FINAL THOUGHTS ON PEDAGOGY IN EDUCATION (Week 10)

Hello everyone.

I have finally reached the end of this course. Overall,I must say I am quite surprised with the outcome of this subject. I did not expect to gain this much of life changing knowledge. From the school of thoughts, to the mock teaching experience and finally the classroom management, it has been a beautiful journey. I really enjoyed learning about how to manage students behavior and mentality.

Image 10.1

As we can see in Image 10.1, a teacher has so many jobs to fulfill. I realize and understand that being a teacher is not easy. I know that I have to be passionate about bringing meaning into the lives of my students. Dedication and initiative must always be present in my life as I pave my way to be a cutting edge teacher as I had mentioned much earlier in my first post.

I hope these 10 weeks of reflection has helped you gain something as much as I have learned. I would like to thank my lecturer Ms Thana who always treated my opinions like diamonds and always polished me to be someone better because she knew my potential. If not for her, I would not have made it to the end of these posts. I would also like to thank my friends who always had my back. The fruitful discussions helped me to come up with meaningful points for my posts. 

In conclusion I have learned that at the end of the day, there are no bad students, only bad teachers, as my lecturer would say. A teacher has the power to make or break a student, therefore she must be careful in whatever said and done.

That is all for now, thank you for reading and have a great day ahead.

CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT (Week 9)

Hello everyone. 

In this post, I will share what I have learned in the classroom management chapter. This topic is closely related to pedagogy skills as a teacher must know how to manage the classroom so that she can teach effectively.

Image 9.1

As seen in Image 9.1, frequent practice to maintain a warm classroom environment is needed so that the teaching and learning process can go on smoothly. A teacher definitely cannot manage the classroom in a day as she must get to know the needs and abilities of the students in the class that she is teaching in. This shows that a teacher must be willing to undertake the responsibility of getting to know what her students are like.

We read a few news articles on students being bullied by schoolmates and teachers as well. I felt extremely sad while reading those articles because the actions of the teachers mentioned in the news were illogical and not right at all. They had failed to assume their role as a teacher and had forgotten that students can model after their inappropriate behavior. In one case, the teacher had badly hurt the student and then paid him some money to keep this issue down.When the student went to complain to other teachers, they gave him food and told him to keep quiet. This shows the current saddening state of the schools in our country. Where are we heading to? If teachers themselves approve of such behavior, how will we be able to correct students if they were to make the same mistake in the future?

This clearly shows that the classroom management is weak in schools. Some teachers have failed to abide by the rules and procedures of their school, leading to these problems. Professionalism is lacking in teachers as they tend to take simple matters personally and punish innocent students for something that could have actually been forgiven and let go. Thus educators must learn how to control their emotions as they will see many types of students who will get on their nerves. But students will eventually model after the teachers' behavior therefore teachers must a good example.

As for classroom routines when it comes to teaching, I would always want it to be effective. Thus there are a few points that I would like to share with all of you.

1. Explain.

• Always explain the meaning and make sure your students learn by definition.There is no point of a student learning the content if he does not understand the basic meaning of it.

2. Demonstrate and model.

• Make sure to show your students how to conduct an activity and how you would like the outcome to be. Giving them a pre-hand idea helps to build their confidence.

3. Rehearse and have guided practice.

• Take time to repeat the information and make sure your students understand it before moving on to another chapter or topic. Do guide the students to conduct group discussions so that they have interactive learning.

4. Perform independently.

• Encourage students to perform individually. This will help them come out from their cocoon and mingle around in the classroom, also while building their confidence level.

5. Review and reteach.

• Make it a point to do a weekly review and check up on whether students remember the content taught or not.

We also had a small discussion on what kinds of rules we would impose on our classrooms. I mentioned that I would encourage my students to ask at least a question. This is to help clear doubts and also break the block that stops them from asking questions. 

That is all for this week. Thank you and have an edifying day.

