Chapter Summary: Finding Your Philosophy Of Education

Chapter six was titled “Philosophy of Education”. When I started reading this chapter the first major component that I noticed, is the section titled “Finding Your Philosophy of Education”. I found this section to be quite important because until now I didn’t really think I had a philosophy on education, and this section in a way helped me to better understand myself and my philosophy on education. While reading this section I took the small little test to see where I more likely stand with the philosophy of education. There are five philosophies of education that this section talks about. Out of the five the one that I scored highest on was progressivism. Progressivism “organizes schools around the concerns, curiosity, and real-world experiences

I also really liked how the book explained what a progressivism classroom would look like. “Walk into a progressivism classroom and you will not find a teacher standing in front of the classroom talking to rows of seated students. Rather you will likely see children working in small groups, moving about the classroom and talking freely.”(pg 167) I really like how it’s a little different from the traditional classroom. This style veers away from the traditional lecturing teacher. The philosophy that I scored the lowest on was existentialism. Existentialism “asserts that the purpose of education is to help children find the meaning and direction in their lives, and it rejects the notion that adults should or could direct meaningful learning for children.” This approach was not one that I liked because it doesn’t seem to be family oriented and seems to almost block families out. After reading through the five different philosophies I now see the importance of knowing what kind of philosophy of education that I like and support. I think this helps me to know myself better as a future educator. It also helps me to be a little more open minded to other philosophies of education because everyone is

I found this section to be important because it shows a few other forces that shape schools beside just the philosophies of education. This section talks about constructivism which “asserts that knowledge cannot be handed from one person to another, but must be constructed by each learner through interpreting and reinterpreting a constant flow of in. This section also talks about behaviorism. Behaviorism is “derived from the belief that free will is an illusion and that human beings are shaped entirely by their environment.” This was an interesting thought to read about being a future educator, because I had never really thought of that concept. That children are very much so influenced by their environment and that can have a strong effect on their behavior. Thinking about this and knowing it as a future educator is important because now I have more insight on behavior and why people act the way they do. I think it is important to know about psychological influences on education because as a teacher, I feel I would deal with the aspects of psychological education a