“It is the task of the enlightened not only to ascend to learning and to see the good but to be willing to descend again to those prisoners and to share their troubles and their honors, whether they are worth having or not. And this they must do, even with the prospect of death.”
This must have been the best lines that sum up what I have learned after completing the process of knowing and understanding the concepts behind the Allegory of the Cave by Plato.I am a faculty instructor of the College of Pharmacy of Southwestern University PHINMA, and my job is to make sure that I help the students learn the knowledge and wisdom needed to become registered pharmacists. Southwestern University PHINMA is an institution that aims to be an instrument for game-changers: for serious and driven learners to become the best that they can be. As a science-oriented faculty instructor, I did have a hard time understanding the entire concept of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. It was a near-traumatic experience as I was feeling lost and confused the entire time I was watching the video and reading materials related to it. The experience made me ask myself a question: “How can a university achieve their goal of producing individuals to be the best that they can be, if faculty instructors are not able to understand the concept behind Plato’s Allegory of the Cave?”. I know the question is not a concrete basis to a faculty instructor’s efficiency in helping the university achieve the goal, but my answer opened windows that paved the way to new learnings. My answer to the question started the development of my philosophy in teaching. It acted as a drive for me to learn all the world and educational philosophies, differentiate them from each other, and assess which of these best suits my philosophy of teaching.
Reconstructionism has greatly influenced the assessment methods that I use in the classroom. From the traditional pen-and-paper examinations, I have introduced assessments that are true to reconstructionism. I utilized role plays, reflection paper writing, plenary sessions, community immersions and clinical-based cases to my class. These new assessments will not replace written examinations, but will only be an addition to the assessments that I am going to use in my class. I believe by doing this I will be able to impart different types of media where students will learn to accept the consequences of their actions; to nurture in them the sense of commitment and responsibility, which are needed by individuals who play a role in social change. The decision variable of when to or what will be the best assessment to be utilized will depend on the learning objectives. For example, in my Pharmaceutical Marketing class, I set an objective that aims to let my students design pricing plans correlated to the data collected from previous session’s risk assessment activity. For them to achieve this goal, they need to know the different market pricing strategies. Students need to brainstorm and submit pricing plan related to their proposed product as an assessment for this objective.
The introduction of the new learning assessments changed the learning environment: from a classroom where sitting arrangement is permanent, it has now changed to a classroom where sitting arrangements depend on the learning activities to be conducted for the session. Community-based learning and bringing the world into the classroom will be the common strategies that I am going to use. The learning environment will be fueled more this time by the students, not by the teacher. The students will be the active participants and the teacher will most of the time serve as the facilitators of knowledge. The students will be active learners in the process, and not just mere recipients of information. They will be more active in the class, and will be more involved to experiences that require social action to real problems, an example of which are the epidemiological cases in the society. The students’ role will now be more focused to things that could develop their soft skills — like root cause analysis and formulating action plans — to apply action-based theories and values to things that can make a real difference in the society.
My main role as a teacher is now a resource person who guides the students’ learning, rather than being a dispenser of knowledge. This is a complete shift from my previous role as the primary speaker in my class. I will now focus more on facilitating activities that will enable the students to learn through experience, rather than forcing ideas and theories through plain discussions. This will promote long-term retention, and the students can efficiently apply these experiences in real-life situations. The activity of making a lesson plan from our previous activity served as the perfect tool for me to put these realizations into actions. I made use of the lesson plan in one of my classes, and the results made me realize that it is very crucial for the teacher to properly set measurable, timely, and clear objectives that are true to his or her philosophy, and pair it with activities and assessments that can methodically measure the completion of the set objectives. Now that I realize that reconstructionism is my philosophy of teaching, I will be, from now on, making objectives that are true to my philosophy. I need to focus on making objectives that promotes problem-solving method activities that demand application to real-life problems.
If I am going to compare the person I am right now to the person I am who was struggling to understand the concept of the Allegory of the Cave by Plato, there will be a lot of differences. I did not expect myself to learn things like this in just a short period of time. In less than a month, I have discovered a lot of flaws on the way I teach. I learned that I still don’t have a true image of what my philosophy in teaching is. After these discoveries, I made sure that I will be able to know my philosophy of teaching as soon as possible. Through studying the educational philosophies (LeoNora Cohen, 2017) I discovered my philosophy of teaching is pretty much the same to that teaching method of reconstructionism. I then developed this philosophy by applying it to my classes and I will continue to do so to strengthen it. My philosophy of teaching stays true to the essence of reconstructionism. I believe that for me, a teacher of SWU PHINMA, my students need to apply to the society what they have learned inside the classroom for them to become the best pharmacists that they can be.
References
LeoNora Cohen. (2017, August 26). Philosophy and Education Continuum Chart. Retrieved from Oregon State Edu: https://oregonstate.edu/instruct/ed416/chart3.html
Plato. The Republic. In Plato, The Republic Book VII (pp. 514a- 521d).
No comments:
Post a Comment