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Philosophy
of Teaching
When adults teach and learn in one another’s company, they find
themselves engaging in a challenging, passionate, and creative activity.
The acts of teaching and learning – and the creation and alteration of
our beliefs, values, actions, relationships, and social forms that
result from this – are ways in which we realize our humanity
(Brookfield, 1986, p. 1).
The above-mentioned quote largely informs my
philosophy of teaching. I embrace teaching as a
cooperative/collaborative venture in which the learners and I are a
community of learners and teachers engaged in a critical and informed
dialogue about our contested lived experiences and world views. In this
cooperative venture, both the learners and I engage in an
action-reflection-action which creates and alters our frames of analysis
about our lives, inter-personal relationships, and socio-economic,
cultural, religious, spiritual and political views. Over the years, my
guiding principle as a teacher has been my acknowledgement of the
learners’ accumulated lived experiences as valuable sources of
knowledge. My goal as a teacher is to enhance the learner’s critical
thinking and reflective ability to effect positive behavioural and
attitudinal change. My role is to inspire learners to dream and live
their dreams, and nurture a transformative learning culture. One of my
approaches to guiding learners to challenge and validate their
experiences and world views is by presenting
alternative interpretations of such positionalities. I consider
the development of critical consciousness and curiosity as central to my
philosophy of teaching. At the university level, I see my role as a
guide, advisor and facilitator, providing the learners with input and
assistance that are critical to the realization of their academic and
career goals. As a teacher, I believe that I should be sensitive to the
multiple voices and diversity the learners and I bring into the
teaching-learning situation. To allow this to happen I should create a
learning environment through participatory and emancipatory teaching
methods such as cooperative inquiry, socio-dramas, story telling,
dialogue, simulation exercises, group discussions, role plays and
critical individual reflections.
I conceptualize learning as an on-going and
life-long process. It must be problem-centred and rooted in the real
life and concrete experiences of the individuals engaged in a learning
process. Transformative learning is most likely to take place when an
individual has the ability to critically reflect on and analyze her/his
own and others’ lived experiences, assumptions, beliefs and values with
the ultimate goal of creating new knowledge and change in behaviour.
Learners engage in a transformative learning process in order to
identify problems affecting their personal well-being and their society,
the root causes of these problems and explore practical solutions to
such problems.
In my several years of teaching experience at
elementary, secondary and college levels, I have realized that learners
will actively participate in a learning activity in which they feel
respected, recognized and valued and see a potential to fulfill their
personal needs, dreams and aspirations. Individuals’ active
participation in a learning experience is most times motivated by the
desire to grow intellectually, transform their behaviours and attitudes,
or respond to real-life problems. In order to enable learners to achieve
their learning goals, I need to be very clear with what I expect them to
gain out of our cooperative learning venture. I should also encourage
learners to articulate their learning goals and help them to realize
that our world views are contextual and socio-culturally constructed.
The adult education philosophers and or scholars who have had the
greatest positive impact on my teaching philosophy and pedagogical
approach include Paulo Freire, Julius Nyerere, Moses Coady, Budd Hall
and Edmund O’Sullivan. In the area of peace education, which I consider
as an essential ingredient or integral part of adult education, I derive
my greatest inspiration from the works of Kathy Bickmore, Betty Reardon,
Helen Kekkonen, Brigit Brock-Utne, Swee-Hin Toh, I. W. Zartman, Abu-Nimer,
M. and Johan Galtung.
My professional development is also an essential
ingredient of my teaching philosophy. Since I began teaching in 1970, my
goal has been to develop a high standard of professionalism and
scholastic excellence in the art of teaching. This motivated me to
pursue a Higher Teachers Certificate and Bachelor of Science degree in
Agricultural Education. In my decade’s experience as a community
development practitioner and educator, I facilitated several non-formal
adult education sessions. This experience made me realize that I needed
to be more grounded on the theory and principles of adult education. It
is against this background that I decided to pursue graduate studies in
this field. I therefore, adult education as my vocation perceive
learning as part of my life’s journey.
Development Philosophy
As an adult educator, I come from a social
transformation background which influences my philosophy of development.
I understand sustainable development as an on-going process of social
transformation. I therefore, believe that social transformation can and
does occur through education. I also strongly believe that my teaching
and development philosophies are interrelated. I acknowledge that the
concept of development is highly contested. It is a ‘blanket’ term that
means different things to different people. I conceptualize development
from a human- and earth-centred perspective. The development process
encompasses multiple frames of analysis including, gender, race,
religious, spirituality, cultural, economic, political, social and
environmental. In articulating my development philosophy certain core
values influence my thinking, such as, human and earth rights, good
governance, justice, equality, equity, non-violence, empowerment,
self-reliance, accountability, relevance and sustainability. Based on my
lived African experiences and academic background in Freirian
emancipatory philosophy of education, I believe that development is a
right for everyone regardless of their race, gender, sexual orientation,
religion, beliefs and values. At the heart of development is also the
issue of equal and equitable distribution of material resources, and
political, economic and knowledge power among a group of individuals in
a given society and between the so-called industrialized countries and
the Global South. Development cannot be sustainable without changing
the structures and forces that oppress people and deplete the natural
environment. Since the process of social transformation is complex and
dynamic, the development process must be community-driven. It is through
collective and cooperative action that people emancipate themselves from
the forces of oppression and exploitation. Informed by my teaching
philosophy, I embrace development as a cooperative venture, in which all
the stakeholders must actively participate in all phases of the
development process as well as in the control and ownership of its
successes and challenges.
Central to my development philosophy is the belief
in people’s capacity to develop themselves and their communities using
their indigenous knowledge systems, processes and local
resources/assets. I believe that people cannot be developed, they can
develop themselves. Therefore, the goal of development is to enhance
people’s capacity to liberate themselves and their societies from the
factors or forces that limit the realization of their abundant lives and
the sustainability of their societies and environment. My role as a
community development educator is to create a conducive learning
environment in which both the learners and I identify, analyze,
challenge and critique, in an informed manner, our multiple frames of
development with a view to searching both individually and collectively
available human and non-human assets that would solve the problems that
limit the advancement and sustainability of human and non-human
environments.
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