MOCK TEACHING FEEDBACK & IMPROVISATION (AO2) (Week 8)

Hello everyone.

As promised, I am back to share the feedback I got from my lecturer. The whole lesson conducted had been successful as most of the learning objectives and learning outcomes had been achieved. However there were a few elements that were either missing or too much in the mock teaching session that I had conducted. Allow me to share some of them with you.

1. Repetition of praise.

• I had used words of appraisal during the lesson. Unfortunately, I had repeated quite a number of words to appreciate my students instead of replacing them with other words. To improve, I will tell them to try harder and then proceed to praise them. This is to encourage them to work harder to gain recognition in a positive way. This is also known as positive reinforcement.

2. Excess of activities.

• I had prepared 3 activities to be done in 30 minutes which is not recommended as the students have to rush while conducting the activity. This results in the information learnt not moving into the long term memory, but instead stays in the short term memory which will then fade away because of lack of repetition. Thus I will prepare short but informative activities so that the students can still learn although the duration is short.

3. Teaching of grammar as a lesson.

• Grammar cannot be taught as a lesson on its own, but can be integrated while teaching other components. In my lesson, I had asked students to brainstorm descriptive words and jot them down in the circle map and then write an informal letter to their friend. The next time if I were to conduct this activity, I will ask the to write the informal letter first and then extract the adjectives from there. I would also take them to the field or ask them to observe the scenery from the classroom and describe anything that they see. In this way, they can also learn adjectives, but not directly as a lesson.

4. Correct punctuation usage.

• I was also corrected on the usage of punctuation. I had written some words and sentences on the white board while conducting the lesson. For the sentences, I had failed to punctuate hem with a full stop and comma. So I must be observant as my students are watching my every move and how I do things. If I were to be negligent and leave this mistake as it is, I will not be able to correct my students in the future if they make the same mistake as they can question me back. Thus I need to be careful when it comes to anything I do in the classroom.

5. Usage of informal language.

• I had used some informal language in the classroom environment. As the classroom is a place where formal language and the teaching and learning process goes on, it is best to avoid informal language as it kills the serious mode of the class. So I have to make sure that I am careful with the words I use in the classroom.

I have used the feedback given to improve myself and will continue to work on it as everyday in the classroom is an experiment. That is all for this post. Thank you and have an edifying day.

MOCK TEACHING (AO2) (Week 7)

Hello everyone.

This week, I will be sharing my experience about the mock teaching session which I had conducted in the class. It was an eye opening encounter for me as I had never done it before. This mock teaching was part of the assignment in this course. The purpose of this task was to give us a forecast of what will be happening in real classrooms when we go for our teaching practicum.

In this individual assignment, we were given two parts. The first part required us to create 3 lesson plans based on one school of thought that we could relate the most with. Then, we had to justify the flow of the lesson by explaining why we chose to do a certain activity and how it related to the theory we had chosen to base on. After that, in the second part of the assignment, we were given half an hour to conduct the class using one of the lesson plans as a guide. 

I had chosen the Humanistic school of thought as I feel that students' needs and feelings must be appreciated. In my lesson plan, I had incorporated a circle map and an informal essay writing activity which was done in the classroom itself. I prepared a circle map and informal essay template and gave it to my students as class worksheets. Then I asked them to describe their friends and write anything descriptive words in the circle map. Following that, I instructed them to write an informal essay to their friends using the words in the circle map earlier. In this way, the students had learned about adjectives, the format of an informal essay and how to brainstorm as well. Towards the end of the activity, they felt very happy and fulfilled when they read each others' letters. When I asked them to express their feelings, they said that they felt appreciated, loved and secure knowing that their friends will always have their back no matter what happens.

This was a wonderful experience to me as I could see how cheerful the students were after the whole activity. Their needs of esteem and sense of belonging according to Malsow's Hierarchy of Needs had been achieved and they also learned something fruitful that they can use to describe things and people. I could also understand the importance of the mental and emotional health of my students and when they felt secure, they tend to perform better. Their potential could be seen clearly and they did strive to achieve the learning objectives. Thus I would say that this mock teaching was a success, but there were certain issues that had to be polished. Those matters will be shared in the upcoming post next week.

