My educational philosophy encompasses both the formal and informal learning processes--learning through an institution and developing knowledge from a variety of learning contexts. I bring a strong feminist viewpoint to my educational practices that seem to pervade my entire educational philosophy. My educational philosophy stresses the use of a reflexive approach; equality among staff and students; integration of multicultural and multiple voices in lesson design; learner-centered and interactive; problem-based; and very hands-on. I expect students to learn to work together in a flexible, challenging, creative learning environment that provides an overall contribution to society. Consequently, I help students identify their motivations, become creative problem-solvers, value and respect themselves and others, and develop their critical thinking skills. I want them to gain perspective on themselves and others by using their own cultural context to understand and connect to new contexts.
A review of Feminism illustrates how it encompasses the following components:
Feminism also stresses the experiential aimed at grasping the living experience through perceptions of your self. You cannot have a shared relationship with another individual without a translation occurring between another’s experience and your own. Consequently, my educational philosophy takes a reflexive approach – to critically examine your self along with another individual. As a teacher, I include many activities that allow me to learn more about the learner’s life. I develop activities that invite the teacher to learn and inquire about the learner’s life. In turn, I give the learner an opportunity to reflect upon themselves as well as on one another.
Given my definition of feminism, my educational philosophy in turn, emphasizes equality among school members. All students have the same privileges, status, rights, respect, opportunity, and equality before the law.
I also think my feminist philosophical background makes a tremendous contribution to my multicultural perspective in education. Women, as so many other subordinate social groups, represent a subordinate ideology in our society. I feel that women share a common subordinate position in society with all the other subordinate cultures and/or social groups in American society. I suspect my membership to the social group representing American women directs my educational philosophy to emphasize how education needs to serve as a vehicle to help preserve rather than replace subordinate ideologies within American society.
Another aspect of my educational philosophy focuses on taking a learner-oriented approach. Working individually and as a group, the whole class is involved with a variety of learning experiences defined by the classroom’s participants. Lesson design defines tasks where skills are directly applicable to real tasks performed in every day life. I situate the student at the center of education by creating an environment that is receptive to different ways of knowing, different abilities, and different cultural backgrounds.
Indeed, one of the principal components of my educational philosophy is to present a variety of voices. Many of those voices need to come from the local community representing the learner’s worldview. In addition, I like to incorporate media, or learning content in such a way that I address the various learning styles of the students.
In addition to a learner-centered approach, my lesson design is typically very hands-on and interactive (students interact with each other and the curriculum). The hands-on and interactive approach actively engages the learner in my problem-based learning experiences. As a facilitator of learning, the student is forced to make choices. Depending on the student’s needs and personal experiences, I feel it is important to facilitate the learning process using a flexible format that allows students to collaboratively work in groups or individually to solve their problems and questions.