My Concrete Experience

This activity will enable you to ask yourself about the different future practices or
actions that you will do in teaching. You may not have done it yet, but if you become a teacher
what do would be your response to each item? Your answers will identify what your philosophy
of education is all about.

Answer each item in the Survey Questionnaire very honestly. There is neither right nor
wrong answer for each item. After you have answered each item, record your answers and look
at the interpretation at the back of this work text.
After you have answered the questionnaire yourself, you are to ask two teachers to do the same
activity.

WHAT IS YOUR PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION?

(based on Sadker & Sadker, 1998
Teachers, Schools and Society, 2nd Ed)

Each of us has a philosophy of education or a set of fundamental beliefs regarding how

we think schools be run. What is your philosophy of education? To find out, read each of the
following statements about the nature of education. Decide whether you agree or disagree with
each statement. Use the following numbers to express your response.

4 Agree strongly 2 Disagree

3 Agree 1 Disagree strongly

2 1. The student learning should be centered around basic subjects such as reading, writing,
history, math and science.

3 2. The school subjects should focus on the great thinkers of the past.
4 3. Many students learn best by engaging in real- world activities rather than reading.

3 4. The students should be permitted to determine their own curriculum.

3 5. Subject matter is taught effectively when it is broken down into small parts.

34 6. The school subjects should be determined by information that is essential for all
students to know.

4 7. Schools, above all, should develop students abilities to think deeply, analytically, and
creatively; than develop their social skills or provide them with a useful body of knowledge
about the ever- changing world.
3 8. Teaching should prepare students for analyzing and solving the types of problems they
will face outside the classroom.

3 9. Reality is determined by each individuals perceptions. There is no objective and

universal reality.
 4 10. People are shaped much more by their environment than by their generic dispositions
or the exercise of their free will.

3 11. Students should not be promoted from one grade to the next until they have read and
mastered certain key material.
3 12. An effective education is not aimed at the immediate needs of the students or society.

4 13. The curriculum of a school should be built around the personal experiences and needs
of the students.
2 14. Students who do not want to study much should not be required to do so.

3 15. Programmed learning is an effective method of teaching information.

3 16. Academic rigor is an essential component of education.

3 17. All students, regardless of ability, should study more or less the same curriculum.

4 18. Art classes should focus primarily on individual expression and creativity.

2 19.Effective learning is unstructured and informal.

3 20. Students learn best through reinforcement.
3 21. Effective schools assign a substantial amount of homework.
1 22. Education should focus on the discussion of timeless questions such as What is
beauty? or What is truth?
4 23. Since students learn effectively through social interaction, school should plan for
substantial interaction in their curricula.
4 24. The purpose of school is to help students understand themselves and find the meaning
of their existence.
3 25. Frequent objective testing is the best way to determine what students know.

2 26. Countries must become more competitive economically with other countries hence
schools must bolster their academic requirements to facilitate such competition.

3 27. Students must be taught to appreciate learning primarily for its own sake, because it
will help them in their careers.
3 28. Schools must place more emphasis on teaching about the concerns of minorities and
women.

4 29. Each person has free will to develop as he or she sees fit.
230. Reward students well for learning and they will remember and will be able to apply what
they learned, even if do not understand why the information is worth knowing.

4 31. Philippine schools should attempt to instill traditional Filipino values in students.

4 32. Teacher- guide discovery of profound truths is a key method of teaching students.

4 33. Students should be active participants in the learning process.

3 34. There are no external standards of beauty. Beauty is what an individual decides it to be.

3 35. We can place a lot of faith in our schools and teachers to determine which student
behaviors are acceptable and which are not.
3 36. Schools must provide students with a firm grasp of basic facts regarding the books,
people, and events that have shaped the Filipino heritage.
2 37. Philosophy is ultimately at least a practical a subject to study as is computer science.

4 38. Teachers must stress for students the relevance of what they are learning for their lives
outside, as well as inside the classroom.

4 39. It is more important for a student to develop a positive self- concept than to learn
specific concept.

3 40. Learning is more effective when students are given frequent tests to determine what
they have learned.

Note
Photocopy two copies of this instrument. Request two teachers to answer the remaining
questionnaire. Tabulate all the answers in the Matrix provided.

