Task 4
Word Count: 680
In my teaching I have applied a few different theories and principles to enhance learning and create required behaviour.
I found learners were losing motivation and become tired and distracted during revision session’s this led me to study Mazlow’s (Petty, 2004) ‘Hierarchy of needs’ when I provided energy boosting snack the improvement on learning, understand and behaviour was extremely positive. Proving the effectiveness of Mazlow’s theory.
Student plans detailing what is to be taught in each session are given to all learners on a termly basis. This relates to Ausubel’s theory ‘advanced organisers’ where by learners more prepared to accept new material if they know what to expect in advance.
I choose to used Knowles (1970, Cited Reece et al, 2010) andragogical approach to enhance self-motivation in learners. He identified that adults learned in a different way to children preferring to be self-directed than completely dependent on the teacher and their past experiences. I have used this as a basis to my teaching during this module by not giving answers unless absolutely necessary in Q&A discussion and during assessment feedback. This has resulted in deeper learning and productive learner centred environment and has also enhanced the learners’ self-esteem and independence. In addition to the benefits to the learner this has also left me with more time manage the learning environment and assess learner on individual basis.
Another theorist that believed in the andragogical approach was Kelly (1955, cited Reece et al, 2010), he devised ‘personal construct psychology’ which examined how past experiences could affect a person’s anticipation of achievement or failure. After study of this theory I have become more aware of student’s with negative learning experiences and how it can affect their opinions of their own achievement, I have implemented the use positive reinforcement during feedback to build self-esteem and trust which has made some improvement but not as much as I anticipated. On reflection this should be used at the beginning to enable enough time for this theory to erase the negative past learning experience.
It is important to give attention to all learner so that they feel valued as identified by Rogers’s(Wallace, 2007) and his ‘Unconditional positive reward’ but I have found that this is not always successful when dealing with learners who vow for attention constantly removing attention from the whole group. To control the negative behaviour I have used Wallace’s (2009) neo-behaviourist approach of direct the talkative learners question to rest of the class withdrawing the reward of my attention. This has proven very successful and the attention seeking
