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.

HUMANISTIC SCHOOL OF THOUGHT (Week 3)

Hello everyone.

This week, I will be focusing on the Humanistic school of thought that I have learned in class. This school of thought is all about understanding and respecting the needs and abilities of students in the classroom. This is extremely important as teachers need to know how and what their students are like so that lessons can be planned and taught effectively along with good feedback from the students themselves.

Figure 2.1. Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

The Humanistic school of thought is based on the Hierarchy of Needs by Abraham Maslow as seen in Figure 1.2. This school believes in appreciating the affective domain of students and prioritizes the feelings of students and teaches them to accept themselves and others. This leads to the students being able to feel unique and worthwhile. There are mainly four important points that ensure the accomplishment of this school, which are inviting school success, values clarification, moral education and multi-ethnic education. The approach to teaching and learning will also be included in this post.

a) Inviting School Success

The application of this point is seen when teachers communicate to students and shows them that they are actually responsible, able and valuable human beings even though they may have weaknesses. Constant words of appreciation, a pat on the back or giving literal rewards such as star points are a few ways to increase the sense of worth in students which in turn invites them to want to learn the lesson. In some cases the students may not like the subject but just because the teacher acknowledges his work, he will try harder to please the teacher which makes him learn indirectly.

Thus teachers must take the initiative to get to know about the students' background, interests and dislikes. This creates an impression among students that the teacher cares about their well being genuinely instead of always focusing on their grades in class. As a consequence, they will push themselves to be better people. Teachers can ask students to write essays about themselves or play an interactive game where students get to know each other and then pass the information to other friends in the classroom. In this way, everyone gets to communicate and strengthen friendship bonds as well.

b) Values Clarification 

It is quite important to be able to clarify values while learning takes place. As we know, the National Education Philosophy presses on holistic human capital, so it is necessary that we as teachers integrate relevant values into lessons so that students can understand the content and understand its value in their life.

For example in a Maths class, students learn basic addition and subtraction. After that, they also go on to learn about money usage. In this they are able to see how they need to add or subtract money to pay for things bought at shops or to get the correct balance money. Perhaps the teacher can do a short sketch to show the value of addition and subtraction in money usage. As students will be using money in their life, they will be able to understand the importance. This is also a part of authentic learning.

Teachers must work towards implementing techniques that allows students to identify correct information, see its value in their life and understand why they are doing it and finally act on it after weighing the consequences of the action done. Students are very much encouraged to share and explain their experience and how they relate the content to their action.

c) Moral Education

Figure 2.2. Moral Values

This is also an important factor that must be combined with lessons. These days, we see a decline in appropriate behavior and discipline. Students of this era feel that it is normal and acceptable to have an attitude that is not bothered about anything much unless it affects them deeply. This mentality has to be changed as they are the future leaders of tomorrow and they must be able to empathize the situation and feelings of others so that unity is present and healthy relationships can be fostered.

Teachers should focus on developing responsible behavior in their students that will be in them despite of being in or out of the school environment. This is also to ensure that there is an upcoming generation that can be entwined with a higher standard of living, which in turn lifts the status of Malaysia in the global view.

d) Multi-Ethnic Education

This is very much applicable in our country thanks to our pluralistic society. In subjects like in Moral Education (Pendidikan Moral) and Civics and Nationality (Sivik dan Kewarganegaraan), teachers can explain the differences and similarities of the various cultures. 

As for students; involvement here, they can be asked to share their own experiences about festivals celebrated and its origin. In this way, students will definitely get excited as they would want to open up about whatever they have gone through personally, resulting in personal satisfaction. Confidence is also built and knowledge is a definite gain. This is beneficial in terms of helping the students to naturally develop using situations that they go through in daily life.

Humanistic Approach to Teaching and Learning Process

a) Project Method

This method focuses on encouraging students to pursue their own learning interests. To me, this is a good way to have them grasp content as the interest will drive them to push the information the their long term memory. They would surely do a certain activity to help them remember the relevance of the learnt content in their life. If the student is not interested in the lesson planed, the teacher can tailor make the planned lesson into something that can attract the student even for a short period of time. Once the connection has been established, the student will begin to see its relevance to his interest and therefore effective teaching and learning takes place.

b) Cooperative learning

This method promotes social and emotional growth as students share, accept and respect each others thoughts and feelings whilst learning in groups. This is another way for teachers to help quiet students to talk and engage with their friends in the classroom. Group discussions and presentations builds confidence and proper rapport between them. Through this they will also learn how to think critically and creatively before they offer ideas so that they do not embarrass themselves.

Figure 2.3. Emotional Intelligence Statistics

                               

In conclusion, as we can see in the picture above, emotional intelligence is directly proportional to performance outcome. We teachers need to make sure that students are able to clear the emotional block by motivating, listening and offering counselling to them. It is essential that we anecdote changes in behavior so that we know what the student is going through and how we may be able to help them.

Freedom to express their thoughts and feelings without any hindrance is important as this may be their only way to voice out. Thus as teachers it is important that we observe every said word and action done so that we can track and come to the rescue should they move away from the right track.

Thank you for taking the time to read this post. Have an edifying day ahead.

COGNITIVE SCHOOL OF THOUGHT (Week 2)

Hello everyone.

Why when a teacher teaches in a classroom, not all students learn? Have we wondered why? What is it that leads to the failure to engage students in the lesson? These are the few of the many questions that will be answered in the upcoming posts based on the School of Thoughts that I am currently learning.


