Friday, August 26, 2016

Contemporary/ Modern Philosophies of Education ( Idealism, Experimentalism and Pragmatism, Progressivism, Existentialism)

IDEALISM

Basic Features/ Principles of Idealism

1. It is a philosophy that proclaims the spiritual nature of men and the universe.
2. Its basic viewpoint stresses the human spirit, soul or mind as the most important element in life.
3. It holds that the good, true and beautiful are permanently part of the structure of a related coherent,  orderly, and unchanging universe.
4. Reality is reducible to one fundamental substance- spirit. Matter is not real. It is only the mind is real.

Aims of Education

1. To contribute to the development of mind and self, the school should emphasize                                   intellectual abilities, moral, judgments, aesthetics, self-realization, individual freedom,                    individual responsibility and self- control.

2. Character Development
            Wisdom
            Moral conviction
            Good will
            Loyalty

Curriculum

1. A body of intellectual subject matter which is ideational and conceptual on subjects which are essential for the realization of mental and moral development.
2. Subject matter should be made constant for all.
3. Mathematics, history, and literature rank high in relevance since they are not only cognitive but value-laden.
             *value-laden - presupposing the acceptance of a particular set of values.
4. Materials that promote “critical thinking.”
5. Focus on reading and writing.
6. Reading materials should foster discussion of “big ideas.”
7. Classic works are favored because they have passed the test of time.
8. Student writing should emphasize both personal expression and clear reasoning.

Methodology

 1. The instruction should encourage accumulation of knowledge and thinking. It must also                       apply criteria for moral evaluation.

 2. Learning process is made efficient by the stimulation which comes from the teacher and                      school environment.

 3. The teacher should be conversant with a variety of methods and should use the particular           method that is most effective in securing the desired results.

 4. Questioning, discussion and lecturing.

 5. Projects can be done individual or in group.

Role of the Teacher

1. Role of the Teacher: to analyze and discuss ideas with students so that students can move to new levels of awareness so that they can ultimately be transformed, abstractions dealt with through the dialectic, but should aim to connect analysis with action.

2. Role of the teacher is to bring out what is already in student’s mind: reminiscence

Teacher-Learner Relationship

1. The teacher must be excellent mentally and morally in personal conduct and convictions.

2. Creative in providing opportunities for pupil’s mind to analyze, discover, synthesize and create.

3. The teacher should see his role in assisting the learner to realize the fullness of his own personality.

Proponents

                                                                Plato
                                                                Augustine
                                                                Rene Descartes
                                                                Immanuel Kant
                                                     Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Experimentalism and Pragmatism

Basic Features/ Principles of Experimentalism and Pragmatism

1. Experience anything to learn it.

2. Education should be a study of social problems and how it is solved.


3. Students shouldn’t be taught what to think, But HOW to think.

4. The Experimentalism and Pragmatism reject the dualism that separates the perceiver from the object that is perceived. Man is both in the world of his perception and of the world of his perception. All that can be known is dependent upon experience. This      experiencing of phenomena determines knowledge. Because the phenomena are       constantly changing, it follows that knowledge and truth must similarly be changing. Truth is something that happens to an idea. Whatever is considered true today must   also be considered as possibly changing tomorrow.

5. Believes that things are constantly changing. It is based on the view that reality is what works right now and that goodness comes from group decisions. As a result, schools exist to discover and expand the society we live in. Students study social experiences and solve problems.

Aims of Education

1. Education must teach one how to think so that one can adjust to an ever-changing society. The school must aim at developing those experiences that will enable one to lead a good life. These objectives include:
            1.  Good health.
            2.  Vocational skills.
            3.  Interests and hobbies for leisure living.
            4.  Preparation for parenthood.
            5.  Ability to deal effectively with social problems
2. Additional specific goals must include an understanding of the importance of democracy. Democratic government enables each citizen to grow and live through the social interaction that takes place with other citizens. Education must help its students become excellent citizens in the democracy.

