Philosophy of Education Essay

It was Chesterton, an slope essayist, who once said that the most practical thing active a man is his view of the universe his rail of thought (Hocking 4).  Mans ism is generally referred to as the sum of all his beliefs and views about the world which slip away his actions.  His beliefs comprise all those judgments, whether they be based on convictions or impressions, which he habitually lives by.During the pre-service education and throughout the breeding c argonr, instructors give have to aspect up to what it means to live and to memorize in a gild that gives the individual freedom to hold different beliefs and values.  In this beau monde there seems to be no single right way of thinking about and doing things in education.  How instructors deal with school matters objectives, contents, and methods depend truly much on their own individual beliefs and values.  They should be willing to take responsibility for give their own answers to legi on(predicate) problems they will meet in their schoolrooms regarding goals and values, and ways of hearing their students.1. Organizing your classroom & materials.The instructor in the classroom is a original manager.  The success of the activities in the classroom depends on the ability of the inculcateer as classroom manager.  He is at the helm of all activities, and these activities will bring home the bacon depending on how head he can steer and guide them properly.  wiz of the most difficult problems that confront a beginning teacher is classroom management.  Unfortunately, he does not learn techniques of proper classroom management from books.  He merely gets suggestions on how to mange a class, but there is nothing same(p) tenet experience that will really teach him all the tricks of classroom management.Hence, classroom management is one of the master(prenominal) concerns of teachers, administrators, and parents.   If the school is t o live up to the communitys expectation that it is a erudition-producing enterprise, the individual classrooms which comprise the school must contribute to the schools educational productivity. Learning is the rally goal of the total school operation, and teaching is the schools canonical production technique.  Effective teaching and stiff study take push through in well-managed classrooms. When class clock time is consumed by management problems, students are the stomachrs, for brusk real get downment takes place.  As all(prenominal) teacher copes, good classroom management is one of the strongest influences on academic eruditeness.2. Choosing rules & procedures.A well managed classroom is hardly possible without laws, regulations, and conventions.  The classroom in itself is a society and needs its own rules and regulations to keep peace and harmony within it.  definite classroom activities can be made automatic in the champion that they can be p erformed without much thought, especially when they have be enumerate habitual.  such(prenominal) activities, we say, have become routinized.  It is apparent that routinizing classroom rules and procedures can help the teacher a lot in classroom management.  There are no hard-and-fast rules as to which activities can be reduced to routine.  Routinizing would depend on such factors as size of the class, the spirit of students, materials available, arrangement of equipment, and the like.There are certain advantages in routinizing classroom rules and procedures and these are economy in time and effort, prevent confusion, and promote learning activity.  Much time is wasted on administrative activities that are not handled in a well-organized manner.  Activities that are replicateedly done may well be routinized so that pupils will know exactly what should be done.Some disadvantages should, however, be mentioned if routine factors are overmechanized.  If eve ry little activity in the classroom is mechanized, no room for porta is left to the pupils.  They may behave like automatons and certainly creativity is destroyed.  The teacher is reduced to an autocratic general and the pupils are regimented soldiers who merely clench for the chiefs signal or command.  Such a touch leads to blind obedience and acceptance of rules and procedures.  This type of atmosphere must be avoided by the teacher.Certain classroom rules and procedure, though, can be routinized so that to a greater extent time can be devoted or allotted to much significant activities.  Among these activities are the roll calls, seating, handling materials and devices, classroom courtesies, and responses to the bell signals. The main goal here is to save time and effort.  Pupils should be made to make and learn the value of time.  The old saying that time is gold should be pinchly impressed on the minds of children.3. Managing student work.One as pect of classroom management deals with managing student work.  The teacher takes full charge of the learning office staff should manipulate the learner and the situation to arouse the desired learning.  Managing implies arranging the learning situation so that the learner comes eccentric to look with the stimulating problem.  piece of music it is true that most teaching tends to foster teacher domination, manipulation, an intervention kinda than the development of a genuine share relationship, teachers can learn to die hard less and get students to participate more(prenominal).  It is good practice for teachers not to repeat their chiefs, answer their own hesitancys, or repeat answers of students.Some teachers tend to be autocratic or authoritarian.  Experience and research findings show that democratic teachers produce better learning results than those who dominate, control, or manipulate learning situations.  Teachers should determine the psyc hological needs of their students and adapt their teaching styles accordingly.  The teacher who encourages a two-way chat in the classroom insures a favorable teaching-learning climate.  To understand better the complexities of learning and classroom style, classrooms must be pupil centered rather than teacher centered.4. Getting off to a good start.Getting off a good start requires careful attending to how teachers teach rules and procedures to their classes.  The tone of the class is set by the personal disposition that a teacher displays.  A teacher should bring a cheerful, pleasant and corroboratory disposition to the classroom.  Once inside the room, a teachers face must be lit with joy to brighten the atmosphere.  Then, a teacher should take the necessary time during the first day of class to hunt carefully your expectations for behavior and work.  Teachers should not be in a advance to get started on content activities that teaching good beh avior is neglected.  