Reflection 8

Reflection 8
After taking the Educational Philosophy Survey, I discovered that I am mostly Constructivist and Progressivist. I believe that one of the best ways of teaching is by constructing your own reality. Using prior knowledge and experiences we can interpret objects or events. (Instructional Design & Learning Theory) Some of the assumptions of Constructivism which I believe in are the following: our knowledge is constructed from prior experiences, as we are learning it is considered to be a personal interpretation of the world, by using our experience we build meaning using the active process of learning, the growth of concepts comes from negotiating meaning and also using collaborative learning, and also it is good to situate learning in realistic settings. (Instructional Design & Learning Theory) I believe that by using the knowledge gained from previous experiences to what we are learning now, we can put the information together to interpret different situations or problems. The survey also said that I am a progressivist which means that education should have some basis on the principle that humans are social animals, meaning that we learn best by using real life activities and interactions with other people. (Progressive Education) There is a process which was made by a famous philosopher named John Dewey which really helps to support my way of thinking. The following is the procedure of the Dewey’s model: First you become aware of the problem, Second you need to define the problem, Third you need to come up with a hypotheses to solve it, Fourth you need to use your past experience to evaluate the consequences of the hypotheses that you came up with, and Fifth is where you need to test the most probable solution. (Progressive Education) As part of the progressivism view, there is the idea that we don’t like to just give the students book work and teach them directly what they need to know, we like to teach them but using more realistic activities and examples. It is the idea that you learn by doing. A good example of this would be when you are teaching the life cycle of the butterfly to your students. Instead of showing the students pictures or videos of the different stages, you can actually buy butterfly eggs and have the children observe the stages in real life butterflies. This helps the children get the hands on experience they need and also makes the classroom environment more interesting. By taking this survey, I am to the conclusion that I am a Constructivist and also a Progressivist. I totally agree with these results because I am a person who really likes hands on activities with real life activities and at the same time I like to use my prior knowledge and experiences to interpret new ideas and events.