Teaching philosophies and multiple intelligences

This week, the topics that we were to discuss were the various teaching strategies and the multiple intelligences. Basically, it was about professional development. What should we be aware of as teachers in order to allow students to make more connections and truly learn the material?

First of all, it is important to know yourself as a teacher. What are your values? What approaches do you take to education? What theories do you believe in? A really great tool that was posted for us this week was a quiz to determine what educational theory you agree with most. Click here for the link to this quiz. Once you take it, you can click here for how to score it and see what your results are. I took this quiz and I also had my husband, who teaches special education, take it as well. It turns out that I have a tie between reconstructivism and constructivism. I think I agree with the assessment. Here is what was said for each (taken directly from the site):

"Reconstructionism/Critical Theory
Social reconstructionists advocate that schools should take the lead to reconstruct society in order to create a better world. Schools have more than a responsibility to transmit
knowledge, they have the mission to transform society as well. Reconstructionists use critical thinking skills, inquiry, question-asking, and the taking of action as teaching strategies.
Students learn to handle controversy and to recognize multiple perspectives."

"Cognitivism/Constructivism
The learner actively constructs his or her own understandings of reality through acting upon
and reflecting on experiences in the world. When a new object, event, or experience does
not fit the learner's present knowing structures, a conflict is provoked that requires an active quest to restore a balance. Teachers facilitate environmental conditions and mediate
experiences to support student learning."

My closest runner up (only a 1 point difference) was humanism which says:

"Humanism
Humanist educators consider learning from the perspective of the human potential for growth, becoming the best one can be. The shift is to the study of affective as well as cognitive dimensions of learning. Beliefs include: human beings can control their own destiny; people are inherently good and will strive for a better world; people are free to act but must be
responsible; behavior is the consequence of human choice; and people possess unlimited
potential for growth and development. There is a natural tendency for people to learn, which
will flourish if nourishing, encouraging environments are provided."

The only thing I don't agree with here is the part that says "people are inherently good and will strive for a better world." I don't think I necessarily agree with this. I do think that the majority of people are good, but if they were striving for a better world, I think we would have seen more progress being made to fix our environment and our society. I'm also not completely sure on the
"unlimited potential for growth and development." It depends on what aspects of life we are
talking about. I absolutely agree that we are constantly growing as people. Every new
experience affects our lives. When it comes to content, however, I think there is a limit. The reason I say this is because, teaching mathematics, there are some students that do not have
the ability to think abstractly in order to understand algebra. There is nothing wrong with this. If we look at the 9 intelligences theory, mathematics and logic has its own category and so many people may just have other areas of intelligence that are heightened.

When my husband took the quiz, he got a tie as well. He is a constructivist like me, but he is also a behaviorist. A behaviorist believes "...behavior is the result of external forces that cause humans to behave in predictable ways, rather than from free will. Observable behavior rather than internal thought processes is the focus; learning is manifested by a change in behavior. This is known as the stimulus-response theory of learning. The teacher reinforces what [he/she wants] the student to do again and again and ignores undesirable behaviors. The teacher's role is to develop behavioral goals and establish reinforcers to accomplish goals." I think this makes sense since he works in the elementary school and students are learning the basic skills that
they must practice again and again until they reach mastery.

While learning about the educational theories and intelligences this week, we also added to our
group wiki with some material on the content. If you are interested in seeing what we came up
with, click here for the link.