Curriculum

1. Social heritage of the past is not the focus of educational interest. Rather, the focus is for the good life now and in the future. The standard of social good is constantly being tested  and verified through changing experiences; therefore, education must work to preserve democracy. The nature of this democracy is dynamic and changing as a result of its continually undergoing reconstructive experiences. However, this reconstruction does not demand or include total change. Only the          serious social problems of society are re-examined in order to arrive at new solutions.

2. The curriculum of the education imparting institution must not exist apart from the social context. The subject matter of education is the tool for solving individual problems and as the individual learner is improved or reconstructed, society is improved in similar fashion. Therefore, the problems of democratic society must form the basis of the curriculum; and the means to resolve the problems of democratic institutions must also be included in the curriculum.

                Therefore, there must be:

            1. A social basis to the curriculum.
            2. Opportunity to practice democratic ideals.
            3. Democratic planning at every level of education.
            4. Group definition of common social goals.
            5. Creative means to develop new skills.
            6. Activity-centered and pupil-centered curriculum.

Methodology

1. The teaching-learning method just described is the method of problem solving.                                    Experimentalists and Pragmatists are committed to the use of the problem-solving inquiry                    and discovery method.

                This approach to teaching requires that a teacher must be:

            1.      Permissive.                     6.      Creative.
            2.      Friendly.                         7.      Socially aware.
            3.      A guide.                          8.      Alert.
            4.      Open-minded.                9.      Patient.
            5.      Enthusiastic.                  10.  Cooperative and sincere.
                       
Role of the Teacher

1. In Experimentalism and Pragmatism, learning is always considered to be an individual matter. Teachers ought not to try to pour the knowledge they have into the learners, because such efforts are fruitless. What each learner learns depends upon his own personal needs, interests, and problems. In other words, the content of knowledge is not an end in itself but a means to an end. Thus, a learner who is faced by a problem may be able to reconstruct his environment so as to solve this felt need.

2. Provide experiences that will excite motivation. Field trips, films, records, and guest experts are examples of activities designed to awaken learner interest in an important problem.

3. Guide the learner into formulating a specific definition of the problem. Because each learner approaches the problem from his own experiential background, the teachers should encourage the learners to formulate their own aims and goals.

4. Plan with the class the individual and group objectives to be used in solving the problem.
5. Assist the learners in collecting the information pertaining to the problem. Essentially, the teacher serves as a guide by introducing skills, understandings, knowledge, and appreciations through the use of books, compositions, letters, resource speakers, films, field trips, television, or anything else that may be appropriate.

6. Evaluate with the class what was learned; how they learned it; what new information occurred; what each learner discovered for himself.

Proponents

                                                                       John Dewey
                                                                Charles Sanders Pierce
                                                                     William James
                                                                     Richard Rorty


Progressivism

Basic Features/ Principles of Progressivism

1. Education should focus on the whole child, rather than on the content or the teacher.

2. The students should test ideas by active experimentation. Learning is rooted in the questions of learners that arise through experiencing the world.

3. Individuality, progress, and change are fundamental to one's education. Believing that                           people learn best from what they consider most relevant to their lives.

4. Learning should center on the child’s interests and needs.

Aims of Education

1. The aim of progressive education is to meet the needs of a growing child. The school should be a pleasant place for learning, while progressivists differed in many of their theories and practices, they were united in their opposition to the following:

            1. Extreme reliance on bookish methods of instruction.

            2. Obtaining learning by memorization of factual data.

            3. The use of fear as a form of discipline; and

            4. The four-walled philosophy of education that isolated the school from the realities  of life.

            5. “Learning by Doing”

Curriculum

1. Progressivists were not interested in a prepared, prescribed curriculum to transmit knowledge to students. Rather the curriculum was to come from the child so that learning would be active, exciting and varied.

2. Child-centered curriculum.

3. The content of the subject matter was done by the teacher and the students as a group project or cooperative efforts.

4. The teacher served as facilitator.

            Progressive education left a legacy characterized by:

            1. Emphasis on the child as the learner, rather than on the subject matter.
            2. Stress on activities and experiences, rather on textbook reliance and memorization.
            3. Cooperative learning, rather than competitive lesson learning.
            4. Absence of fear and punishment for disciplinary purposes.

