Methodologies of Philosophy Education

As a lower level elementary teacher, I hold a strong belief in essentialism. I agree that students must know the basics of academic knowledge so they can build upon that. My goal is to help my students master the basics

An educational philosophy is a personal statement of a teacher’s goals or belief. A teacher comes to the classroom with a distinctive set of principles and ideals that affect how a student learns and expand the child’s potential in his or her venture into knowledge. I believe that education should be active, and focus on the whole child, rather than just the content or the teacher. The three (3) principles I believe that work harmoniously with my educational philosophy are the teacher acting as a facilitator to foster critical thinking, allowing the child’s natural curiosity to steer his or her learning for personal development, and

Theories provide the foundation for educational practices, and many of them exist. While I consider my personal theory or philosophy of education to be one that is something of an ever-changing conglomerate of ideas, I realize that some of my guiding principals are directly attributed to well a well established theory.

There are five main philosophies that describe education: Essentialism (the back-to-basics approach which strives to teach students the essentials), Progressivism (which stresses individuality), Perennialism (which is the teaching of philosophies that have been around for hundreds of years), Existentialism (which give the students the choice of when to study and when not to), and Behaviorism (which lets teachers use reinforcement to achieve the desired behaviors which need to be used in the class room). Essentialism was the main philosophy used in earlier classrooms, and should be adopted back into the classrooms of today.

Throughout education there are six main philosophies to take into consideration, and they are as followed. From a teacher centered classroom approach they include Essentialism, Behaviorism, and lastly Positivism. In a student centered classroom approach they are Progressivism, Humanism, and Constructivism. What do these terms mean? Essentialism is and educational philosophy that there is a common core of information and skills that an educated person must have. Behaviorism is a psychological theory and educational philosophy that asserts that behaviors represent the essence of a person and that all behaviors can be explained. A person acts the way they do for a reason. Finally positivism is a social theory and educational philosophy that limits truth and knowledge to what is observed and measured. These are all important for a teacher to take into consideration. Progressivism is an educational philosophy that emphasizes that ideas should be tested by experiments and that learning is better developed in questions developed by the learner. Humanism is an

To accomplish this goal, I will teach to the needs of each child so that all learners can feel capable and successful. I will present curriculum that involves the interests of the children and makes learning relevant to life. I will incorporate themes, integrated units, projects, group work, individual work, and hands-on learning in order to make children active learners. Finally, I will tie learning into the world community to help children become caring and active members of society. I think that there is a large part on emphasis on educational philosophies because they help learners reach their goals- and these philosophies provide tangible ways to do

First, essentialism focuses in teaching through core courses, using the essentials of knowledge and development. Essentialism is a traditional teacher-centered philosophy. It emphasizes the great importance of transferring knowledge from the older being to the younger generation. The teacher is the expert on the subject, and students listen and learn what is being taught. The teacher is also the role model to his or her students. School is the institution students come to learn.

In the book Pearson Custom Education, five educational philosophies are discussed and what each one represents what a teaching and learning is distinctive to each other and some of them is easily observable in nowadays moment when in contrast, some of them are rarely to be seen. The first among the five philosophies is essentialism. It is a teacher centered philosophy which “puts little stock in what students want in terms of what and how they learn” (Powell, 2015, p.71). There are requirements for students such as: “[their] interests not important, [they] must be discipline; [and their] hard work emphasized” (Powell, 2015, p.71). The mainly used method for teaching would be “direct instruction, memorization, and proven methods” and such

My personal educational philosophy is a combination of perennialism and essentialism, which leaves me uniquely well-armed to teach my subject of choice: History. History, viewed as a whole, is a monument to the achievements of Man. It is unchanging, though new aspects may be found or brought to light, and it can be viewed from many angles, it is an unchanging truth that what happened, has indeed happened. Through a thorough and guided exploration of this subject, students can learn many of the essential skills they will need to succeed later in life.

I justify the humanities by sketching four views of knowledge in which the idea of an academy or an integration of disciplines might be understood. I assume that every system of higher education inevitably appeals to concepts of knowledge. Such concepts cannot be isolated from political and civic dimensions of life as well as from personal cultivation and character. Nonetheless, older views based on these aspects are open to serious criticism. The four views considered are Aristotelian-Thomistic, Cartesian-positivist, Kantian, and "traditionalist" (in a liberal and hermeneutic sense). The paper describes key elements in each of these views and notes several objections, with a marked preference for Kantian and "traditionalist" views. Kant

I believe that some knowledge is relevant to the time and place, but some knowledge is constant. Essentialism’s views of “back-to-basics” are appealing to me in regards to mathematics, history, reading and literature. These elements should be the basic focus of early education. A mastery of these

Creating a multitude of experiences for students and focusing instruction around the vocabulary that stems from those experiences is the foundation of my teaching philosophy. From daily exposure and continuous personal research I know that poverty means more than a lack of money; it means a lack of resources-financial, relational, neurological, social-emotional, experiential, and linguistic. It was from this list of necessary resources that I developed my teaching philosophy and the strategies to reinforce it.

Some of the benefits a student gains by studying philosophy is having the ability to gain knowledge and think more clearly. You learn skills, seek wisdom and get an understanding of our world through various branches. Helps us appreciate where the world came from, where we came from. Using our critical thinking we evaluate information and reach a conclusion due to the analyzation. We learn ethics, what is real, how others see things. We gain cognitive, moral and spiritual development by studying philosophy.

It is critical that a teacher be ever learning and provide students with relevant knowledge. There are two questions: how do teachers become ever learning and what is relevant knowledge? There are four identifiable philosophies that answer these questions: Traditional, Progressive, Existential and Critical Theory. However, they are often taken to the absolute and extreme. I firmly believe that taking both the main valued approaches from the Traditional and Progressive Philosophies provides strong disciplinary focuses and knowledge integration. The combination of the two philosophies allows for a positive insight to all educational philosophies. Keeping the mind open to these philosophies allow for flexibility and stability in the classroom for schools, teachers and students. In my position statement I will discuss what values from Traditional and Progressive philosophies complement each other. I will also recognize the Existential and Critical Theory philosophies along with their positive aspects. Through this statement I will explain how I believe the philosophies have applied to my life as a student and how I see them being applicable to my classroom in the future.

In the field of education there could arise many philosophical ideas of each individual teacher. Many of the past philosophies have been and still are used in today’s education programs, such as the Socratic method. My philosophy will also contain some of the many philosophies of the past and possibly the future. I will state the nature of students, the nature of knowledge, the purpose of public education, method, and curriculum according to my own philosophies, which also may be based the philosophical ideas of previous individuals.