Philosophy of Teaching and Learning
Xiaopeng Ni
November, 2002Teaching and learning is an integrative process of nurturing individuals' potential to inquire, to discover, and to change in our social and natural world. A teacher is not only a facilitator of academic inquiry but also a role model of both the academic and non-academic values. My teaching philosophy is a belief in the importance of integrating academic values and non-academic values, and cognitive aspects and value aspects.
I think my long journey around China marked significant learning and personal changes in my early adult life. This experience also caused a series of critical changes in my view about teaching and learning. The purpose of this paper is to articulate the relationships among life experience, learning outcomes and my teaching philosophy. By better understanding myself, I can become a better facilitator in educational practices. First, I picture the learning event and analyze its process and context factors. Then, I describe how this learning event impacts me in the short-term and the long-term--- physically, emotionally, cognitively, and spiritually. Lastly, I want to analyze how this event shapes my own teaching philosophy at a macro-level and a micro-level. Also, a diagram is given to illustrate my understanding of teaching and learning at the micro-level.
Long stimulated by the notion that learning must come from social practice and by the curiosity of different places and customs, I, along with my classmate, Quan, decided to try a bicycle odyssey around China. At the time, we just finished our college. The purposes were to travel around China, investigate technology using in schools, and test our survival ability in the summer break. At the age of twenty, we started our adventure with two bicycles. The total distance across China from the east coast to the west desert is 5,500 kilometers. We stayed in different schools and homes, talked with headmasters, administrators, teachers, parents and students. We observed different life styles, attended some summer classes, helped some families repair their electronic utilities, provided them with knowledge about nutrition and hygiene, and discussed with parents how to educate children. We also experienced severe environment and hardship and had to deal with complex situations outdoors. We didn’t plan to take money for the trip, which means we had to “beg” for a living. Finally, we survived in the first adventure of our lifetime.
If we analyze contextual factors which relate to the learning process, this event happened in two settings. The first one was in a formal education setting, mainly in the university where I studied. In order to prepare for our journey, we had to locate information about geography, history and electronics (we planned to design communication tools and a bicycle odometer). We also needed to learn skills for bicycle repair, first aid, and outdoor life. At this stage, learning locations usually were libraries; our instructors are experts in relevant field, such as craftsmen, doctors, explorers, and travelers in the community. We decided upon our own learning activities and usually adopted the inquiry learning method. It was student-centered and self-directed. We imaged skills which might be needed on the road and then located corresponding information or resources. As to learning content, it covered lots of subjects and skills, but all content were related to our exploration. For example, when we were collecting geographic information, such as altitude, climate, and topography, to design our route, we would also gather historical stories, poems, or songs related to our route. That kind of learning helped us to know one place in multi-aspects. This preparation lasted nearly one year.
The second stage of this event took place during in the following two months. I would classify it as the stage of applying the knowledge into real life, social understanding, and self-actualizing. Learning settings here were informal, sometimes on a small trail, sometimes in home of a farmer. Broadly speaking, nature and society were our instructional locations. The instructional formats included problem-centered learning and dialogues between people and us, between Quan and me. We had the roles of learner, investigators and practitioners. The learning content was more focused on applying our knowledge or verifying what we had learned. We had to apply what we learned from repairmen to mend our bicycles on the road. We were also surprised how different the situation people lived in was in comparison to what we had learned from books, newspapers, or radio.
In this adventure, my friend, Quan, was very important as a collaborator and learning partner. He was very supportive, persevering, and active, which not only set an example for me, but also promoted constructive, in-depth, and extensive conversation. During the journey, his patience, wisdom, and ways of dealing with difficulties really inspired me. Of course, I was also very happy that he said that he had learned many things from me.
From learning perspectives, this adventure benefited us in many ways: physically, emotionally, cognitively, socially, and spiritually. The immediate effects were physical fitness and internal pleasure caused by such fitness. I believed that physical exercise benefits learning. Another change was capability in emotion adjustment. I found I was capable of adjusting emotionally much more easily, and I often had a peaceful feeling which prepared me to do anything. I think this state is “euphoria”, which is similar to what flow theory describes as “… the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter”(Csikszentmihalyi, 1990, p4). One cognitive importance was that it helped me correct the schemes about geography in my mind and made them more close to the real situation.
