Personal Philosophy Statement

Em. G.
Decem­ber 6th, 2021

            Over the first semes­ter of my UNBC teacher-train­ing pro­gram, I stud­ied and reflect­ed on numer­ous edu­ca­tion­al issues.  While each top­ic and assign­ment had its own set of chal­lenges, my most daunt­ing task was to pin down which ped­a­gog­i­cal phi­los­o­phy res­onates with me.  I seem to be pulled from one philo­soph­i­cal par­a­digm to anoth­er depend­ing on the grades I am to teach or what foun­da­tion­al skill I want my stu­dents to improve upon.  My ever-chang­ing ped­a­gog­i­cal phi­los­o­phy does not stem from indif­fer­ence, but rather I wish to take from each one and apply it where I feel it best meets the needs of my stu­dents.  Draw­ing upon the four major edu­ca­tion­al philoso­phies; peren­ni­al­ism, essen­tial­ism, pro­gres­sivism, and social-recon­struc­tion­ism, I seek a bal­anced approach to edu­ca­tion where ulti­mate­ly my ped­a­gog­i­cal phi­los­o­phy is eclecticism.

            Apply­ing an eclec­tic per­spec­tive to ped­a­gogy allows me to choose meth­ods and tech­niques from dif­fer­ent schools of thought, and this in turns helps to bring bal­ance to my style of teach­ing and way of life.  While hav­ing this flex­i­bil­i­ty might seem inel­e­gant due to its incon­sis­ten­cy, I feel the poten­tial to adapt and tai­lor my teach­ing style for my stu­dents helps me to ful­fill the first stan­dard from the Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dards for BC Edu­ca­tors which states, “Edu­ca­tors val­ue and care for all stu­dents and act in their best inter­ests ” (BCTC, 2019, p.2). 

After observ­ing oth­er teacher men­tors and reflect­ing on my own teach­ing, I real­ize that being adapt­able helps to broad­en options to sup­port diverse stu­dents by per­son­al­iz­ing an effec­tive response to their needs.  I am mind­ful that one would need to be famil­iar and care­ful in apply­ing the dif­fer­ent teach­ing philo­soph­i­cal meth­ods.  When col­lab­o­rat­ing with oth­er teach­ers it would be use­ful to under­stand their under­ly­ing ped­a­go­gies and teach­ing methodologies. 

            Achiev­ing a life bal­ance is impor­tant to stu­dents and teach­ers alike.  Accord­ing to Maslow (1943) there are five cat­e­gories of human needs that dic­tate an indi­vid­u­al’s behav­ior: phys­i­o­log­i­cal needs, safe­ty and secu­ri­ty, love and belong­ing, esteem, and self-actu­al­iza­tion (As cit­ed in Lumen Learn­ing, 2020).  So when stu­dents come to school hun­gry or sleep-deprived, their phys­i­o­log­i­cal needs are not being met and their learn­ing abil­i­ty inevitably suf­fers.  To func­tion at our best, we need to ensure that our basic needs are first sat­is­fied.
            This need for bal­ance comes as no sur­prise to Indige­nous Peo­ples, as part of the first prin­ci­ple from the First Peo­ples Prin­ci­ples of Learn­ing (FPPL) states, “Learn­ing ulti­mate­ly sup­ports the well-being of the self” (First Nations Edu­ca­tion Steer­ing Com­mit­tee, n.d.).  How to best achieve bal­ance depends on the indi­vid­ual, but one tool to help us deter­mine this by using the Indige­nous med­i­cine wheel.  When we were first intro­duced to this med­i­cine wheel frame­work at the start of the semes­ter, I did not real­ize how impor­tant it would be to me.  The wheel is a cir­cle divid­ed into four quad­rants each rep­re­sent­ing an aspect need­ed for life bal­ance: the spir­i­tu­al-soul, the emo­tion­al-heart, the phys­i­cal-body and the intel­lect-mind (Joseph, 2020).  Dumont (1989) reminds us that,
            “The cir­cle, being pri­ma­ry, influ­ences how … Abo­rig­i­nal peo­ples view the world.  In the
              process of how life evolves, how the nat­ur­al world grows and works togeth­er, how all
             things are con­nect­ed … Abo­rig­i­nal peo­ples see and respond to the world in a cir­cu­lar
             fash­ion and are influ­enced by the exam­ples of the cir­cles of cre­ation in our envi­ron­ment”
           (As cit­ed in Joseph, 2020).

