Becoming a good teacher depends on multiple pillars, and awareness
of the different philosophies of education is one of them. Knowledge of various
kinds and genres has been sought by those who became the greatest philosophers
of all time. The methods followed by these philosophers, the curricula that
they developed, the aims that they aspired to reach and set as objectives to be
achieved by their students, and finally the roles that they played in doing so
all build up their respective philosophies of education.
In this paper, 2 of the most commonly employed philosophies in the
21st century are subjected to comparison. These two philosophies are
Pragmatism and Behaviorism.
Any two philosophies of education have their unique contributions
to the learning systems that they influence. What is majorly perceived about
pragmatism is that it is a philosophical movement that sponsors ideology or
proposition if it works satisfactorily. If a proposition is to be perceived as
true, it must have acceptable consequences; whereas impractical ideas are
rejected (McDermid, 2006). On the other hand, behaviorism is a philosophy that
favors observable behavior over internal events like thinking and emotion. This
approach is utilized by behaviorists because external behavior can be
scientifically and objectively observed and measured.
Discussion
Pragmatism:
Pragmatism became a recognized philosophy in America around the
1870s. It was initially proposed by Charles Pierce whose work was not
recognized until after his death. He came to a conclusion that true knowledge
of anything depends on testing one’s ideas in actual experience; that is that
ideas remain hypothetical until put to test and proven to be applicable.
Following Pierce’s death, William James popularized pragmatism and brought the
philosophy to a wider audience, and finally it was John Dewey who put
pragmatism into a systemized educational frame. Pragmatism has been implemented
into the educational systems of many schools due to its practicality and its
domination in modern philosophical societies.
Behaviorism:
Behaviorism is perceived more as a psychological theory instead of
a philosophy per se. regardless of the controversy of his works; B. F. Skinner
was the founding father of behaviorism. He developed –gradually- the system
that influences human behavior through positive and negative reinforcement that
follow a consequence generated from a certain response to a specific stimulus. Since
behavior is a result of a stimulus, behaviorists view that we have no free
will; we are born with a ‘tabula rasa’ and our behaviors are affected by
our environment. Moreover, new behavior is learned through classical
conditioning. Classical conditioning was first founded by Ivan Pavlov, but was
criticized for being too simplistic; however, it was practiced and developed by
both Pavlov and John Watson. Watson even took this approach a few steps further
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Aims of Education:
According to John Dewey and other pragmatists, education should not
be regarded as schooling in academic subject matter, and should rather deal
with matters of life and society up close; i.e. any separation between the two
should be eliminated. Education is an important part of life itself, rather
than a mere preparation for it. Also according to Dewey, in “My Pedagogic
Creed”, he mentions that education has 2 main fundamental aspects: the
psychological and the sociological. Therefore, he believed that individuals
should be educated as social beings that can consciously orient their social
affairs and that education should be a means for achieving certain social and
appropriate growth criteria. Dewey’s approach revolved around:
-
Aims
that grow out of existing conditions; that the rules of right and wrong and
practicality must change to become more synchronized with the conditions in
which a person is growing in.
-
Aims
should be tentative and flexible, also to be more consistent with conditions at
hand.
-
Last
but not least, and most importantly aims should be directed towards an ‘end in
view’, therefore liberating one from constraints of education.
Upon analyzing these criteria, you can arrive at the first and
central aim of education which is ‘Growth’. Growth is what pragmatic
educational approaches aim to fulfill in the first place; unlimited, social and
liberating growth.
Other pragmatic educational aims include: finding new solutions to
problems; as long as their mentality and morality are right for attacking that
problem with the least casualties. When combining this aim with the pragmatists’
view that education needs to be synchronized with life itself; we can conclude
the third aim of pragmatism; which is making people more aware of the
consequences of their actions and be more conscious about their behavioral
decisions.
