Week 3 Response 1: Teaching Philosophies and the 'Method' Mentality

One statement in the first chapter that seems incongruent with effective instruction is the notion that a teacher's common sense is synonymous with their theory (18).  This may be true for certain individuals, but I strongly oppose the acceptance of such logic.  Teacher's common sense should not constitute their teaching philosophy.  People's common sense is based upon their personal experiences, mostly formed by their own time as a student.  Yet what works best for them may not be what works best for their students.  Therefore, I believe a teacher's philosophy should constantly be challenged by those within the profession but also, and perhaps more importantly, by those outside of the traditional educational system.  What do community activists, parents, international scholars, and marginalized individuals of society have to say about how or what students should be taught?  Gathering these different opinions will drastically change the way a teacher functions within his or her classroom.

The more we study the accepted methods in TESOL, the clearer it becomes that "[m]ethods are based on idealized concepts geared toward idealized contexts" (28). Like Kumaravadivelu, I see postmethods as more of a framework as opposed to methods, which attempt to act as a rigid template for learning and instruction.  The postmethod theory gives the teacher much more flexibility--by providing guiding principles or developmental objectives of learners that may be fulfilled according to the classroom environment, subject material, resources available, and teacher personality (39).

This reiterates the importance of recognizing one's own teaching philosophy and, in turn, his or her vision of what it means to learn.  In chapter 1, it proposes that building a repertoire of critical thinking skills is much more valuable than broadly exploring various content areas (20).  This reminded me of Paolo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed, in which he argues that critical thinking skills are what is being demanded of future generations.  I whole heartedly agree.  Never did I buy into the logic that memorization of specific knowledge would do me any good in life.  Instead, I see far more value in learning how to analyze different situations and pieces of information, because that is what we will face in the "real world" beyond the classroom.  Students are not "empty vessels" that need to be filled with our expertise but rather individuals within a critical dialogue (Freire).  This is how I hope to conduct any classroom, thereby creating an environment of meaningful discussion as the basis for learning English (or any other language).