{"id":145,"date":"2016-05-18T21:40:06","date_gmt":"2016-05-18T21:40:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/foundationsofedx81xmaster\/?post_type=chapter&p=145"},"modified":"2016-08-10T17:44:45","modified_gmt":"2016-08-10T17:44:45","slug":"how-do-our-values-beliefs-and-philosophies-form-our-teachers","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/suny-jefferson-principlesofeducation\/chapter\/how-do-our-values-beliefs-and-philosophies-form-our-teachers\/","title":{"raw":"How Do Our Values, Beliefs, and Philosophies Form Our Teachers?","rendered":"How Do Our Values, Beliefs, and Philosophies Form Our Teachers?"},"content":{"raw":"\r\n
The teacher-student monument in Rostock, Germany honors teachers.<\/div>\r\n
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\"In learning you will teach, and in teaching you will learn.\" \u2013\u00a0Phil Collins<\/a><\/em><\/div>\r\n

We Teach How We\u2019ve Been Taught<\/h3>\r\nThe following is the article \"We Teach How We\u2019ve Been Taught: Expeditionary Learning Unshackling Sustainability Education in U.S. Public Schools\" by Stephanie Owens, Ph.D. an educational psychologist with 18 years experience teaching in public middle school. It was originally published in the Journal of Sustainability Education Vol. 5, May 2013. Too see the full article with references you can find it by clicking this link.<\/a>\r\n\r\nMillions of youth in the United States today are mandated to go to \u201cwork\u201d daily.\u00a0 Indoor spaces, hard, plastic seats, and inauthentic menial tasks characterize their workplace.\u00a0 In a time in which the life support systems of our planet are imperiled and more humans are living in communities of poverty and violence, there exists an absurd disconnect between how education is currently practiced and the education that is needed to facilitate deep cultural revolution.\u00a0 Our teachers are taught to teach using the same irrelevant pedagogies, sitting in rows inside institutions of higher learning, taking notes, and memorizing disconnected facts for regurgitation on multiple-choice exams.\u00a0 My argument is that we are not going to be able to implement any true attempts in sustainability education without concomitant change in the way we teach teachers.\u00a0 While publicly funded schools still provide an equalizing agent to potentially provide opportunity for all children regardless of their race or social class, no school can truly educate children to meet the coming demands of our time without experiential teacher education.\u00a0 Expeditionary Learning, a national reform model for public schools, creates lasting change in the praxis of teaching by creating opportunities for teachers to learn in a different way than they have often been taught as students themselves.\u00a0 With continued coaching when they return to their classrooms, teachers are able to create learning environments embodying inquiry and authenticity so that our youth are empowered to affect societal change.\r\n

Introduction: The Perpetuation of an Antiquated Education System<\/h3>\r\n\u201cThere is no such thing as a neutral education process. Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate the integration of generations into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity to it, or it becomes the \u2018practice of freedom,\u2019 the means by which men and women deal critically with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.\u201d\r\n\u2014Jane Thompson, (as cited in Mayo, 1999, p. 5), drawing on Paulo Freire\r\n\r\nWhen I first began teaching in a college of education, my excitement hinged on modeling a different way of educating teachers \u2013 characterized by a more engaging and project-based approach.\u00a0 One afternoon, after wrapping up my class, I was walking down the broad hallway in the education building and overheard a professor say the word \u201cconstructivism.\u201d The essence of the constructivist philosophy is that teachers create an environment in which students confront new experiences and challenging questions, fostering a sense of not knowing, of disequilibrium, and motivating them to actively construct their own answers (Piaget, 1962; Vygotsky, 1985). \u00a0I looked in this classroom of higher learning and saw the professor lecturing from the podium to at least thirty underclassmen sitting in rows, facing the front of the room, and racing to take notes on constructivism in education.\u00a0 At this moment, the crux of the issue plaguing our education system became glaringly evident to me. \u00a0Constructivist teachers are expected to create the ideal classroom by providing students opportunities for engaging with ideas in authentic contexts and around productive group tasks. \u00a0If pre-service teachers have not themselves experienced a new way of learning in their training, how can they teach in a different way than stand-and-deliver?\u00a0 If we continue to educate our teachers by initiating them into the status quo, we will both continue to fail in educating our children and in initiating a revolutionary process of societal reform.\r\n\r\nWhen most teachers enter active teaching after completing their teacher education program, they are confronted with a professional landscape in which the craft and science of teaching has been removed from the teachers\u2019 domain and placed in the hands of textbook companies, online learning, and district pacing.