning activities to the didactic classroom, where traditional expectations are grounded in textbook readings and PowerPoint-guided lectures. I do this is by regularly creating experiential learning activities for students to apply newly acquired knowledge to solve real problems within their community, nation, and the World. This allows students to apply information in different contexts, thus developing cognitive relationships with the knowledge and guiding them closer to metacognition.