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My teaching philosophy is centred around the idea that “learners will not learn unless they want to learn” (Morgan and Saxton 2006, p.15). The evidence backs this up too as students who want to learn will display better behaviour in class and achieve better outcomes (Park and Peterson 2009). My method of applying this in the classroom is heavily influenced by the ‘positive psychology’ of Lotta Uusitalo and Kaisa Vuorinen (2019), which argues that teachers must ‘see the good’, by constantly noticing when children are acting well and identifying which positive character strengths they are using (e.g. self-regulation, honesty, kindness), which creates an environment where their self-worth and self-efficacy is strong.

The way that I try to achieve this in my classroom has been by always being explicit about the character strengths I am looking for during a task, by encouraging my students to notice the strengths others are showing, and by linking English learning to character strengths wherever possible.

My teaching philosophy is rooted in my experience in the classroom as a student, and in the experiences of my siblings, who dropped out of school during A-Levels. When I reflect on my own experience, I think of it as surviving, not thriving. The environment was one where learning was highly valued, but there was no culture of teamwork and collaboration. While the quality of my education was quite high, in that I developed strong reading, writing and critical thinking skills, I think that the lack of focus on character strengths and ‘seeing the good’ resulted in my low self-esteem and unhappiness. I was only motivated to achieve high grades by the example my parents set and in order to escape from the system I was in. I think I was lucky to have good role-models and a couple of excellent teachers, which enabled me to overcome some of this, but I believe many children in this system were left behind.

Based on this experience, I believe that by fostering positive character strengths, we can go a long way to improving the school experience for students, and that this will improve their self-esteem and soft skills, so that they can thrive.

The other half of my teaching philosophy is to embrace the Thai’s cultural sense of sanuk, or fun, in my classroom. In Thailand, it is important not to be overly ‘serious’ in approach (Baker 2008) – and in fact, to many Thai’s, if something isn’t sanuk, it’s not worth doing. In my fairly unusual position of being integrated with a team of Thai teachers (rather than other foreign ones) I have been able to observe how this concept is deployed.

By embracing this sense of fun, along with what I am learning on the PGCEi course, I have been able to build rapport with students and to manage behaviour effectively. It also fits perfectly with the first half of my philosophy – focussing on positive character strengths. By bringing together positive reinforcement and a sense of fun, I believe I can fulfil my philosophy that students will learn if they want to learn, and I hope they continue to want to learn with me.

References

Baker, Will. (2008). A Critical Examination of ELT in Thailand: The Role of Cultural Awareness. Relc Journal. 39, pp.131-146.

Morgan, N., & Saxton, J. (2006). Asking Better Questions. 2nd ed. Ontario: Pembroke Publishers.

Park, N., & Peterson, C. (2009). Strengths of character in schools. In R. Gilman, E. S. Huebner, & M. J. Furlong (Eds.), Handbook of positive psychology in schools. New York: Routledge, pp. 65–76.

Uusitalo, L., & Vuorinen, K. (2019). See the Good! How to guide children and adolescents to find their character strengths. Helsinki: Positive Learning Ltd.