\u00a0 I believe that many professionals unquestionably accept this state of affairs, as it is so familiar to their own education and teacher training.\u00a0 They have not been exposed to an alternative model of education. \u00a0\u00a0In conventional training programs, rigor is defined as good note-taking and test-taking skills and equates learning with knowing the right answers.\u00a0 Such narrow teacher education provides very little actual experience in providing participatory and creative learning environments or even working with children for any substantial length of time.\u00a0 Those teachers dissatisfied with the reality of teaching in our mainstream public schools, who want to experience something different for themselves and their students, often do not know where to begin.\u00a0 This obstacle is especially true for teachers committed to integrating environmental education into their curriculum.\u00a0 How can one \u201ccover\u201d the curriculum presented in standards and textbooks and have additional time to investigate environmental issues and create avenues for real student-initiated action and change?\u00a0 A certain paralysis in the craft can occur from the pressure of cramming information into students\u2019 brains, the fear of failing test scores, and the impact of performance-based merit systems on pay.\r\n\r\nA good deal of the problem may have arisen from trying to educate all students equally<\/em>, when only recently the goal of public education has become that of educating every child to the same standard.\u00a0 Like adding onto an old home where one can never escape the limitations of the original foundation, our current structures are jumbled around an archaic foundation that initially never intended to provide equal educational opportunity to all children. \u00a0In describing the history of our current system, Hess (2010) argues that recent efforts to effect reform struggle because of the early history of our education model since our country\u2019s founding.\u00a0 The social architects of this country intended for education to be provided for the sons of wealthy male landowners \u2013 period.\u00a0 The debate in the late 1700\u2019s was around how many children of poverty might be provided scholarships to attend school in order to climb the social ladder.\u00a0 Thomas Jefferson believed that, at most<\/em>, three poor boys per state should be given that chance. \u00a0At this time, a second area of contention centered upon whether or not all children should receive educational instruction in basic literacy and arithmetic to the equivalent of our 2nd<\/sup> grade.\u00a0 An argument never existed concerning whether or not all children should be given an equal<\/em> chance at advancement in society through educational opportunity.\u00a0 Mandatory public education laws did not arrive on the scene until the early portion of the 1900\u2019s when an effort by unions ended child labor, thus removing a cheap labor source from the workforce in order to create jobs and drive up pay scales for adults (Hess, 2010).\r\n\r\nEven now, with mandatory education laws enforcing school attendance for children until at least age 16 and No Child Left Behind legislation trying to require equal educational opportunity for all students, our system still engenders oppression.\u00a0 John Taylor Gatto (2005) delivers a scathing critique of our current structures for schooling, defining our public schools as \u201can essential support system for a model of social engineering that condemns most people to be subordinate stones in a pyramid that narrows as it ascends to a terminal of control\u201d (p. 13).\u00a0 Rather than guaranteeing an equitable footing for opportunity, the structures and activities within our dominant paradigm for education undermine democracy, as defined by the existence of social equality in which all members of a society have a share in producing and directing social institutions (Dewey, 1938).\u00a0 Rather, our current system functions to create a permanent underclass and transmits social inequality from one generation to the next \u2013 a force known as social reproduction (Doob, 2013).\r\n

Educating for a Consumerist Meritocracy<\/h3>\r\nThe major defining characteristic of our conventional system is that of a meritocracy.\u00a0 It works to the advantage of those people who are defined as deserving<\/em> privileged social standing \u2013 white, male, higher social classes.\u00a0 These students respond to our general philosophy of education with success.\u00a0 Simply put, the student is raw material in an industrialized process characterized by an institutional assembly line churning out finished product.\u00a0 The products, or graduates, are all educated in the same way so that information is \u201cbanked\u201d in their minds. \u00a0The modes of instruction engendered by this philosophy, such as the lecture, are only successful, as measured by the test score, for certain children of certain social demographics.\u00a0 These ways of teaching more closely match the home environments, the subculture, of children from higher social classes.\u00a0 Different communities, most easily defined by socioeconomic status, learn, use, and value language differently.\u00a0 These differences result in unique ways of using language in social control and collaboration as well as to express an individual\u2019s own identity.