Till then, thank you for reading this post and have an edifying day.

SUMMARY OF SCHOOL OF THOUGHTS (Week 6)

Hello everyone.

In this post, I will summarize everything that I have learnt in the past 4 weeks. The three school of thoughts that I have seen are cognitive, humanist and behaviorist. Below is the breakdown of these school of thoughts followed by my opinion of which theory fits to be the best approach to cover the entire education process.

a) Cognitive School of Thought

Image 6.1

This school of thought focuses on the mind and its thoughts. As we see in Image 6.1, there is a missing jigsaw piece. This is similar to a missing piece of information which leads to an incomplete understanding of a subject matter. Students often go through this problem of being unable to recall a certain information because they did not put effort to practice repetition, leading to the information being stored in the short term memory where it will fade away after sometime.

Thus teachers have to help students by doing quizzes, tests, discussions and more to ensure that students grasp the information and store it in their long term memory. Interactive activities that are relevant and suitable for the ability level and interest must be taken into consideration by teachers when they develop their lesson plan and create activities for their students. This will guide their students to progress further and achieve more in a shorter span of time. They will also be constantly interested to learn as they know that the content and activities done have been shaped to suit their needs.

b) Humanistic School of Thought

Image 6.2

In Image 6.2, we see two hands trying to hold each other. I would like you to imagine it as the teacher and student trying to make a connection in the classroom. The teacher must always have the initiative to go down to the student and help bring them up. A teacher can perceive well the potential of her students and should work toward enabling them to see their own talent and skills.

Inviting school success, values clarification, moral education and multi ethnic education are the power branches that builds this school of thought towards success. Teachers must focus on anecdotal recording of changes in emotional pattern of thoughts, words and actions. If students were to have any problems, teachers should immediately assume the role of a friend, parent, sibling or anyone required for the situation so as to help the student clear the emotional block and give 100% focus in the lessons taught. As I had mentioned earlier, the emotional intelligence is directly proportional to performance outcome. Thus we can see the importance of having a clear mind to ensure the success of students in achieving their learning objectives.

c) Behavioral School of Thought

Image 6.3

The behavioral school of thought focuses on shaping appropriate behavior. This is extremely important as students today will go out and be part of society tomorrow. If the school environment fails to lay the foundation in the lives of students, it will be impossible to build other characteristics on it. Both teacher and student must work hand in hand to make sure that the final outcome in behavior is fruitful and life changing.

In this section I learned about contiguity and stimulus response, Pavlov's classical conditioning, Skinner's operant conditioning and Bandura's social learning. These theories are very closely knitted. In contiguity, a stimulus is important to get a certain response from the subject due to its established connection, which leads to classical conditioning where initial stimulus is replaced with a new stimulus but still produces the similar response as the earlier stimulus and response. This then proceeds to operant conditioning where reinforcement is the main focus. Here, the subject is disciplined by positive or negative punishment which will be remembered the next time the subject wants to commit the same mistake. Finally, social learning takes place. Students tend to note the behavior of their peers and teachers as well. So teachers must be sure that anything said and done be right and not rude. They must also focus on making students realize inappropriate behavior and helping them to change from their perspective, as anything forcefully done to transform behavior may not end up effective.

This is a revision activity done in the class with our lecturer. We were asked to write down anything that we remembered about whatever we had learned. This were my ideas and understanding about the topics learned. After writing this down individually, we were asked to present it in front of the class where our lecturer proceeded to correct our mistakes and we also had an interactive session where we shared opinions with our friends and gained more ideas on how to apply these school of thoughts in our classroom environment. By presenting in front of the class, I learned to put aside my fear and start being confident.  This activity was certainly a great experience as it felt like a class environment where the teacher and students have a discussion. 

