The words of Carl Rogers, one of the founding fathers of humanism, reverberate deep within my soul as an educator. “The degree to which I can create relationships, which facilitate the growth of others as separate persons, is a measure of the growth I have achieved within myself” (Smith, 2008). Through this foundational Adult Learning course, I have seen a transformative process in myself as I have refined my educational beliefs while retaining the core values that contribute to my sense of self. Through my clinical work with pediatric residents and medical students as a bedside educator, I continually strive to utilize humanism, constructivism, and feminist pedagogical principles to create a trustworthy, collaborative learning environment that is student-centered with a shared power between the student and the teacher. I believe the teacher should be the facilitator to promote knowledge sharing, self-directed learning, and self-reflection among all learners.
Family-centered bedside rounds are the heart of clinical medicine for a pediatric hospitalist at an Academic Children’s Hospital. As a clinician who is passionate about education, I find this to be an invigorating and deeply fulfilling experience to be able to move with a diverse team of learners from the bedside of one patient with a unique set of problems to the next. Each day comes with it a new opportunity to work together in a group to construct and build upon each other’s knowledge while developing critical thinking skills and independent thoughts. While I previously claimed to be “seen but not heard,” in practice, I still retained power over the team. Through self-directed learning and reflective practice sparked by this Adult Learning course, I prefer to be a facilitator of learning and to employ a constructivist approach to education as touted by Vygotsky and Bruner (Merriam, 2013, p. 36-37 ). I encourage and respect resident autonomy with shared decision-making through an “incremental approach” where I “provide just enough help and guidance” with gradual independence (Whitman, 1993, p. 519). During family-centered rounds, the medical students and interns develop care plans to address the patient’s problems, and the senior resident as supervisor promotes clinical reasoning guides the thought process and helps with decision-making. I respect peer teaching and collaboration by having students become the teachers to “construct their own models of knowledge and enhance their own understanding” by “reviewing, organizing, and explaining the information to others” (Whitman, 1993, p. 520).
I had initially believed that teaching is a work of art with students’ minds being a canvas waiting to absorb the material, but I now reject this “banking” method of education in which “teachers didactically deposit knowledge into the minds of their students” (Cavanagh, Vanstone, & Ritz, 2019, p. 38). By thinking critically about the works of Paulo Freire and bell hooks, I view students as brilliant colors of the rainbow, each capable of making their individual mark on the canvas of the world. As a feminist, I believe in the diversification of lived personal experiences and paying homage to the voice of my learners by “directing students to interrogate the overlapping aspects of their identity that shape their passage through the world” (Cavanagh et al, 2019, p. 39). During formal educational sessions in classrooms or during clinical rounds, I believe that instruction should be fluid, “the teacher may not always be right,” and there are multiple perspectives for one given problem (Whitman, 1993, p. 520). To promote inclusivity and eliminate bias, I ask open-ended, thought-provoking questions that spark meaningful conversations. I support a humanistic approach to education through self-directed learning based on individual goals as everyone has their own internal motivation to learn. I encourage learners to utilize self-evaluation and reflection to promote personal growth and development.
As both a learner in this course and a bedside clinical educator, I have been influenced by a student-centered teaching model based on a democratic approach to learning where ideas are explored through collaboration, peer teaching, and respect for the diversification of learners’ experiences. I believe that this process relies on the teacher as a facilitator with learners being internally motivated, utilizing self-directed learning techniques, and reflective practice. Humanism is at the heart of my educational philosophy. I believe in building a trusting relationship with my learners and I care deeply about their well-being. The ultimate goal is for both the learners and myself as an educator to achieve self-actualization (Wikipedia contributors, 2019).