Methodology

1. Discovery, Inquiry, Experimentation, Field Work, Project Method

2. Discussion, Demonstration, Group Work

3. Role Play, Simulation, Drama, Debate

            * Discovery/ Inquiry – the learner has to find knowledge using his own ways, under teacher’s guidance of knowledge.

            *Students actively participate in their own learning through encountering real life situations in which they get first hand situation.

            *Role Play advocates creativity in students which help to keep alive the interest of the class and relieve the monotony of the lecture method. It also provides a life sample of human behavior that serves a vehicle for pupils to explore their feelings and gaining sight into attitudes and ways.

            *Discussion/ Lecture method- it is a superior technique for demonstrating models and clarifying matters to students.

            *It can effectively introduce and summarize major concepts.


Role of the Teacher

1. The teacher serves as a guide and facilitator of learning by assisting students to sample                         direct experience.
2. The teacher works beyond the individual in the classroom. This kind of teacher would be                      good with making group decisions and keeping in their mind the consequences for the                          students and how it may or may not benefit them. The teacher's role is to help his or her students        acquire the values of the democratic system. 

Proponents

                                                                John Dewey
                                                               William Heard Kilpatrick
                                                               Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi

Existentialism

Basic Features/ Principles of Existentialism

1. Existentialism is a way of viewing and thinking about life in the world so that priority is                           given to individualism and subjectivity.
            *Individualism is a moral, political or social outlook that stresses human independence and the importance of individual self-reliance and liberty. 
            *Subjectivity is a central philosophical concept related to consciousness, agency, personhood, reality and truth.

2. Human being is the creator of his own essence; he creates his own values through freedom or individual preference.

3. The most important kind of knowledge is about the realities of human life and the choices that each person has to make.

4. Education is the process of developing awareness about the freedom of choice and the meaning of responsibility for one’s choice.

Aims of Education

1. Education should cultivate an intensity of awareness in the learner.

2. Students should learn to recognize that as individual they are constant, free, baseless, and creative.

3. Education should be concerned with effective experiences, with these elements of experience               which are subjective and personal.

Curriculum

1. Subjects are merely tools for the realization of subjectivity.

2. Learning is not found in the structure of knowledge nor in organized discipline, but in the student’s willingness to choose and give meaning to the subject.

3. Literature and the humanities are important in the curriculum.

4. Literature is useful and relevant for awakening choice-making in basic human concerns.

5. History is important in finding out how men in the past have faced and answered recurrent human questions like guilt, love, suffering or freedom.
5. Arts stimulate aesthetic expression, not merely imitate styles of selected models.
6. Humanistic studies are rich sources of ethical values.

Methodology

1. The existentialist aims to develop a sense of awareness and responsibility in students.
2. The teacher may choose a variety of methods but not obscuring the teacher and learner relationship.
3. Children are individuals. No two children are alike; therefore they are going to learn differently. Education should accommodate these needs and students should be encouraged to do things because they want to do them.

4. There should be freedom of choice, spontaneous play, open expression of feelings, and student participation in the democratic control over community life in the school.

5. There should be diversity in the curriculum and in the manner in which things are taught.

6. Teachers should treat students humanely, as people, not objects. A relationship should be developed between the student and the teacher in order to promote the goals of education.

7. Existentialists believed that the authority/control method of teaching tends to prohibit the         attainment of knowledge.

Role of the Teacher

1. In the existentialist world the role of the teacher is to provide diversification within the    curriculum to the individual learners. Each child as an individual has a unique way of learning. When discussing types of teaching methods to be used, one size does not fit all learners.

2. The teacher needs to focus on children as individuals and interact with them as "subjects" and not "objects", personalities and not numbers. 

3. The teacher has permission to become the learner and the learner to become the teacher. But because the teacher has more experience in life perceptions, it is her job to promote an awareness of the possibilities of the world through openness to past, present, and future possibilities. Teaching children to communicate through effective language practices becomes very important as children to learn to communicate effectively for true self expression. The teacher is an "enabler who helps the student appropriate, internalize, and make over."

Proponents

     Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
Martin Buber  (1878-1965)
     Martin Heidegger (1889 - 1976)
Jean-Paul Sarte (1905-1980)



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