Philosophy of Education

Philosophy of Education

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  DAMIENDEVAUX Philosophy of Education Aneducation consists in providing students with many opportunities to discover and experiment with different lenses or fields as varied as history, literacy, arts, languages and sciences. All of these fields of study aim at helping individuals develop in a way that will be useful, efficient and empowering for both themselves and for society. However, students are a diverse population, with different cultural and social backgrounds as well as different needs and abilities. While it is important to set them up to the standards our society needs, it is also important to enhance their development from the ground up, from their inherent qualities, rather than from the top down, a blanket of knowledge applied uniformly without any regard toward whom they are. Teachers not only instruct but also assist students in their acquisition of practical knowledge, a set of ideas, facts and adopted methods which will help them progress for themselves rather than for a letter grade. For this exhilarating task I chose to focus my teaching on Physical Sciences. I have always had an interest in how “things work”; how the behavior of planets and galaxies, as well as that of car suspensions and electric motors, can be explained using a few scientific concepts; and how those concepts can be used to understand and engineer efficiently. The field of Physics is deeply exciting in a playful way. It is about understanding the “tricks” behind the “magic” of Nature from the ground up, using sound inquiry. It is also a field that requires analysis and methodology, skills that are indispensable to an academic career as well as a professional one. In addition, acquiring a solid understanding of scientific concepts and practices helps people become knowledgeable as citizens. It is a deeply philosophical process of investigation and, as such, is not limited to fundamental sciences. Analysis and problem-solving are important to master in Physics, even though they seem difficult. In my work, I see too often a superficial grasp on concepts and a lack of methodology which result in errors and frustration. A comprehensive approach to solving actual practical problems is necessary in order to develop experience with these skills. Difficulty arises when we fail to make connections between concepts and with the real world, but once we create sense through actual scientific experimentation we weave a solid and elegant fabric of understanding. In order to attain such ambitious learning goals, it is necessary to place the student at the center of instruction. Indeed, if we want them to develop as sense-makers, it is only natural to provide them with opportunities to express themselves, experiment with and apply scientific knowledge. Integrating modeling activities and graphic organizers as part of formative
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  assessment strategies helpthem to first rephrase and make this knowledge their own. Then, applying these concepts to new situations, such as a scientific “mystery” or an engineering project, provide them with valuable experience while developing an understanding of the usefulness of the concepts studied in many different aspects. While student teaching a 7th grade Physical Sciences class, I was given the opportunity to teach a unit on atoms and molecules. In order to effectively teach these very abstract concepts, I developed a coherent unit of instruction based on the Bohr model and the periodic table to get students to motivate and understand explanations for the physical and chemical properties of substances. Specifically, students were asked to find patterns in the Periodic Table; find molecules they could build with three different atoms and a few rules; use the patterns they had found to switch elements in their molecules and discover new ones; infer physical properties from the mass of the molecules; and finally uncover conservation of mass by comparing the reactants to the products in a chemical reaction. All of these tasks were done through activities and labs with a minimal amount of direct instruction so as to privilege an active role in learning. They were then capable to use Atomic and Molecular theories to explain the behavior of substances in specific situations: why a thin stream of water bends in an electric field; why carbon dioxide is a heat-trapping gas; and how to use chemical properties to identify substances. My objective as a teacher is to help students develop skills and connections, make sense about what they learn, and how it applies to the discipline of science as well as other academic fields and the real world. Learning how to learn, investigate, build models and approaches to solve problems, is building a path to success. Reflect, practice and experiment is building a mindset which will help students in an ever more diverse and connected world.