The best fit

We have discussed the educational philosophy along with learning theories, taking a deeper look into these theories we should be able to see the underlying educational philosophy. As stated before I feel that progressivism is the educational philosophy that I feel aligns with my belief and as expected the learning theory that aligned with my belief was that of constructivism. This was an easy connection for me as the underlying philosophy is focused on the learner and developing the knowledge through active learning. They both focus on prior knowledge of the learner and want to build upon or in some cases clear misconceptions. Constructivism theory is one that can be seen as influenced by the philosophy of progressivism and can be seen in the way learning is facilitated.  

Behaviorism seemed to fit well with essentialism based on how behaviorism looks to measure outcomes. One aspect of essentialism is looking for students to learn and master basic skills. This philosophy would match up well with the theory in that to know if the students are learning and mastering the skills you would need to be able to measure that through standards. Behaviorism This would also match well with the idea of going off of textbooks to cultivate this knowledge as the skills that would be learned would be developed with textbook companies. The way in which Behaviorism would be facilitated in the classroom would be a focus on mastery of skills and the teaching style would be one of teacher, and text book, being the ultimate source of knowledge. 

 The other two learning theories that we had discussed was not so clear, to me anyways, as to what philosophy that they were directly influenced by. Systems theory looks at the whole, prescribing rather than explaining, and the procedure for designing instruction. I look at this learning theory and can see a big influence through perennialism. I say perennialism based on the belief of the learning theory of the natural order and rationality of the world. This, to me, seems as though it is speaking to a universal truth and perennialism also believes that subjects develop rationality and morality. The facilitation would be of understanding knowledge and one that would be tied to the great works of civilization. 

The last learning theory that we talked about was that of the communication theory. This one also challenged me to really get at the bottom of what philosophy was influencing it. The focus is on the process of, from my understanding knowledge, that would make it closely influenced by essentialism. Essentialism is belief of transmitting knowledge from the teacher to the student. This in and of itself is essentialism but the learning theory also takes into account the background of both individuals, or field of experience, which can be seen in progressivism. The idea being that communication occurs when both individual’s field of experiences overlap. This is one that I am still contemplating which philosophy is influencing it overall.