We live in an inter-connected world, which brings societal, regional and global challenges. In order to deal with these challenges, we need effective citizens who can understand the concepts and the relationships between conceptions, use skills like reasoning, scientific and analytic thinking, and make critical evaluations by considering evidence-based arguments, values, and dispositions. Considering my role in citizenship education, my teaching philosophy has been developed by many years of teaching experience.
After I graduated from Primary Science Education Program at Bogazici University, I worked for eight years as a science teacher in different schools with 1st to 8th grades. Working with students at various grade levels helped me to see the curriculum as a whole, and also to recognize the vision, capacity, and approach of children at the ages 6 to 14 towards science subjects. During these eight years, I had some questions on my mind, such as what should be taught in science courses, why should it be taught and what is the best way of teaching it? I have been trying to answer these questions as a teacher and as a researcher.
It is my philosophy to guide my students to critically evaluate scientific claims and make evidence-based arguments. To achieve this goal, I enjoy implementing various strategies based on the educational principles that cover:
• learners’ individual differences regarding their prior knowledge, learning styles, cognitive functioning and potential development levels
• different learning theories for sufficient instructional planning and assessment
I strongly believe that prior knowledge plays an important role in learning and making a critical evaluation. People actively construct or create their own subjective representations by linking new information to their prior knowledge. I usually start the lesson with a short brainstorming activity or with a focus question that helps students engage in the content and reveal their initial knowledge.
Besides prior knowledge of the students, their learning styles, cognitive functioning, and potential development levels are critical to the acquisition of increasingly more complex knowledge and skills. As students have a range of learning styles, I design my instruction using scientific practices and the learning cycle. Including scientific practices in the learning cycle provides the basis for me to incorporate effective strategies, which can accommodate individual perspectives and help students improve their evidence-based thinking skills. Moreover, considering the cognitive functioning and the potential development levels of learners help me plan activities that encompass not only what students are capable of doing on their own, but also what they can learn with the help of others. For example, I prefer planning a variety of cooperative learning activities with groups of students at different learning styles and learning levels who can help each other learn.
I also had several years of opportunities to apply a variety of learning theories. I look at learning from the perspective of social constructivism, which supports the idea that knowledge is a product of human interaction. People are in contact with each other and with their environment, and so learning is a social activity that happens naturally in the social world. In concert with this, learning is based on real-world adapted case studies, which takes place in a social manner through shared experience and argumentation. Therefore, new ideas can match with existing knowledge and students can adapt their own ways to make sense of the world.
Considering the social learning environment, I play the role of the facilitator to guide my students when they needed. With a facilitator role, I plan and implement lessons that clearly identify the lesson objectives and strategies for effective student engagement, and suitable assessment options to measure student mastery. I strongly believe in the benefits of implementing various options to accurately assess understanding of course content among diverse groups of learners. For instance, depending on the design of the lesson, I use assessment techniques ranging from rubrics, projects, portfolios or presentations to traditional written exams. Determining the appropriate assessment techniques for the learning objectives helps me teach with both clarity and focus.
Following these basic principles increased my pleasure for teaching and learning. More importantly, I have realized that by sharing my enthusiasm for teaching and learning and using these principles with empathy connects with students. As a result, teaching with clarity, passion, empathy, and sincere enthusiasm effectively impacts students, ultimately connecting them to their passion and lifelong learning.
Please read more about my K-12 teaching and higher education teaching experiences.