\u00a0 When these linguistic schemas do not match the instructional structures of schools \u2013 the manner in which information is acquired and proficiency demonstrated \u2013 then school is a poor fit and fails to meet every student\u2019s framework for learning with equal success (Heath, 1983).\u00a0 This system is a prime contributor to the maintenance of a society in which most people are oppressed, meaning that the majority of people are the workers whose primary task is to create the wealth and maintain the lifestyles of the power elite (Freire, 1970). \u00a0Furthermore, by educating students to be consumers that fit into the machinery of our capitalistic, hyper-competitive culture and to be scientifically managed and controlled, we inadequately prepare children for taking an active role in society (Combs, Miser, & Whitaker, 1999; Gatto, 2005).\u00a0 The ingenuity, passion, and creativity of the youth are dismissed as folly, relegated to a side conversation rather than the driving focus of learning.\u00a0 And this travesty is perpetuated just when we need creative young who are more engaged with an increasingly dynamic, globalized world in which we are hurtling our way into periods of economic destabilization, food and water scarcity, war, and extreme climate change.\u00a0 As a result of the removal of their voices from the public sphere, I believe we have further inculcated feelings of nihilism in our youth, contributing to a vicious cycle of numb materialism, violence, and passive addiction to media.\u00a0 In fact, many children are seemingly indifferent to the adult world (Gatto, 2005) \u2013 a violation of our very biology!\u00a0 Yet, given the realities of our society and the complex interface other structures have on our system of schooling (e.g., placing schooling in schools rather than the home affords the opportunity for women to enter the workforce), how can we function in the constraints of compulsory education and merit determined by test scores to create a new way of \u201cdoing\u201d school?\r\n

Charting a New Course<\/h3>\r\nIn my various roles as college professor, middle school teacher, charter school founder, and consultant for a national reform model, I have come to recognize two primary areas of opportunity to transform our education system while simultaneously maintaining a structure that is government funded and universally accessible.\u00a0 First, a degree of school choice needs to exist for families.\u00a0 Public schooling is crucial to creating educational opportunity for all children \u2013 just imagine a future with publicly funded schools removed from inner cities or extremely rural communities.\r\n\r\nCharter schools are an effective means to ensure school choice.\u00a0 The purpose of the charter school movement in our country was to provide reform to the process of social reproduction, not the dismantlement of public education, as some would argue.\u00a0 Essentially, the reality is that people of means have always had school choice (i.e., private school).\u00a0 The charter school movement, with missions informed by the unique needs of the local community, provides a tuition-free choice for all families (National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, 2013). \u00a0Charter schools are designed to use our consumer economy to provide competition and, hopefully, create impetus for other public schools to increase the quality of their programs.\u00a0 Charter schools are thought to encourage reform through the adoption of an explicit educational model (e.g., Core Knowledge, Kipp Academies, Expeditionary Learning) that demands a different method of instruction, in contrast to the mode entrenched in public district schools.\u00a0 Often, when district schools are faced threat due to competition, they rally around the cry that charter schools are siphoning money from public education. \u00a0However, charter schools are<\/em> public schools; and, ultimately, the public funds allocated for each student belongs to that student, not any particular school per se.\r\n\r\nStill, schools can only provide alternatives if the teachers who create them can implement a new way of being and teaching.\u00a0 In my experience, many charter schools are ineffective in reform because they merely recreate the standard education system.\u00a0 Therefore, the second area of reform on which we should focus is that of teacher professional development.\u00a0 Within public schools, financial resources need to be prioritized primarily for teachers and their continuing education ahead of textbooks and even technology.\r\n

