Philosophy Article
I found this article to be only somewhat interesting. It seemed like most of the effort was put towards the argument that philosophies are really important, but not as much on how they are used. That said, I found some tidbits and ideas that I liked and that put teaching philosophies into perspective for me. This blog is mainly going to be excerpts from the article and then I’ll explain why I chose the except and why it’s relevant to what I’m trying to learn.
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Philosophy is more than style or methods. Defined as our beliefs that are carried out in our teaching.
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This statement rings true to me. When we first read about philosophies I had the idea that they were decisions that had to be made rather than feelings that grow from experience. But what I think this statement is saying is that we discover truths about education all our lives and that the philosophies that exist are the calcifications of these feels/beliefs that we develop. The historical contexts of a popular philosophy is important because it shows that a group of people came to have the same feelings and ideas about education. This happens I’m sure largely as influential people share their philosophies, so it’s not completely organic, but like all philosophy it’s ok to evolve and change one’s mind.
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informed and improved decision-making relevant to practice, more effective planning of educational programs, and analysis of situations.
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“Examination of individual adult education philosophies helps us to discover if our beliefs are aligned with our practice.”
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“Once we create a basic view of ourselves as educators, we can begin to determine which philosophical lens is best aligned with our beliefs.”
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These three statements work together to explain why any of this concern over philosophy matters. I think it’s more important to think about philosophy and what it means for your instruction than it does to firmly select a given philosophy and stick to it. It’s also more difficult to do than to simply select a dogma and make rote decisions based off the prescribed solution outlined in your philosophies perview. However! It is extremely helpful to have a philosophical approach to decision making in the sense that you can have certain kinds of experiences and learning situations which will foster a certain kind of learning. If you believe strongly in conditioning your students to learn behavior then you’ll use that as you make decisions. If you feel strongly about the teacher’s primary role to be that of facilitator then that will weigh heavily as you prepare and execute lesson plans.
“Humanism stems from earlier works of Maslow (1943) and Knowles (1950, 1968), and essentially relies on a learner-centered focus in the classroom. It relies on identification of learner needs, and now to best address them in the classroom. The drive for more "humanistic" learning results in attentiveness to self-direction within the course approach (Hiemstra & Brockett, 1994) as well as self-initiated instruction that better supports the learner's individualized interests.”
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“Noonan (2004) describes critical humanism as the recognition of differences, particularly among oppressed groups, and viewing self-determination and freedom as universal values of all humans. From a research perspective, critical humanism suggests "orientations to inquiry that focus on human experience [...] that acknowledge the political and social role of all inquiry”
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“Emancipatory education seeks to empower students to change or influence broader political, cultural, or other sociological areas of society.”
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This article focused primarily on Humanism and a few of it’s close brethren. The emphasis was online learning and instruction. What she was arguing was that online learning is inherently different from typical classroom learning and that when preparing instruction for online students the teacher needs to re-evaluate her/his philosophical approach. Especially in the case of classes where not every student is online together at a set time/place. She says that online learning tends to push instructors toward these types of philosophies since they all champion the instructor as facilitator quite strongly. I thought it was interesting that the format of the class could have an impact on philosophy but having explained it the way she did I saw this was fairly obvious.
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“A humanistic approach in an online learning environment is typically targeted towards motivated and self- directed learners.”
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“self-directed learning requires motivation, while learner control does not. In an online learning environment, both motivation and learner control must exist in order for learning to take place”
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“The humanistic adult education philosophy seeks to facilitate personal growth and development, where the educator facilitates, but does not direct, learning”
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This rang very true of the very class I’m writing this blog for. It’s a teacher-as-facilitator set up with the onus being on each student to both learn new knowledge about the subject, but also emphasizes the betterment of ourselves. I have felt personally encouraged to take this opportunity to learn something that will make me better, more able to teach. I’ve also felt a lifetime’s worth of grade hunting has left me particularily bad at it! But maybe that’s the greatest lesson I could have learned in this class! Time will tell.
Information taken from:
by
Dr Karen Milheim in Adult Learning
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