Running head: PHILOSOPHY OF

EDUCATION

Philosophy of Education

Jillian Harding

C/I Social Science

Nancy White

March 7, 2017
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My personal philosophy of education has been built around the texts in

which I have read and reflected on during my schooling, as well as my own

practical teaching experiences. My own teaching practice is ever changing,

but it will always be revolving around my own philosophy of education.

Reflection is a practice used regularly in my own teaching that allows me to

ensure that I am implementing my own beliefs from my philosophy into my

daily lessons.

Education is going to be viewed from different parties in several

different ways. Olson & Worsham discuss that Liberalism holds that the

individual is naturally driven by power, competition, self interest and

security (2012). Reflecting on this Liberal view, I find myself holding it to be

true within my teaching practices thus far. From my experience, giving

students a place of friendly competition within the classroom can drive them

to excel to their full potential. Allowing students to feel secure within a

classroom comes from creating a positive class climate. Ensuring that

students know the rules, and follow them allows for students to feel that the

classroom is a safe learning environment where they can excel and grow.

Finally, taking interest in your students lives can make a difference in their

own reflection of their life and where they have come from. Encouraging self

reflection within an English classroom can give students a sense of

responsibility and connection to the piece of text being studied.

I have frequently reflected on my practices as a teacher, and use those

reflections to build on my skills and abilities. When looking at older

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pedagogies of education, I know that I view education much differently than

people have in the past. Darder, Baltodano & Torres write about how

Gramsci argued that by cultivating such consensus through personal and

institutional rewards, students could be socialized to support the interest of

the ruling elite, even when such actions were clearly in contradiction with the

students own class interests (2009). I noticed that Gramsci is discussing

that educators are using their students by manipulating them into seeing the

teachers world view, rather than their own, almost like a competition. I knew

right away that this was the opposite view that I hold in regards to Education.

I believe that students all have unique views that are constructed from their

own story, and it is important that teachers give students a chance to further

write their story from their own point of view with some influence from a

broader range of views that I hope to incorporate into my teaching.

When constructing my philosophy of education, I fond myself

questioning and reflecting on my own core values, as well, how I

implemented those into practice. Once I began to develop my own praxis, I

found myself struggling to implement my values and personal philosophy

into my teaching practices. Monchinski discusses that praxis involves

theorizing practice and practising theory. Praxis is thinking about what and

why youre going to do before you do it and then reflecting on what you did,

how you did it, and how it turned out. Critical Pedagogy involves an ever-

evolving working relationship between practice and theory (2010). I found it

difficult to construct my philosophy of education, until I had practical

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experience in the education field with a class over an extended period of

time. As Monchinski says, one must reflect on their own practice and ensure

that it reflects their own teaching philosophy (2010). I found that the more I

reflected about my days experiences, the more I began to develop ideas

about what I thought went well, what I would change, and how I felt the

students reacted to the lesson. Like any teacher, my practice will always be

changing, and there will always be new ways to instruct, assess and evaluate

students.

Personally, I think that assessment is a huge part of being an effective

teacher. There are several ways to assess students learning, and it is

important to do so to get an understanding of how well students are

comprehending the material. Using assessment as a daily practice within a

classroom can show students that you care about their understanding, rather

than just trying to get through the material. I felt that the more I taught to

the students needs, the better relationship that I had with them. Showing

students that you take a personal interest in each of them can ensure that

students know they are cared for within the school community. Assessment

can take the form of multiple differentiated instruction methods. I have had

the chance to try out some different techniques, such as a thumb up

method, or simple review games such as slap it. I have found their use of

assessment has been very useful. Not all techniques work for all subjects and

grades, so I found that I had to try out different techniques, and in my

reflection, I noticed that some did not work the way I had intended for them
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to. This is why reflection is the key to growing as a teacher. Trying new

things, and find out what worked and what did not is part of the growth of a

teacher.

Growing up in the Ontario school system, I remember there not being a

lot of diversity in the curriculum that was being taught. In history, we were

taught about Canadian history, and the Western view of world history. Never

in my class did we learn about the Indigenous peoples of Canada, or the

settlement that they created. We strictly learned about the European

settlement on Canadian land rather than conflict between the Canadian

Indigenous peoples and the Europeans. In my teaching practices, I aim to

give students a holistic view of the world. As a teacher of English, I will select

novels that are set in non-western countries, and that give a realistic

interpretation of life in some of these developing countries. I find that more

times than not, teachers avoid having these difficult conversations with

students about topics, for example genocide. Incorporating these types of

topics into my English curriculum I will give students a broader view on the

world, and allow them to reflect on difficult topics within the safe confides of

my classroom.

Having such a diverse population where I hope to teach one day, in

Southern Ontario, I want students to feel that they have a chance to learn

about their own history and culture within the Ontario classroom. I aim to

ensure that students get a world view education rather than just a western

education. Part of critical thinking is looking at something from different

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angels, seeing it as a whole. I think that is a crucial part of education,

ensuring that students look at a moment in history, or a specific problem

from more than just a western lens. Within English, teaching students about

the use of different lenses on the same text is vitally important to my

teaching. Showing students that there is more than one way to look at or

interpret a situation depending on a variety of factors. Taking a text and

looking at it from a historic view, a female view, a media view, a political

view can bring out different aspects of a text that would not have been

discovered with strictly looking through one lens. Ensuring that I am teaching

students how to broaden their view on texts and different events in the world

today can have a huge impact on their ability to critically think about the

world around them.

Student directed learning is something that I have embraced within my

short teaching career. Students excel in their own ways, they all have unique

strengths and weaknesses. Within my classroom, I will give students the

flexibility and opportunity to express their assignments with their own

creative flare. I noticed that students do not engage with assignments that

they dont want to do. By giving them the freedom to put a creative spin on

their assignments, it creates an opportunity for students to engage with what

they are learning, and therefore they will retain more from it. Giving students

flexibility during my placement meant that I got a variety of assignments, all

very unique to the individual student. I found that the quality of work that

they produced was at a much higher level than on the assignments where I
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dictated how the information would be presented. Hope to continue to use

this mode of flexibility throughout my teaching career.

Throughout my time in Teachers College I have received a variety of

opinions from professors on similar topics. One unified thing that they have

all agreed on has been that if you wish to be a great teacher, that will be

reflective of your ability to continue ongoing professional learning. There is

constantly new research being done on education, and the usefulness of

somethings rather than others. As educators, I think it is our job to ensure

that we keep up to date with new knowledge, just as we expect of our

students. Ensuring that we are up to date on all the latest research is one

thing, but implementing it into practice is another. This once again is a

product of reflecting on our own practice regularly. That is the only way to

grow as a teacher I feel, constantly changing your practice, and tailoring it to

allow for the most learning from students.

References
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M. A. (n.d.). Critical Pedagogy in the Classroom [Web blog post].

Retrieved March 05, 2017, from http://maljewari.blogspot.ca/

Darder , A., Baltodano, M. P., & Torres, R. D. (Eds.). (n.d.). The Critical

Pedagogy Reader (2nd ed.). New York: Routledge.

Monchinski, T. (2010). Critical pedagogy and the everyday classroom.

New York: Springer.

Olson, G. A., & Worsham, L. (2012). Education as civic engagement:

toward a more democratic society. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.