My Educational Philosophy

We make countless decisions throughout our lives. However, some of these decisions directly affect the course of our lives. The most important of these is the career decision that most of us make at a young age. There have been many people affected by their families at this decision stage we made at a young age. The biggest factor that made me become a teacher is my grandfather. I grew up with the teaching memories of my grandfather, who graduated from the Village Institutes and worked in many village schools. When I was younger, I had the chance to see the deficit in education thanks to my grandfather, who criticizes the quality of the education he received here and the teacher training in today's conditions. Although I was a successful mathematical science student in high school, after losing my grandfather during the university exam period, I chose this profession to become a teacher like him by making a sudden change of decision. After deciding to be a teacher, I compared my grandfather's education with my own education throughout my university life. I tried to complete my shortcomings by attending the seminar and taking courses.

In Turkey, primary school, secondary school, there is a three-stage 12-year compulsory education system, including schools. If we consider this education system as a building, the primary school is the foundation of that structure. There is a direct proportion between the strength of a building's foundation and the strength of its floors. The reason is that most of both values such as justice, respect, responsibility, honestly, freedom, helpfulness, and abilities such as literacy, problem solving, making decision, empathy are started to teach in these years, and these values and abilities are necessary for their future life. This period also aims students to learn to how they can adopt to somewhere, how they can handle a problem without their parents, how they can learn something. Therefore, I think the primary school period is the most important period in the education system. In addition to this, according to my observation, a person who don’t like the primary school years is also unsuccessful in the following academic years. In my opinion, this situation can be explained with Freud’s Psychosexual Development Theory. According to Freud's theory, primary school age children are in the phallic period. During this period, we see that their children's interest begins to shift towards new social and peer relationships. School is the most important place where the child can socialize. For this reason, the slightest event he experiences at school may affect him more than other periods. This effect can continue throughout the student's school life. For these reasons, the primary school period is very significant for children and should be passed through in a healthy way.

Communication is very important in this period of social development, which is so important for students. The more solid the relationship between teacher, parent and student is kept, the greater the student's sense of belonging to the school. Due to the small age group, parents can be quite anxious. In this regard, meeting parents at the beginning of the semester and planning the process and the results of the process assessment tools made during the semester should be shared with the parents at certain time intervals. Thus, parents' concerns will be relieved. In addition, it is very difficult to achieve success without a sense of belonging, as is included in Maslow's hierarchy. For this reason, events such as breakfast, math night, reading night with students, parents and teachers should be organized in order to improve the students' sense of belonging to the school. In addition, it is a stepping stone to success in love as well as a sense of belonging in Maslow's hierarchy. They tend to reveal the love needs of younger students more clearly than other grade levels. The teacher should always approach the students with compassion and understanding. However, he must be very careful about the compassionate approach. If students find a maternal affection in the teacher and start to see the teacher as a mother, this can cause identity confusion. In the eyes of the students, this identity confusion towards the teacher can affect the learning process negatively. In addition to the relationship between parents, teachers and students, it is very important to establish a connection with the environment in which students live. In this way, the student can think that the school is a place in life. For this, the teacher should observe the environment in which the students live and their family and relatives relations.

Students' learning processes may change periodically. According to Piaget, primary school children are in concrete terms. This situation is reflected in their learning styles. The most distinctive feature of this period is that children have difficulty perceiving abstract information. Therefore, abstract things should be avoided during the teaching process. Especially in numerical lessons with abstract subjects such as mathematics, it should be used manipulatively or drama should be done in verbal lessons where abstract concepts such as values ​​education will be taught. In this way, abstract issues can be concretized. Using concretization for all children in this period will also facilitate the learning process of students with learning disabilities. In addition, a spiral training program should be followed throughout the training process. At each grade level, building new knowledge on the information learned at the previous grade level helps students both to recall past information and to put new information into a correct scheme. As in the spiral education model, the subjects should be given at the basic knowledge level first, and then the acquisitions that will lead them to think and question should be taught to support their metacognitive processes.

A good classroom teacher should be a good decision maker rather than just being affectionate, and strong observational skills. Each classroom teacher attends at least 4 different lessons. The acquisition and teaching style of each lesson is different. For this reason, it is the most important feature of the teacher to be able to choose the method and technique suitable for both the acquisition and the classroom dynamics. The theories and roofs we adopt have an important place in shaping these methods and techniques. Throughout my teaching life, I have been influenced by many pioneers such as Dewey, Piaget, Pestalozzi and many theories such as constructivism and cooperative learning. The most distinctive feature of these pioneers and theories is that they are student-centered. As indicated by the constructivist approach adopted in our education program, I believe that instead of directly giving information to the student in the learning process, the teacher should be in a guiding role in the student's access to that information by asking Socratic questions. In this way, the information that students construct themselves can become more permanent, and an educational environment in which students are cognitively active can be created. In addition, as stated by the cooperative learning theory, peer learning is very important in this active learning process. Peer learning will both socialize them and help them learn the subject in this age range, where their developmental interests are in social relations. In this period, students are moving away from the egocentric period. Therefore, in my opinion, group works should be used in the lessons. As cooperative learning theory mentioned, three ways can be followed, randomly, according to their strengths, according to their wishes, while determining these groups. However, I think it would be better to use all of them equally, if possible, rather than using only one or two of these three ways over a period of time.

I was impressed by Pestalozzi's views while designing the learning environment in which I was planning to realize this whole educational philosophy. As I mentioned in the previous paragraphs, students need to feel a sense of belonging and love in order to succeed. Therefore, I think that the classroom environment should be homelike enviroment, as Pestelozzi said. For this, in the first grade, students may be asked to bring something from home to the school to be put in a locker. In addition, students' work should be hung on the walls to make them feel important. One of the most important features of the class is that it consists of centers. Course materials should be available in these centers for each course. In addition, the technology center must also be. Thanks to the augmented reality or virtual reality technology, which is born with technology, the new generation can learn many things more easily by concretizing. All materials in the centers should be within reach of the students during the break. In this way, students can make new discoveries about the subjects by dealing with manipulative outside of the lesson. Accessibility of manipulative will also improve students' sense of responsibility.

What's more, since there will be group work in the lessons, the order of the order should be adjusted accordingly. There are two points to be considered here. The first is that all students can see the board, and the second is that they can communicate comfortably with their friends in the group during group work. For this, I am thinking of applying the “T-Table Arrangement” shown on the side in my classes. In this way, these two cases will be provided.

In conclusion, the memories of the Village Institutes I listened to from my grandfather since my childhood and during my four years of university life, I created my own philosophy of education. I am also aware that, in order to be a good teacher, I will follow the researches made in line with the interests and needs of the new generation and update my educational philosophy that I have formed now.

Sena Ölçer