EDU 255 Week 1 Assignment: My Teaching Philosophy

I have had to write my teaching philosophy several times in the last 26 years of being a student of education.  It has changed somewhat each time based upon experience with students and strategies that have helped them be successful in my classes.  My philosophy is based primarily on a blend of two psychological orientations:  humanistic psychology and constructivism.

     Humanistic psychology “emphasizes personal freedom, choice, awareness, and personal responsibility.” (Parkay, 2001, p 93).  This perspective takes into account motivation, feelings, and needs in addition to intellectual aspects of learning and is based on the idea that learning is within the individual’s control.  In the classroom, teachers are facilitators who create a classroom climate of trust and respect where students have some decisions about their learning.  Aspects of my teaching that align with this philosophy are:  getting to know each student as an individual and asking them what their goals are (course and career), creating a classroom climate where students contribute, share information, and work together, and including activities where students have a choice about some aspect of the activity.

     Constructivism focuses on the mental processes students use to learn new information and focuses on active learning (Parkay, 2001).  A constructivist classroom is one where students are involved in their learning and activities take into account prior experiences.  In mathematics, many of the new concepts are based on or extensions of previous concepts and there are many real world applications of mathematics that students can relate to.  Characteristics of my teaching that align with a constructivist perspective are:  connecting the current topic with topics students have learned previously (either in a previous class or earlier in the semester), encouraging students to work together in groups to complete problems or tasks, and relating mathematical concepts to many real world applications.