05+Applications+of+Ed+Philosophy

=Educational Paradigms (Meeting 2 agenda)=

May 17, 2011

Questions from last month (BRIEFLY):
>> -- Albert Einstein
 * What do you consider the role of “education” is? And this might vary by the "cultural definition" in the US vs. what it could mean theoretically. What do we mean when we mean "education"?
 * //Education is that which remains if one has forgotten everything ever learned in school//.
 * What is an “educated person”? And how do you know in an adult world if someone is “educated” or not? Does one need to be "educated" -- a good goal?
 * What is a “successful person” -- is it their wealth, whether or not one would like to be around them, their internal happiness, their parents' pride in the outcome?

How do you go from this broad discussion to day-to-day decisions – and why do you care?
Educational goals and curriculum choices are impacted by many things (each its own discussion topic); many are objective and measurable like personality and learning styles. Some are more subjective. All leadi to your schooling choice, goals and curriculum choices.

Some of the most "hidden" influence on how you feel about your choices, your vulnerabilities to hearing other people talk about their homeschooling choices, etc. are the Educational Paradigms that you have and may not even realize.





Educational Paradigms:
Evaluating Educational Paradigms and Values

We all have our paradigms about how we (and our children) learn best. Most homeschoolers don’t have formal educational background and often these paradigms haven’t been clearly defined in our own minds but we get glimpses of our paradigms by the style of homeschooling we are attracted to and the discussions we have with friends and colleagues about approaches to homeschooling.

Paradigms which elicit the strongest opinion – Strongly Disagree or Strongly Agree – will form the basis of how individual homeschool learning environments are set up – from goal setting to schedules to style of homeschooling. However, it’s the more neutral ones that can make people more uncomfortable. Those are the ones that make us most vulnerable to jumping on curriculum that “is the answer to everything” for someone else – or that make us feel the most vulnerable to feeling inadequate in our homeschooling. Exploring the “maybe neutral” paradigms are important to help define our confidence in our homeschooling journey.

The longer we homeschool, the more we are exposed to different learning styles, different types of curriculum and courses, different needs of our own children, different goals for our own children and those paradigms will shift. Paradigms that might be strongly felt for 6 year olds may be much different by the time that 6 year old is facing the teen/college choices of a 16 year old.

Below is an initial list of educational paradigms and values. It still needs to be tweaked and fiddled with but might provide a good level of initial understanding of some of the paradigms.

You can also try filling in a surveymonkey about these ideas. As more people fill in the survey, I'll post the results here for you to see.



Link to the online survey