PROFESSIONAL TEACHING FRAMEWORK: FAEZA

I envige my role in an Australian education system to be that of a facilitator. Metaphorically, I would consider my personal philosophy in relation to education to be that of a bridge. A bridge that facilitates the creation of sucessful learners, active and informed citzens of the future by providing well planned structures that build on prior knowledge and skills and lead to new knowledge and skills. I believe that the base of the bridge needs to comprise of strong humanistic rungs fueled by Plato's ideas of goodness and truth, Confuciuses ideals of nobleness that leads to harmonious societies and Loche's thinking on the importance of wisdom and social graces. In addition, I believe, as Nel Noddings suggests, that care is central to pedagogy and that critical and deep thinking should be an integral part of learning as it fosters intellectual quality, as Lipman suggests, a vital need in our age of mass information.  These ideals ensure that learning is socially meaningful and significant for students and assists in creating connections with students at a personal level thereby maintaining a supportive classroom environment. As a facilitator, I would focus on well planned scaffolds, the rails of the bridge, in the ideals of Bruner who considered pedagogy to be a blend of cognitivist and constructivist approaches, where by learning initiates from known concrete contexts and is supported to foster new abstact ideas. Vygotsky considered meaning making to relate to social constructs and in the contemporary context, it is vital to foster collaborative skills and teamwork as well as explicitly teach social skills, particularly in the special needs context. I also believe that in this rapidly changing era, educators ought to adopt the best possible means of meaning making that leads to enthusiastic, independent and informed learners, including the most appropriate technologies and evidence based research practices.