Is There a Single Best Approach to Teaching?

In my opinion, there is no one best approach to teaching. Every school of thought has its own specialty and they can all be woven together to create a strong foundation in our students. Having mastered all these theories helps me prepare myself to meet the needs of my students(humanistic), feed their minds with relevant knowledge(cognitive) and contour their behavior to become someone better(behaviorist). 

I believe in the application of the teaching and learning styles in the past posts. This is because it promotes both creative and critical thinking which is vital for students these days who constantly question 'why?' In every lesson planned, we are able to see how heavily integrated these theories are. All this time I was assuming that going to class and teaching is simply preparing some short notes and questions for students to read and answer. However after learning and applying these school of thoughts in my teaching and learning experience, I can see the importance of it.

For example, we must get to know our students on a deeper level so as to understand their needs, abilities, emotions, character, talents, skills, interests and much more. If we can comprehend them as human beings instead of robots that come to receive textbook content, we can plan a successful lesson and carry it our with their engagement. The activity done may not necessarily require expensive materials, it could be as simple as taking students to the school field and asking them to point of the parts of plants and to draw what they see in their Science notebooks. This activity did not require anything but paper, pencil and their creativity plus participation.

In conclusion, I would like to stress that the application of these 3 school of thoughts must be appreciated as it is so rich and valuable. Teachers who fail to understand the beauty of these theories are sure to miss out on being a cutting edge educator. My future lesson plans and activities will definitely contain the elements from these philosophies as I only want the best for my students.

Thank you for reading this post and have a nice day ahead.

BEHAVIORAL SCHOOL OF THOUGHT Part 2 (Week 5)

Behavioral Approaches to Teaching and Learning Process

In this post, I will be explaining the approaches that can be used to reinforce good behavior in the classroom. There are mainly three ways which are computer assisted learning, mastery learning and applied behavioral analysis. 

a) Computer Assisted Learning

Figure 5.1. Computer Assisted Learning

Through this approach, the integration of ICT is applied. Students will be able to learn how to use applications and software to educate themselves and gain information. Activities in the classroom can also be done through the usage of computers and the Internet.

For example, we UNITAR students have our UNIEC Portal where we can download our notes and also answer and reply forums which will be graded by our lecturers. We also use Padlet.com where our lecturer posts a question and everyone gets to answer and also read the opinions of other students. This promotes virtual learning and also communication.  A healthy competition is also ensured.

b) Mastery Learning

Figure 5.2. Mastery Learning 

In mastery learning, students get to learn at their own pace. As we see in Figure 5.2, the content is delivered through instruction by the teacher. Then the students are assessed to see their level of understanding. If the learning objective is achieved, the mastery is the demonstrated through application in real life situations. If the students fail to achieve the goals, reteaching and correction is facilitated by the teacher. A retest is done to see the progress and improvement of students.

This approach is a great way to make sure that students actually learn something at the end of the lesson and not merely come to class just for the sake of coming. Also, the teacher has to be dedicated enough to put effort to create ways to help students understand instead of teaching in the conservative way.

c) Applied Behavioral Analysis

Figure 5.3. Applied Behavioral Analysis

The figure above shows the process involved in applied behavioral analysis. This analysis focuses on behavior modification through a procedure. Below is the brief explanation of the procedure involved in this analysis.

1. Identification of behavior that needs to be changed.

• Teacher anecdotes behavior pattern of student, notices the change and tries to identify the reasons leading to the change.

2. Determine how student presently performs desired behavior.

• Teacher imposes desired behavior on students and tracks the progress of behavioral change in student's actions.

3. Intervention, reinforcement student receives while performing desirable behavior.

• Teacher proceeds to help student improve on behavior and rewards student every time student successfully completes a task or achieves behavioral goals.

4. Appreciate change and maintain reinforcement until desirable behavior is achieved.

• Teacher praises the student for trying to change for the better and stresses on moving forward to fully reach the target of behavior change.

