For this section of my e-portfolio I have decided to include my Pedagogical Philosophy Statement that I wrote in my first block of the program. I want to include this because upon re-reading it, it outlines where I was and where I am going and ultimately shows quite a lot of vulnerability about how I see myself. I understand that these values and goals may change, but by including it here it can act as a prompt to reflect on in the future. This statement was originally written for EDUC 393 Foundations of Education, but has turned into a really vital piece of work which was written from the innermost core of myself. Enjoy!
There are a couple of defining elements in my life that have brought me to who I am in this moment that have helped shaped my personal pedagogical philosophy. I am sure a lot of it comes from my own experience throughout my years of being educated yet 2020 has offered me a chance to look within and find a sense of understanding for myself. As a budding teacher candidate grinding through the program of my dreams amidst a pandemic, I can only really find my own pedagogical philosophy from within. Sure, I can look back at personal experiences from times pre-COVID, but I would be lying if I said that this forced lifestyle change has not changed me. COVID-19, being the first of two events this year that have given me a new perspective, has proven to me that a) teachers are superheroes and b) crisis can either bring out the best or the worst in society, politics, and everything in between. In January of this year I was gearing up for three weeks worth of back to back vacations, beginning in Mexico and ending in Costa Rica. I was an office manager at a financial institution in Prince George and I woke up one day with the realization that I had yet to find my passion in life. I have always known that I wanted to be a teacher yet had always managed to talk myself out of it for one reason or another. This last time my excuse was that it was already January and surely the deadline for applications must be closed by now, however, the reality of the matter is that because of the UNBC strike the school had graciously extended the deadline. I had three days to apply. Then, over the next six months my dream of becoming a teacher fell to the back of my mind because of COVID and quarantines and political disrupt with the Black Lives Matter movement. Life got really heavy, really fast. I was eventually waitlisted for the program which hit me like a tonne of bricks and forced me to re-evaluate my expectations for the future. And just when I thought I had it all figured out I was told that there was one seat available in the program, and if I wanted it I had merely five weeks to get prepared. So, I quit my job as an office manager, began serving a locally owned restaurant and am now back to being a full-time student! As I reflect upon these last eleven or so months of my life, I can easily say that my outlook on life has shifted for the better. My experiences throughout this year have taught me about patience and positivity, and ultimately, I believe it has had a big part in shaping my pedagogical philosophy. I understand that this philosophy is simply where I am now and that it will evolve as I grow and experience and learn but I am honoured to have been given the opportunity to take that chance. This year has taught me to welcome change, and I believe it will make me a better teacher because of it.
Without getting into the fine details yet of my own pedagogical philosophy, my statement can be summed up through discussion of my ontology, axiology, and epistemology. Ontology, the study of being, has had me questioning the importance of education to an individual student as well as human beings as a collective. I believe that education is important to the individual student because it allows them to grow themselves in a holistic way to broaden their minds and understanding of the world. Learning is different for each and every person and therefore it is imperative that everyone gets a well-rounded education so they can get out of it what works for them; to be a singular human being living on this planet means to evolve and grow as all living things do on Earth. And with evolution and growth comes learning. As a collective, education is important because as a society/group/species we can only evolve and move forward if we are all learning and growing. Obviously, this works best if everybody is learning the whole truth regarding history and science but that is just not the reality. However, if we are all growing and learning we are all evolving and moving forward and therefore hopefully improving. If only one individual is learning and they are better able to benefit their life, imagine the benefits of billions of people doing it as a collective. Axiology is the study of value and notions of worth. For me this is huge because as evolved as humans are, we are still assessing people in the world based on what we believe they are worth, and the value of human life cannot have a price assigned to it. There are way too many factors at play to do this. So when I am asked “who needs to be represented in learning?” my umbrella answer is everybody. This is because we have already been picking and choosing what we teach to children and teens and it has created these huge knowledge gaps which are affecting adults today. All peoples from different backgrounds and with different capabilities should be represented, not only whoever is relevant to the course material or topic at hand. There should be more emphasis on the people that are involved in their country’s history just because that is going to affect them most going into adulthood, but all other peoples should be represented as well to create a well-rounded education. We are all human beings; we should not be kept in the dark about each other. Biases and ignorance comes from us not recognizing the absolute interconnectedness and history that we all share. And finally, before we delve into the nitty gritty details of my own pedagogy, I would like to share my epistemology. Epistemology is the theory of knowledge, but more importantly it distinguishes justified belief from opinion and here is where I believe I may differ from mainstream thought. I think that throughout our educational history our students have been taught subject material on the opinion side of things as opposed to the justified belief side. There are students (me being one of them) who had gone through the entire K-12 system with barely any knowledge on residential schools, a huge knowledge gap for me regarding my country’s history. Given this knowledge gap of my own I believe that teachers should serve as a vast wealth of unbiased knowledge for their students and therefore I will make the effort to ensure that my students are getting an honest education. My epistemology encourages me to vet my resources to ensure that they cover accurate history and stories so that as my students age into high school and then adulthood they can see the world through an educated lens.
