Learners - Teachers Prime Focus

Well. Effectiveness of our lessons/ teachings massively depend on satisfying power and level of learner’s needs and for this reason for me and my colleague teachers, “Students” and their “surroundings” become as prime focus in our teaching activity.

My teaching experiences reflects me that even the first day, I become too much anxiety to learn at least some attributes of my students like: name, family (brothers and sisters), ambitions, hobbies etc and I develop a sort of small biography for each of my student through a creation of scrap book, name game, name tags, first day celebrations in my first class usually. My Student Inventory and biography largely influences my lesson planning and preparation for the lesson. The Questions is why is this so? Here are some of my experiences.

Learning names of students itself develop self-confidence in myself, smoothens the teaching and learning activity by removing the alien-feelings among students and teachers. Perhaps, it might be always good to learn students learning styles with more interactions.

Let me share you a time where I had a student who did not participate in class lessons and who was not responsive. She was in Grade 11 and I thought the subject “Economics” at that time for her. Grade 11 Economics Subject demands higher level of application and analysis.  She largely ignored my teachings and gave little attention to lessons though she was not showing any disruptive behavior. I am sure it might be so wrong to tell her parents that she was not learning and she was dull. I believe talking “dull” and “brilliant” about our students is of now old-fashion.  However, when I assessed the students of my class with first assessment, she came out with highest score. Her academic language; English was perfect and answers were too good to comment on. Her answers almost matched my mark scheme answers. Was this a co-incidence? Or did she copied or did I gave the test paper before? None of these had happened.

From this incident, I judged the pointed student was a gifted student though she did not participate in my lesson so actively. Therefore, the teacher might perhaps, be little confused about these students from classroom teaching and learning, where too I was doubtful about my student.

Another incident that I experienced while teaching grade 8 student the same subject “Economics”. Even though we feel that grade 8 economics scheme is simple and easy, in real sense, students are introduced to new concepts when they transits from grade 7 to grade 8.

This student seems hyper-active in class, had a cultivated habit of asking questions and clarifications and he was responsive and completed work regularly. He was the first to finish class work. However, I feel quite pity when I saw his semester marks. He exactly secured class average marks. From this point I studied the student in detail and later found he is facing some learning difficulties. He has problem with memorizing (long-term memory) and also he lacks the required level of academic language to that grade. More so, from PTA meetings, I found he is faced with some home problems. He lived with not his real parents and he was from another island.

These experiences reveal me that I was teaching a mixed ability student class. However in sometimes, in some schools they divide the class depending on scores and classes are ability-wise categorized. For me, this is not very encouraging. It is very clear from these incidents that when I know well my students, I can use the correct instructional methods in a student-centered teaching and learning context catering for individual differences and multiple intelligences. This also provided me a deep thinking while writing my lesson plans for the particular class.

Another inference from these incidents is that all students learn in different ways at different paces and all students have special needs.  

Also it made much easier for me to give reasoning for their behaviors and reasoning for low/ high marks in PTA meetings and it enabled me the right counseling for right parent. If I did not have learnt the facts about those two students I might have interpreted the scenario wrongly and also their behavior will not be improved.

This research fact we should bear in our mind;

·                  Research says that the students performance increases when the instructional methods match the individual strengths and characteristics of learners – Corno and Snow 1986, Cronbach and Snow 1981.

·                  Research also says that the achievement can be increased when the instructional method favors the learner’s natural modalities for learning (Cushner, McClelland, and Safford 1992; Messick 1995)

Therefore, it is very important to have a keen understanding of our learners to make teaching and learning a success and I myself try to learn the following facts of my learners to the best ability that I can in order to develop my learning outcomes, lesson planning and selection of a instructional methods and also for assessment and evaluation mode of a lesson.

