Teaching-Learning Philosophy Essay Paper
Teaching-Learning Philosophy Essay Paper
Your personal assessment of your philosophy of teaching and learning should be unique to you. This assignment will give you a good base for enhanced learning through the remainder of this course and will provide you the opportunity to achieve the course learning outcome: describe the complexities and realities of health teaching from a personal and theoretical perspective. Supporting information and assessment of your philosophy of teaching and learning is addressed in Units 1 – 3.
Assignments must be submitted via the appropriate dropbox on the course home page.
Evaluation Criteria for Assignment 1
Articulate clear statements of your personal learning style and your professional teaching philosophy. (3 marks)
Link at least one of the theoretical underpinning (e.g. Behaviorism, Cognitivism, Social Constructivism) to support your teaching-learning philosophy. (10 marks)
Provide one clear and detailed example to demonstrate how your values and beliefs related to both teaching and learning affect your role as a health care professional. (5 marks)
Provide evidence of application of course concepts from Units 1, 2, and 3 and references from external sources as needed to support your teaching-learning philosophy. (7 marks)
Teaching-Learning Philosophy
The professional teaching and learning practice is based on the awareness that learners perform best when placed in an environment in which they feel comfortable. In addition, learner perform well when offered the opportunity to participate in learning activities. Competent teachers will typically provide their learners with meaningful learning content while encouraging them to develop a deeper understanding of the content, engage in discussions about the content, and adapt the content for their unique needs. These are all conducted through speaking, listening, writing and reading activities (Gross & Kinnison, 2014). Besides that, the learning environment should provide learners with detailed and frequent feedback from their teachers, especially in their speaking, listening, writing and reading. This is intended to help learners discover their strengths and weaknesses that they must work on in order to improve their knowledge levels. Also, learners should be held accountable for their learning as they would be motivated if offered a choice on how and what they learn (Billings & Halstead, 2016). The present paper offers a discussion on the personal philosophy of teaching-learning.
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Discussion
My personal philosophy of teaching-learning is that every learner is unique and must be offered a stimulating education environment to socially, emotionally, mentally and physically grow. It is my belief that every learner has the potential to be a successful learner who acquires all the knowledge concepts being taught. The teacher has the responsibility of creating a safe and conducive environment in which learners can meet their full potential. Creating such an environment can be achieved by introducing five elements into the teaching/learning environment. Firstly, technology should be incorporated to support learning activities. Such as presentations to engage learners in discussions. Secondly, the environment must be safe with every learner offered an opportunity to practice the concepts learned in the classroom. An unsafe environment would keep the learners distracted from the classroom activities. Teaching-Learning Philosophy Essay Paper Thirdly, the environment should offer learners choices that enable them to use curiosity to explore the learned concepts. Using different modalities ensures that each learner has access to a preferred learning mode, particularly the visual, aural, read/write, and kinesthetic sensory modalities. Fourthly, learners must be offered access to hands-on activities that allow them to practice the learned concepts. These activities must be practical in nature and targeted at improving familiarity with the skills associated with the concepts being transmitted. Finally, the teacher should act as a guide who directs the learners on the concepts that would be important and useful to them. This philosophy of teaching-learning will enable me develop an environment that embraces the differences between learners and accepts them as they are will assisting each learner to develop his/her own learning styles and potential.
The personal philosophy of teaching-learning is guided by the Behaviorism Learning Theory (BLT). This theory concedes that behaviors can be learned through interactions with the environment in which learners are conditioned. It involves manipulating the environment so that learning among learners becomes a response to the environmental stimuli. The theory is based on the assumption that providing a learner with the right environment will help in facilitating learning to the learner’s full potential, and that inherited and innate factors among learners can be controlled by manipulating the environment. Irrespective of the complexity of a behavior, it can be reduced to a simple association between a stimulus and response. In applying the theory, the behavior of learners can be predicted for specific situations (Schunk, 2012).
