Teenagers these days are very IT savvy. They may be listening to music, chat via MSN with another person and do blogging at the same time. Teachers can no longer just chalk (meaning write) and talk (meaning speak). The students may find it "very boring". A paradigm shift is needed in the teaching profession. Perhaps, students may be tested in front of the computer screen instead of writing on a piece of paper. Marking may be automated to a certain level for instant feedback and so on. It has opened up a new horizon for the learning environment.
I supposed an effective school LE depends very much on the school culture. Staff and pupil morale are very important in creating a conducive LE. In a "happy school", teachers and pupils are more likely to learn better.
On top of that, IT (or rather, ICT) is now very prevalent in schools. Its usage has definitely changed the learning environment. I've just attended a New Media workshop, and it is truly amazing to learn how things are evolving so fast. I sure some of our pupils are more IT savvy than us. We have to adapt our teaching methods accordingly, and having a complementing environment is important. For eg, having internet connections in every classroom or wireless network around the school. The use of tablets will also enable us to conduct our lessons outside the classroom. The use of interactive Smart Board will make learning more interesting.
As teachers, we have to keep pace with these changes, but amidst all these changes, we must not forget our core business of nurturing the next generation. =)
I will first start with an ineffective school learning environment I was in many years ago. I was in this enrichment art lesson at Bra Basah Road. I did not feel a sense of belonging as we (teacher & students) only met once a week. Furthermore, I also did not feel I was improving as the teacher only concentrated on the students who could draw. Though, I was keen on art, I was not a good artist and needed the teacher’s guidance which was not forth coming As a result, my self-esteem was low and I finally decided to drop out of the class as no learning was taking place.
My personal effective learning environment was when I was in this literature class in school. Though the teacher was young and a novice in the teaching profession, she made up her shortcomings by preparing her lessons well. She met our personal needs of wanting to do well in the subject. Furthermore, she was friendly and approachable, so we felt a sense of safety when we seek her help whenever we had difficulties understanding some literature concepts
I will first start with an ineffective school learning environment I was in many years ago. I was in this enrichment art lesson at Bra Basah Road. I did not feel a sense of belonging as we (teacher & students) only met once a week. Furthermore, I also did not feel I was improving as the teacher only concentrated on the students who could draw. Though, I was keen on art, I was not a good artist and needed the teacher’s guidance which was not forth coming As a result, my self-esteem was low and I finally decided to drop out of the class as no learning was taking place.
My personal effective learning environment was when I was in this literature class in school. Though the teacher was young and a novice in the teaching profession, she made up her shortcomings by preparing her lessons well. She met our personal needs of wanting to do well in the subject. Furthermore, she was friendly and approachable, so we felt a sense of safety when we seek her help whenever we had difficulties understanding some literature concepts. koh Swee Keow
Personally, I had some bad experiences during my primary school days. After viewing the attached video, I realised that my need for esteem, love and affection was lacking then. I felt insecure as a student in class and in school. However, when I was posted to secondary school, there was a paradigm shift, the teachers and classmates there were very encouraging. The environment in that school allow and encourage us to rise up from our failures. Most of my school days, I lift my head tall. School holidays are always full of activities. My esteem run high when my scoutmaster promoted me to Senior Patrol Leader in Sec 3 and I run the scout troop activities with other cooperating patrol leaders. Such empowering environment in my school days! Really, perhaps a good learning environment is shaped and control by the teacher within us.
An effective learning environment is a place where teacher has clear expectations of the student behaviour, good instructional skills, and where the students felt a sense of belonging and empowerment. On the other hand, an ineffective learning environment is a place where the expectations were unclear and students do not have a sense of belonging and purpose.
I remembered enjoying learning Economics in junior college under a rather strict and firm teacher. The teacher was clear about her expectations of us and sets the tone for the classroom clearly. We were to prepare our tutorials before going for class and to have questions related to the topic ready. We spent every minute focused and engaged in the discussions of economics and time passed very quickly in her classroom. Although the teacher was strict, we felt a sense of belonging in her classroom, secured with the knowledge that we would definitely improve in our Economics under her charge. I remembered having high self-efficacy in her class; the effort that we put into the subject was directly proportional to our grades and we felt motivated to work even harder when our results improved. I think this positive learning experience is linked to the high level of empowerment I felt in the classroom.
I also remembered a constant fear of my English lessons in primary school. Coming from a non-English speaking family, I struggled with the language and felt inferior to my peers. It seemed that I simply could not improve my grades in English no matter how hard I tried. In retrospective, I probably did not even know the means to improve. Although the teacher was relatively gentle compared to my Economics teacher, her sudden outbursts of frustration at my poor standards frightened the daylights out of me. Those were the dark days indeed.