Progressivism, the first philosophy I would like to delve in to, “is the belief that education must be based on the principle that humans are social animals who learn best in real-life activities with other people.” and “Most progressive educators believe that children learn as if they were scientists, following a process similar to John Dewey’s model of learning.” (Educational Progressivism para. 1). I feel as though this is a lot like what we have been learning so far throughout the block, especially when it comes to teaching the whole child. Each students’ education will be different due to their socio-cultural or economic differences and therefore their education must fluctuate. The importance of group work is because of both similarities and differences amongst our students as it allows all students to learn their own way as well as respect and understand the views of others. I relate this to my own pedagogical philosophy because I believe that students of the same age or grade tend to all be treated and educated the same way when in school because they are all being expected to learn the same curriculum at the same pace. However, with a progressivist mindset I believe that I will be able to look for ways to implement grouping into my classroom so that like-minded students can work together to benefit their learning even better. Through this grouping my students will be able to supplement each other’s learning as well as learn at the pace of the collective smaller group as opposed to trying to learn at the pace of the entire class. This philosophy also states that children will learn best through active experimentation with their learning, which I believe may help some students in my future classroom as well. This is because while not all learners learn best by doing, I do believe that they will best be able to use that learning in the future if they have taken the time to practice the knowledge at hand in an active or experimental way since they would have real life experience to relate their future learning to.
Existentialism educational theory is one that I have found, through speaking with other members of my cohort, we may not all agree on, which is surprising to me because I relate quite strongly with it. “Existentialism in education is a teaching and learning philosophy that focuses on the students’ freedom and agency to choose their future.” (Drew, 2020, para. 4). As teachers, it will be our job to impart knowledge onto students who perhaps do not want it and reject the idea of learning; it is at that point that we would try different methods to engage our learners and to help better their learning experience, however the decision to want to learn would still be the students’ decision in the end. Perhaps what some people disagree with is the belief that there is no higher power influencing our students’ lives, as Chris Drew states: “Existentialist educators believe there is no God or higher power guiding their students. Thus, they encourage all students to exercise personal agency and create their own meaning for life.” (Drew, 2020, para. 4) but getting into that would make this a theological deconstruction paper which I would prefer to stay away from. I think it is important for myself as an educator to ensure that my students understand that their desire for education is derived out of their own control and not the control of some other-worldly ideal. This is important for me to make sure that my future students understand because I would hate to see them fall into a pit of despair because they gain the mindset that their ability (or inability) to learn is caused by something that is out of their control. Eventually our students are going to grow up and become adults and if they have spent the first eighteen years of their lives blaming their struggles on something intangible then I worry that they would have difficulties taking accountability for their own actions in the future. I plan on implementing this into my own classroom by highly encouraging and creating courage within my students; I can do this by focusing on their strengths, regardless of what they may be, and ensuring that my students feel valued and validated in their work as well as their feelings.
“The constructivist learning theory explains that we learn by ‘constructing’ knowledge in our minds. Constructivism argues that learners have an active role in thinking things through, mulling them over, and coming to conclusions based on logic and critical thinking.” (Drew, 2020, para. 1). This educational philosophy resonates with me because I find that it relates quite strongly with learning progressions, something that we have recently begun to learn in this block and a subject which I find quite interesting. The curriculums that we will be using as teachers are constructed in such a way that each grade builds off of the prior, and it manipulated so that when placed in a linear fashion they would build a straight path to higher learning. The idea of the British Columbia curriculum seems to be based heavily in Constructivism in the sense that each grade level of the curriculum is not meant to be taught in such a manner that it is separated from the grade prior or the grade after, instead the learning intentions for each grade blend together with their surrounding grade levels. Because I relate to this Constructivism philosophy, I think that in my future classrooms I will rely heavily on learning progressions and will always make a point of taking them into consideration when constructing my lesson plans. For my students, I hope that by doing this their education will be a more fluid experience.
Now, the final educational philosophy that I would like to mention in this statement is one that I find relates quite strongly to our Professional Standards for BC Educators: Humanism. “The humanistic theory of teaching and learning is an educational theory that believes in teaching the ‘whole’ child. A humanistic approach will have a strong focus on students’ emotional wellbeing and eternally view children as innately good ‘at the core’.” (Drew, 2020, para. 1). This philosophy speaks most to who I am as an individual and is what connects me most to the Professional Standards for BC Educators, specifically Standards 1 (Educators value the success of all students. Educators care for students and act in their best interests.), 2 (Educators act ethically and maintain the integrity, credibility and reputation of the profession.), and 9 (Educators respect and value the history of First Nations, Inuit and Metis in Canada and the impact of the past on the present and the future. Educators contribute towards truth, reconciliation, and healing. Educators foster a deeper understanding of ways of knowing and being, histories, and cultures of the First Nations, Inuit, and Metis.) (BCTC, pp. 4-5). How I interpret Humanism and why I believe it relates to me as a person is because this looks a lot like holistic learning, something I am passionate about. I strongly believe that a well-rounded education consists of teaching our students minds, bodies, and souls and an element in being able to do that is to understand that children are in no way born bad and that no student is valued less than the other. We all start at the same place and it is the external factors in our lives that shape who we become as we age and therefore as an elementary educator I believe that it is my responsibility to follow the Professional Standards for BC Educators and to value the success of all students, to act ethically and maintain integrity, and to contribute towards truth and reconciliation. As a teacher I believe that I am an advocate for my students because not only am I imparting knowledge, but I will also be forming the minds of the next generations. It is critical for the futures of my students that I do not write them off because of bad behaviour and that I instead give them my patience and support because at the core, they are children, and between the time they leave my classroom and enter into adulthood they will have millions of external factors that will continue to shape who they become and how they value themselves. My hope is that with a Humanistic philosophy in my classroom my students will be able to hang on to their innate goodness that they were born with.
