I believe that both educators and learners can learn from each other's perspectives. I see that my role as an educator is to facilitate the creation of learning spaces that help create a collective meaning through conversations. In these learning spaces, I aim to provide a structure on the activities and assessments that encourage an exchange of perspectives in practical ways that give a voice to every learner, providing opportunities to both listen and speak about their own experiences and opinions. This way, I see that assessments drive the students' learning process. Students can provide knowledge from their personal perspectives, and for that it is essential to consider the voices of students, paying particular attention to and including the unspoken voices. To achieve this, I will incorporate methods of collaborative learning that facilitate reflection and expression of personal perspectives, and that balance participation by facilitating turns for students to express themselves. In these, I will have an active role that organises, sets tasks, manages the classroom and synthesises the learning in the learning space. I will also incorporate methods that provide a voice through feedback, both from the teacher to the student, and from the students to the teacher, because good feedback can improve students’ learning.

Reflecting on my development as a researcher and early career academic, I believe that I should encourage students to develop their critical thinking because they need to question and challenge their own assumptions when they are facing a problem. I aim to create learning spaces for discussion and dialogue that will show students that their solutions and decisions are also linked to their own values and that a design thinking process will help them empathise with the population related to the problem that they are facing. I believe that focusing on the process, in line with critical thinking and empathy, can provide a rich learning to students.