It is an uneasy task to formulate one’s teaching philosophy in just a short document; however it is critically important to do so, since formulating a teaching philosophy allows a professional teacher to better understand it, to outline basic criteria, which define their behavior in complicated situations, in the situations, which call for immediate action in rather controversial settings. Among the central ideas of my teaching philosophy I would first of all underline the close relation of my philosophy with my learning experience. In other words, my teaching philosophy derives from my experience of being a student. It is critically important, I believe, not to oppose oneself to the students, but remain a part of their team, seeing their challenges as one’s own personal challenges. This cooperation builds prerequisites, grounds, needed for successful achievement of the goals defined. This sort of relations between a teacher and the students contributes into trustful, conflict free relations, and thus all the joined effort is being effectively spent upon achievement of educational goals.
In order to clearly articulate one’s teaching philosophy it is also critically important to define and understand one’s mission. And I came to understand that my mission as a teacher is threefold: to promote positive learning; to spark learner enthusiasm for learning; to provide students with a career insight.
Use your promo and get a custom paper on
"Teaching Philosophy: Educational Principles".
When being a student, I had a very strong feeling, that the majority of my professors did not care much about my professional development and educational success. Too often their job is taken formally by educators. It is not among professors’ formal obligations to help students with their professional development and career planning. Thus the majority of professors do not care to help their students in this way. And, formally speaking, it is hard to reproach them of such sort of attitude. However I personally wish to avoid this kind of a formalistic approach. Higher education is not obtained for the sake of achieving formal goals. It serves to help students find their way about the complicated and diverse life circumstances. And this is why it is important to provide them with the real-life related hints and prompt them at possible ways of dealing with their circumstances, with their newly obtained profession and preferable scenarios of career building. This allows the students to save their time and effort by avoiding unnecessary activities. As a professor, I am in that unique position to apply the educational time and conditions to help students better imagine the practical application of their knowledge. I strongly believe: my goal is not to provide them with a certain volume of information. I can never be as a successful in this sort of task. In modern conditions information should be operated differently, not as it has been for hundreds of years before. Thus my goal as an educator is to teach students how to deal with information, how to effectively find and process it, how to apply their professional skills to real life. This gives students a lot of inspiration and allows to better understand their goals in career and possible ways of achieving them.
To accomplish this ambitious plan, I will apply a wide variety of strategies based on essential educational principles, encompassing cognitive functioning, learning theories, diversity issues, instructional planning and assessment methods. Engage each and every student to learn more about them and what their career goals are. I intend to always keep our communication strong so that my students clearly understand: they have a professor they can depend on when resolving their doubts, which they can always address for inspiration and advice. I want them to see me both as a partner and a friend, and a great mentor who wants nothing more than the student to obtain what they seek from higher education. In this respect my main goal is to help them connect with their passion and inspire them for lifelong learning.
