My personal philosophy about educational process is to gear a system that facilitates students’ learning. Learning as is understood by an enrichment of their previous knowledge, significantly linked personal experiences that they may keep it permanently and apply in the future. Those approaches are my understanding of the Transformative Learning Theory by Jack Mezirow. This theory is the framework that I have in mind because the subjacent goal of teaching is to make autonomous thinkers ready to interact successfully in a social and working environment.
However, following the latest research on teaching, to obtain these outcomes depends on three main factors (Woolfolk, 2006 p.510): 1. The teacher instructional support 2. The teacher emotional support 3. The classroom organization behavior First of all, the teacher instructional strategies are based, mainly, on cognitive development theories. Of those, Piaget’s stated that the cognitive development, more or less, has predictable sequences that guide how the children and teenagers analyze and build knowledge. With those sequences he establishes four universal stages; each characterized by increasingly sophisticated and abstract levels of thought.
Using that paradigm, Jeanne Ormrod’s described the following conclusions about children’ learning: • Each age has a different way of thinking. They are active meaning-makers. Their cognitive development is building base on their prior knowledge. • Learning requires practice and feedback. Challenging promotes growth on cognitive development. The cognitive development theories are the teaching’s base because to know what is “typical” is the base for designing the strategies for an academic achievement. Therefore, as a teacher, this point of view is very useful in the beginning of each lesson and to scaffold it through formative assessments and questioning.
The following are some examples of how I could use the cognitive theories in my classroom:•To assess the students’ previous knowledge before teaching a new peace of content •To use formative assessments to place students in new activities and choose strategies to reteach the content or to present the next activities. • To use Bloom’s Taxonomy –as a cognitive theory that associates cognition’s stages with action words– to describe the activities and guide the questions through which I develop the lecture. • To drive students to the accommodation process by connecting the new content with their prior knowledge, and building it by induction or deduction (abstract thinking).
In second place, and understanding learning and teaching as a holistic process, I consider the Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences Theory as an indivisible complement of cognitive development theories. Time changes faster and continuously, the world is globalized, and consequently the society and children dance in concordance. Actually, at the schools, there is the mandatory motto “No Child Left Behind Act”, students are from different countries and cultures, conscientious about their own interests, motivations, and learning’s path. With that reality on the classroom, I think that Gardner’s can fit the students’ needs, appropriately. Gardner wedged that even the cognition is unitary, there are eight different and measurable intelligences with a biological basis (Woolfolk, 2013, p.120) understood it as a languages that all people speak and influenced for the culture environment (Campbell and Dickinson, 2003, p.2).
In order to that, each person has those eight intelligences, but only uses frequently two or three kinds. Campbell and Dickinson on their book Teaching and learning through multiple intelligences, (2005) offer an efficient system to identify the weak and the strong performance on each intelligence and also give recommendations to improve the student’s weakness. Multiple Intelligences theory suggests that teachers must integrate multimodal learning strategies into their lessons (Campbell and Dickinson, 2003, p.252) in order to suit the learning students’ needs (p.254). Other advantage of that theory is that facilitates the way to incorporate strategies that include the affective and psychomotor domains of learning explained by David Krathwohl and Anita Harrow, respectively.
The following are some strategies that I could use to facilitate students’ learning: • || could divide the class in the fourth predominant students’ strength intelligences: visual, linguistic, kinesthetic, and musical. For example, once the grammar rules were explained, each student could go to his/her correspondent station to make some work that allows them to incorporate, on their own knowledge, the new content. Their strong intelligences could work as a frame to them memorize and incorporate the new content. · Students could have the opportunity to recognize their strengths and incorporate knowledge from their own background as a plus. • The assessments could be made from that perspective, allowing the students a better performance.
Finally, students present, too, behavioral needs that the process of learning must satisfy. Bandura established a direct relation of students’ learning with the concepts of self-efficacy, self- regulation, and modeling. Consequently, teaching strategies must be based on those three elements. Self-efficacy and self- regulation are an intrinsic perception that students have about themselves. So, both are subjective and different for each student, but they influence so much the learning student attitude. Self-regulation gives the students the power of be able to try. Also, Bandura stated modeling as a subjective perception that students have about what is happening. For that approach, teachers have a principal paper through ours actions. For modeling to be effective, it must be consistent and the rewards received relevant to the student.
The strategies that result from that approach are transversal to all teaching strategies. They are relevant with the way of “how”, with the way that teachers leader the class, give directions, manage emotions, solve problems and misunderstandings, etc.
On my teaching, that perspective could be used each time that: •I make high positive expectations to the whole class or each individual student · My attitude is respectful to the students and myself • I am modeling a good relationship with my students • I hope goods outcomes on the learning process • Thelp students recognize their self-efficacy as a tool to move them from an external locus of control to a high levels of self- regulation • I encourage students to state their desired grade for the subject area and the associated behaviors to it to conclude, my teaching philosophy about learning strategies is a system that from considering the developmental, cognitive, and effective stage of each student, and also their differences processing information, allows an adequate students’ learning aligned with the common core standards.
In addition, those teaching strategies will facilitate students’ intrinsic locus of control and self-esteem. I believe those three approaches working together to design the class strategies are a warranty of a integrative and collaborative learning that fits the students’ knowledge considering them as a human beings, respecting their background, and helping them to lead to the next educational objective.