The Teaching Philosophy: An Opportunity to Guide … - five educational philosophies

---

• (1) five educational philosophies introduction
• (2) five philosophies of teaching
• (3) educational philosophies chart
• (4) the 5 philosophies of education

The Teaching Philosophy: An Opportunity to Guide Practice or an Exercise in Futility?
Stacia M. Stribling
George Mason University
Elizabeth K. DeMulder
George Mason University
Sandra Barnstead
George Mason University
Laura Dallman
George Mason University
Abstract
This conceptual essay explores the role a teaching philosophy plays in the experiences of K-12
classroom teachers who are firmly established in a school context. We draw on our experiences as in-
service teacher educators and K-12 teachers to examine the extent to which teachers make decisions that
are grounded in a well-thought out and clearly articulated belief system about teaching and learning.
We argue that there are often tensions and disconnections between teachers' fundamental beliefs about
teaching and learning and the realities of current mandates and imposed expectations.
Keywords: teacher professional development, teaching philosophy
37
The Teaching Philosophy: An Opportunity to Guide Practice or an Exercise in Futility?
The majority of pre-service teachers do not complete their teacher training without first writing a
Teaching Philosophy Statement. This assignment affords new teachers the opportunity to articulate their
beliefs and understandings about effective teaching and learning by including descriptive examples of
how they teach and by providing theory and research-based justifications for why they make particular
pedagogical decisions. While the final product is useful for job applications and interviews, it is the
reflective process used to create the document that is expected to serve the teacher well in guiding their
day-to-day work in the classroom. In fact, Goodyear and Allchin (1998) contend that this statement is a
living document that should be used throughout one's teaching career to drive and to continually
reassess teaching goals. They state:
In preparing a statement of teaching philosophy, [teachers] assess and examine themselves to
articulate the goals they wish to achieve in teaching. . . . A clear vision of a teaching philosophy
provides stability, continuity, and long-term guidance. . . . A well-defined philosophy can help them
remain focused on their teaching goals and to appreciate the personal and professional rewards of
teaching (Goodyear & Allchin, 1998, pp. 106-7).
As in-service teacher educators and K-12 teachers, we wondered about the role a teaching
philosophy plays in the experiences of K-12 classroom teachers who are firmly established in a school
context. The little research that has been conducted in this area is inconclusive. Some studies show that
teachers' beliefs and practices are not in alignment (Polly & Hannafin, 2011; Wilcox-Herzog, 2002),
whereas other evidence suggests that teachers' beliefs and practices are concordant (Tsai, 2008).
Ultimately, the relationship between teachers' beliefs and practices is complex and, as Basturkmen
(2012) found in a review of the research related to the work of language teachers, is mediated by
38
contexts and constraints. Therefore we wondered whether, once in the classroom, teachers experienced
any tensions or disconnections between their fundamental beliefs about teaching and learning and the
realities of current mandates and imposed expectations.
Our Context and Experiences
Author 1 and Author 2 teach in a Master's Degree program that is designed to develop in-service
teachers' capacities to engage in critical pedagogy and critical literacy, school-based and community-
based inquiry, collaboration, teacher leadership and continuous improvement. The teaching philosophies
of the faculty in this program are strongly rooted in social change, humanistic and progressive
approaches, though the concern in exploring the teachers' philosophies was not to measure the extent to
which they conformed to the program ideals. Rather, the purpose was to understand the extent to which
teachers make decisions that are grounded in a well-thought out and clearly articulated belief system
about teaching and learning.
From July 2011 through July 2013 the faculty worked with 41 graduate students who were
enrolled in this cohort-based program and who had been teaching in K-12 settings for anywhere from 2-
20 years. As part of their focus on teacher leadership, the teachers read Awakening the Sleeping Giant:
Helping Teachers Develop as Leaders by Katzenmeyer and Moller (2009). Time was spent reflecting on
what it means to be a teacher leader, examining assumptions about leadership, and developing the skills
to lead from within the classroom. Katzenmeyer and Moller (2009) suggest a development model for
teacher leadership that begins with teachers doing a personal assessment to better understand themselves
in relation to others as both teachers and leaders. Part of this personal assessment is to examine their
belief systems about teaching and learning by completing a Philosophy of Education Inventory (PEI)
developed by Lorraine Zinn (1999). This inventory contains 15 sentence stems with five phrases to
39


What are the different philosophy of Education? What are the different types of educational philosophy? There are four different types of educational philosophies: Perennialism, Essentialism, Progressivism, and Social reconstuctionism. There are also five classroom applications that help teachers decide which philosophies are used while they teach.

• The Educational Philosophies Of Training And Development
• The Educational Philosophies Of Training And Development
• Examining Graduate Students Philosophies of Education: An …
• The Educational Philosophies Of Training And Development
• Educational Philosophies Definitions and …