In the past, when I used to be on the other side of the classroom, I would have opened any piece

that demands some level of scholarliness with a quote by someone charismatic, lived and hopefully
little known (at least to me), so as to attest the supposed level of depth I would have gone into, in
order to research an essay of this nature. In reality what I was trying to do was to use someone
elses brilliance in order to disguise what I already knew that would end up being a rather mediocre
piece; made up of a regurgitation of made up phrases, some of the most difficult sentence
constructs I could think of, plenty of (what I must admit) brilliant paraphrasing and yet more quotes,
all of which had as its one and only objective the obtaining of a pass mark. So in order to expiate
my past turpitudes, and without any pretensions, this time around I shall quote myself, as in my
Facebook status from this morning which never was written with the intention of ending up here:
Sometimes the things we dread the most are the ones we secretly end up enjoying
It is amusing how in life everything falls into place, and for better or for worse if I hadnt written
those fifteen words this morning I would be probably giving you a very different text. I could be the
by-product of my innate apprehension towards anything that is scholastic in nature, such as writing
this essay, which prompted me to type those words that aptly sum up my complicated relationship
with education. I sincerely apologize if it will feels as if I am taking the panoramic route in order to
get to the point, but I believe that my teaching philosophy, the basis of what defines me as a teacher
(even more given the fact that I have just started as a teacher and I am still getting to grips with this
new reality), was not born out of what Plato, Aristotle, Foucault, Levinas, Dewey or any other
brilliant thinker or theorist had to say or argue, but it was conceived from the fact that for my whole
life I had always hated school and I just didnt know why.

This was not due to the fact that I was not good in school; on the contrary I was almost always top of
my class, however the whole school experience for me was appalling, the lessons, the homework,
the studying, the exams - I found everything absolutely pointless, boring, useless and when I finally
found the courage to leave during my second year of psychology at university, I promised myself
that I would never set a foot in a school ever again. Evidently empiricism had failed with me.

I wandered for many years doing odd jobs, without a specific direction, skill-less, until one day
someone put a video camera in my hands, and learned as some would say the hard way, by doing,
the more I did the more I learnt, I had guidance but I was not solely dependent on it to learn, I was
hooked, I was in love, and perhaps for the first time ever I yearned to learn and when the time was
right I went back to school, this time in a vocational setting, and for the first time I valued learning, I
valued teachers both in and out of the school, some of which had more passion than degrees and
valued my new found self, full of curiosity I never knew I possessed, drive I never thought myself
capable of and passion which I never believed it could exist. My experience plays a major role in my
teaching philosophy; the world as it exists right now makes up the other part. In this day and age
information is unrestricted and readily available, knowledge is shared, transmitted and built upon.
Teachers no longer set the bar on the level of education, nor should we attempt to. If once at a
certain level teacher were supposed to teach a, b and c, nowadays students, at least from my limited
experience, will not only be aware or even know a, b and c but will be already experimenting with d,
e and f. Who am I to tell such a student that he is not supposed to go there yet? Who am I to tell a
student, dont be as passionate as I am, dont be as curious as I am or dont push yourself as much as
I do?

My teaching philosophy is quite simple, if it is a philosophy at all, I dont consider myself a scholar
nor a teacher perhaps, I consider myself as a guide, who happens to have walked down the same
path that my students will have to walk, I am not better, nor more intelligent, nor more able than
any of my students can be, perhaps just a bit wiser but because I happened to start before them, I
still have a long way to go and my students will be one of the reasons that will keep me going and
that is why I will always cherish them. I am there to help them find their own way, ask the right
question, find all the possible answers, and inspire them to help each other to walk that path, letting
them know about the obstacles I found so they can overcome them more easily, and I will listen to
how theyve overcome theirs so if I ever should encounter the same obstacles I will be able to
overcome them myself. I shall always be passionate about teaching, not just because I am
passionate about teaching itself, but because I am passionate about the subject that I teach, if the
day that I stop being passionate about my subject should arrive, I would no longer teach as there will
not be a meaningful reason for me to do it. As a teacher I am aware that I am at least partly
responsible for someone elses future and that sense of responsibility will encourage me to do my
job everyday better. As a teacher I will work hard to inspire my students and encourage them to
learn and better themselves so one day we will be able to walk alongside each other in our path.

