Running head: TEACHING PHILOSOPHY/PLATFORM STATEMENT 1

Teaching Philosophy/Platform Statement

Markaela Bryan

University of Nevada Las Vegas

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As an educator, my focus is first and foremost my students. The entire purpose of a

teaching career is to help students learn and grow in all aspects of life, not just academically.

Teachers are trying to help students grow in their academics, relate that knowledge to the real

world, and help mold them into productive citizens in society. With this being said, I create my

classroom environment to be one that is student-centered. I view myself as facilitator of

knowledge, one who does not tell my students what to think, but rather guide them into thinking

about their own thinking and thought process. I find it important that my students learn from

each other, which is why my students are seated in heterogeneous groups. I believe that students

learn through a sufficient amount of practice and that practice should be varied. Students should

be able to practice both independently and together. Students should also be able to have as

much hands-on learning as possible. Students should be able to openly discuss their thoughts

with their peers in order to both gain and input new thoughts into each other. My goal in this is

that my students will leave my classroom with the skills to work cooperatively, express

themselves clearly in both oral and written expression, and overall, love learning.

During one of my graduate courses, I discovered the progressivism philosophy. John

Dewey was one of the leaders of the progressivism philosophy and he explains that ‘The child is

the starting point, the center, and the end. His development, his growth, is the ideal. It alone

furnishes the standard. To the growth of the child all studies are subservient.’ (Olivia, 2009, p.

162-163). This statement from Dewey relates closely to what I believe to be true. The students

are the focus of education. Anything that differs from this just isn’t true. Beckett (2018) also

examined the works of Dewey explaining that, “in the new child-centered classrooms, the focus

was on the student activities. Teachers watched and listened while students engaged in projects,

ready to help when needed,” (pg. 382). Olivia continues to explain Dewey by stating that,
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‘Learning is active. It involves reaching out of the mind…It is he and not the subject matter

which determines both the quality and quantity of learning.’ (Olivia, 2009, p. 163). If learning is

active then simply lecturing, practicing, and testing will not suffice. Students need to be

practicing with their hands and working cooperatively, not merely practicing on a sheet of paper.

The students’ needs are what should be determining the learning environment in the classroom.

With students being active participants, they are also engaged in the learning which

according to Bear, May, and Yang (2018), “…is related to a number of important outcomes,

including greater academic participation, achievement, school completion, greater effort in

learning activities, a stronger sense of liking toward and connectedness with school, and a more

positive personal well-being,” (pg. 45). Ensuring my students are engaged is extremely vital to

me because when they are I know that they are learning. Disengaged students can easily fall

behind as well as cause disturbances to students around them.

As a teacher, I want to witness growth from my students. I believe that student growth is

about individual growth not students compared to other students. How a child writes or

comprehends reading at the beginning of the school year compared to three months into the year,

compared to six months, compared to the end of the year is where true growth can be measured.

In ensuring student growth, I like to use Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD).

Rider and Sigelman (2018) describe ZPD as, “the gap between what a learner can accomplish

independently and what she can accomplish with the guidance of a more-skilled partner,” (pg.

208). Like most teachers, I am required to benchmark my students at the beginning of the school

year, to understand students’ present levels. With these benchmark results, I am able to find a

student’s independent level as well as the instructional level. From here, I am able to group my

students in a way they can learn from each other. I have found during my three years of teaching
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that seating and grouping my students this way produces a positive work environment for my

students. Students do seem as afraid to ask their peers for help as opposed to a teacher. The

students who get to help others take pride in doing so. I find that with this my students also learn

how to encourage each other through challenging tasks during the entire school year.

I believe that before students are able to practice themselves, they need some type of

model to observe from. Bandura’s Social Learning Theory supports this. “…Bandura argued that

people learn more from observing others than they do from the consequences of experiencing

things themselves…we learn by observing others by observing others,” (Morrow and Tracey,

2017, 170). In my class, I like to provide my students with demonstrations on how to complete

tasks. I believe it is important for students to be able to take notes from the teacher, watch the

teacher practice and work through various tasks. From this point the students have somewhere to

start from rather than trying a task blindly.

Recollecting on my educational philosophy, beliefs, and practices and comparing them to

what I learned throughout my graduate program, I learned that I follow the ideas of both

progressivism, Vygotsky’s ZPD, and Social Learning Theory. I believe that in my current

practice I combine the three which promotes cooperative learning so the students can learn from

each other, which allows for the teacher to take the role of facilitator more so than that of

instructor. In much of my practice, I agree with the thoughts of John Dewey that learning should

be child-centered. I’ve learned that the classroom environment needs a balance; my balance is

providing models for the students to observe and learn from and then allowing student-centered

cooperative learning.
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Works Cited

Bear, G., May, H., &Yang, C. (2018). Multilevel Associations Between School-Wide Social

Emotional Learning Approach and Student Engagement Across Elementary, Middle, and

High Schools. School Psychology Review, 47(1), 45–61. https://doi.org/10.17105/SPR

2017-0003.V47-1

Beckett, K. (2018). John Dewey’s Conception of Education: Finding Common Ground with R.

S. Peters and Paulo Freire. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 50(4), 380–389.

Retrieved from

http://ezproxy.library.unlv.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=

rue&db=eric&AN=EJ1164858&site=ehost-live

Olivia, Peter F. (2009). Developing the Curriculum. San Francisco: Pearson.

Sigelman, C., & Rider, E. (2018). Life Span Human Development (9th ed.). N.p.: Cengage

Learning.

Tracey, D., & Morrow, L. (2017). Lenses on Reading an Introduction to Theories and Models.

(3rd ed.). N.p.: Guilford Publications.