One long-term impact was that I began to realize the importance of collaboration in learning. I was a “good” student in primary school, secondary school, and college. I never thought discussion had any value for study. I even thought the form of discussion in classrooms ware simple, silly and time wasting. I could get good performance easily and became a top student just by studying alone. I viewed study as study itself and grades as the main objectives of learning. However, I learned the importance and interest of cooperation in coping with real life problems in the adventure. I began to like dialogue and feedback and started to use collaboration as a learning method.
Another impact was that I realized the value of “designing” in education. We designed learning activities by collecting information according to what we needed and integrated them into problem solving. As described by Jonassen(1994), people who learn the most from instructional design projects are not the end users, but the designers and developers themselves. It also corresponds to my later teaching experience. I organized a student-as-teacher model in my class. This model allowed students to share and teach their skills in making webpages and students usually would elaborate and further their skills if they knew they would teach others.
This adventure is also a very good spiritual experience and exercise. Climbing mountains and wading rivers with pack on the back gives a feeling of life-long journey and the journey of whole human race. It made my connection with nature and society closer psychologically. One strong memory is, of one day in a sandstorm, in a very remote town, as we were writing letters to our parents in a drab classroom, while hearing heavy wind outside. I felt I was only one grain of sand in the universe, but I was still proud of my warmth and personality as a human being.
This learning experience is completely different from regular schooling. It is a form of adult learning. First, I had graduated from college and was going to take a job position. I had begun to perceive myself as socially responsible for my life and for that adventure. Second, during that journey the objects of my focus started to change from nature to society. I am not sure if it was only a natural part of development, from child to adult, that caused this change to happen, but I did change. I cared more about education, a person’s views and their assumptions, values, etc.. I also never realized I needed so much socialization, so much active conversation and began to perceive the socialization and socialized learning as a symbol of adulthood.
In this adventure, rich learning activities were integrated. The inquiry-based learning, problem-centered learning, and collaborating learning were dominant. We were not only learners, but also teachers. We were transmitting knowledge to people and each other. These activities not only gave strong feedbacks, promoting our own learning, but also gave us a feeling of value and growth since we were contributing. I think these learning experiences should relate to different learning theories. Different activities indicated different learning assumptions and methods. Here, I would like to focus on the humanist perspective and the constructive perspective. One of basic assumptions of the humanist perspective is to view learning as a personal act to fulfill one’s potential. It is a holistic process of personal growth and an active search for meaning. It is self-directed. Mackeracher(1996) believes that “learning is something done by the learner rather than something done to or for the learner. Learning proceeds independently of and sometimes in spite of, education and schooling”. Meanwhile, our learning experience is also strongly related to constructivism. This perspective views meaning and truth as constructions, literally built through study, conversation, social negotiation in real contexts. It emphasizes an open-ended, learner-centered environment, which is based on substantively authentic, real life foundations. “We each invent our own ‘theories’ about how the world works based on our experience” (Mackeracher, 1996, p.8). Mackeracher also believes that learning is a dialectical process, in which personal meanings and the personal model of reality can be changed during interactive and constitutive processes. I experienced two different models of cognitive schemes about geography, customs, and exploration before and after the adventure. Such changes happened by our continuous, lasting interaction with reality. For example, through observation and extensive conversation, we realized the different assumptions among people. We also sensed the great difference between how we thought about things and what we experienced on-the-spot. Before we started, friends always persuaded us not to take such a silly risk, since their assumption was that it would be very dangerous on the road. Frankly speaking, we were also a little worried about our journey. However, on the road we just were filled with pleasure and relaxation instead of the imagined stress. One worry was that there would be beasts outdoors which might be a danger to us. We experience the opposite and proved our imagination was still living in hundreds years past. We didn’t meet any beasts. At last, we realized how human beings had changed nature dramatically and how we should really take action to protect our environment if we still wanted to see beasts other than in zoos.
