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earlychildhoodeducationblog-blog · 7 years

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Philosophy of Education

My interest in teaching peaked after my first day of Kindergarten. There was something about the environment that intrigued me; the teacher standing in the front of the classroom teaching us anything and everything. I decided on that day that teaching is the career I wanted to pursue when I got older. For Christmas that year, I asked Santa for a teacher set; it came with a dry erase board, stickers, a pointer, a bell, and even more. I sat in circle with my baby dolls and teddy bears teaching them lessons on the daily; truly enjoying myself.

Throughout my primary and secondary schooling, the idea of a teaching profession was always there. I still dreamed of one day having a classroom of my own. I reached high school and I finally got my opportunity. Hunterdon Central offers a course called Child Development. Child Development is a class that allows you to teach an actual preschool; creating lesson plans and learning different teaching style that you may have to use in the classroom. On top of that, we learned about different theorists and their beliefs on education. We applied the skills we learned in the classroom when we were dealing with the preschoolers.

In the preschool, th high school students were paired up with a preschooler to work with them one-on-one. I was lucky enough to get paired up with two preschoolers. After working with them both one-on-one, I was able to see the differences between them. Lucy was a very bright girl, she knew almost every answer to the questions asked and was very social. She was not afraid to ask another child to play with them or to ask an adult for help if she needed it. On the other hand, Lila was more of a quiet student. She would only speak to me when I would initiate a conversation, and she did not talk much amongst her peers. As I could see, their socialization in the classroom affected their learning process.

Relating back to one of the theorists I learned in child development, my philosophy of education is closely related to that of Lev Vygotsky. Vygotsky is best known for being an educational psychologist with a sociocultural theory. These theories suggest that social interaction leads to continuous step-by-step changes in children's thought and behavior that can vary greatly from culture to culture (Gallagher). A child’s socialization with other children and adults will greatly impact their behavior and learning process.

I believe that learning requires more than just a pen and a pencil, but rather requires the socialization amongst the people around you. I believe this because of my experiences from working with the preschoolers. The children that were social with their peers and the adults in the room seemed to get more out of the lessons compared to the children that were very shy and quiet. The children that were social were able to ask questions about the lesson and either get the questioned answered by a student or one of their peers; this helped provide a better understanding of the lesson to the child. On top of that, being social is a very big part of life as we age. If we begin to socialize children when they are young, they will be better off as their life progresses because they will have already experienced something similar at a younger age. “The true direction of the development of thinking is not from the individual to the social, but from the social to the individual.” - Vygotsky

Sources:

Gallagher, Christina. “Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky.” Psychology History, , 1999,

www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/vygotsky.htm.

“Lev S. Vygotsky Quote.” A-Z Quotes, , 0ADAD, www.azquotes.com/quote/690652.

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