Topic > Pragmatism as a Paradigm in Education - 1304

A paradigm can be thought of as a scheme or model of how something is structured and how its parts work. The paradigm can be defined in different ways Harmon in Huit (2011) defines it as "...the fundamental way of perceiving, thinking, evaluating and acting associated with a particular vision of reality..." while Baker defined a paradigm as “ a set of rules and regulations that does two things: first it establishes or defines boundaries and second it tells you how to behave within those boundaries to be successful. All in all every individual has paradigms that cover many aspects of life , also about education. Education has its own paradigms that this article will focus on. There are four that this article is titled: pragmatism, constructivism, critical theory and behaviorism develops from practice or in practice. in a practical way in other words “what is true is what works”. Everything that can be known depends on experience, and the experience of phenomena determines knowledge. Pragmatism consists of nine principles that are changing the nature of truth, from which truth experience is built, issues as motives of truth, emphasis on social and democratic values, emphasis on the principle of utility, opposition to fixed ideals and values, importance of workforce, importance of activity, belief in the present and future, opposition to social customs and traditions, belief in pluralism and belief in flexibility. In pragmatism the teacher develops a problem experience for the students, then the students find a solution and learn during that time. You introduce the problem and then the student is asked to find a solution to that problem, so over the course of the… middle of the paper… that activity will weaken. In reference to the school I attended during practical teaching I observed my life science mentor apply this paradigm by creating a game like class work in class 12. The topic was about the process of protein synthesis. He took the manual which contains paragraphs followed by a paragraph relating to that paragraph and a blank space for students to write their answers. If the student answered the question correctly, he or she was praised or rewarded with a sticker, and the person who answered the question was punished by going back and reading the paragraph until he or she answered the question correctly. This was followed by another paragraph and another question, this method continues until the end of the manual. In this method students were actively involved and were also immediately reinforced with correct answers to encourage positive behavior.