Educational Theorists in the Classroom


Out of all the educational theorist I have been exposed to, I would say that I look up to Dewey and Piaget. This is mainly due to the ideal that the main take home messages that these two theorists in my opinion truly go hand in hand. John Dewey places such a heavy emphasis on the ideal of hands-on learning. Being a science teacher, I think Life science is a subject in which one has many opportunities to engage students in activities that allow for students to learn the content being taught to them. When it comes to Piaget, he focused heavily on the ideal of having students be engaged in their own learning by utilizing their prior background knowledge to form connections to the new content that students are learning.

            
Due to me looking up to these theorists so much, I do my best to incorporate these principles into my instruction. For instance, in the first unit of the school year, I had students complete a project in which students had to form connections from cellular organelles to the technical area that students are currently enrolled in. Thus, if a student is in the automotive program, he or she could use the car door as a analogy for the cellular membrane because this organelle functions to determine what can come in and out of the cell. In the second unit of the school year, students got to complete a fuel efficiency lab where students got to burn a marshmallow and cheeseball to determine which food source produces the most efficient fuel. After completing this lab, students were able to comprehend why our doctors tell us that eating too many carbs leaves you feeling sluggish and ultimately takes a significantly longer time to burn off to obtain that energy. For the third unit of the year with DNA and heredity, students were able to practice their transcription and translation skills in order to determine and draw the different features that their critter has.

            
Overall, my curricular framework is to have students engaged in hands-on activities while also being able to form authentic connections from prior knowledge to the new content that is being taught to them. This not only helps with retention but also will help students apply the content that is learned in Biology (the study of life) to their daily lives.

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