Philosophy Paper 2

Michael Lane MAT Teaching Philosophy 1/14/2014

Before I start, I do want to mention something. I feel I am starting to come full circle with my assignments. Information I am writing started out as a philosophy paper back in 2010 that changed into college application letter, into something I tried to actually apply in work when I was a substitute teacher, into concept map of pedagogical theory, into a philosophy of assessment, and finally into now philosophy paper--again.

Honestly, I feel like nothing else I have tried in the past has peaked interest or fulfillment as trying to teach students concepts. While at Tech as teaching assistant for the School of Physics under Dr. Eric Murray, my passion for teaching was sparked by seeing how experiments when adapted to the specific interests and goals of the student could change a failing or bored student to a student that understands and is passionate about physics. I now know it because you can use assessment to motivate students. Philosophically Vygotsky’s mandate that “full cognitive development requires social interaction” must guide teachers to facilitate attentiveness and involvement from the class. One of the greatest challenges to critical thinking is belief preservation, or the tendency to make evidence subservient to belief. This is why, as a teacher, I now try to supplement Piaget’s theory with Vygotsky’s theory because by making the material emotionally and culturally relevant but disequilbrializing by having them try to explain physics behind certain common technologies they use every day. When I first tried this, in my H01 Physics 2211 class in 2008, I was inspired by the student response. The students quickly broke down the existing social, economic and la...

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...ve scale. The test simply measured their knowledge of simple kinematics and the concept of vectors. When I reviewed the information and checked for questions the day before the quiz, my observations of the student’s very blank faces, and questions to me that they had learned nothing from the test and that it was not reliable. They could get very little from a multiple-choice assessment that was either right or wrong. In contrast, when I proctored almost (~60%) the same students for a free response essay in history class the next day, the detail and care that they responded to that essay, a subjective assessment, showed me that that group of student was better a performance subjective test rather than traditional objective based testing. Based on this I feel like I favor subjective forms of assessment because they are able to provide more feedback students.