Analyze That.

The results of taking the time to actually comb through my philosophy (previous post) and analyze it AND my practice (not always one in the same) was indeed interesting. When learning about the three curriculum perspectives as described by Miller & Sellers (1990), I though I knew where I as an educator, would fit. I feel that John Dewey summed it up best: “Education is life itself”. I knew that I wasn’t “zen” enough to embody the transformative perspective fully, and I hoped that I wasn’t “stiff” enough to embody the transmission perspective. The transaction perspective seemed like it was right up my alley… Or was it?

Upon taking a much closer look at the characterizations of each and going through each point in painstaking contemplation, I started making comments to myself like “well, I believe this, but don’t actually do it ”, as well as the reverse “I do this, but don’t really believe in it”. Red flag. I then went back over each point, highlighting:

• Ones that I practice, but don’t whole-heartedly agree with;
• Ones that I agree with, but don’t actually practice;
  
• And ones that I practice because I because it is what I believe.
  

I discovered that my beliefs and philosophies reside in the transaction perspective, but that my experience and practice actually lie within the transmission perspective (what?!). Why is there a discrepancy between what I believe and what I practice? Some things that immediately came to mind as I brainstormed this inconsistency are: Policy/Decision makers; Curriculum specificity; Classroom constraints; Budget constraints; Energy to do this; Personal time constraints...etc.

Even in writing my philosophy I acknowledged that my philosophy is split between a utopic view where policy and mandate and curriculum specificity and classroom constraints do not play a role, and a more realistic one where they do (which I don’t necessarily agree with all of the time). So this of course, has an effect on my practice. Or, perhaps I haven’t forced myself to really analyze my philosophies and my practice together in a critically reflective way in such detail before/enough.

Some questions I had regarding the transaction perspective (and definitely more so with the transformative perspective, although I am less interested in becoming more of a “transformative educator” at this point) involve curriculum development, organization and evaluation. To me this idea of having any sort of control over the above factors would definitely impact the way I teach; however it seems that educators who specialize in higher-level, academic classes (in my case, mathematics) do not easily have this freedom as perhaps primary, generalist educators do. Being bound by constraints such as final exams and 50 minute blocks makes it challenging for teachers to “facilitate learners’ inquiry in directions the learners’ interest reflects”. I am not skeptical, but I am interested to see how this would be accomplished.