EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY

Educational Philosophy

Educational Philosophy

Part 1: How has Essentialism impacted the role of assessment and accountability? Discuss the social, economic, and global pressures that have given rise to the popularity of this educational theory.

Traditional-academic curriculum theories are concerned with preserving the cultural heritage and cultivating intellectual virtues, and they typically treat subject matter as an end in itself in the educational process (Tyler, 2003). Traditional-academic curriculum theories can be divided into two sub-theories: perennialism and essentialism. 

Essentialism maintains that the knowledge most worth learning is composed of the essential modern academic disciplines, including the humanities, mathematics, science, and the social sciences. Essentialism emphasizes intellectual training above practical application of knowledge, viewing knowledge as an end in itself, and exalts academic achievement over student interests and societal concerns. Leading advocates of essentialism included William Bagley, Isaac Kandel, and Theodore Sizer (Bobbitt, 2004). Essentialism has been criticized for its neglect of student interests and societal concerns and for fostering a fragmentation of the curriculum. Arguably, essentialism is the curriculum theory that prevails in educational settings, although in practice, essentialist curricula tend to reduce academic subject matter to rote recall.

Part 2: How would you relate the contributions of the global community to America's current education system? Draw examples from your own teaching experience.

When it comes to international education rankings, recent studies show that other nations in the developed world have a higher caliber of student success than that of the United States. In 2003, the United Nations Children's Fund conducted an educational study that took the averages of five different tests and ranked the 24 participating nations; the United States was ranked 18 (Herrick, 2005). Because of this recent slip in rank, the educators of the United States have somewhat resorted to teaching the material that will only be on the test rather than material that actually needs to be learned by the students (Gerald, 2009). This is my personal experience that the United States teachers focus more on procedure, and try to teach multiple topics quickly while other countries tend to break up the topics and go more in-depth. Other countries' teachers work on the concept and the background of the material instead of just teaching the procedure (Pinar, 2004). When students are taught the procedure and not the concept behind the procedure, there is a higher chance of forgetting the subject all together. It's not just the international education rankings that American students are lagging in, but also the high school's curriculum for their students, which differs greatly from other developed nations (Pinar, 2004).

Part 3a: My Teaching Philosophy II

Education is defined mainly as knowledge acquired by learning and instruction. It usually pertains to academics learned in schools. My teaching philosophy is very simple i.e. education is a vital part of growing up from the time you attend preschool all the way until graduate school. What most individuals do not realize is that education is also incorporated into absolutely everything we do. For example, if your car breaks down on the highway and you do not know how to change a tire, as you watch someone else do it, ...