`This is a rare find, a book that manages to turn educational theory into accessible practice. It will appeal to teachers, managers, support staff and anyone interested in how we learn...This is a book relevant to everyone involved in education as it gets right to the heart of what makes us achieve: motivation. An empowering read - don?t miss it!? - Support for Learning
`As the title suggests, motivation is a key theme, and this is explored with reference to theoretical perspectives on learning and how these can be translated into practice. A real strength of the book lies in its emphasis on the importance of managing learning and developing effective whole-school approaches to improving the motivation of pupils? - SENCO Update
Help all your students become better learners!
This book tells you how to recognise and meet the individual needs of different kinds of learners, and provides adaptable strategies for helping every learner develop their own successful approach to learning.
Packed full of advice, the book contains:
oideas for ways to motivate all pupils
oa chapter on learning styles in the early years
oadvice on how to create the best learning environment possible
oquestionnaires, memory games and organizational charts
okey practice points
ovisual summaries at the end of each chapter
The practical ideas offered in this book will be invaluable to all class teachers, trainee teachers and SENCOs.
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Yes, you can access Motivating Learners in the Classroom by Gavin Reid in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Education & Education Teaching Methods. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.
This chapter will describe some of the basic principles of learning and will provide a foundation for the book. It will comment on:
the importance of developing independent learning
the need to consider the whole child – including the social and environmental aspects as well as cognitive factors
the need to recognise individual differences amongst learners
the importance for learners to develop their own learning strategies and to be able to adapt these to different learning situations
a recognition of the diversity among learners in relation to cognitive differences and learning experiences
the role of learning styles in the classroom
the theoretical background underpinning learning strategies, including the metacognitive aspects of learning and particularly based on the work of Vygotsky and Bruner.
Planning for learning
One of the most discouraging and disappointing comments teachers often hear from students is ‘I have been up every night for months studying and I still failed the exam!’ This happens so often and teachers, and of course parents, immediately sympathise with the student; and so they should. There is nothing more demoralising than not obtaining a fair reward for your efforts and it is for that reason I have written this book. Its aim is to inform teachers on learning habits and strategies based on individual needs and preferences.
This will help to encourage students to develop their own effective learning techniques so they can maximise their time efficiently and be rewarded for their effort.
It needs to be recognised of course that learning is not only about passing exams – that is certainly part of learning, but it is not the main aim. One of the problems with books that aim to help students pass exams is that the reader is bombarded with a plethora of strategies that might, or might not, work for that individual. What is often omitted are the foundations of learning – the building blocks that can help learners to become aware of their own learning preferences and about how to use these effectively in new learning situations.
It is necessary to help learners develop independent and autonomous learning skills. Books on study skills often disempower rather than empower the learner, by being too prescriptive. This can facilitate an over-dependence on what are essentially other people’s strategies, and when these do not work learners will immediately feel they are doing something incorrectly. It is for that reason that we need to look at the learning process and more importantly how that process can be maximised and personalised for individual learners.
KEY POINT
Provide a summary of key points at the beginning of a text. This is important and is emphasised in the example above relating to this book. This helps the reader select those aspects of a book that are most appropriate. Additionally it also provides a means of recapping and checking that the whole text has been understood. Summaries should have key points and these will emphasise the importance of each part of the text.
Developing effective learning
Developing effective learning is like building a house. A house consists of individual bricks and requires solid foundations otherwise it will collapse when under strain. Learning is the same – if the founwdations for learning are not in place the learner will have difficulty when coming across new and challenging learning tasks.
A plan is essential for building a house. The builder does not pick up bricks as he/she goes along and slots them in. No – every brick and every component have each a place in the plan of the house. Nothing is left to chance. It is the same for learning. Nothing should be left to chance – it is important to plan so that the learner is ready and prepared for new and more challenging learning tasks. Yet in practice what we find is that perhaps the curriculum is planned and the teaching is usually planned and but the learning (namely, how a learner interacts with the new material) is not. In practice it is often left to chance!
Feeling secure – the heart and mind
For most people their home is a place of security. Inside it is equipped to make the people staying there secure and comfortable. The same principles should adhere to learning. It is important that a learner feels comfortable when learning which means the learning environment has to be right for that learner. The environment is an important consideration in learning and is discussed later in this book.
