Over the past 20 years, I have taught at Drake University, a small liberal arts college in the Midwest, and Washington State University, a large, land-grant university in the Pacific Northwest. In addition, I have taught two intensive block seminars at the University of Passau in Bavaria and have regularly taught online. I have a diverse portfolio: I have taught more than 30 different courses since receiving my PhD, ranging from Race and Popular Culture and Theories of Racism and Ethnic Conflict to the Cultural Politics of Sport and Signifying Practices. While I have taught courses of varying size, ranging from large lectures course to graduate seminars, most of my classes average about 40 students. I have chaired a dozen PhD dissertations and regularly supervised undergraduate work, including at present a McNair Scholar at Washington State University and three Bachelor Theses at the University of Passau. Find syllabi from course I have taught here.
I have come to understand teaching to be an active process, rooted in interaction, empathy, and inquiry. At its best, it establishes a context for intellectual engagement, personal reflection, and social transformation. My pedagogy might be best described as student centered and emergent. It seeks to meet students where they are at, building on what they know to reach established objectives. This demands sensitivity, openness, and flexibility. Moreover, my approach to teaching stresses active learning and critical thinking, promoting dialogue, inquiry, and the development of basic skills. Finally, it emphasizes currency. I incorporate ongoing, real world events and issues and leading edge scholarship to interpret them, while also using technology and media to enhance access (posting readings online) and illustrate key themes (videos from youtube). All of this is meant to develop and refine critical literacy. That is, I strive to encourage students not only to know or understand beliefs and behaviors, but also to interpret and engage them. I hope increasingly to give students a set of techniques and habits attuned to the ways in which power relations, symbolic systems, and sociohistorical conditions imprint their lives, while fostering a desire to use these techniques to interpret their worlds of experience. Finally, I understand teaching and research to have a symbiotic relationship. Each activity should enhance and extend the other. I regularly bring my ongoing work into class. This allows students to see scholarship in motion. It also gives me a chance to get critical input on emerging ideas and hypotheses.
-Dr. C. Richard King
I have come to understand teaching to be an active process, rooted in interaction, empathy, and inquiry. At its best, it establishes a context for intellectual engagement, personal reflection, and social transformation. My pedagogy might be best described as student centered and emergent. It seeks to meet students where they are at, building on what they know to reach established objectives. This demands sensitivity, openness, and flexibility. Moreover, my approach to teaching stresses active learning and critical thinking, promoting dialogue, inquiry, and the development of basic skills. Finally, it emphasizes currency. I incorporate ongoing, real world events and issues and leading edge scholarship to interpret them, while also using technology and media to enhance access (posting readings online) and illustrate key themes (videos from youtube). All of this is meant to develop and refine critical literacy. That is, I strive to encourage students not only to know or understand beliefs and behaviors, but also to interpret and engage them. I hope increasingly to give students a set of techniques and habits attuned to the ways in which power relations, symbolic systems, and sociohistorical conditions imprint their lives, while fostering a desire to use these techniques to interpret their worlds of experience. Finally, I understand teaching and research to have a symbiotic relationship. Each activity should enhance and extend the other. I regularly bring my ongoing work into class. This allows students to see scholarship in motion. It also gives me a chance to get critical input on emerging ideas and hypotheses.
-Dr. C. Richard King