Nurses have a professional responsibility to engage patients and other community members in health learning activities. In this case, learning is targeted at enabling students to change their behavior, skills, emotional functioning and mental processing as a result of experience. This is a dynamic process in which each learner is guided to acquire new skills and knowledge that alter their actions, attitudes, feelings and thoughts (Bastable, 2014). The learning activities directed by nurses enable they learners to adapt to their changing health circumstances and demands. This is true whether it is for staff nurses devising more effective strategies for treating and educating patients, for students acquiring the skills and information required to become professional nurses, or for patients grappling with ways to adjust their medical conditions and improve their health. It becomes clear that learning is important for individual wellbeing, health, functioning and development (Walker & Avant, 2019).
Applying the BLT in the professional nursing role helps in simplifying the learning process to an interaction between a manipulated environment and achieving the desired change. The theory helps in understanding how to modify the responses and attitudes of learners through stimulus conditions. It specifically makes use of motivation and practice. It perceives motivation as the desire to learn and change, while practice is the strengthening habits. For instance, persons who visit medical facilities for the first time are likely to feel uneasy, anxious and nauseated from the unique odors in the hospital environment. These feelings are reinforced in subsequent visits if the environment remains the same thereby creating lost-lasting negative attitudes. Nurses are able to intervene by highlighting the positive aspects of health care thereby interrupting the negative attitudes and developing new positive attitudes that associate a hospital with health and wellness (Butts & Rich, 2018).
As a nurse who understands the importance of nurse-led education in the health care environment, I rely on my personal values and beliefs to guide my role as a health care professional. My personal values inspire me. They include achievement, creativity, determination, honesty, independence, intelligence, kindness, and learning. Achievement helps me in developing teaching/learning goals that can be matched with effort and results thereby knowing what has been achieved and what is yet to be achieved. Creativity helps me in personalizing the teaching/learning experience to meet the needs of each individual. Determination helps me in always pushing to achieve the set teaching/learning goals. Honesty allows me to be open in all communications with a focus on presenting truthful information that engenders trust. Independence helps me in perceiving each person as an individual capable of independent thought and behavior. Kindness helps in ensuring that all interactions and communications express sensitivity to the prevailing conditions, such as observing information confidentiality and privacy expectations. Learning helps me in perceiving every situation as an opportunity to acquire new knowledge and skills. Although these values are not exhaustive, they identify what I consider important in the teaching-learning interactions.
Conclusion
One must accept that teaching and learning activities are best supported by comfortable environments that include competent teachers and motivated learners. In addition, one must acknowledge that the ideal environment should be tailored to the learners and include feedback that highlights strengths and weaknesses. The discussion clarifies that apart from tailoring the teaching-learning environment to the needs of each learner, the environment should incorporate technology, safety, choices, access to hand-on activities, and have the teacher act as a guide. Such an environment helps to embrace the differences between learners. Also, this environment is supported by BLT. The theory enables a change in behavior, skills, emotional functioning and mental processing as a result of experience thereby simplifying the learning process as an interaction between a manipulated environment and achieving the desired change. Overall, the discussed teaching-learning philosophy helps in highlighting the positon that nurses can play to intervene in health care issues by highlighting the positive aspects of health care thereby interrupting the negative attitudes and developing new positive attitudes that associate a hospital with health and wellness.
References
Bastable, S. (2014). Nurse as Educator: Principles of Teaching and Learning for Nursing Practice (4th ed.). Jones & Bartlett Learning, LLC.
Billings, D., & Halstead, J. (2016). Teaching in Nursing: A Guide for Faculty (5th ed.). Elsevier, Inc.
Butts, J., & Rich, K. (Eds.) (2018). Philosophies and Theories for Advanced Nursing Practice (3rd ed.). Jones & Bartlett Learning, LLC.
Gross, R., & Kinnison, N. (2014). Psychology for Nurses and Health Professionals (2nd ed.). CRC Press/Taylor & Francis Group.
Schunk, D. (2012). Learning Theories: An Educational Perspective (6th ed.). Pearson.
Walker, L., & Avant, K. (2019). Strategies for Theory Construction in Nursing (6th ed.). Pearson. Teaching-Learning Philosophy Essay Paper