On the other hand, behaviorism aims to achieve goals of different
forms. Behavioral engineering has become part of the educational process in
many ways. By using conditioning in various cases inside the classroom and
outside of it; teachers have developed strategies to influence student behavior
and attitudes (for instance by rewarding good behavior and punishing
unacceptable behavior). In following such beliefs behaviorists aim to program
student behavior in ways that are more beneficial and productive than the way they
are programmed by their previous environment. This previous environment
consists of television, friends, computers, and most importantly parents of
educational beliefs incompatible with that of the school’s.
According to Skinner students need to be subjected to new more
systematic and meaningful conditioning instead of the haphazard conditioning
that they subjected to before entering schools to produce more desirable
behavior. Even though many argue that Skinner’s approach is more like training
robots instead of education, it has proven effective inside classrooms. By
positive and negative reinforcements; teachers are able to orient students
towards more responsible behavior and thus producing improved humans; and
improvement in humans especially when manifested in their behavior is one of
the core essences of education. Skinner further discussed how technology use in
conditioning can contribute to this improvement if used wisely. In Walden
Two, he shows how the conditioner must be conscious of his conditioning and
its consequences and that the conditioned can also help in his own
conditioning. Therefore, conditioning does prioritize aiming for more conscious
humans that can deliberately choose the right path; based on both their
conditioning and their will to do the right thing.
Methods:
When discussing the methods of behaviorists in implementing
education, it is evident what those methods are. Behaviorists rely heavily on
conditioning to engineer behavior. They focus on how consequences can be used
to influence behavior. Once a person is subjected to conditioning (the younger
the better the results are); every action is to be judged by the conditioner
and feedback is provided. Feedback is provided in the form of positive and negative
reinforcement instead of the classical reward and punishment. When a child does
something correctly, his conditioner is expected to provide praise, a smile,
stars, stickers…etc. On the other hand if the behavior performed by the student
is unfavorable, the teacher may take away the factor stimulating this behavior;
thus causing a pattern of diminishing in such a behavior and with no use of
punishment.
Other methods adapted by behaviorists are behavior modification
through modification of the environment. If a certain factor in the person’s
environment is causing him to behave in a certain way; that factor needs to be
investigated and worked around in order to alter that behavior into something
more acceptable. The behavior may be due to something perfectly reasonable;
therefore it is illogical to punish it and rather it should be negatively
enforced; i.e. its conditions should be altered to prevent it from occurring
again.
Finally, the methods of positive reinforcement are many; but their
frequency should be carefully studied. This is because we want it to be
motivating enough for students to feel the desire to follow the behavior; but
in the same time, the conditioned should not get too attached to it that he
only performs the behavior for the sake of winning a smile or a certain prize.
Therefore, reinforcement should be given at a high frequency at first to
encourage then this frequency should be lowered gradually. By that time the
behavior will be a habit to the conditioned; especially if he has a clear and
convincing idea about its rationale.
As for the methods followed by pragmatists, they seek to implement
knowledge mainly via the scientific method. The scientific method is a logical
way of thinking and carrying out of procedures to solve a certain problem.
According to pragmatists, if the procedure proposed by scientific thinking is
beneficial in a sense that its drawbacks are acceptably minor, then it is
approved. Other philosophies will accept any method that works in theory but
pragmatism is unique in its ‘put the theory to test’ approach.
Also, the concept of experimentation is basic to pragmatism.
Through discovery learning, students learning under pragmatic influence are
urged to perform practical experiments and test hypotheses for better
understanding. Discovery learning is a modern approach utilized by many
pragmatist teachers where students are given a chance to develop skills of
inquiry in order to discover the important knowledge to be learned (which in a
different setting would have been introduced and clarified by the teacher).
Curriculum:
In terms of discussing the curriculum adapted by pragmatism, the
pragmatist teachers first of all see that everything is related; they are
against the centering of knowledge into discrete subjects and rather advocate
integration and coordination of knowledge in order to connect the dots between
these subjects and possibly arrive at new knowledge or be inspired to use
different methods and approaches; as long as they correlate with the scientific
method.
Moreover, pragmatists encourage the use of actions in learning.