This is all for this post. In the upcoming post, I will be writing a simple summary of the three school of thoughts to give you a clearer view of what we have learned so far. We will also see whether there is a single best school of thought to cover the entire purpose of education. Thank you and have an edifying day. 

BEHAVIORAL SCHOOL OF THOUGHT Part 1 (Week 4)

Hello everyone, 

In this post, I will be focusing on the first part of the Humanistic school of thought. This theory helps us understand why we behave as we do. In this school of thought, there are a few important concepts that we must remember. They will be explained below.

a) Contiguity

Figure 3.1

Contiguity means  being in direct contact with something. In terms of education, it is closely related to stimulus and response. It simply means that any environmental event and any action that occurs in a brief span of time tends to be associated together. For example, when a students sees a certain subject in his timetable, he then checks whether there is homework given for that subject as the teacher constantly gives homework for the subject. Here, the stimulus is the constant giving of homework and the response is the thought of whether there is homework or not. Both these events has taken place in a short duration of time.

b) Classical Conditioning

Figure 3.2

In classical conditioning, we focus on learning that occurs when we have established a connection between the initial stimulus-response and new stimulus-response. This is done long enough to produce the similar response as when the first stimulus- response was used. 

Ivan Pavlov's experiment with the dog depicts this theory very well. In Figure 3.2, food is shown to the dog to which it reacts by salivating. Then a whistle is blown but there is no response. After that, the whistle is blown together with the food. This time the dog salivates. As now the dog knows that the whistle and food are related, it will salivate whenever it hears the sound of the whistle as it knows that food will be present.

For example, in the school environment, at the end of the lesson, the ringing of the bell (original stimulus) tells the students that it is the end of the lesson. For a change, the teacher assigns homework (new stimulus) indicating end of the lesson. Now there is a change in the stimulus but it still produces the same response that is the thought of the lesson ending.

c) Operant conditioning

Figure 3.3

As seen in Figure 3.3 above, the teacher has practiced positive punishment by asking the student to rewrite a phrase for 20 times instead of beating him to prevent him from repeating such behavior. So the next time the student thinks of repeating the same mistake, he will remember this punishment and therefore not perform the undesirable action.

Frederic Skinner came up with the theory of learning facilitated through reinforcement, be it positive or negative. He defined negative reinforcement as punishment and positive reinforcement as the strengthening of a certain event. For example, if a student were to send his homework on time, he will be given a sweet by the teacher. This strengthens the will of the student to continue to send his homework and do his class activities on time so that he will be rewarded in the future. As a teacher to be, I strongly believe in positive reinforcement as it is important to make our students feel appreciated and worthy. Negative reinforcement may embarrass them and they may not want to try or participate in any activities after that anymore. 

d) Social Learning

Figure 3.4

Social learning is all about learning through observation. Students must be taught to follow behavior that is accepted and refrain from negative behavior. For teachers, we should avoid relating content with anything that students dislike or do not have an interest in as it will confuse them or make them to feel weak as they do not understand the content taught. Teachers should also avoid giving homework as means to punish them, instead homework should be viewed as a way to improve their progress in a certain subject. Whenever in the class, teachers must remember that everything said and done are being seen by students and they will model after it. Thus teachers must take care of their actions and choice of words so as to not hurt the students and teach them misguided behavior.

There are a few ways to appreciate students and help them progress with good behavior in and out of the classroom. Here are a few ways.

1. Appreciate their improvement even though it may not be significant. 
2. Try to draw attention in a friendly way to students who show proper behavior so others can follow.
3. Get to know what is rewarding to them and reinforce student centered learning.
4. Always provide learning reinforcement for new tasks.
5. Encourage response and thank them for trying though it may not be accurate.
6. Create situations where every student can succeed or at least try.
7. Work together and communicate with parents to fortify valuable behavior.

In the next post, I will be writing about the approaches in this school of thought. Do keep up with the blog posts. Thank you and have an edifying day.