Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Week 4 - Theory to Practice
If a teacher provides a learning environment that is emotionally safe and meets the basic needs of their students,then those students will be able to work at a higher cognitive level and will be intrinsically motivated to accomplish their tasks well because they will have a more positive attitude towards learning. According to Maslow, by having these basic needs met the students will be able to focus more clearly on learning and not become distracted by things such as hunger or sleep. Also, according to Kolencik, students that have a more positive attitude are willing to work harder. These are students who feel emotionally safe in expressing their thoughts and ideas without the threat of judgment or ridicule. These students are also less likely to feel a "learned helplessness" and will attempt a problem even if there is a chance of getting it wrong.
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Jeff,
ReplyDeleteYou've packed quite a bit of conceptual knowledge into this little post. I'm going to challenge some of the inferences (causal relationships) you've made however. For example, that students who feel "emotionally safe" will less likely feel "learned helplessness." One way to make your T2P hypothesis more believable is by incorporating a concrete example. What type of specific pedagogical practices could you incorporate in your learning environment to mitigate students' feeling learned helplessness? How would you know if they are suffering from learned helplessness? Activities, interpersonal interactions, assessments? Participant observation? Its definitely time to take your conceptual knowledge to the next level and incorporate some concrete ideas. Keep pressing.