Creating a philosophy for education

I have finished teaching a semester of Professional Studies for pre-service teachers where the culminating performance was to write a beginning philosophy of education. I marked over 50 essays and was incredibly impressed and humbled by the collective wisdom, vision and creativity of these people who have barely dipped their toes in the water of teaching.

Many of my students committed to a path of being and becoming 'awake teachers', teaching 'who they are' with integrity, and engaging in reflective practice.

In discussing their beginning philosophy it seemed that my students tended towards taking one of three approaches. It occurred to me that each approach was a piece of the puzzle and that as educators these key three aspects could help inform us and keep our philosophy and our practice alive. It is interesting that these approaches emerged from the task and were not dictated by it.

What sort of teacher do I want to be?

A number of students pulled together a range of different teaching and learning strategies. They painted a picture of the environment they wanted to create, the relationships they want to have with the students, the experiences they would like the students to have and their teacher identity that they would like to develop.

I believe that imagining ourselves into our classrooms is a very important aspect in working out our philosophy – it uses our intuition and sense of identity to attract to us what we believe is good, true and beautiful. It is a great starting point for going deeper and looking for foundational values and what we think is the purpose of education.

Key values and ideals

Some students took a key value, like respect and dignity as the core of their teaching philosophy. They teased out the deeper meaning and potentials of these values and imagined a classroom where these values infused their own teaching presence/identity and the environment of the students. Exploring just one of these key values could be a lifetime’s work – to ask what does it mean to truly embody such a value as deeply and richly as possible.

There are many educational authors who have won fame through focussing on one thing and through that developing rich and complex philosophies that speak to many dimensions of teaching. (Eg. Nel Noddings using the idea of “care”.) Articulating a core value (or some values) and keeping them fore fronted means as we design activities or work on relationships we can ask “What does it mean if I bring in a conscious awareness of respect and dignity here?”

I tend to ask myself “What is good, true, beautiful and whole here?”

What is the purpose of education?

Some students went to the very heart of what education is for and looked for a philosophy that said something about humanity, society and education. They moved outside of the classroom into wanting to understand the bigger picture of education and its role. Students who wrote from such a perspective were able to create a coherent rationale of what they might be becoming an educator for. This question is a very important one to ask ourselves as it sets a vision. So why are you an educator? Some students were coming with a clear vision of transforming society, developing humanity etc.

Locus of awareness

When asking what our philosophy of education is, we can focus on ourselves and our identity, our classrooms, the school system, society, a sense of an evolving world… our locus of awareness at any stage can narrow or broaden. It is useful to be aware of where we are locating ourselves and to realise where else we can look and have the choice to do that.

The teachers we value

One specific part of the assignment was asking students to reflect on their past teachers who were significant to them in some way (negative or positive) and through reflecting on this to pull out key aspects that they might think are important for their own teacher selves.

Teachers that students valued listened to them, saw them, supported and encouraged them, spent extra time with them, shared a passion with them, were human and real, allowed them freedom if they needed it, gave something to them that sparked an interest, made them feel valued, enabled them to make mistakes and feel comfortable with that. Teachers they hated diminished them, used throw away comments, put them up for ridicule, misunderstood them, told them that they would never be good at XXXX.

So while many of students discussed teaching strategies of their teachers, an overwhelming conclusion was that strategies that their good teachers used are all over the spectrum – it is not the strategy that makes the teacher – the teacher makes the strategy. What students valued was not technique as much as identity – the quality of their teacher and in particular the quality of relationship that their teacher had with them.

So what is the essence of a good teacher that needs to be bottled? Quality of relationships?

So how do we keep alive our thinking about what it is we value in education? How do we consciously embody our vision? How important is it to read something inspiring, talk inspiring dialogue with a collegial community, and to record those moments with our students who have inspired us?


PHOTO: CC Pink Sherbet