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BUILDING AN EDUCATIONAL
PHILOSOPHY
OBJECTIVES
Learning outcomes - after
reading the chapter, you will be able to:
- Describe the influence
of classroom practices on motivation.
- Analyze the underlying
differences among discipline approaches.
- State the components of
their personal philosophy of education
- List the characteristics
of teachers as change agents.
- Provide examples of teacher
leadership behaviors.
OUTLINE
- See figure 11.1 on page 363 - educational
theories.
Using philosophy in the
classroom, pages 364-377
- A teacher's practices in the classroom
reflect his or her personal philosophy.
- The best goal for beginning educators is
to become comfortable with a variety of classroom
practices that address the needs of learners.
Classroom organization
- Classroom organization is a multifaceted
dimension of teaching that includes the content,
methods, and values that infuse the classroom
environment.
- Lesson planning is mandatory if effective
teaching and learning is to follow.
- Every lesson should be built from a basic
set of objectives that correspond to the overall
goals of the lesson.
- The Physical Setting: the arrangement of
classroom furniture and the use of classroom
materials may be predicated on the teacher's
perceptions of the learners as passive or
active.
- Student Assessment and evaluation: most
teachers use a variety of techniques including
exams, term papers, projects, group participation,
etc.
- Read the debate on pages 366-367 regarding
school uniforms.
Motivation
- See figure 11.2 on page 369.
- Motivation: internal emotion, desire,
or impulse acting as an incitement to action.
Discipline
- See figure 11.3 on page 370 - Teacher-Student
Control Continuum.
- Educators must help students to learn to
become decision makers and critical thinkers
about their own actions. "Discipline with
Dignity".
- Control theory: a theory of discipline
that contends that people choose most of their
behaviors to gain control of other people
or of themselves.
- Read about assertive discipline and discipline
with dignity on pages 372-373.
Conflict resolution
- Focuses on the process of teaching students
how to recognize problems and then solve them
constructively.
- Peer mediation programs.
"One
can never consent to creep when one feels an
impulse to soar" Helen Keller.
Classroom
Climate
- Research shows that successful schools
are ones with favorable conditions for learning,
parent interest in and knowledge of the schools,
and positive relationships between principals
and teachers and teachers and students.
- Voice refers to the multifaceted
and interlocking set of meanings through which
students and teachers actively engage in dialogue
with one another.
- Space that permits students to explore,
take risks, make mistakes, and take corrective
action is an authentic space.
USING PHILOSOPHY BEYOND
THE CLASSROOM, pages 377-380
Teachers as change agents
- Change agent: a person
who actively endeavors to mobilize change
in a group, institution, or society.
- Adaptation: in the
context of social change, an educational approach
that favors the promotion of a stable climate
in schools to enable students to obtain an
unbiased picture of changes that are occurring
in society and thus to adapt to those changes.
Teachers as leaders
- Vision: a mental construction that synthesizes
and clarifies what a person values or considers
to be of highest worth. Linda Shelve
and marian Schoebelt offer five steps to help
leaders put their visions into action:
- Value your vision.
- Be reflective and plan a course of action.
- Articulate the vision to colleagues.
- Develop a planning stage and an action
stage.
- Have students become partners in the vision.
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