About

My name is Jose H. Gonzalez.  I am an experiential educator and an entrepreneur.  As you will see in this blog, my passion are: educational technology, learning theory, social reconstruction, sailing, management and leadership development.  I look forward to sharing my knowledge as well as learning from you.  Cheers! My full resume is located here:http://www.linkedin.com/in/josehgonzalez

My teaching and learning philosophy

My teaching and learning philosophy is based on the constructivist and pragmatic theories with a humanistic approach to it. To explain my philosophy I want to start by citing Eduard Lindenman, 1926 (from Knowles, 1998); “Experience is the adult learner’s living textbook”.  Based on this statement, I like to provide the adult learner with common background knowledge using a constructivist approach. In this way, I am not lecturing information but instead the learner is creating his/her own mental schema through a concrete experience. This active experience could be anything from reading a book to interacting with objects to running a recreation program. This combines the constructivist approaches that the learner constructs his/her own knowledge, (based on Piagets’ theory of assimilation and accommodation) and Deweys’ “learning by doing” pragmatic approach to acquiring knowledge through experiences. The pragmatic philosophy places the students and their needs and interests on center stage as opposed to putting the subject matter at the center of the educational focus (Knight, 1989). In addition, the humanistic approach provides a sense of self actualization, personal involvement, self initiation, evaluation by the learner and its essence is meaningful (Knowles, 1998). This humanistic approach is based on Carl Roger and Maslow’s elements of humanistic psychology.

Contact me:

Email: josehgonzalez@live.com

Phone: (603) 452-7245