As a student of the natural sciences, I believe my learning and teaching philosophies are grounded in the constructivist train of thought. I learned best in school working through the modality of explorations and inquiry. My original thought was to go the route of mathematics and I was going to be an accountant. I spent my senior year in high school interning at an accounting firm in Dallas and thought this was going to be amazing because I was going to learn how to be an accountant. I was going to learn the application of all the mathematics classes that I had taken over my twelve years in public education. Not so much … I need up being a data entry person and no one in the firm even taught me what a debit or credit was. I was also attending the local college taking an accounting class and hating every minute of it. There was so much memorization and what I was learning was not being applied to what I was doing in my accounting internship. Both the class and the internship frustrated me beyond belief. However, my mind was still on accounting as I went into my freshman year in college, although the college I went to did not allow accounting classes to be taken during the first semester.
During the first semester, I loaded up on the basics and took biology, calculus and other required courses. Biology proved to be the most interesting class, specifically the lab portion of the biology class and prompted a change in my major that semester. I went on to get bachelor’s degree in biology with a minor in chemistry. My college experience consisted of classes that incorporated the constructivist philosophical practice of learning and teaching. Jean Piaget, the leading philosopher of the constructivist views focused on how humans make meaning in relation to the interaction between experiences and ideas. After going through alternative certification and deciding to enter public education as a middle school teacher, I felt that this was the stance I planned to take with my students.
The state curriculum required us to spend a majority of time in the science laboratory experiencing what I was teaching and the students were learning. This mindset excited me as I felt that my students were going to be much more excited to come to my class and therefor their grades and behaviors would definitely be more desirable. Since I had spent my previous five years, yes it took me five years, learning this way I was sure that it would be easy to replicate with 11-14 year olds. The students constructed their own understanding and knowledge of the world through experiencing things and reflecting on those experiences. Students were able to perform experimentation, conduct research project, participate in field trips and experience in depth class discussion. Throughout my ten years as a science teacher, I continued my teaching experience under the constructivist mind set. I was more of a facilitator than a lecturer in my classroom. The movement in education at the time that I entered and has moved toward today giving more control to the students in their learning. We were taught through many professional development session to strive for the student to ask the questions and search for the answers.
Since I have moved into administration and began working with students in a different light, my perspective has shifted. In the last six years not only have I become a middle school assistant principal, but I have also become a parent. Not once, but twice and we are expecting our third any day now. These experiences have definitely influenced how I look at the world, learning and also educating our youth. Before I was a teacher of science and I loved every minute of it. My students and I spent hours experiencing all that we were learning in the lab under a microscope and performing experiments to prove all our different hypotheses.
Now that I have been studying the different philosophies behind learning, I realize that as an administrator, I do lean towards behaviorism when dealing with teaching social expectations throughout the school. One of the initiatives that I have brought to our school as an administrator is Positive Behavior Intervention Support. We are in our third year with PBIS at our school and it has done wonders lowering the number of negative discipline infractions included in the reported data. The idea of PBIS aligns with the behaviorist philosophy employs a wide variety of strategies used to improve the quality of life of students and at the same time reducing the incidence of problem behaviors through more positive means of reinforcement. Some say that Skinner’s ideas of operant conditioning helps to have students change their behaviors because the consequences of behavior determine the probability that the behavior will occur again. Ultimately as student have behavior that goes above and beyond, then they are rewarded and cause the behavior to happen again. I definitely agree with these ideas, however there is more to PBIS in that students are taught expectations and not just consequences with the assumption that they know exactly how to behave.
I also feel that as an administrator and under the guidance of TTESS, the new appraisal system, my role is no longer the evaluator. I serve alongside the teachers as a coach. It is now my job to help the teachers become better teachers. I spend my day motivating, analyzing teacher performance, providing feedback and advice on the performance and coaching on how to perform. These conversation pieces provoke reflection and articulation of what was learned from that coaching relationship. This is more of along the sides of constructivist learning theory.
In some classrooms, especially in the lower grade levels, I see cognitive learning theory working well. With cognitive learning theory, students effectively utilize cognitive processes making learning easier where new information can be stored in the memory for a long time. Speaking as a mother, my daughter has been working on ABC mouse for two years now and I feel that she is exposed to a lot of new information through this program. The program also rewards her for her progress and her success, making her want to continue learning.
Ultimately, although most of my teaching and learning experiences lie within the constructivist learning theory, I feel there is a time and a place for all three philosophies of learning. Rewards and incentives motivate both students and teachers giving support to the behaviorist learning theory. Cognitive learning theory explains why the brain is the most incredible network of information processing and interpretation in the body as we learn things and can be applied to younger ages where information is newly exposed. Finally, the constructivist learning theory encourages students to use active techniques to create new knowledge and encourages students to reflect on and talk about what they are doing and how their understanding is changing.
