Educational Philosophy

I believe learning is something like a jigsaw puzzle. Each person has an individual puzzle that they have to put together to figure out their own personal learning picture. The teacher’s job is to help students figure out how to put their puzzle together, and to encourage them to explore every corner and every piece of that puzzle.

Students begin life with the major parts of the puzzle – their eyes, brains, hands, etc. They have to first learn how to put these large pieces of the puzzle together correctly to form their learning picture. For example, if a child is more of a tactile learner, then that child has to learn how to put their hands and senses at the center of their puzzle. As the child grows and develops, they also have to learn that not every situation allows for hands-on learning. So they may have to learn how to connect other pieces to their learning style that allows them to adapt their learning style to different situations.

I think that it is important to point out that students have to be taught what to do with several important pieces of the puzzle such as nutrition, exercise, and rest. These should never be left out of the puzzle.

Ultimately, however, some information just has to be learned, or some situations don’t allow certain learning styles to operate. This is where the teacher has to teach the child to explore every corner of their puzzle and learn how to learn in different styles. This may not help them learn that information for the long haul, but it will help students survive anything that would get thrown at them in school or in life.

I think at the core of learning, we have to interact with someone. Whether it’s a dialog with a teacher, listening to a lecture, or a group discussion, we need to learn in a context of interaction. That is why I like to think of the jigsaw puzzle – the inter-locking pieces symbolizing how we need to interact with others. So it is also up to teachers (and parents) to teach us how to properly interlock those pieces. We can’t force the pieces to go together where they aren’t designed to go, but we can’t just leave them hanging by themselves.

Also, I think that we need to realize that the puzzle may (and probably will) change and rearrange as we get older. Hands-on activities may be the main learning style for younger children, but as they get older, some may find that they are more visual learners. So they would have to re-arrange their puzzle to focus on the visual aspect.

Teachers also need to realize that at any time they can add pieces to this puzzle. In fact, we may work diligently on the puzzle our entire lives and never quite finish it. Hopefully, that is true, because I never want to get to a place that I have stopped learning new things about myself.

In technical terms, one could say that I have a social constructionist pedagogy.