Theories

To learn more about my philosophy, I read chapter ten to find out what theories my beliefs fell under. Teacher centered theories included essentialism, behaviorism, and positivism. Essentialism believes that there is a common core of information and skills that an educated person must have. Essentialism teachers educate the students on core information, hard work, and mental discipline. Their teaching styles include required reading, lectures, memorization, repetition and examinations. Behaviorism is a theory that asserts that behaviors represent the essence of a person and that all behaviors can be explained as responses to stimuli. A behaviorist teacher uses both positive and negative reinforces of the environment to help the students learn. The environment plays a critical role in this theory as it believes that one behavior is determined by the environment, not heredity. Positivism limits truth and knowledge to what is observable and measurable. A positivism individual believes that all reality can be explained by laws of motion and matter.
Student centered educational theories include progressivism, humanism and constructivism. Like positivism, progressivism emphasizes that ideas should be tested by experimentation and that learning is rooted in questions developed by the learner. A progressivism person believes that ideas must be tested by experiment, and that only then the true meaning of and practical results will appear. Humanism contends that humans are innately good, but adopt bad behaviors as they grow. Humanism is all about the individual, it rejects group oriented work. Students should be active and should be encouraged to make their own decisions. Constructivism emphasizes hands-on, activity- based teaching and learning during which student develop their own frames of thought. They believe in a wide variety of activities and that students develop their own ideas and create their own pathways.
To my surprise, the existentialist theory was my favorite of the eight. I like constructivism simple because it only focused on what works in terms of student learning. I liked how it emphasized hands on activity for teaching and learning, as well as requiring the teachers to use a variety of teaching techniques that include different learning activities which allows students to find their own answers. I think humanism would have been my favorite, if they did not have such a negative attitude towards group work. I liked how humanist try to bring out the good in the students, and how it emphasizes instruction and assessment based on student interests, abilities and needs. I liked how it also focused a lot on the student’s feelings and allowed the students to make their own decisions.
Since I am a pragmatist and idealist, I got to cover humanism and essentialism. Like all the teacher-centered theories we have covered, I did not care for any of them. I did like how behaviorism placed a lot of importance on the environment, but the overall thought of the theory was a little weird to me. I am glad that I had the opportunity to look more into humanism. I went into the class only liking constructivism, but I found humanism a lot more appealing than I originally thought. Like I said earlier, I think this would have been my number one choice had it not looked down on group work. I obviously found more in common with the student centered material, as I two of the three where my top choices. I did not like progressivism at all though. I do not like that idea can only be found in practical results. There are a lot of things covered in schools that are hard to prove in a classroom, or even in a professional lab.