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Teaching Philosophy

Izabella von Beren

Professor Son:EDUC7520

September 20th, 2022

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There are myriad theories and philosophies on teaching in the United States, let alone the whole

world. As an early undergraduate student, when I was first introduced to these, I was concerned

about how I would pick just one perspective by which to run my practice. Obviously, I was naive

at that time because, as a teacher, you do not need to follow just one theory of thought. But these

ideas eventually begin to form based on your morals and belief systems and can change as time

goes on. In this paper, my personal statement on teaching will be presented, and the following

subjects will be touched upon: the psychological perspective for education and how it relates to

the social justice stance I take, as well as the purpose of math education and the paradigm I

follow.

Starting with my general psychological view on teaching and learning, I am a

Vygotskian, meaning I take a sociocultural and historical approach to understanding and

developing. Lev Vygotsky, the founder of this field of thought, stated that human development is

a socially mediated process where children obtain their beliefs, cultural values, and other skills

via collaboration and dialogue with more knowledgeable members of society. Prior to college, I

would not categorize myself in this way, and I liked to think that there were perfect

developmental stages that everyone, for the most part, would go through at the same time as the

general textbooks told us. However, once actually getting into a diverse classroom, I realized this

could not be the case. I noticed two core concepts of the sociocultural theory of cognitive

development in my undergraduate placements that have kept me on this perspective. The first is

that we are social beings and started off needing each other to survive. Thousands of years later,

in my opinion, we still learn best from working with others who give us different perspectives on

this world. The second is that we all have backgrounds that we can not leave at the door when we
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walk into school. Everyone is not coming in from the same place, and that is what makes

education so challenging but rewarding.

Another reason I align so heavily with Vygotsky's work is the lens it provides for social

justice teaching. As aforementioned, students will always come into your classroom in totally

different spaces developmentally. Some educators do not factor this in and just expect students to

be up to the Common Core Standards or get there quickly. Looking at this with the Zone of

Proximal Development in mind, for some students, with the help of peers or a facilitator, they

may get there; however, this can not be the expectation of all who are not developmentally ready.

As a future educator, I will meet my students where they are and understand that they are who

they are because of their unique upbringing and life experiences. Moreover, in my classroom, we

will accept one another and cherish our differences rather than let them divide us. I will be

patient and open-minded and expect my students to live by that mantra. At the end of the day, I

hope this attitude and continual work and adjustments will create a socially just classroom in

which every single student can thrive!

Moving onto the final part of my philosophy, it is essential to understand my

conceptualization of mathematics as a discipline. I see mathematics through the dynamic

problem-driven lens, which states problems and solutions exist. Still, there is no one size fits all

method for everything, and the grand purpose of math education is to give people the skills to

solve problems outside the school building and in the world. As we have discussed in class, math

is everywhere, from parking meters to creating vaccines to stopping the spread of the COVID-19

pandemic. As grade school teachers, we cannot teach all of the specificities to solve the world's

problems; however, giving them the mathematical mindset that everything is solvable and can be

done with many routes will lay a foundation for young children to become future leaders.