Four Major Educational Philosophies Handout Analysis

The handout on the Overview of Four Major Educational Philosophies, gave an excellent overview of the major philosophies. It shows that each educational philosophy has a philosophical base, aim of education, a role for the educator, and a curriculum focus. Reconstructionism is aimed to improve society; the focus is that the student will become focused on all of society’s problems (p.1). Progressivism is used to help students learn through methods of problem solving and scientific inquiry, the roots of this philosophy are grounded in a belief that educational and democracies were meant to be taught together (p.1). The aim of essentialism is to promote intellectual growth. This is accomplished by acquiring essential skills, such as reading, writing, and math (p.1). One of the oldest

The three major learning theories are behavioral, cognitive, and humanistic. All three are very different from one another. The behavioral theory has three distinct features; the first feature is that it is observable behavior (p.4). The second feature is that the environment shapes one’s behavior (p.4). People will learn by doing and observing things within their environment. The last feature deals with reinforcement of appropriate behavior. Reinforcement and feedback are essential for leaning to occur (p.4). Cognitive theory is a bit different from behavioral in that theorists believe that cognitive learning occurs in a slow and steady progression and learning is a result of interactions between potential and the environment (p.5). Piaget who is one of the most famous cognitive psychologists developed the four stages of cognitive growth. The stages are sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operations, and formal operations (p.5). The last theory is humanistic. This theory looks at learning from a human growth viewpoint. Learners are looked at as individuals who have diverse needs, abilities and varying intelligence