Expeditionary Learning: A Re-vision of Teacher Education<\/h3>\r\nFor the past 10 years of my career, I have been affiliated with the national public school reform model, Expeditionary Learning (EL), both as a middle school teacher and as a consultant working directly for EL. \u00a0Expeditionary Learning was born in the late 1980\u2019s as part of the Harvard Outward Bound project. \u00a0Based on the work of educator Kurt Hahn, EL is grounded in 10 Design Principles that include foci on diversity and inclusion, the natural world, solitude and reflection, empathy and caring, and service and compassion.\u00a0 Since its inception, the mission has been to provide teacher professional development grounded in the research on educational best practices in the domains of curriculum, instruction, and school leadership.\r\n\r\nBeginning with just 10 pilot schools, EL now contracts with around 160 schools nationwide, serving an educational community about the size of an urban school district.\u00a0 These schools are primarily public district schools, but also include a substantial number of public charter schools, and are located in urban and rural communities (Expeditionary Learning, 2012).\u00a0 Most importantly, and consistent with the social justice orientation of EL, a\u00a0program evaluation by Ulichny (2000) determined that \u201cExpeditionary Learning implementation appear[ed] to be providing a strong academic curriculum that allow[ed] students from typically disadvantaged backgrounds to thrive\u201d (p. 107).\u00a0 The results of this study attest to the power of changing our standard educational narrative, that of expert teachers and passive students, to one of relationship and authentic action in the world.\r\n\r\nWhile many models of education reform involving teacher professional development exist and create positive gains for teachers and students, the philosophy underlying the EL model is defined by a commitment to social and environmental justice.\u00a0 As a result, the professional development of teachers remains true to this philosophy and actually makes a difference in the implementation of environmental education in EL schools (Riordan & Klein, 2010).\u00a0 The professional development of EL teachers looks very different than traditional models of teacher training.\u00a0 In a typical EL institute, teachers and administrators experience life as a student engaging in inquiry around either important worldly topics, such as climate change or the civil rights movement, or professional topics, such as data analysis to inform instruction.\u00a0 The facilitators of professional courses model the \u201cmoves\u201d of the teacher in creating a learning environment in which the participant is no longer an object to fill but a subject capable of thought, creativity, and solutions.\u00a0 In addition to providing an alternative learning experience, another reason EL teacher training makes a difference for teachers is that the organization also provides on-going support to teachers back in their schools, with coaching as well as informing the use of time and resources in the overarching structure and leadership of the institution. \u00a0This scaffolding has been found to be crucial to the implementation of inquiry-based education around authentic topics and tasks in which teachers and students must collaborate to accomplish complex and lofty goals culminating in authentic action (Riordan & Klein, 2010; Darling-Hammond & McLaughlin, 1995). \u00a0To embrace constructivist teaching, as advocated by the EL best practices, is an active rejection of bureaucratized, essentialist (i.e., teaching the facts) education. \u00a0The constructivist alternative demands that teachers are learners themselves who possess a high degree of precision and commitment to the creation of learning environments that stimulate the asking and answering of hard questions (Hess, 2010).\u00a0 To develop and maintain these characteristics requires continual professional renewal.\u00a0 And the required investment of time and money in teachers and their own growth and development pays off for students and, by extension, the institution and society at large.\r\n\r\nWith the focus on teachers and best practices in education, test scores follow.\u00a0 In EL schools in which their annual evaluation indicates a high level of implementation, more students attain levels of proficiency in math and English language arts when compared to state and district rates.\u00a0 This success is achieved without teaching to the test, as is so common in other public schools. But I believe the most important contribution of the Expeditionary Learning model is in the humanizing of education for children, in opposition to the industrialized model in which learning is defined as the accumulation of information.\u00a0 The EL orientation demands a deep relationship between teacher and student, as well as with their community, and moves the disenfranchised in our society \u2013 the youth \u2013 out of the margins.\r\n\r\nWithin an EL school, the teacher is free to become a learner and enter into dialogue with students around real issues.\u00a0 And when the problems encountered are authentic, learners rise to the challenge (Freire, 1970).\u00a0 As a teacher, I am discovering meaning alongside students while creating a learning environment for students to explore multiple perspectives on real issues.\u00a0 Last spring, we were investigating water issues in New Mexico and the complexities of water appropriation, in particular addressing how we support the state economy and the growth of cities and still maintain a culture of farming and ranching.\u00a0 I was staying mere steps ahead of the students on topics such as shifting demographics in our state and water law so I could develop the content expertise needed to engage them in a conversation about a consequential and timely topic.\u00a0 They became experts on this pressing issue in our state through the process of publishing a book and creating a documentary film designed to educate the public about water availability in our state in a time of climate change.