Design-Based Self-Study; Is One’s Philosophy of Education Fixed?/ Tasarım Temelli Öz Araştırması: Eğitim Felsefesi Sabit midir?

Abstract

Educational philosophies pertain to teachers’ perceptions, beliefs, and values about teaching and learning. They are teachers’ reference points for instructional effectiveness. In this study, I examined my own case to manage a dissatisfying incongruence between my educational philosophies and instructional practices. For this purpose, I employed self-study methodology with design-based research methods and analyzed instructional instances which reflected a divergence from my dominant philosophies via thematic analysis. I realized that I applied different educational philosophies at different stages of the class. For syllabus design, I employed traditional philosophies to meet departmental expectations. However, I taught the class mostly via Progressivism and Reconstructionism for pre-service teachers’ professional development. The fact that I could not reflect my educational philosophies satisfactorily created an instructional dissatisfaction; therefore, I made instructional changes throughout the class to manage it. Initially realizing pre-service teachers’ traditional perceptions of teaching, I taught by Reconstructionism and Existentialism to broaden their perspective. However, pre-service teachers’ class participation was low and to assess their internalization of content, I adopted Progressivism. As pre-service teachers analyzed a language teaching class, I also recognized their traditional beliefs about learning. This realization led me to examine the context of the study. For a long time, the Turkish education system reflected characteristics of Perennialism and Essentialism. It is only recently that Progressivism was adopted. In this context, Existential and Reconstructionist teaching would not be effective, and I diverted to Essentialism, Progressivism, and Reconstructionism. Therefore, I could teach for my students’ learning habits, professional development, and workforce demands. On the last weeks, Existentialist and Progressivist principles were vivid in my class because I value training autonomous, well-educated, and critical thinkers. I could not teach this class as I would ideally do because of my course design as well as characteristics of the context and stakeholders, yet met course objectives.