Rather, flux learning about procedures, rules, and course requirements with your initial content activities in fix to build the foundation for the whole year program.5. Planning & conducting instruction. safe as good classroom management enhances instruction by helping to create a good environment for learning, so too does in force(p) instruction contribute to well-managed classroom.  With the change of emphasis on educational objectives, with the inclusion of more outcomes learning, with the focus on the child as the most key factor in the educational process, the concept of conducting instruction has likewise change and broadened.  In recent years, juvenileer and more informal methods of instruction have come about.  Current practices have gradually replaced the undesirable features of so-called lesson hearing instruction.  This is due(p) in part to the gradual acceptance of the stark nakeder philosophy of education, i.e. educat ion is not merely a process of learning facts and storing knowledge, but it is concerned with the many sided development of the individual social, emotional, and mental- including he ability to meet social needs.6. Managing accommodative learning groups.Cooperative learning in mathematicsematics is essential if math teachers are to promote the goals of problem-solving competency, ability to declare mathematically, ability to reason mathematically, valuing of mathematics, and assumption in ones ability to apply mathematics, and self-confidence in ones ability to apply mathematical knowledge to new problem situations in ones world.  Although competitive and individualistic assignments should at times be given (even though they place students in the role of being passive recipients of information), the dominant goal structure in math should be cooperative.There are a number of fairly uncomplicated ways teachers may begin to use cooperative learning in mathematics classes, inc luding having students turn to their partners to decide on an answer to a question or having students work in pairs to check each others homework, pretends far more than simply assigning students to groups and telling them to work together.The teachers role in structuring learning situations cooperatively involves clearly specifying the objectives for the lesson, placing students in learning groups and providing appropriate materials, clearly explaining the cooperative goal structure and learning task, monitoring students as they work, and evaluating students performance.  Teaching students the required interpersonal and small-group skills can be done simultaneously with teaching academic material.  In order to halt the long-term implementation and in-classroom help and assistance needed to gain expertness in cooperative learning, teachers need support groups made up of colleagues who are also committed to mastering cooperative learning.7. Maintaining appropriate stude nt behavior.A number of educators have formulated some suggestions on ways to take hold good classroom student behavior.  The suggestions range from how to encourage students to behave and how to develop and oppose a positive approach to classroom management.  Some of these suggestions unremarkably used in the classrooms are (1) Act as if you expect students to be orderly from the first day on (2) Expect everyones attention before starting to teach.  Stop when there is noise.  Dont teach over individual or group chatter (3) dont talk too much as after a while, you lose the students attention.  Involve the students in activities, ask questions, pose problems, etc. (4)  Hold students responsible for abiding by rules.8. Communication skills for teachers.Making a lesson presentation essentially requires mastery and understanding of goals, skills and criteria for effective communication.  Communication skills is also at the very core of effective teaching .  As most teacher would agree that to communicate well is to teach well.  In the skillful use of the question more than anything else lies the fine art of teaching for in it we have the guide to clear and vivid ideas, and the quick spur to imagination, the stimulus to thought, the incentive to action.9. Managing problem behavior.It has been accentuate time and again that good classroom discipline is indispensable to an effective learning situation.  All teachers, old or young, old or new in the service, are faced with problems of discipline. It is true that some teachers can maintain better discipline than can others. It is suggested that the best approach should be positive rather than negative.  The best measure should be preventive rather than remedial.  An oz. of prevention is worth a pound of cure, so the saying goes.  This byword is exactly what should guide the teacher.  Knowing the possible causes of disciplinary problems, the teacher should h and to eliminate them.10. Managing special groups.One of the special challenges a teacher should face is managing special groups successfully.  Of course, these groups have an impact on the management of student behavior as well as on instruction.  Experience have proven that attempting to cope with these special groups by using many different assignments, providing an individualized, self-paced program, or using small group instruction extensively in subsidiary school increases the complexity of classroom management, requires a great deal of grooming and preparation, and require instructional materials that are not readily available.  So, rather than fixing the instructional approach, experienced teachers provide for different levels of student ability by supplementing their whole-class instruction with limited use of special materials, activities , assignments, and small group work. So, to the question of which administrative procedure is most effective in managing special groups, sole(prenominal) one answer can be given.  All can be effective if used with discretion and with the right children.ConclusionThe teachers total philosophy of life cannot be separated from his philosophy of education, his learning theory, and his methods of teaching.  In other words, how he thinks about his work and the way he performs his functions as a teacher are derived from what he believes about the nature of the world, knowledge, and values. In philosophical terms, his world-view lies in the realm of the metaphysical, his knowledge-view in the epistemological, and his values in the axiological.  These are the philosophies which teachers consciously or unconsciously deal with in the teaching world.Every committed teacher tries to work out his own philosophy of education, clarifies his beliefs and ideals to make his teaching meaningful to himself and to his students.  Without a philosophy of education, the teacher will be easily swayed by fads i n education.  Because his life and work involve making choices and decisions, the teacher cannot avoid having a philosophy.  Even when courses of study are dictated, he always has the freedom to decide how he will teach and to select the contents and methods of teaching.