I have discovered I integrate constructivist and humanistic principles into my professional knowledge. This is to create a connection between how students learn with my understanding of content and teaching strategies, ultimately creating meaningful, real-world application of knowledge in the classroom.

I have embraced humanistic education principles in understanding students and how they learn. As highlighted by Nath, Kumar, and Behura (2017), a humanist teacher invests considerable effort in nurturing a child’s self-esteem, emphasising the crucial aspect of fostering a positive self-perception in students. This approach guides my data collection for creating a class profile, ensuring a commitment to meeting students’ psychological needs before meeting academic or self-fulfilment needs (Maslow, 1943).

I believe that knowing the content and how to teach it aligns closely with constructivism (Arends, 1998), where learners actively construct meaning through personal experiences and the interaction of prior knowledge and new events. Dewey (1938) valued real-life contexts and problems as valuable educational experiences, believing that learners can only construct meaning through active engagement with the world, whether through experiments or real-world problem-solving. I have found this approach to teaching content proves especially  beneficial when students see the relevance of these concepts to their lives and can apply classroom knowledge in collaboration with their peers.