My Philosophy of Social Studies Education
My philosophy of education did not completely cover the more specific
philosophies I have in teaching students the social sciences. This philosophy
concentrates on transformational education. I want students to leave my classroom
transformed into better citizens, more critical of things like how power is distributed, how
they personally, or others, may be privileged or disadvantaged, or things they/we can do
to help change the status quo.
The focus of my teaching would be on social reformation i.e.: How can we make
this society more just? In history it would be taking examples of instances of race,
gender, class bias, and seeing if situations have improved or gotten worse today. In
social studies it would be paying closer attention to things like class reproduction, white
privilege, or Aboriginal poverty in Canada.
My social studies classes, especially, will have a focus on cooperative learning.
This builds classroom community by having the students interacting, bouncing ideas off
of, and solving problems together. They eliminate some of the competition found in
more direct teaching methods. Competition ultimately breeds selfishness and jealousy,
and loses a lot of the creativity that should be present in cooperative learning as students
will be more open to sharing and bouncing ideas off of each other, thus getting critical
feedback and turning out improved and well rounded ideas.