What type of teacher I was and how my teaching changed
When I started my teaching, my overwhelming focus was on academic rigor and I used to spend a lot of time preparing how I can convey the latest knowledge, theories, and concepts to my students. I worked hard for that and with time, my courses have improved and become more rigorous and better aligned with the learning outcomes.
More recently I realized that now I need to move beyond a clinical focus on developing hardcore skills and also inculcate soft skills such as group work, team-building skills, and greater emotional intelligence.
This shift is easier to say than to do. It is a shift of mindset whereby you do face resistance from your peers who believe that shifting focus away from core academic issues creates unnecessary noise and creates a distraction. They are not really against this shift but people in the academic community believe that this shift is being over-projected, takes a lot of our energies, and moves us away from the academic core. It looks like this debate will continue over several years till we finally realized that new times demand new pedagogies and methods.