COGNITIVE SCHOOL OF THOUGHT

This school of thought emerged in the 1960's to study how people think. There are two important ideas to be understood, which are information processing and meaningful learning which helps us understand how people learn and remember.

a) Information Processing

Figure 1.1. Information processing

As we can see in the diagram on the left, it shows a simple breakdown of how the brain works with information and memory. We encounter many stimuli but pay attention to some which results in the discarding of some information whereas the rest goes to the short term memory or working memory. Short term memory is a storage system that holds only limited amount and certain kinds of information for few seconds. From there, with repetition of information, slowly the attended information moves to the long term memory which must be recalled from time to time. 

We should take note on anything that helps in holding the learner's attention in the learning environment, how much information can be placed in the short and long term memory and how to organize information to make it memorable.


These are a few guidelines to help teachers hold the attention of students in the class. They are;

• Make the learning experience pleasant and satisfying,
• Get to know the interests and needs of students,
• Avoid monotonous way of conveying knowledge, instead make use of the various sensory channels,
• Understand students' differences in ability to attend to information given,
• Provide activities that require more concentration in the morning rather than the later in the day,
• Call for direct attention when teaching and learning process occurs,
• Try to eliminate all distractions if possible.

b) Meaningful Learning

Meaningful learning is necessary so that information students receive can be used better and understood. It is also to develop to approaches which includes the following;

• Prepare relevant content,
• Present it in a clear and logical way,
• Connect it to prior knowledge,
• Help students review past knowledge,
• Assist students in processing and using new information,
• Summarize the lesson learnt with students.

Figure 1.2. Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

As we see in Figure 1.2, it is quite related to meaningful learning. Students tend to move up better to self actualization when they have a sense of worth and are being appreciated. For example, a student who gives opinions in class will feel better and dare to contribute even more when the teacher relates his opinion to the lesson, or accepts and corrects his inaccurate answer instead of saying something that can chip off his confidence.





Cognitive Approach to Teaching and Learning Process

Cognitive Approach	Authentic Learning	Scaffolding	Reciprocal Teaching	Problem Solving
Important Facts	Knowledge is meaningful when remembered and related to student.	Helps students solve problem through gradual shedding of outside assistance.	Dialogue takes place between teacher and student regarding what is about to be learned.	Situation exists where learners consider how they solve the problem.
How it works	Direct experience is better than abstract or secondhand kinds. This adds to personal achievement and self-discovery.	Provide learners with support. Teachers need to be sensitive towards students’ changes and needs.	Before, during, after lesson, students should be able to employ 4 learning strategies Predicting; predict what is about to be learnt Questioning; they create questions they would like to answer Clarifying; they clarify doubts Summarizing; identify key words to their understanding.	Well-structured problem; fixed procedure to solve the problem. Unstructured problem; no specific procedure, more complex or real life issues.
Example	Student teaching among themselves.	Peer helping and teaching, students may understand what their friends are unable to catch and help them from there.	Group discussions where students take up role of teacher and explain the content to their understanding.	Students gain experience in problem solving through application of relevant methods.

Table 1.1.Cognitive Approach to Teaching and Learning Process

I hope you have learned something from this post. Do keep up with the other upcoming posts as well. Thank you and have an edifying day.

  

I, My Goals & Philosophy

Hello there. Welcome to the part of the blog which is about to tell you more about me as you read on. Yes, that's me on the right.

I'm Florence Shamma. I was born on the 28th day of the tenth month in the mid 90's which makes me somewhat of an adult this year. I was born and bred in Penang which makes me quite a conservative girl. I am a person who enjoys art in any form, be it food, dance, music or literature. I am a proficient debater and I am open to constructive criticism. I believe that creativity is always present everywhere, it is we who fail to see it. 

I am now pursuing Bachelor's of Education in UNITAR. It's been a long way from school life but similar in terms of me receiving education; just at different levels throughout the years. This course is very interesting as I can relate and see myself in whatever said and done. I have been longing to contribute to the education system and this path taken is one that helps me achieve that. 

I strongly trust that an educator in any form has the power to change the life of a student because I had a teacher who changed my life. I have been a teacher before (I worked in a kindergarten after SPM) and I've seen the beautiful metamorphosis of children before my eyes. From the noisiest brat in the class, they evolve into active learners; depositing their energy into the learning process. All they needed was just a teacher's attention and belief along with activities to suit their abilities and interests.

The goals I'd like to achieve would mainly to finish my degree, continue with my Master's degree and go on to be a cutting- edge teacher. Anyone can be a teacher, but how many would actually take the initiative to make their career count? I'd love to work alongside experienced teachers so that I can keep learning about the strengths of education and improvise on it's weaknesses. Also, while joining hands with other teachers, I would strive to provide free education for the children or even adults who cannot afford it, through tuition classes or maybe I would open a free school with the help of the government and NGOs. I am also building up myself to become a motivational speaker to help empower women and youths for the nation's well being. 

A teacher must have a philosophy of her own that she believes in. Mine would be experimental-ism. Allow me to explain how I see the teaching and learning process in this philosophy. As I am person who likes to boggle my mind with how interesting I can make my T&L process, this philosophy is great as it focuses on constant trial and error which is good in the sense of we teachers being able to improvise on pedagogy skills. This philosophy allows me to have a relaxed classroom environment where learning is still the main focus, but is more student- centered and disciplines with dignity. A dash of other philosophies is a definite welcome wherever needed though.

I hope you had a good time reading this post. I'm hoping to know more about you so please spare me some time and leave a comment on this and all the other upcoming posts. Looking forward to seeing you regularly on my blog. Thank you and have an edifying day!