Now that you have responded to all 40 times, write the number of the response to each
statement in the matrix below. Add the numbers in each column to determine your attitude and
those of the two teachers toward key educational philosophies.

Among the three of you, who is more inclined to be an essentialist, perennialist,

progressivist, essentialist or behaviourist?
I and the teacher number 1 are the one who are inclined to be more essentialists.
Teacher number 2 is the one who is incline to be more perennialists.
Teacher number 1 is the one who got the total of 30 is incline to be more progressivist.
I got a point of 24 which indicated that I am inclining to be an essentialist.
Teacher number 1 got the highest with 25 as the total score which indicates that she is
inclined to be a behaviourist teacher.
 The Observations
Visit a teacher in a school and observe what school/classroom activities reflect his/her
philosophy of education while she is teaching. Identify and describe teachers action or behavior
and match each with the identified educational philosophy.

1. Observed actions of a teacher who is a progressivist:

Progressivist teachers teach to develop learners into becoming enlightened and
intelligent citizens of a democratic society. This definition was seen when Mr. Eusebio teach
by the integration of technology in his English class. He is a teacher who accepts the
impermanence of life and the inevitability of change. He changes his way of teaching into
new way and never fully still adopting the characteristics of a traditional teacher.

2. Observed actions of a teacher who is a behaviourist.

Behaviorist teachers are concerned with the modification and shaping and
shaping of students behavior by providing for a favorable environment, since they
believe that they are product of their environment. The integration of values education in
the clas of Mrs. Cruzada is an example of shaping the childrens behavior. It helped he
students to exhibit desirable behavior when they are in the room.
 My Reflections
Based on your concrete experience and the actions of the teacher you have observed, how
important is your philosophy of education to your future career as a teacher? How would your
experiences and observations contribute to your becoming a teacher?

These philosophies of educations were my pillars when I will become a teacher soon.
These will guide me on how to be an effective teacher to the children with different
norms, belief and behavior. My experiences and observations contribute to my
becoming a teacher in the sense that these experiences and observations will help me
to decide whether I will imitate, modify or will not imitate those experiences and
observation when I will be handling my class soon.

The teachers priority is in order the students to learn. And these learning can be
achieve when the philosophy of education that you believe is befitting to your
students who has individual differences.
.

My Affirmed Concepts
Identify at least three concepts learned in your previous subject like The
Teaching Profession which are related to the Experiential Learning Episode 3 (Teaching
Belief/Philosophy) that are confirmed or affirmed in this activity? Enumerate.

1. Affirmed Concept 1
Knowledge isnt thing that can be simply deposited by the teacher into the empty
minds of the learners. Rather, knowledge is constructed by learners through an active,
mental process of development; learners are the builders and creators of meaning and
knowledge. Their minds are not empty. Instead their minds are full of ideas waiting to be
midwifed by the teacher with his/her skillful facilitating skills.

2. Affirmed Concept 2
The teacher, as a facilitator of learning will just facilitate in whatever activity
they have. If we let the students to manipulate the things around them in order to learn,
it exhibits experiential learning. These experiences are foundations of their ability to
apply certain actions to the things around them for the solutions of problems.

3. Affirmed Concept 3
The questionnaires that I gave to the teachers wherein, there, it was listed their
few experiences that will help me to define their level in a specific attribute were like an
experiential assessment. The questionnaires tell some descriptions that they may check
if it agrees to them.
 My Future Application
Using the first hand experiences in this activity, how will I use these when I
become a teacher in the future?

1. In teaching learning I need to select an appropriate philosophy of education based on the

students preference. It is important to give more emphasis to a kind of philosophy to use to
achieve a more effective and effective teaching and transfer of learning.

2. In addressing diversity learners a teacher should consider multicultural approach in which he

teach impartially based on the students individual differences, their norms, beliefs and laws.
Just like in the issue of religion for example, I should not organize an activity in the
classroom that contradicts the belief of one student or of the others.

3. In creating a conducive learning environment I should consider that the environment is one of the
factors that affect the childrens way of learning. Conducive leaning environment help
students to participate actively in some activities during classes. Somehow, teacher is still
the focal person on how to organize a class that is effective no matter what environment is.