by Jan Schwartz
I’ve been thinking about teacher training recently and I have wondered how many teachers, of any subject, think about their educational philosophy? Not many I bet unless they’ve been through a school of education. In order to be good teachers, we don’t need to have a formal degree in education (although some sort of teacher training would certainly be beneficial), but I do think we need to know what our philosophy is and how it relates to our practice. Our educational philosophy helps us to critically think about the teaching-learning contract.
I read an article recently by Gary J. Conti in the Journal of Adult Education that talks about this. There are 4 major schools of philosophy in the western world and Conti connects them to adult education like this:
Idealism = Liberal (or classical so as not to get political) Adult Education
Realism = Behaviorist Adult Education
Pragmatism = Progressive Adult Education
Reconstructionism = Radical (or reconstructionist so as not to get political) Adult Education
Conti developed an instrument that helps one determine a personal philosophy of education. It’s called PHIL which stands for Philosophies Held by Instructors of Lifelong-learners. I tried it on and it was accurate for me–Radical Adult Education. This philosophy is learner-centered and helps the learner to develop problem solving skills and life long learning skills that will effect change.
You can check it out to see what category you fall into: Discover Your Educational Philosophy. It only takes about 2 minutes.
image credit: tourist_on_earth
Tags: adult learner, education, educational philosophy, life-long learning, teacher
