What is your Philosophy of Education?

Answer 1

Just happen to have mine on file . . .

Education, like medicine, involves elements both of art and of science. The creative work of synthesizing knowledge and applying it to the tangle of instructional questions about classroom conversations can never be reduced to formulaic prescriptions. The teacher must respond to the individual circumstances of the teaching situation and hone teaching practices through continual assessment of learning. On the other hand, inquiries on instructional issues should draw upon the best available educational research. Activities, strategies, and procedures that have been established through careful educational trials should be preferred over those supported principally by anecdote, philosophy, or good wishes.

Teaching is most successful when warm, enthusiastic instructors engage in structured, systematic talk and planned activity with students, where the talk and activity is designed to further explicit educational goals. Teachers bear responsibility for moving students toward these educational goals in ways that are sound and developmentally appropriate, ways that minimize frustration while maximizing appropriate challenge. To this end, teachers should elucidate the learning strategies that lead to mastery, using clear and understandable terminology and generous examples.

Adult students, like elementary and secondary students, progress optimally with clear goals and rich descriptions of the strategies that lead to achievement. Because collegiate learners tend to be expert readers, a pivotal responsibility of college teaching is guiding their reading of carefully selected texts. In British higher education, students read a course, rather than taking a course. Because most content learning takes place through reading, instructors should choose readings with great care, prepare students to take an interest in what they are to read, and consolidate readings by supplementing and enriching the presentation rather than reiterating text material.

In my own teaching, I often fall short of the ideal, but I continually learn from assessments new ways to improve my teaching. In revising my plans, I have often come up with more cogent explanations, more instructive teaching models, better analogies, more engaging activities, and a clearer organization of ideas. Supervising lab work has been particularly rewarding for me because I learn details of effective practice from my students as they apply classroom ideas in teaching struggling readers. Many refinements of our tutoring techniques have been created from student innovations.

Education at its best is a collective search for clear ideas that better inform our conduct and skillful practices that lead to wiser and more successful living. Education is not only a means to other more practical goals, but also an end in itself. Just as education enhances our material success in the economy, our economic prosperity permits greater leisure, more books, and better technology, allowing us to devote more resources to education. In a real sense, schools are societal centers for the pursuit of happiness. To fulfill this lofty potential, teachers must inform their creative efforts with scientific knowledge, and they must take responsibility for recognizing and making explicit the knowledge and strategies that lead to achievement.
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Cheers,
Bruce

Answer 2

I think most people have a philosophy on several aspects of education.

ONE of mine, is that we all understand classes are overcrowded, and some schools are better than others. Proficiency testing and the 'No Child Left Behind' program is quite probably doing more damage than good...BUT, I don't care WHAT kind of neighborhood you live in or what your race is...if your child is not getting a good education, it's up to you as a parent...to get more involved. If you child doesn't do well in math...YOU'D better help him/her. If they can't read well...YOU'D better tutor them at home, because the kids who have parents that participate in their child's education, don't need excuses about where they live or how unfair tests are to their child.

Schools need to do their part of course, but when you get down to brass tacks, you are the one who has to turn that child out into the world, and you need to make sure they're prepared.

Answer 3

An education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It's being able to differentiate between what you do know and what you don't.

Answer 4

education is the basis u have to face up society

Answer 5

you would have a view or opinion,not a philosophy!!!

Answer 6

i believe you make of it what you will. and i think you will succede in what you feel most passionately towards.

Answer 7

IT SUCKS
but we need it =(