Reflection 3

You were driving one day and realized that if you take 8th St instead of 10th St you would get to the Wal-Mart much faster? You begin to tell your family and friends this but they do not believe you. They believe you are lying and there cannot be a faster route to Wal-Mart. You implore them to try out the new but strange route for themselves but they feel the way have been driving cannot be driving is the fastest around. Your brother comes in the house and is elated because he shaved five minutes off his driving time to Wal-Mart. He has finally tried the new route and has seen for himself that the new route is quicker. He tells everyone and now everyone knows that the new route is faster. You have finally been given the validation for your finding that you deserve.
In very simple terms this is a paradigm shift. Before I explain to you what a paradigm shift is, I must first explain to you what a paradigm is. A paradigm is a new finding or more efficient way of getting something done that is not yet widely accepted. A paradigm shift is what happens when this idea becomes widely accepted. I gave in the paragraph above, an example of what I experienced a few years back when I found this new route. Like most paradigms it was met with reservation and doubt but in the end it was found to be true and efficient. An example that was used in class was the example of Copernicus, who said that the Earth did not revolve around the Sun. Many people did not accept his finings because the refuted the findings of Aristotle, the greatest mind ever. Also his findings were to radical for his time. His finds were later finally accepted.
Paradigm change is very important in the classroom because everything changes and education is not immune to these changes. The way that students learned five years ago may be different than the way students learn today and because teachers are in the classroom for many years, they must adapt to these changes. Also, teacher must try to meet the needs of the different kinds of learning capabilities in their classroom. At the moment students learn very well with technology so technology must be incorporated in learning. As teachers, we must be able to identity these paradigms in order to better assist the children in the classroom. Student’s education is very important and accepting these paradigms will aid teachers to accommodate very type of learning style, whether visual, audio, or kinetic.