Appearance
We often judge the quality of a house by its appearance. Presentation both inside and outside is important. We may well be able to draw some conclusions about the owners if for example the garden is untidy, the outside needs painting and the curtains are hanging off their rails! Similarly we need to consider the manner in which the learning task is met and presented. How the task appears to the learner can be important. Some learners can switch off within seconds of seeing a task because it looks too formidable; the sentences are too long or the vocabulary is too complex. How learners react to a task can tell us much about them, their learning styles and their learning preferences.
Developing independent learning
Independent learning is one of the most important indictors that effective learning has taken place. If learners can work independently this means that they have fully understood the task. They are able to make decisions on how to tackle new learning based on their background understanding and their capacity for independent learning. The key issues here are learning resourcefulness and independence in learning.
(See CD Rom Activity 1.) The learner who repeatedly asks someone rather than tries to work through the solution themselves can in fact be:
Off-loading the pressure of thinking to someone else, or at least sharing it. For some learners this is important as they need to articulate the problem before they can even begin to solve it.
Perhaps they may be utilising the skills of others because they have not acquired those skills themselves. They simply do not have the ‘know how’ to think through the problem and work out the steps themselves.
Dependence and independence – the role of the system
A question that should be asked is – does the education system promote independent learning? Many people are unable to work through a problem themselves. This may be due to the type of education they received because this education shaped their learning preferences and made them dependent on others. In recent years there has been a more obvious thrust towards problem-solving activities in the curriculum. This involves making decisions and thinking about and justifying decisions. This is the key to independent learning and often this is embedded in the learning ethos in a school.
KEY POINT
Encourage learners to develop an understanding of the learning process and how they can become more effective learners through tackling problems. Many learners do not get enough experience with this type of activity and it is those learners whose main strategy in solving learning problems is to ask someone. They are part of a dependency culture and it might be difficult for these learners, without support, to break out of this and become independent learners.
Learning takes all of you
There has been a great deal of attention paid to different styles of learning – visual, auditory, kinaesthetic and tactile – and the assumption is that each person has a preferred mode of learning. This may well be the case for some and is usually referred to as one’s learning style.
A useful definition of learning styles is that it is a relatively stable indicator of a person’s cognitive and environmental preferences for learning. This can include the visual, auditory and kinaesthetic, as well as factors such as attention and memory and environmental aspects such as time of day, light, background noise and classroom seating arrangements. It is important however to ensure that one does not view learning style as an inflexible and fixed way of processing information. It is not a blood group! Yet for many a knowledge of their learning style can help significantly in learning and particularly in tackling tasks that can be demanding.
However, there are now significant research studies that indicate that learning is a total experience. All the modalities are important, with emotional and environmental factors as important as cognitive learning factors. Similarly it is important for some learners to work in groups. For some this might be the only way they can function as a learner. This point will be developed in more detail later in this book.
KEY POINT
Ensure that learning involves all the senses, namely the visual, auditory, kinaesthetic and tactile. Many people have a preferred modality and need to use this when they are learning new material. If a learner is very visual then he/she may not be able to listen to instructions for any length of time as listening focuses on the auditory modality. It is also important to recognise the role of the social and emotional experiences of a learner. This could determine how well they will perform in groups and how they may react to working independently.
Individual differences and diversity
It is crucial to acknowledge individual differences in learning. This includes students with identifiable disabilities as well as learners who have no disabilities. It is too easy and simplistic to suggest, for example, if a learner has dyslexia, or ADHD that one particular approach should be followed. Students will have individual preferences and that includes those with dyslexia and ADHD or any other category of difficulty.
It is important to cater for the diverse needs of students and to acknowledge intellectual, cognitive and cultural differences, taking on board this diversity when planning for learning.
The importance of theory
There are a number of different theories that attempt to explain how children learn. There are however some common strands that need to be considered by a teacher. These include:
Understanding: a learner needs be able to understand the requirements of the task.
Planning: a learner needs to be able to identify the key points and work out a learning plan.
Action: a learner needs to have the resources and the skills to carry out the task.
Transfer of learning: previous learning should help ...
Table of contents
Cover Page
Title Page
Copyright
Contents
Acknowledgements
About the author
Introduction
How to use this book
1 The foundations of learning
2 Motivation to learn
3 Self-knowledge – the role of learning styles
4 The learning environment
5 Memory – recognise, revise, review, recall and reflect
