Educational Philosophy
It all begins with an idea.
I believe the purpose of education is to equip learners with the skills and knowledge they need to succeed in future opportunities. Though most people think of K-12 primary and secondary education, I believe this is also true of any adult learning. Education exists to open doors for people that were not open to them prior to learning. As such, if the learner isn’t better off (more prepared, more equipped to succeed, etc) then there was a failure somewhere in the education process. It is the role of the teacher and the instructional designer to guide the student through the learning process so that they possess knowledge and skills at the end which will afford them more opportunities in their life.
The teachers in our schools are highly trained educators, knowledgeable not only in their subject matter but also in teaching techniques, learning styles, and more. Before my career in sales and recruiting, I studied education and worked as a public school teacher, which gave me an appreciation for evidence-based teaching techniques. I believe adult professionals deserve the same time and thoughtfulness paid to their instruction, and I want to utilize my skills to create meaningful learning opportunities.
Meaningful learning opportunities will:
Clearly pertain to the learner’s life context
Be available to in a format compatible with the learner’s learning style
Be appropriate in scope and scale for the subject at hand
I believe students learn best through their own experiences. Like Piaget and Dewey, I believe that learning is an active, constructive process in which people build understanding through their own context and culture. When instructors create opportunities for learners to complete projects relevant to their experience and context, the learners are motivated by the connection between theoretical concepts and real-world applications. This results in much higher rates of implementation of the new information or skills. Research shows that when students are active processors of the information they receive, the information moves from short term memory (repeating information without processing it) to long term “working” memory, meaning the manipulation of stored information (Adams, E. J., Nguyen, A. T., & Cowan, N. 2018).
I have found that the most effective method for teaching is to make sure your learners are motivated to learn. You’d be hard-pressed to find a more difficult task than teaching someone who doesn’t want to learn, whereas a motivated learner will often seemingly do a lot of the work for you, allowing you to act more as a guide in their self-directed journey of discovery.
From working as a public school teacher and leading professional training in a business setting, I’ve learned firsthand the difference between a motivated learner and an unmotivated one. But it’s not just my experience that tells us this; the learning theory of constructivism suggests that learning and meaning are constructed by the learner from their past experiences. This process doesn’t relies on the learner to be a willing and active participant in the learning, and won’t work if there is no internal motivation to learn.
When I’m teaching a subject, my primary goal is to understand what the learner needs to be able to do. Once I know the objective, I can design the instruction to achieve that goal. The temptation when teaching a subject, especially one that may be an area of expertise for the instructor, is to demonstrate how much you know. While subject matter expertise can be valuable, simply expounding on the subject should never be the goal of well-designed instruction. You must understand the objective, design and deliver instruction that aligns with it, and provide opportunities for learners to connect the instruction to their own context. Though the time and energy spent in identifying and understanding the learning objective may differ from one project to another, the process will remain the same because without a clear idea of the goal, an instructional designer cannot create meaningful instruction for the learner.
Adams, E. J., Nguyen, A. T., & Cowan, N. (2018). Theories of Working Memory: Differences in Definition, Degree of Modularity, Role of Attention, and Purpose. Language, speech, and hearing services in schools, 49(3), 340–355. https://doi.org/10.1044/2018_LSHSS-17-0114