Apply­ing this cir­cu­lar con­cept to my eclec­tic edu­ca­tion­al ped­a­gogy, plac­ing each of the major edu­ca­tion­al philoso­phies into a quad­rant and refer­ring to them when struc­tur­ing my class­room, design­ing my lessons or adapt­ing my for­ma­tive and sum­ma­tive assess­ments to best meet the indi­vid­ual needs of my students.

            When I teach old­er stu­dents who already have a sol­id foun­da­tion in lit­er­a­cy and numer­a­cy but who are still try­ing to hone their crit­i­cal think­ing skills, I like to fol­low peren­ni­al­ism.  This sub­ject-cen­tered phi­los­o­phy val­ues teach­ing stu­dents using clas­si­cal knowl­edge and lit­er­a­ture from time­less greats like Pla­to, Socrates, and Shake­speare.  This phi­los­o­phy espous­es that some lessons in life are uni­ver­sal, and I do believe our human nature makes it so.  It is the rea­son why “his­to­ry repeats itself” and why we have the old adage, “the more things change, the more they stay the same.”  When explor­ing peren­ni­al notions, one teach­ing tech­nique to engage stu­dents is called the Socrat­ic method. Devel­oped by the Greek philoso­pher, Socrates, it is a shared open-end­ed dia­logue between teacher and stu­dents. The teacher leads the dis­cus­sion and keep­ing it focused and intel­lec­tu­al­ly respon­si­ble through pos­ing thought-pro­vok­ing ques­tions. Stu­dents active­ly engage by ask­ing ques­tions of their own. One inter­est­ing aspect of this exer­cise is the teacher does not always have an answer, so the oppor­tu­ni­ty for cre­ative, crit­i­cal and ana­lyt­i­cal think­ing analy­sis is shared in rec­i­p­ro­cal man­ner with each par­tic­i­pant pos­si­bly syn­the­siz­ing new ideas.  The teacher will help to sum­ma­rize what is dis­cussed but there is no grad­ing, as the ques­tions are open-end­ed with no pre-deter­mined answer.  Includ­ing diverse cul­tur­al world­views in the list of “clas­si­cal” ref­er­ences could enhance and expand the effec­tive­ness of peren­ni­al­ism.  
            While the self-reflec­tive prac­tice of the Socrat­ic method can be used for high school stu­dents, I imag­ine it would be quite anx­i­ety caus­ing for younger ele­men­tary school chil­dren.   When I teach youth who are still learn­ing to mas­ter their lit­er­a­cy and numer­a­cy skills like stu­dents in the pri­ma­ry grades or spe­cial needs stu­dents, I pre­fer the teacher-cen­tered phi­los­o­phy of essen­tial­ism.  Essen­tial­ism pri­mar­i­ly focus­es on mas­ter­ing numer­a­cy and lit­er­a­cy skills.  Essen­tial­ist instruc­tion is based on the cog­ni­tive devel­op­ment the­o­ry of infor­ma­tion pro­cess­ing which sug­gests that the human mind takes in infor­ma­tion via the five sens­es, orga­nizes and stores it to be retrieved at a lat­er (ICT in Edu­ca­tion, n.d.).  Essen­tial­ism favors the stan­dard prac­tice of lec­tur­ing, mem­o­riza­tion and repet­i­tive drill prac­tice. This tra­di­tion­al form of teach­ing does not have to be bor­ing; we can reframe the drill into one that is fun to do.  For exam­ple, many games are repet­i­tive by nature, so if you build numer­a­cy drills as part of the game, stu­dents will be engaged enough to for­get they are actu­al­ly prac­tic­ing math.
            John Dewey’s stu­dent-cen­tered phi­los­o­phy of Pro­gres­sivism comes nat­u­ral­ly to me the most.  Old­er stu­dents who are capa­ble of read­ing to learn rather than learn­ing to read are more like­ly to ben­e­fit from this type of teach­ing.  Dewey believed that school edu­ca­tion should help pre­pare stu­dents to become good cit­i­zens, and that stu­dents best learn by doing (Lumen Learn­ing, His­to­ry of Edu­ca­tion­al Psy­chol­o­gy, 2020).  Fol­low­ing a pro­gres­sivist approach pro­vides my stu­dents oppor­tu­ni­ties to prac­tice authen­tic expe­ri­en­tial learn­ing as they work on action-ori­en­tat­ed projects in real-life set­tings.  This style of learn­ing fos­ters my stu­dents’ crit­i­cal-think­ing skills as they work indi­vid­u­al­ly or col­lec­tive­ly to ana­lyze and solve real-world problems. 

