There are several types of philosophies in education. This essay focus on three significant kinds of essential perspectives for creating teaching and learning philosophy. The views include perennialism, progressivism, and transformative learning theories. The paper then presents a discussion of the historical influences that nurtured each of the philosophies described.
Transformative
The transformative philosophy of learning provides that all learners have different expectations, assumptions, and beliefs that help them make meaning and appreciate the world around them. An individual's psychology, society, personal experiences, and culture all together shape those perceptions. They begin to develop from childhood and, along the way, determine their perception of causality. For example, if an individual commits a crime, they become criminals. Criminals are ashamed of themselves when they commit crimes ( Taylor, 2017 ). If someone says, "thank you," the second person responds, "welcome." Every individual comes from a culture, and each culture differs from the other in terms of expectations. Such perspectives typically work outside the conscious awareness of individuals, and they continue until challenged. At this time, transformation takes over.
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According to Mezirow, there are two categories of learning, including communicative and instrumental types of education. Instrumental learning is where knowledge is involved, procedural tasks, and problem-solving. On the other hand, communicative learning emphasizes how a person communicates their needs, emotions, and desires. For new knowledge to indeed happen, the learner has to sustain a change in perspective. One of the expectations, assumptions, or beliefs that assist in making sense of the world has to change. It is during his process that a learner undergoes transformation and formal learning happens.
Mezirow simplifies the process into several detailed stages. The conditions can be further broken down into two. These include the learner must experience some dilemma that will, in the end, change one of their assumptions. The learner must then reflect on that assumption critically, testing the assumption validity.
Historical Influences
Jack Mezirow came up with the transformative learning theory at the beginning of 1978. The transformative approach has developed with time to become a sophisticated yet comprehensive explanation of how the learners can validate, construe, and rebuild the meaning of their experience. For the learners to alter their meanings and understanding of their attitudes, perceptions, ways of thought, and emotional reactions, they must have a critical reflection on their life experiences ( Apps, 1973 ). This reflection will, in turn, leads to the transformation of their perspectives. The meaning of views that forms the meaning structures may change a person adds to or interrogates ideas or already existing perspectives. This transformation, according to this philosophy, routinely happens throughout learning.
Mezirow borrowed from the fact that defining the condition of being a human, and man must understand the meaning of his or her experiences. For some people, any explanation that is not critically assimilated by an authoritative figure will suffice. However, in contemporary communities,' people must learn to make their interpretations instead of acting on beliefs, purposes, feelings, and judgments by other people. The primary goal of adult education is to facilitate such understandings. Transformative learning theory is, therefore, a tool for creating and developing independent thinking.
A perspective transformation that leads to transformative learning, however, does not regularly have. According to Mezirow, the low level of change leads typically to a disorienting dilemma that is triggered by a crisis in life or a significant transformation. However, it may also come from the accumulation of changes in a meaning scheme with time.
Perennialism
Perennialism philosophy appreciates knowledge transcending time. Perennialism is a subject-oriented philosophy. The goal of a perennial teacher is to give understanding to the learner to reason and to be able to become critical thinkers. The objective of a perennial classroom is to be a closely organized and properly disciplined learning environment that develops in a learners' lifelong pursuit of truth. A perennial has the perception that education needs to optimize a prepared effort to make the ideas available to the learners and to guide their thought processes in the direction of appreciating and understanding of great works ( Tupas & Pendon,2016 ). The outstanding results include the works of literature produced by some of the finest thinkers in history transcending time and are never outdated. Perennialism's major problem to solve is the significance of the development and growth of reasoning skills and the ability to master the lesson contents. The phrase "the more things change, the more they remain the same" gives the reasoning of a perennial regarding education. In the perennials school of thought, the learners sequentially develop skills and knowledge.
Historical Influences
Knight (1998), the author of the works "Philosophy and Education," suggests that perennial education emphasizes the significance of using the reasoning, using the mind, and examining the remarkable works done by historical experts. One of the major interpretations of a perennial perception of education is the liberal education school of thought. Knight (1998) continues to justify that liberal education in a classical tradition was based on studies that made people truly and freely human, on the contrary to the training that the people obtained to accomplish specific tasks in the working world.
Neo-Scholasticism philosophy historically influences Perennialism. Neo-Scholasticism is an advanced form of scholasticism which first surfaced in the middle ages. Scholasticism, as a theory, is based on ideologies by Aristotle, who taught that the universe has design and order. Aristotle also had a belief in the cause and effect relationships. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) scholastic is remembered for blending Aristotle's school of thoughts with Christian theology. Aquinas, in his reasoning, provided that people need to reason out for themselves like human beings to gain knowledge, and then they are to be guided by their faith to achieve more (Knight, 1998). In Neo-Scholastic reasoning, the world has absolute truth, and man has to be trained in terms of how they think to get that truth.
Progressivism
According to the progressivist thinkers, change and individualism are very important for a person's learning and education. They further believe that individuals gain knowledge in the best way from the things they value most in their lives. Therefore, the progressivists develop their curriculum based on their needs, abilities, and learners' experiences. The progressivists advise that education should be holistically based on the learner and not the teacher or the content. This school of thought further promotes group learning as opposed to individual learning. Students get more knowledge by working as a group as opposed to working as an individual ( Mosier, 1952 ).
The progressivism educational philosophy emphasizes that the learners need to test ideas through actively experimenting. According to this educational philosophy, learning needs to be based on the questions that students ask when they are conducting experiments and experiencing the world. John Dewey developed progressivism from his pedagogic theories of learning, majorly based on pragmatism. Therefore, experience forms the basis and core concept of progressivism philosophy. Some American schools follow the progressivism philosophy of education.
Historical Influences
Progressive educational philosophy is focused on the child. Progressive educators have the belief that children usually are naturally inquisitive and curious about their environment. It is, therefore, important that education is based on this curiosity ( Elias & Merriam, 1995 ). The progressive educational philosopher also perceives the school as part of society, and they also view education is part of life instead of preparation for life.
Progressive philosophy in education can be traced to pragmatism. Pragmatism is an advanced 20 th -century philosophy that emerged due to conventional philosophies. It occurred about one century ago when the United States was undergoing industrialization and urbanization. During industrialization, change was everywhere, and one of the ways to react to this change during this time was through pragmatism. Pragmatism can be defined as the attitude of looking away from the first categories, things, supposed necessities, principles, and looking towards the last things, facts, and consequences. There was a lot of knowledge exploding that people began questioning the wisdom of searching for absolutes. According to pragmatists, the reality is not fixed. It keeps changing. The things that are thought to be real today will not be real tomorrow.
The only approach to learn about reality in life is through human experiences; this is the pragmatist school of thought. The pragmatists believe in the saying that "truth is what works." since the world changes so fast, the things that are true today will not be real in the future. Therefore, in a pragmatist view, truth is relative. The relativity of the truth is, in some way, extended to the values. The society chooses the kinds of values that are important and the ones that may shift to be the dominant culture changes.
Conclusion
This paper has successfully presented the three major types of philosophies essential for creating teaching and learning philosophy. The perspectives discussed include perennialism, progressivism, and transformative learning theories. The paper has also presented a discussion of the historical influences that nurtured each of the philosophies described.
References
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