Overall, our learning experience in this adventure is very positive and has had a far-reaching impact. It is a really successful experience, not for the journey itself, but for internal growth. Its learning process is effective for wholly individual development, although it has not such sequential steps as programmed instruction and may be a little difficult to manipulate in school settings. It is little agonizing since some learning outcomes can’t be projected. Moreover, if we made a reflection and documented this experience immediately after the odyssey, it would be much more meaningful for our learning.
This event has shaped my philosophy about teaching and learning. In my opinion, learning can be viewed on two levels. On a macro-level, I view learning as a process of human self-realization, and teaching as a process to enlighten people’s life, to help them find meaning in life, to love life, and to make connections with nature, society, and other people. So learning is related to growth and meaning. On a micro-level, I believe that learning is a result of construction, collaboration, reflection and negotiation within a meaningful context where learning is situated. That is, learning is a function of interactions between the individual and the environment where the individual exist socially and physically (Brethower, 1995). And such interactions are modulated by our value system. While learning opportunities are everywhere and at all levels, the guided learning (teaching) is a socially construct activity to assist learners in effective learning and growth at a certain domain and a certain level. Teaching ( a organic mechanism of teachers, goals, tools, content, peers, media) is a process of science and art, which must lead to meaningful interactions and human respected directions. For example, page-turning buttons on a computer educational software do provide a kind of interactions, but not necessary lead to the cognitive interactions. For another example, test is an effective evaluation tool for learning, but it is easy to be misused and even abused, which might cause negative effective and prevent a student from a sound development. Further, teaching is to address a certain instructional problem in a certain context and discipline, and any pedagogical position and approach must be given a significant consideration to the context. Simply taking one theoretical model, no matter lecturing, case study, or problem solving, is misleading and might not help students learn and develop. Behaviorism, cognitivism, situated cognition, constructivism, etc. all reflect a certain angle of learning mechanism and only work for a certain problem and context. Therefore, teaching should take our value system, consider physical, social, cognitive, spiritual background of our students, and address instructional problems in a certain context.
The bridge between teaching and learning is to provide meaningful activities. Due to the complex nature of learning, rich activities can cover multi-perspectives, especially constructivism and self-actualization. Through activities delivering instructional content, developing hidden skills, and promoting reflection, students can get balanced development and exert their potential. During this journey, we learned from many different activities through sharing, inquiring, expressing, and constructing, managing, and designing, unlike school education which just fasters knowledge delivery and skill training. Maybe knowledge absorption was not in systemic ways, and maybe skill acquisition was only a small part of our activities, but I should say learning really happened, since I got the feeling of growth, especially such feeling as transformed our understanding of learning. I was still the same, but some parts of my learning mechanism had changed, just like when someone gets inspiration suddenly or spiritual life is enlightened. In conclusion, I would like to visualize my philosophy about teaching and learning. The following picture (Figure 1) describes my understanding about teaching and learning on the micro-level. Learning is generated from interaction between the individual and society, while these interactions are realized through rich activities, such as communication, expression, constructions, and inquiry. Through rich, problem-driven, and self-directed activities, students are acquiring knowledge, developing skills, growing in reflection, and finally, they not only learn how to learn, but also understand the meaning of life. The ultimate goal of learning is not mastery of discipline, but beyond it. It is mastery of the self, the universe, and their relationship. That’s why all different disciplines ultimately lead to the doctor of “philosophy.”Reference:
Brethower, D.M. (1995). Specifying a Human Performance Technology Knowledgebase. Performance Improvement Quarterly, 8 (2), 17-39.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The psychology of optimal experience. New York: Plenum Press.
Jonassen, D. (1994). Technology as cognitive tools: Learners as designers. Ahtens, GA: The University of Georgia, ITFORUM [on-line electronic listserv].
Mackeracher, D. (1996). Making Sense of Adult Learning. Culture Concepts Inc.
Growth Form
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Last updated: 08/10/04 .