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Philosophy of Education

Michaela A. Puckett

Ohio Christian University

4 April 2019

Author’s Note

This essay was prepared for Doctor Jeanne Bruce Educational Psychology Class.
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Margaret Mead once said, “children must be taught how to think, not what to think.” I

believe that this is very true. As educators, today, we are sculpting the minds of tomorrow. We

cannot have everybody thinking the same exact way, what kind of world would that be? Also, if

children are supposed to think in their own way, shouldn’t they have the best possible way of

thinking suited best for themselves? As teachers, we must work to find what is the best way to

help our students learn, whether that is differentiating for them or meeting somewhere called the

“magic middle”.

The philosopher that I enjoy reading and following his practices the most is Lev

Vygotsky. He follows along with Jean Piaget but touches up a few of his loose ends. The thing I

like about Vygotsky that Piaget disapproved on that I will for sure use in my classroom is private

speech. Woolfolk (2013) defines private speech as, “children’s self- talk, which guides their

thinking and action” (pg. 58). I think this is great for children because when they are problem-

solving this is basically them brainstorming! When a child comes up to me wanting help and I

ask them to explain to me what is going wrong, they can use what they have already said in

private speech to tell me and we can fix the problem from there. Vygotsky puts a lot of faith into

the kids because we do not give them enough credit, they are smarter than we believe them to be!

Where Piaget on the other hand, underestimated children.

Another thing I like from Vygotsky is he believes that cognitive development stems from

social interactions with guided learning in his use of the zone of proximal development (ZPD).

Woolfolk (2013) describes this as, “the area between the child’s current development level “as

determined by independent problem solving” and the level of development that the child could

achieve “through adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers’” (pg. 59). This is

where the “magic middle” that I spoke of earlier comes into play. This is where we must figure
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out what the student already knows and what the student isn’t ready to learn yet. The goal is to

help the student find the best way of learning for themselves.

There are many strategies that I would love to use in my classroom, but I feel that I need

to meet my students before I even attempt to use them. In a perfect world where everything went

the way the teacher wrote in her lesson plan; I would like to incorporate cooperative learning.

Woolfolk (2013) defines cooperative learning as, “situations in which elaboration, interpretation,

explanation, and argumentation are integral to the activity of the group and where learning is

supported by other individuals” (pg. 373) There are many positive factors that come with

cooperative learning, such as positive interdependence, promotive interaction, individual

accountability, collaborative and social skills, and group processing. Gillies (2016) stated (as

cited in Cohen, 1994),

“Students are likely to achieve more when they work in groups of four or

less members, preferably in mixed-ability groups rather than homogeneous

groups, and when they work on tasks that require them to cooperate or tasks

where students are interdependently linked so they are required to interact and

share resources” (para 17).

Sometimes students learn better from other students than from the teacher directly. Kids

know how to communicate with other kids and put the directions into simple terms that

sometimes the teachers cannot get to. Not saying the teacher can never reach that level,

but kids are naturally going to be good at it.

With every student in your classroom, they are going to thrive differently and a form of

differentiation may need to be used. This could be as simple as the directions may needing to be

read to them or as extreme the work needing to be simplified. In my observation classroom, we

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have a child that simply gets overwhelmed by seeing all the problems on his rocket math. We

simply fold his paper into halves so he cannot see all the problems at once. He still has all the

problems just like all the other kids, he just is not seeing them all at once. The book Leadership

for Differentiating Schools & Classrooms (2000) states,

“The goal of a differentiated classroom is maximum student growth and

individual success. As schools now exist, our goal is often to bring everyone to

“grade level” or to ensure that everyone masters a prescribed set of skills in a

specified length of time” (para 9).

There are countless ways to differentiate in the classroom, we just need to observe our kids and

find out what is the best way we think would help them learn the best. The goal is to get

everyone to the same level without speeding anyone up or slowing anyone down. Differentiation

is made easy when you get to know your kids and know their interests where you can make

connections to help the student understand.

These that I would like to use in my classroom if things worked out in a perfect world

and the stars aligned perfectly. I know as soon as you plan for something to go one way, it will

go the other way just as quick. Knowing that things can go wrong such as kids completely do not

understand it or you underestimated them and they already know it all, you must have a backup

plan in order. John Dewey gives an amazing quote to close with. He says, “If we teach today’s

students as we taught yesterday’s, we rob them of tomorrow.”

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References:

Gillies, R. M. (2016). Cooperative Learning: Review of Research and Practice. Australian

Journal of Teacher Education, 41(3). h p://dx.doi.org/10.14221/ajte.2016v41n3.3

Tomlinson, C. & Allan, S (2000) Leadership for differentiating schools & classrooms.
Retrieved from http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/100216/chapters/Understanding-
Differentiated-Instruction@-Building-a-Foundation-for-Leadership.aspx

Woolfolk, Anita. (2013). Educational Psychology, 12th ed. Pearson.