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Critically discuss the relevance of philosophy and the philosophy of education in a teacher education programme.

There are as many different approaches to teaching students as there are students themselves. As a result, it is important that someone learning to be a teacher also learns about the different philosophies and comes to identify their own. Of course, a teacher's philosophy will (and should) change throughout their career as they come to learn new information and have new experiences, but they should leave their program with an understanding of 1) what they...

There are as many different approaches to teaching students as there are students themselves. As a result, it is important that someone learning to be a teacher also learns about the different philosophies and comes to identify their own. Of course, a teacher's philosophy will (and should) change throughout their career as they come to learn new information and have new experiences, but they should leave their program with an understanding of 1) what they want to do as a teacher, and 2) how they want to do it.


Developing a teaching philosophy also helps to identify priorities. No teacher can focus on all aspects of development or even all aspects of a particular subject at once. If you're teaching young children, do you want to work more on social-emotional development or pre-reading skills? If you're teaching middle-school math, do you want to focus on whatever will be most real-world relevant or do you want to focus on more abstract concepts? If you're teaching high school students, do you find it more important that they learn facts or that they ask questions?


A good teacher education program won't tell you the answers to these questions. A good teacher program will ask them of you, and leave it to you to develop your own ideas that you can then take with you when you prepare your own classroom.

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