Teaching philosophy

Education is not only teaching but many more things. If we look back to the past it’s more like a traditional kind of instruction, like go and study this and next week we will recite to you what you study. There were no contributions, no space for creativity and no space to check the student’s abilities. As teachers we need to adjust our teaching according to learners' needs and we had to shift to constructivism. Constructivism is from the word construct so you are not only giving the students the information, but they are participating in the learning and you can involve the students in the content. So there is a kind of direction or instructions given to them but the learning is not completely done by the teacher. The students went to discover it by themselves. So students are no more passive learners, whereas they are active ones. So teaching is no longer repetition, no longer recalling and memorizing only. Nowadays students are able to construct and think about the information. As a teacher I can incorporate constructivism in my classroom through different ways. For example, I can ask my students to take the name of four flowers and go to the field and bring information about them, about their colors, and about their floral leaves (sepals, petals, stamen, and carpels) to determine whether they are complete or incomplete flowers. Or for example I can incorporate constructivism in my class by giving my students a topic about the function of the circulatory system and they can explain to me how the heart can pump blood throughout the body by PowerPoint presentation in the front of the class. Constructivism helps us to move from teacher centered learning to students centered learning and helps us to emphasize the teaching process. If I want my student’s to know the kind and amount of food that must be eaten by diabetic individuals, I can give them a nutrition guide and ask them to make a menu for diabetic individuals. So that the students are constructing the information by themselves after they get the specific guide. So as a teacher to incorporate constructivism in my classroom I have to focus on how I give my students the information. It's not like this is the information, go and study it, it’s more like giving the students the information and asking them to analyze, reflect, emphasize and integrate it. I can give my students information about blood pressure and then ask them to give me a project or certain machine that measures blood pressure so I’m integrating the information with visual and model learning. Moreover, nowadays there are a lot of ICT tools in front of us as teachers so we can vary these tools to fit our students' needs and to incorporate constructivism in our classroom. If we are going about photosynthesis and we are talking about what are the main conditions that are necessary for the plant I can ask my students to open the simulation app and perform the experiment, so that the students can control the conditions that are necessary for the plants. They can control the variables in the way they want, they can know what conditions are needed by the plant in order to survive; how much mineral salts they must add or which specific intensity of sunlight is better. So the usage of online tools can help me a lot as a teacher to achieve constructivism.

 So students don’t depend on the teacher as their own source of knowledge, rather learning becomes student centered and students are able to search or create the information. To incorporate constructivism in my class I have to go beyond the book, I may ask my students to watch a video or I let them have a project or even I can take them to specific places to discover according to my topic. For example, if I am explaining a lesson to my students about the impact of plastic on marine animals, simply I can take them to the beach and ask them to collect all the plastics there. So as a science teacher, I can incorporate constructivism in different ways in my class.

social constructivism:

In social constructivism students are still discovering and learning from their own interpretations, observations, and from their own experience. But it’s not necessary by themselves, me as a teacher I can ask them to make it in a collaborative kind of learning like to work in groups, to work in peers, or may be to collect data by going around and asking people, or by filling up a questionnaire. So social constructivism it’s from its name its more social so here the information is not only from one source, it’s a kind of multiple interaction, we have opinions of others and we have group working activities and students are understanding the lesson from different perspectives. For social constructivism my role as instructor is to focus on these three points: scaffolding, inter subjectivity, and guided participation. Scaffolding is an important concept that we have to remember upon talking about social constructivism. It’s about going step by step; so when you are giving the information to students you are not giving it all at once, but you divided it into many stages, so the students don’t directly depend on themselves in case I am introducing a new concept. For example, if I want my students to work in peer and have a project about food chain. I have first to explain to them the concept of ecosystem, then I can show them a model about the interactions of individuals within the environment. I give all the new information and make sure that my students get the ideas and know what they really have to do in this project. So in the last stage students are able to apply the concept and are able to create the project about food chain without the help of the teacher. So scaffolding is like constructing a building, by which I give my student’s the main blocks to guide their learning. Another example about scaffolding is:  in case I am a language teacher, I can start with my students by simple things, colors, numbers, or some regular words (father, food, air). Then as a second step I move into using phrases and constructing sentences and then as a final step I let them have conversations with each other.

Another point to focus on is guided participation; by which it’s about interacting and helping my students to learn and perform in a proper manner.

Moreover, reciprocal teaching, situated learning, and anchored instructions are some examples of social constructivism teaching methods that I can follow in my class. Reciprocal teaching is about students sitting in groups and sharing the information among each other and thus this can help in covering some ambiguous points that some of the students may have. For example, if some students are working on a project about the heart, maybe rana doesn't know or don’t understand how the heart pumps the blood throughout the body, but Sami and Rayan know how, so simply they can clarify and explain the information for rana. So in reciprocal teaching students are learning and clarifying the information to each other. Another method is situated learning. In this method as a teacher I have to think about labs, to think about experiments instead of just explaining the lesson in the class. For example, if I am teaching my students about planting steps, instead of showing them pictures only, I can take my students to the field, divide them into groups and let them learn about planting by experience, they can ask the farmers there, or they can follow some steps to plant something. In this way students can learn or notice things, me as a teacher don’t think about it before. So by situated learning I am letting my students understand the information in a practical manner. For example, if my lesson is about DNA extraction, simply I can take my students to the lab and let them perform an experiment about extracting DNA from strawberries so they can understand the concept by applying it in the lab. Another teaching method of social constructivism is anchored learning. I can use this method to make the learning process more enjoyable and to increase my student’s engagement within class.

So as a teacher in order to incorporate social constructivism in my class I have to focus on collaborations, on discussions, on sharing information, on group activities and on multiple interactions. For example, if I’m going to give my students a topic about causes and symptoms of diabetes. I can divide my students into different groups and ask them to collect data about this by going around and asking diabetic patients, or even by going and making interviews with doctors. So they can collect the information from different sources and from different opinions; maybe they will find that patient one is sick due to heredity whereas patient two is saying that heredity has no relation, and there is no diabetes in his family. So students start to think about the information. For example, if I am explaining to my students a lesson about friendship, simply I can motivate discussion and debate in my class by asking my students to sit in with peers or in groups and discuss what is a true friend. 

Moreover, as a teacher I have to focus more on portfolios, on performance tasks, on peer assessments and not only on quizzes and tests that are more traditional. For example, if I am teaching my students something about wind activity. At the end of this lesson I can ask my students to work with peers to produce a machine that measures the direction of the wind. So the product or the machine will help me to assess their understanding of the concept. Moreover, for example I can post an assessing question to my students on the google classroom and open it to the students to see each other’s answers and be able to reply to each other’s so that if one of the students has a certain misunderstanding he will cover it and deal with it. Another example is to ask my students to exchange the exercises that they solved among each other, and I can give them certain criteria so that they can assess the tasks of each other.