1.      Family background/ Home life

2.      Socio-Economic Status (SES) of the learner

3.      Learner Ability Level

4.      Learning Style

5.      Academic Merit

6.      Personality of the learner

7.      Cultural Diversity (not very much applicable to learners)

8.      Experiences and prior-knowledge

9.      Peers

10.  Student’s Interest and hobbies

11.  Academic language level of learner

12.  If abroad color, customs, religion, cast and class etc (this is not very much applicable in Maldives) = culture and ethnicity

I always believe that it is the time when I can meet and satisfy the unique characteristics of learners that makes my teaching successful. Teachers should take enough time in learning the learners and the judgment we made from our first meeting need not be very appropriate. We do this by more social interactions and focusing on individual student behavior at times.

How often do we bother interruptions and misbehaviors at teaching? Why do we give consideration to whole class teaching and learning context than giving individualistic attention while delivering the lesson? Will it becomes disgusting when students move from place to place and more frequently changes the seating arrangement themselves? Can’t we give unintentionally more attention to corner girls and boys? Don’t you ever hear any unnecessary voices from your class? Therefore, without understanding these facts about learners, no teacher can provide a conducive and safe learning environment. And a conducive and safe learning environment is a necessary element in effective teaching and learning process.

When students appear in class in a routine basis did every day they have good food? How many of them have faced some struggles and family problems at home before coming class?

I don’t think can any teaching which ignores the about facts will become an effective teaching and learning. Teachers need to know the socio-economic status (SES) and cultural background of learner. It is quite easy to do this but my doubt is how many of us learn these characteristics about our new learners.

My simple idea about this is William Glasser “choice theory” (Belonging, Safety, Power, Freedom, and Fun) it provides us enough knowledge in learning learners. At lower primary grades, students feel ownership of their materials and knowledge and they engage more in a learning process when the lessons are designed with fun activities.

It is also important to develop a keen understanding of learners in lesson planning. We usually teach mixed ability student class in Maldives context and though a general lesson plan has been generated for the whole class, it is important to plan activities for the same topic for different ability level students to make teaching and learning more effective. The teacher activity planned for the lesson must contain the additional activities that can be given for the brilliant students and the more simplified activities designed for slow learners. For instance, Addition and Subtraction exercise on Grade 4 Student’s Work Book might have finished almost the dozen of students before the expected time and when they finish the work if they left without engaging the task the class room disruption can be observed. For this reason, the teacher can only design additional activities of their required level when he studies / knows learner characteristics. We must admit the fact that the prior-experiences and prior-knowledge of the learners need not be the same. For example, a student living in Capital city might be exposed to more knowledge than a student studying in a town. The external environment of the learner also plays a predominant role in their learning.

Herman’s Brain dominance theory suggests that learners are divided into 4 quadrants of thinking and their personal traits.

1. Quadrant A (Logical, Analytical, Fact-based, Quantitative)

2. Quadrant B (Organized, sequential, planned, detailed)

3. Quadrant C (Interpersonal, feeling based, emotional, kinesthetic)

4. Quadrant D (Holistic, Intuitive, Integrated, synthesizing)

A teacher can categorize the students in a class into the above four quadrants to have a better understanding of learners depending on their learning behaviors.

Teachers must know the answers for the question; how students learn and what is their learning style?

According to Kolb’s Learning Cycle (1984),

1.      Students learn from Concrete Experience (doing/ having experience)

2.      Students learn from Active Experimentation (planning/ trying out what you have learned)

3.      Students learn from Abstract Conceptualization (concluding/ learning from the experience)

4.      Students learn from Reflective Observation (reviewing/ reflecting on the experience)

Further, Honey and Mumford’s learning style divided the learners according to their learning style as;

1.      Activists

2.      Theorists

3.      Reflectors

4.      Pragmatists

Therefore, we being teachers can categorize and make out our learners fall in which category.

Also it is important to believe the child behavior is influenced by many stakeholders. Among them are;

1.      Teacher himself

2.      Parents

3.      PTA

4.      School Board

5.      SMT

6.      Principal

7.      Peers/ Class Mates

8.      Neighbors

9.      Media etc

Therefore, I believe a proper understanding of learners is essential for effective teaching and learning.