Teaching Philosophy

My goal as an instructor is to give students a deeper understanding of their world and guide their learning so they may find how they fit and grow within it. I achieve this through my teaching approach rooted in Vygotsky’s Social Constructivism—meaning learning is a collaborative endeavor between student and instructor with culture as a crucial piece shaping how individuals make sense of their world. From this foundation, I have crafted a unique interdependent-independent teaching philosophy informed by four years of undergraduate teaching experiences and my own research on people’s multiple identities and culturally shaped self-construals. Recently (Summer 2025), I acted as Instructor of Record at Duke University and taught 11 students in Social Psychology (course rating: 4.89/5, instructor rating: 5/5; see syllabus). I crafted this course in accordance with my interdependent-independent teaching philosophy, as described below. The course was a great success, with a student saying the course was in their “top 3 learning experiences at Duke.”

Implementing an Interdependent-Independent Teaching Philosophy

First-generation college students (Philips et al., 2020) and Latine students (Covarrubias et al., 2016) often have more interdependent cultural norms that mismatch with the American independent cultural ideal. In fact, activating this interdependent sense of self in the classroom can lead to more positive learning and psychological outcomes. (Covarrubias et al., 2016; Philips et al., 2020). Thus, my teaching philosophy focuses on cultivating a learning environment that affirms the interdependent self-construal of all students. This approach will likely benefit other students as well, since my research shows East Asian Americans and African Americans also value interdependence (Muñoz et al., 2026). Importantly, independent self-construal and an emphasis on autonomy is not all bad—emphasizing independence in first-generation students leads to higher grades and White people also value independence (Muñoz et al., 2026; Tibbetts et al., 2016). Thus, my interdependent-independent teaching philosophy implements opportunities for students to tap into their often culturally congruent norms of interdependence while also requiring them to exercise autonomy and independence.

Affirming Interdependence. To affirm students’ interdependent sense of self and allow them to view themselves as part of a larger group, I implement at least one group project a semester in my classes. For example, in my Social Psychology class , I required student groups to conduct psychological field work together and collect observational data from different places on campus. This activity solidifies the bond between the students in the group and emphasizes that they must rely on each other to ensure the group’s success. Additionally, it builds research design and data collection skills. Students responded positively to this assignment, with one reflecting, “[The field work] experiment was so much fun and a really cool way to use what we learned in class and incorporate it in the real world.”

Another way I create an interdependent classroom is by emphasizing the collaborative relationship between student and instructor. I posit that students learn best when they are given the opportunity to receive thoughtful feedback before being assessed for the final time. For example, in my Social Psychology course I asked students to design a novel social psychology study, allowing them to develop and implement an advanced understanding of research methods. I structured the assignment such that students needed to submit a proposal of their study design project to be graded before beginning to write their final paper. Asking students to produce this proposal beforehand acts as a safe opportunity for them to make mistakes and strive for improvement in the quality of their final product. The success of this learning assessment relies on the instructor providing in-depth feedback to every submission, ensuring the student clearly knows what changes they must implement to improve.

Affirming Independence. Encouraging students to find induvial connections with course material strengthens their sense of autonomy. In Social Psychology my students wrote weekly blog entries identify psychology concepts in their every-day life, helping them create new schemas of the content. One of them reflected, “it has been interesting to watch all of these [class concepts] play out in the news, TV shows (most notably, Love Island), movies, and other media.” Moreover, to ensure my students are taking ownership over their work and building critical thinking, writing, and reflecting skills in this new-age of artificial intelligence, I require students to hand-write reflections on the lecture content to turn in after every class. Then, I read each reflection and respond with my own hand-written comments, building rapport between instructor and students.

Teaching Experience & Expertise

As part of my graduate training, I have pursued a Certificate in College Teaching where the curriculum has prepared me with robust teaching experience (see my teaching reviews here). Before serving as an Instructor on Record (Social Psychology), I was a Teaching Assistant (TA) for four distinct undergraduate courses of different sizes and structures. I was a TA for The Self and Social Identities (a 200-level writing-intensive seminar; course rating: 4.9/5) and Social Psychology (a 100-level course with 100 students; TA rating: 4.4/5), Duke’s Psychology Honors Thesis Course (400-level class mandatory for all psychology students graduating with honors; TA rating: 4.8/5), and Cultural Psychology (a 200-level seminar; TA rating: 4.9/5), where I held weekly office hours, graded assignments and essays, and gave guest lectures. My experience TAing for large classes helped me understand that supporting every student no matter the size of the course should be apriority. I implemented this approach in later courses, and it was appreciated by students, “[Mercedes facilitated my learning by] call[ing] me in for office hours when she noticed I was nervous and struggling.” In the Honors Thesis course, my primary responsibilities were supporting these 27 students through the completion of their honors thesis—which ranged from topics in developmental psychology, cognitive psychology, and decision science. I provided students with guidelines to improve the fluency of their thesis writing and gave suggestions on how to improve writer’s block. From this experience, I learned how to give students constructive feedback on their assignments while being sensitive to the fact that there may be a strong emotional attachment to the writing product. Lastly, when I TA’d for Cultural Psychology, my primary responsibility was leading weekly discussion sections where I designed lessons that served to reinforce the material covered in lecture (see my discussion section syllabus). As the section instructor, one of my greatest challenges was getting students to contribute to class discussions. I began implementing lighthearted icebreaker questions (e.g., would you rather eat 1000 gummy bears or 1000 jelly beans) at the beginning of class to warm up the students (see one of my section lectures here). Students responded positively to this approach, “At the start of each class, [Mercedes] would use icebreakers [that] made it easier to participate and created a stronger sense of connection within the class.”

My expertise in social, developmental, and cultural psychology makes me uniquely qualified to teach a range of foundational psychology courses such as Introduction to Psychological Sciences, Child Development, Social Psychology, and Cultural Psychology. Additionally, as my own research has necessitated my expertise in research methods and statistics, I have interest in teaching Methods and Analyses where I hope to have students analyze datasets that have personal relevance to them (e.g., exploring voting trends after recent local elections) to engage students in their local community. I am also qualified to create and teach advanced seminar courses related to diversity science such as The Self and Social Identities, Diverse Racial and Cultural Perspectives in Psychology, Race and Culture Across Development, Prejudice & Stereotyping, and Latine Psychology due to my research expertise.