I did some research into the educational philosophies of Russia, Sweden, and China, and while Russia and Sweden were interesting to me because they seemed so very different than what we are used to in British Columbia, I was surprised to find so many similarities between China and ourselves. My background knowledge of China’s education system has left me with the impression that their system is very strict, consists of long days and harsh instructors, and serves to produce robots into society. However, in reading Donia Zhang’s research paper entitled Philosophical Influences on Education in China: Different Schools of Thought on Self-Cultivation I was made aware of my own biases and came to the realization that the evolution of China’s educational philosophy is very much so in line with what BC is doing right now as well. The similarities that I see between the two systems is the emphasis on nature and holistic learning replacing education for the purpose of economic growth and gain. The Chinese education system is attempting to connect their students back to the Earth and to place importance on the cyclical nature of life as well as the seasons around them. I find that this is similar to BC because with Standard 9 being implemented educators are being strictly encouraged to recognize the values of Indigenous culture, a culture which is heavily set on the Earth and connecting our students to nature around them. Currently in China there are three overarching philosophies that impact the education system: Daoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism. Daoism, which teaches people to be in harmony with nature and promotes a holistic view of the world from the universe (Zhang 2018), relates most to Standard 9 as well as some elements of Humanism. Both philosophies encourage learning to be embedded in the fact that we are humans living on earth and that we are born with an innate sense of goodness and with a relationship to nature that we tend to lose as we age. Confucianism, which concerns human relationship with humans and advocates the idea of an upright moral person who has the courage to take social responsibility in a society (Zhang 2018), reminds me quite a lot of Constructivism because it involves interpersonal relationships and using those relationships to aid in our learning. I think that if these two philosophies were active in a classroom simultaneously it could produce a sort of Progressivism culture in the sense that by encouraging relationships between students as well as social responsibility our students could build off of that energy and work together to grow into moral adults. And finally, Buddhism, which considers the world as fleeting and nothing eternal; it seeks to escape from the illusory world and learn to let go (Zhang 2018) is a prime example of Existentialism in Western culture. The two philosophies share the same value of understanding that life really is what we all make of it and therefore we must do our very best to shape our own lives to how we wish to live and to perhaps sometimes try and be kind to ourselves because ultimately nothing is forever. Seems pretty dark but I believe that in the classroom if I can aid my students in developing a sense of the ‘here and now’ as opposed to focusing on all the years ahead of them I can hopefully help them maintain that focus on their current education, thus bettering them for the future without having them stress out or worry too much about it in the present.
Overall, I think that I have learned a lot through the process of writing this assignment. I was able to reflect on who I was, who I am, and potentially who I will be in the future in the context of becoming an educator. I feel much more confident in my beliefs and where I stand with our education system; I also feel that by connecting the philosophies that I relate to to each other I have been able to ground myself in something much larger than myself and it has provided me the foundation necessary to embed my learning into. Also, because of my connection to the philosophies above I feel that I will better react in the future to those philosophies changing as I age and as I experience more throughout my profession which will hopefully decrease the amount of anxiety that I may get when I feel my views changing later on. As a collective, I think that the philosophies listed above which I have connected to myself will better help me understand my own learning, thus bettering the learning for my students. I am confident in the foundation in which my teaching will be based on and I am excited to watch it shift.
References
Axiology. https://www.britannica.com/topic/axiology.
BCTF. Professional Standards for BC Teachers. Edu Standards. https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/education/kindergarten-to-grade-12/teach/teacher-regulation/standards-for-educators/edu_standards.pdf.
Drew, C. (2020, June 12). Existentialism in Education – 7 Key Features (2020). Helpful Professor. https://helpfulprofessor.com/existentialism-in-education/.
Drew, C. (2020, October 2). What is Constructivism in Education? Piaget’s Pros & Cons. Helpful Professor. https://helpfulprofessor.com/constructivism/.
Drew, C. (2020, September 30). What is the Humanistic Theory in Education? Helpful Professor. https://helpfulprofessor.com/humanist-theory-in-education/.
Educational Progressivism. Psychology Wiki. https://psychology.wikia.org/wiki/Educational_progressivism.
Encyclopædia Britannica, inc. (2020, October 23). Epistemology. Encyclopædia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/epistemology.
Ontology. (2018, October 25). Retrieved November 02, 2020, from https://philosophyterms.com/ontology/
Zhang, D. (2018). Philosophical Influences on Education in China: Different Schools of Thought on Self-Cultivation. Journal of Contemporary Educational Research, 2(3). https://doi.org/10.26689
