Time Well Spent

Throughout my adventure at Walden University, majoring in Early Childhood Studies with a minor in Teaching Adult Learners has taught me four things that I deeply felt within my passion of early childhood education.  They are learning culture, anti-bias, adult learning, and research.  My passion for the early childhood development has expanded from learning , communication, and practice.

            Culture diversity allows me to examine my own culture and understand others.  During my time in the course, I learned to see the needs of others as well as myself.  Examining myself through readings, discussions with colleagues and research allow me to acknowledge my own diversity of the gay culture.  Once I recognize my own diversity and prejudice, I am able to put it aside and face a community of diverse adults and children in society without any bias.

            Acknowledging my own bias allows me to understand how adults learn.  Adults learn in different ways.  According to Knowles theories on adult learning, there are five different types (Merriam, Caffarella, & Baumgartner, 2007).  According to theories of behaviorism, humanist, cognitivist, social cognitive, and constructivist, I learn through behaviorist, social cognitivist, and constructivist theories (Merriam, Caffarella, & Baumgartner, 2007).  Knowles theory goes together with these three learning aspects of visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learners (Kelly, 2012).  The visual learner prefers to see things wrote down through handouts, graphs, charts, and other visual learning tools (Kelly, 2012).  Whereas, the auditory learner, learn best by listening through lectures, discussions and hearing stories related to the subject (Kelly, 2012).  However, the kinesthetic learners are those who learn through senses, such as touching, feeling, hearing, experiencing, and interacting (Kelly, 2012).  I am a kinesthetic learner.  Having this knowledge, I am able to teach all learning styles.  I do this by providing auditory and visual effects within a hands-on learning environment.

            However, research has taught me the value of the past, present, and future.  Researching is the highest point of my learning.  I learned how to research on the internet throughout all of my courses at Walden.  It is the most substantial part of my identification as an adult educator.  I have the ability to research others in the early childhood field as they discovered new concepts on child development.  This encourages me to pursue my passion as an adult educator in the field of early childhood.  The most important concept knows that teaching is from learning and learning is from teaching.  Therefore, I will be a lifetime learner in order to be a successful teacher for adult learners.

My wordle is located below:

“Masters of Science in Early Childhood Studies” by Anonymous http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/5457735/Masters_of_Science_In_Early_Childhood_Studies

 

In addition, a movie is attached with my farewell to my professor and colleagues in the Early Childhood Studies- Practice Application Early Childhood.

Reference

Kelly, M. (2012).  Learning styles-understanding and using learning styles.  About.com.    Retrieved from: http://712educators.about.com/od/learningstyles/a/learning_styles.htm

Merriam, S. B., Caffarella, R. S., & Baumgartner, L. M. (2007).  Learning in adulthood: A            comprehensive guide (3rd ed.).  San Francisco, CA: Wiley.