Personal Philosophy Learning a Process Continuous; Learns

¶ … personal philosophy learning a process continuous; learns things day. You knowledgeable a There are many different ways of learning and of teaching. In fact, there appears to be an intrinsic relationship between learning and teaching. Teachers, after all, must have learned something in order to successfully depart this knowledge to others. Due to the multitude of methods for teaching and learning, it is important to consider factors such as learning style, distance and conventional classroom education, and teaching styles in order to gain the maximum amount of efficacy from this process. After a careful consideration of these factors, it strongly appears that in the documents that this assignment is reflecting upon, the most preferred method of learning by the individual who wrote those documents is observation and participation.

Observation and participation are crucial factors of learning via direct experience. In many ways, learning via direct experience is superior to classroom learning, whether or not such learning takes place in physical or virtual classrooms. When one learns through experience, he or she initially observes some process and then participates in it. Oftentimes, an individual may require longer periods of observation before he or she can successfully complete the process on his or her own. However, doing so enables the individual to actually see everything that he or she is going to do and then do it, so that the individual inherently becomes better at whatever the subject he or she is learning after engaging in both observation and participation in that subject.

Even in conventional classroom learning, participation plays a crucial role. This fact is underscored by the fact that Billings and Halstead (2012) have denoted the specific elements of learning as involving not only understanding and clarifying, but also of applying knowledge so that the individual must engage with it. Such application is readily available via participation. Oftentimes, it is possible for traditional learning -- both distance and classroom -- to forsake this element of participation. For many students, this aspect of traditional learning has a detrimental effect. Students frequently learn theories and notions, with little practical application. As such, this style of learning runs the risk of producing doctrinaires (many people would argue that it actually does produce doctrinaires). A good example of this fact is the way that math is traditionally taught. Students have very little practical application as to the meaning of the concepts and ideas that they are learning, especially at the more advanced levels. True mathematics occurs in nature and is fraught with examples among living beings. However, most math is not taught in such a way, which is why some students become intimidated by it and have difficulty grasping it. If there were more practical application involved, in the form of both observation and participation, then students would more than likely learn this subject better.

There are also allusions to observation and participation in other facets that expressly relate to teaching. Jenkins (2011) states that "past experiences" (p. 72) can shape and influence the way a pedagogue teaches as much as other theoretical traditions in education. These past experiences, of course, are directly engaged in by practitioners in the form of participation. One lives through an experience; therefore he or she effectively participates in it. It is the job of the skilled instructor to contextualize such experiences so that they can augment traditional book or lecture information in order to inform both of these two approaches. Without that degree of practical application, teachers might as well be replaced by computers and simply disseminate information with little practical experience and usage.