This might well be just the idealisation of a teachers role by a novice teacher, which certainly has
yet to evolve, to where, I am yet to discover, but as Foucault wisely says The main interest in life
and work is to become someone else that you were not in the beginning." In fact when I started in
this profession I had little idea or no idea of all the theories surrounding education, I knew I didnt
want to teach as I was first thought and I knew that I wanted to teach by creating a collaborative
environment where the student is participant of his own education. I was in fact surprised to learn
about the different schools of thought in regards to education and in fact I was impressed how well
some of them reflected my own experience of education. Empiricism is perhaps the one that
impacted me the most; as it felt as it was that system I dreaded so much. It is mostly made up of a
one experience from teacher to student, where the teacher assumes an authoritarian role and
delivers the lessons, through practice and repetition, as it is assumed that the student is a blank slate
which needs to be soaked in a predetermined set of core knowledge material hence hindering the
development of problem solving and reasoning skills.

Pragmatism on the other hand takes into consideration the fact that the world is changing and that
is why student need to learn the why we do what we do in addition to the how it is done. In this
learning environment the student in involved en encouraged to ask questions, other students are
encouraged to participate by answering peers questions thus creating an interactive learning
environment where the centre is no longer the teacher but the learning experience. Progressivism
goes a step further and focusing on the learners understanding, it encourages the learner to be
responsible for his own learning and that of his peers. Critical thinking and problems solving are
encouraged. The teacher is no longer the source of information but rather a facilitator of the flow of
information, which is brought by experimentation and interaction with their environment. Finally in
Constructivism it totally shifts the role of educator from the teacher to the learner who is actively
responsible for his/her learning, learning happens when the learner is interacting with his
environment and this environment includes his peers, who by challenging each other stimulate
learning and complex reasoning, building onto ideas and finally allowing them to reach their own
conclusions, to quote Benjamin Franklin: Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve
me and I learn

As one can see on both sides of the spectrum there is a striking difference between Empiricism and
Constructivism, while one is wholly teacher centred, where the teacher is responsible to force feed
knowledge and the student is just responsible of absorbing it, the other shifts completely the axis
towards a student centred approach where the student becomes the active vehicle of his own
learning this is evidenced through complex reasoning.
A few days ago a video featuring a students rant towards his teacher popped up on the internet; Jeff
Bliss a high school student was accusing his teacher of lack of involvement with the class, this is a
part of what he had to say:
You want kids to come in your class; you want them to get excited for this? You gotta' come in here
and you gotta' make 'em excited. You want a kid to change and start doing better? You gotta' touch
his freakin heart! Cant expect a kid to change if all you do is just tell him.
The video which went viral is a clear depiction of where the expectations of todays generation
regarding their education are, students are no longer confined to the four walls of a classroom, they
know better and expect better, from my conversations with students it transpires that the general
feeling is, at least in the practical subjects such as media, can be pursued outside of the school with
readily available resources. So the question that frequently pops up is, why should I continue
studying? So when we have this kind of situation, where a student actively wants to take control
over his own learning, why shouldnt we enforce this behaviour by providing a more adequate
environment focused on a more Constructivist approach? Perhaps the only thing that could hinder
such a learning environment would be the impact on some students due to the legacy from older
approaches to education that is perhaps still present at some of the lower levels of the education
system, where students still expect to be just thought and dont regard involvement as part of the
learning process.
One of the older approaches is closely related to the Behaviourist theory of learning, which says that
behaviour is shaped by external forces, and that persons can be designed to actions through
conditioning. Through this process desirable behaviour is rewarded and undesirable behaviour is
punished, under this theory the learner becomes passive, responding only to external or
environmental stimuli, and therefore education is enforced with repetition and reward, such as
when in order to talk you have to raise your hand in class rather than engaging in a conversation. In
Cognitivism the learner is viewed as a processor of information, and therefore refuses the
Behaviourist theory that we just react to a stimulus, and states that since people are rational beings
our actions are a consequence of a thinking and problem solving process. Constructivism on the
other hand doesnt stop there and argues that if learning in an active process, than new information
is linked to prior knowledge, hence the way we assimilate the new information is subjective because
we dont share a common knowledgebase. Finally humanism focuses on how learning is crucial to
reach an individuals potential, and sees the learner as a fully autonomous individual fully in control
of his or her learning. Learning is student-centred, where teachers act as facilitators, who aim of
developing self-made people motivated to achieve their highest potential for the Learning is
student-centred and personal, facilitated by teachers, with the goal of developing self-actualized
people in a cooperative, supportive environment their personal and social wellbeing.

As with the philosophies of education on each end of the spectrum we have Behaviorism opposed
to Humanism, and what stands out once more is the role that both teacher and learner have when it
comes to education, furthermore the truly distinguishing factor is perhaps the human value given to
the learner in each of the two theories, while on one side the learner is considered as a subject that
can be shaped or designed to fit a predetermined role the latter emphasizes on the dignity freedom
and potential of human beings.


P8: Apply one named theory from one of the disciplines of education to meet the learning needs of a
named specific group of students