What is a personal teaching belief?
Personal teaching beliefs are the thoughts and feelings we have about the way children learn and how we believe we should interact with them based on our own individual experiences (Knaus, M 2018).
It is our beliefs that shape our interactions with the children and the quality of our teaching (Knaus, M 2018). Through these interactions our thoughts and feelings towards learning such as joy or anxiety can be subconsciously communicated to the children. This can lead to children developing similar feelings of joy or anxiety towards their own learning (Knaus, M 2018).
Our beliefs are created through our own subjective experiences (Knaus, M 2018). These can be influenced by our own teachers, whether or not
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This has greatly influenced my beliefs on teaching practices as I personally believe it to be more engaging than the practices that my educators used.
My personal teaching beliefs and practices include:
1. The environment is a third teacher: Mathematics should be included throughout all parts of the children’s environment not just part of their ‘Maths lesson” (Knaus, M 2015).
This idea is a part of Piaget’s cognitive developmental theory (Berk L, 2012) which suggests that children’s interactions with their environment, such as manipulating and exploring various objects allows children to actively construct knowledge (Berk L, 2012). This theory is also used within the Reggio Emilia approach [ACECQUA], 2016), and has also been incorporated into the national quality framework under quality area three which states ‘physical spaces hold the potential to influence what and how children learn’ (Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality authority [ACECQUA], 2016, p.
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You ask the child what he is doing and he explains that he is collecting them because he thinks they are pretty, and would like to take them home to show his family. You then explain to child that they are “pretty” because they have a pattern. You can then explore the idea of “pattern” with the child and the rest of the class, through an activity such as allowing the children to paint the leaves and print them on paper to better be able to see the patterns of the leaves. This example takes an object found within the environment by the child, and uses its properties to explore a mathematical