THEME: PhD students’ pedagogical competence development - An interview
SDUUP has interviewed PhD-student Karsten Thomsen about his teaching experiences and involvement in competence development.
Karsten Thomsen is a Rev., chaplain at Bispebjerg Hospital and is engaged in a PhD project at the Research Unit of General Practice. He teaches courses, like most other PhD students.
Karsten experiences both gratification and challenges in teaching. He teaches among other themes, in what the functions of the hospital chaplain are and what existential and spiritual care is all about for students in the course ‘The Psychology of Health’ in the second year. His biggest surprise has been the students’ focus on the exam. He experiences this as a challenge as he would like to have the students immerse themselves in the field and work with themes that do not necessarily have a clear-cut answer.
First and foremost, he enjoys teaching young people. ‘They are fantastic young people’, who engage in what they take an interest in. It is especially when the students decide on the topics that their motivation peaks, and it can be a challenge to cover the course’s full material. Karsten, however, is happy to make some detours to open up the field for the students. In the ‘The Psychology of Health’ the students are working with topics they most often have not worked on before.
Not all students a duly motivated, and Karsten has as a goal to engage ‘the students in the back row’. His biggest challenge as a teacher has been to teach courses outside his field. One of his tasks was to teach the course ‘Philosophy of Science’, which he experienced as quite a load.
Karsten has participated in the course ’Getting started on your teaching’. He decided to register for the course because he was curious about improving his teaching. He has three years of teaching experience at SDU, and thought he on the whole had done ok but chose to challenge himself. The course has given him some new insights and he is especially keen on the didactical triangle and how it offers a perspective on teaching. He considers introducing it to the students to highlight that they are co-creators in the teaching proces. Karsten would have liked to work more with the theoretical aspects of teaching to be able to further qualify the practice of teaching. He participated in the course in February and hopes to implement new practices in his future teaching.