They strongly emphasize the role of experimentation in their methods; and
therefore, skills and performance of projects and procedures are a crucial part
of their curriculum in order to gain the right perspective when looking at a
problem. Problem solving is another major part of the pragmatist teacher’s
concern and therefore, the pragmatist teacher relies on real life situations o
be solved (even if virtually, but under realistic conditions) in class with the
students so they can transfer this knowledge and be more skilled at solving
similar problems in the real world. When the students are able to formulate
hypotheses and expand their realm of thinking of solutions to problems in a
scientific manner, their impact on their environment becomes more significant.
Finally, pragmatists believe in a diversified curriculum, where the
topics are of various fields of knowledge and interests. However, this
diversity must be a bit constrained in terms of appropriateness for the
students’ age groups and abilities. This means that even though pragmatists
wish to encourage scientific thinking skills, they must take into consideration
the age and ability factor that may stand in the way of their success; and thus
must take it step by step and develop those skills gradually. Moreover,
pragmatism also emphasizes on including skills such as time management or any
other life skill in the school curriculum in order to make learning more
beneficial and compensate for any skills that are necessary to achieve the
goals of pragmatic education, that those may students lack.
On the other hand, the curriculum implemented by behaviorist is
less complex and deals with slightly different aspects of behavior. Behaviorism
proposes that curriculum must be organized into small and discrete units
(subjects and topics); and that integration is not a major concern to them. The
smaller and more independent they are, the more manageable they are to the
teacher and to the students. Also, the teacher must set objectives in
behavioral terms and not only in terms of learning the topic addressed by the
lesson. This means that by assessing the success of a lesson, the teacher will
be testing whether such objectives have been performed by the student or not.
As for the influence on behavior, behaviorists seek to control
behavior through controlling cognitive (in the head) process. This is targeted
by a system of right and wrong that the classic conditioning aims to fulfill.
Role of the Teacher:
A behaviorist teacher is expected to condition student behavior.
When a student is behaving in a way that requires positive reinforcement, the
teacher is expected to provide it in order to carry on successful conditioning;
while the opposite happens in case if the student’s behavior is undesirable. In
order to do so, the teacher must have a clear moral in terms of what is right
and what is wrong in order for the conditioning to be effective. This may mean
that the teacher must be properly conditioned him/herself.
Moreover the teacher must provide reinforcements fairly to all
students to prevent any misinterpretation by the students; which may in turn
interfere with the conditioning of the student. The teacher must be familiar
with the effectiveness of certain reinforcements in certain situation to
guarantee their effect on behavior modifications. Therefore the teacher should
not blindly reward or negatively reinforce any situation at any frequency and
should rather have an alert mind regarding why, when, how often and how much
the magnitude of his/her response will be (training the teacher and the
student).
In order to achieve such objectives, teachers may be encouraged to
carry out meetings and agree on the goals and methodology. Also, teachers need
to be educated on how to minimize the cases where the teacher may fail to
reinforce due to external factors. This aids in unifying the teachers’
systemization of reinforcement.
As for the view of pragmatism on the teacher’s role; the teacher is
responsible for preventing learning from becoming routinized and lethargic.
Even if education is carried out in a scientific manner, effectiveness of
teaching it remains up to the teacher’s skills. The teacher is in charge of directing students
towards the best approaches in solving problems. Therefore, instead of training
the students to merely use the steps of scientific reasoning, the teacher
should model, encourage and explain the rationale behind scientific thinking.
The teacher’s role here is to promote scientific method skills within the
students and encouraging transferability, by involving the students as equally
as well. The teacher should encourage active, rather than passive, learning of
the students where they deal practically with every aspect of what they’re
learning.
The teacher should also be aware that not all students are
motivated and can be educated using the same methods. Therefore, another role
for the teacher is to diversify his/her methods in order to capture every
student’s motivation and ‘boost’ it.
Finally, the teacher has a crucial role which is implementing
knowledge in students by providing real life situations to solve and work on
even if the curriculum doesn’t provide them. By this way, the teacher ensures
the most effective earning because students can actively relate to what they
are working on.
(References:
Adapted from Philosophical Foundations of Education, 6th Edition)
