Education philosophies are philosophical thinking and ideas that are used in the field of education to develop curriculum and improve instruction. One such philosophy is the use of education to enhance critical consciousness and enabling human beings to pursue completeness by acting consciously upon their abilities and limitations. This basically implies using education to enhance human creativity.
Creativity as a concept signifies the ability to cause to exist or bring into being something that never existed before. The second philosophy entails epistemology or the concept of knowledge. Education basically involves acquisition of knowledge, skills, and other type of information by the learners. Therefore epistemology entails, examining the nature, condition and extent of knowledge in the learners.
The concept of epistemology used in education influences several aspects about education such as development of curriculum, teacher learner interaction, and methodology. Knowledge that is gained in the classroom takes two forms: knowledge involving practical skills and knowledge involving the mind.
The knowledge involving the mind is basically theoretical and is expressed as ideas in propositions and statements. When applied in education the concept of knowledge is important in both forms of theoretical and practical. Theoretical knowledge is necessary for general knowledge while practical knowledge is important for providing evidence to theory.
The source of learner knowledge will come through both empiricism and rationalism. The learners have to be engaged to use their minds to extract knowledge from experience they go through in their daily lives.
In the development of curriculum, there has to provision for learners to make use of their experiences and come to the knowledge of things. At the same time, practical sessions especially for certain disciplines help the learners acquire knowledge by getting their hands on experience.
Every other discipline creates uses practical means to explain concepts; these are the circumstances that the learners experiences on daily basis, and also the objects that they interact with in their immediate surroundings.
However in the field of mathematics, rationalism is the main source of knowledge among learners. Even though mathematics tries to relate problems to real life situations, the way in which the mind creates ideas mathematically is through rational thinking. Based on the concept of epistemology, it therefore means that the teacher needs to develop a teaching strategy that is centered on the learners.
This is giving the learners the opportunity to discover ideas and concepts on their own with little involvement of the teacher. The teacher only offers guidelines to the learners. The curriculum is also developed in a way that allows the learners to acquire knowledge through rationalism and empiricism
Creativity on the other hand is a concept that would allow the learner to be more human by exploiting their humanly abilities. It is only through creativity that human beings are able to make the environment around them a better place of living and a place that meets their needs.
Human beings have to therefore assume a subjective role in their immediate environment by being involved in creation of objects and ideas that never existed before. This concept can be applied in the execution and implementation of curriculum especially during instruction.
The curriculum gives the learners opportunity to exploit their abilities and create ideas or improve on the ideas that already existed. K-12 students are already advanced and can be co-researchers with their instructors.