\u00a0 As a second example, a Superfund site is less than 10 miles from our small school in northern New Mexico.\u00a0 As a team of teacher and students, we confront essential questions:\u00a0 What is molybdenum?\u00a0 Why is it mined?\u00a0 How is it polluting groundwater?\u00a0 We learn that we<\/em> are the reason; we have bicycles, knives, stainless steel pots, and cars \u2013 all of which require molybdenum to strengthen the metal.\u00a0 How do we solve this problem?\u00a0 Not just in the future but now?\u00a0 These questions, with direct impact on students\u2019 lives, are what motivate learning, not the abstract specter of test scores.\r\n\r\nWith the freedom to pursue an education grappling with authentic problems, we engage intrue<\/em> education that results in the making of meaning for ourselves from our experiences (ASCD, 1978).\u00a0 Revolutionary societies attempting to transcend a culture of oppression, in which members of society are subject to degradation and servitude, must begin by creating a system of education that allows the freedom to explore the fundamental question, \u201cwhy?\u201d This question exposes sources of inequality and a worldview that the earth\u2019s resources, including humans, are commodities here for exploitation.\u00a0 \u201cEducation as the practice of freedom \u2013 as opposed to education as the practice of domination \u2013 denies that man is abstract, isolated, independent, and unattached to the world\u201d (Freire, 1970, p. 69).\u00a0 Answering why questions results in slowing down the pace of learning so that depth is experienced, rather than \u201ccovering\u201d every content standard.\u00a0 We begin to foster intelligent people who can explore problems from many sides, reflect on their own behaviors, and take true action.\u00a0 In this paradigm, teachers are free to work to help all students see themselves as learners and masters of their own destiny.\u00a0 And, most interestingly, we can actually more effectively meet standards while simultaneously supporting aspects of humanity neglected by our current educational model: home and civic membership; mental and physical health; effective use of leisure time; ethical character; and, most importantly, knowledge of self (Combs, 1965; Krishnamurti, 1953).\u00a0 Achievement of proficiency as judged by test scores follows this devotion to holistic education and not just for the privileged for whom our system generally works but equally for the underprivileged.\u00a0 Ironically, students are best equipped for achievement within the dominant culture\u2019s narrow definition of education when they are actually liberated from a school day in servitude to those same strictures.\u00a0 This environment of genuine inquiry can only be created if teachers and students can practice true constructivism in the classroom.\u00a0 If our aim is a democratic society in which there exists care for our planet and for one another, then school must reflect democratic principles with the belief that all children can learn and make meaning to achieve the end result of taking thoughtful ethical action for the betterment of society (Combs, 1991).\u00a0 Educating the young can be a subversive activity, and the education of teachers is crucial to the transformation of our society.\r\n\r\n
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Your Unique Teaching Philosophy<\/h3>\r\nEach teacher brings a unique philosophy and viewpoint to their interactions with students. Some of these views are more obvious than others. For example, some teachers might state that they choose teaching to help and support new members of their profession. Others may note that involvement with learners is a required and expected job requirement. Taking time to reflect and begin to articulate a personal philosophy of teaching can help teachers understand why they approach their practice in particular ways and how their individual views fit with \u2018big picture\u2019 educational issues. Understanding why<\/em> a teaching approach or action might be advantageous before deciding what<\/em> content to implement or how<\/em> to deliver that content helps teachers think critically about their practice.\r\n\r\nAny philosophy or expression of beliefs can evolve and grow over time. As teachers strengthen their theoretical knowledge and gain practical experience, their personal teaching philosophy will also change. Although it can seem daunting to try and put beliefs into words, initiating a working teaching philosophy statement and then adding to it throughout your career can support teachers in becoming more engaged, competent and scholarly (Chism, 1998; Goodyear & Allchin, 1998; Owens, Miller & Owens, 2014; Ratnapradipa & Adams, 2012; Sch\u00f6nwetter, Sokal, Friesen & Taylor, 2002 ).\r\n\r\nMore information about why it's important to form a personal philosophy of education is contained in the article \"To Change What We Do, Consider What We Believe\" By Alfie Kohn. You can read this article online by clicking here.<\/a>\r\n\r\nMore about teaching philosophy and how it can cause conflict is contained in the article \"Teacher Collaboration: When Belief Systems Collide\" by Elena Aguilar. You can read this article online by clicking here.<\/a>\r\n\r\nMore about some of the most influential philosophers can be learned in this brief video. If the video does not show up below you can view it on YouTube by clicking this link.<\/a>\r\n