            I won­der if pro­gres­sivism can con­nect to a prag­mat­ic onto­log­i­cal per­spec­tive by using inquiry-based learn­ing?  Inquiry-based learn­ing is a tech­nique where active learn­ing has the teacher ask guid­ing ques­tions, prob­lems or sce­nar­ios and stu­dents can explore togeth­er to find solu­tions (Team XQ, 2020). These styles of lessons are hard to cre­ate but thanks to boost­ing stu­dent engage­ment I find they are very reward­ing as they often lead to mem­o­rable learn­ing experiences.

            The final part of my eclec­tic ped­a­gogy is social-recon­struc­tion­ism.  I am inspired to help my stu­dents become agents of change when­ev­er I see the world around me fail to embrace equi­ty, diver­si­ty or inclu­sion (EDI).  I become embold­ened to fight for social sys­temic change.  One frame­work to achieve this is by apply­ing the BCTF’s social jus­tice lens.  I hope to pro­mote and teach about EDI by engag­ing in access, agency, advo­ca­cy, and sol­i­dar­i­ty action in my class­room (BCTF, 2019).  Ensur­ing access means that all of my stu­dents are includ­ed and can par­tic­i­pate in class activ­i­ties. Teach­ing about agency means that my stu­dents know their rights and feel empow­ered to assert them.  Pro­mot­ing advo­ca­cy requires stu­dents to learn about social aware­ness, analy­sis and imple­ment­ing action plans for sys­temic change.  Final­ly, sol­i­dar­i­ty action requires teach­ing about work­ing col­lec­tive­ly, net­work­ing with oth­ers, and medi­a­tion and con­flict res­o­lu­tion skills to bring about demo­c­ra­t­ic social change (BCTF, 2019).  I am inter­est­ed in learn­ing how to bet­ter apply these com­plex social jus­tice aspects in the pri­ma­ry grades.

            The First Peo­ples Prin­ci­ples of Learn­ing (FPPL) states that, “Learn­ing is holis­tic, reflex­ive, reflec­tive, expe­ri­en­tial, and rela­tion­al (focused on con­nect­ed­ness, on rec­i­p­ro­cal rela­tion­ships, and a sense of place)” (First Nations Edu­ca­tion Steer­ing Com­mit­tee, n.d.).  Fol­low­ing eclec­ti­cism gives me the best chance at mak­ing this prin­ci­ple a real­i­ty, as I have no lim­i­ta­tions when it comes to adapt­ing assess­ments, teach­ing method­olo­gies, design­ing les­son plans, and imple­ment­ing class­room man­age­ment.  By meet­ing my stu­dents’ needs I not only can increase their chances for aca­d­e­m­ic suc­cess, but also forge last­ing rela­tion­ships ground­ed in respect and reciprocity.

                                                            Ref­er­ences      
BCTC. (2019). Pro­fes­sion­al stan­dards for BC edu­ca­tors — fre­quent­ly asked ques­tions (FAQs) [Brochure].

            Retrieved from https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/education/kindergarten-to-grade-             
12/teach/teacher-regulation/standards-for-educators/edu_standards_faq.pdf

BCTF. (2019). A social jus­tice lens — BC Teach­ers’ Fed­er­a­tion.
            Retrieved by https://www.bctf.ca/docs/default-source/advocacy-and-issues/sj-lens- 
        booklet-revised-july-2019.pdf? sfvrsn=f890951_4    
First Nations Edu­ca­tion Steer­ing Com­mit­tee. (n.d.). First Peo­ples Prin­ci­ples of Learning.

            FNESC. Retrieved from https://fnesc.app.box.com/s/            
            vk9ovfe78fxo3qji3sw9r12ru562cyt4

ICTs in Edu­ca­tion. (n.d.). Expla­na­tion: Cog­ni­tivism — Infor­ma­tion Pro­cess­ing Approach.
            Retrieved by https://www.tcd.ie/Education/ICT/unit02/explanation03b.htm

Joseph, B. (2020). What is an indige­nous med­i­cine wheel? Indige­nous Cor­po­rate Train­ing Inc.

            Retrieved from https://www.ictinc.ca/blog/what-is-an-indigenous-medicine-wheel     

Lumen Learn­ing (2020). His­to­ry of Edu­ca­tion­al Psy­chol­o­gy. Retrieved from https://

            courses.lumenlearning.com/edpsy/chapter/history-of-educational-psychology/

Lumen Learn­ing (2020). Intro­duc­tion to Psychology.

            Retrieved from https://courses.lumenlearning.com/waymaker-psychology/.

Team XQ. (Jul., 2020). What is inquiry-based learn­ing? (IBL). XQ Web­site. Retrieved from
         https:// xqsuperschool.org/rethinktogether/what-is-inquiry-based-learning-ibl/