My ideal effective school environment is depicted in the book Totto-Chan: The Little Girl at the Window by Tetsuko Kuroyanagi. What inspired me was the uncoventional headmaster who seek to recognise the students' strengths and qualities, and develop them. He created a safe and happy learning environment despite the physical constraints he faced. Moreover, World War 2 was going on at that time. There was a sense of empowerment because the child decided on his/her pace of learning and chose what they would like to learn daily. Headmaster and teachers heaped praises and encouragement on the students. Everyone is treated equally. There is no discrimination because in this book, the physically disabled students are regarded with equal importance. How I wish I am there with the author! Learning would be so meaningful. It would probably be more of a 'want' than a 'need'. :)
On the other hand, I suddenly recalled a tutor in Junior College. I was the worst student in terms of academic performance in the subject. She would be very sarcastic with her remarks and she did it openly in front of my peers. She had no respect for my feelings. This was one of my worst learning experience. My self-esteem needs were not met, based on Maslow's hierachy of needs. In the class, I was 'mute' and felt like wearing an invisible coat, so that she would not notice me. I dread going for her tutorials.
Based on these two examples I have given, I feel that teachers play an important role in shaping a conducive and effective learning environment. Effective learning environment makes one desire to learn but an ineffective learning environment can disable a learner.
I guess school learning environment is very much depend on the students, teachers(All staffs) as well as school's vision.I find that my school's Homeroom system is a classical example of effective learning environment. Each classes have thier own unique tastes which suit both to the students and teachers. It gives ownership and sense of belonging to the class. Also, Teachers need to know and identify the different learning styles(needs)of thier students and cater to them accordingly. As teachers we have to design, experiment,reflect(both teachers and students) and improve on our strategies that we use in our clasroom. Teachers have to embark on new avenues to tap on the students talents. In order to that, we have to equip ourselves with different modes of assessing,innovative lessons and creative skills. School must create a better learning culture and embark on different approaches to achieve this effectine learning environment. Nowadays, the students are better equipped in I.T. skills and are exposed to different media, thus it is important that we cater to the different needs of learning styles which will create a effective learning environment.
What makes an ineffective school learning environment is evident during my primary and secondary school education. All I can remember is that the teacher makes us memorize chunks of information, in fact I memorize sentence after sentences for my geography and literature. When it comes to examination, I regurgitate all the information that I have learnt, not even focusing on the question at hand and at times I cannot even remember what I have learnt. Obviously, I did not do well in my examinations and the school environment has not effectively supported me in learning with understanding.
Now, as a teacher myself, I see the education scene changing in leaps and bounds over the past 30 years. Teachers are taught to understand their pupils and look into their personal needs so as to bring out a sense of belonging, build up their self-esteem and empower leadership qualities in each pupil. Teachers must also adopt correct teaching strategies, methodologies and sound pedagogy to cater for the different abilities in the class. With the use of IT such as Internet, blogging, on-line chit-chat; and interactive CD Roms, lessons come alive, interesting and interactive. However, the teacher must align these activities with the objectives of the lessons to create a learner and knowledge centred environment. An effective school learning environment would also look into the assessment modes and connect learning to the community at large. In my school, pupils’ academic performance is not only based on tests and examinations (summative assessment), but other modes such as project work, presentation of work in drama, songs and lyrics are also taken into consideration. Pupils are also stretched when they apply their knowledge to serve the community such as the involvement in NYAA and this has an important effect on pupils’ academic achievement as it raises their self-esteem. I am proud to say that most of the schools now strive to achieve conducive school climate and school culture where effective teaching and learning takes place.
An effective school learning environment is dependent upon many factors such as being learner- centred, knowledge centred, assessment centred and community centred. Personally I feel that a supportive school culture that promotes these factors will help to create a conducive learning environment for the students and teachers. My personal experience with my school is that the teachers constantly review on what is being taught, how it is being taught, the modes of assessment used and how the teaching and learning is related to reality and current trends. Through this practice, the staff is strongly motivated with high morale and there is a sense of belonging and empowerment.Cooperation is also seen to be present.This is indirectly transcended to the students'level whereby they modelled after the teachers' behaviour and try their best to learn effectively and efficiently. Take for instance, the school recognises that teenagers of these days are IT savvy and courses are actually organised to meet their needs in terms of blogging and podcasting.At the same time, the teachers are also sent for these courses to keep up with the trend. As for an ineffective learning environment,I recalled one of my secondary school teachers who made this comment," if students from another class can do this problem, why can't you?" In fact, the whole class hated this teacher because we are constantly being compared to another class. Her chalk and talk style of teaching did not meet our learning needs and she did not understood that each of us has different learning styles. To sum it all,this illustrates how great an influence a teacher can have on the students. As such, the teacher plays an important role in helping to shape a conducive environment in order to make the students happy and desired to learn.
The attention spans of teenagers are very short nowadays. Their desire for instant gratification and wanting to be heard is ever so strong (read: personal blogs, online forums, mass multi-player online gaming etc).
It is difficult for teachers to compete with the kind media that is reaching out to our students if we continue to teach the way we were taught. With GOOGLE getting stronger by the day, teaching is slowly no longer about the teaching of content. It is about providing a child with the direction, purpose and meaning to the world in which he lives in.
A good learning environment is not about decorating the classroom, it is also not just a display of content neither is it confined to the four walls of the classroom (read: field trips, online blogs, online forums, self discovery).
A good learning environment is one that is able to intrinsically motivate a child to seek direction, purpose and meaning to the content that is presented in a lesson. The way to tell whether a learning environment is effective or not, is by the fruits produced. If an environment is able to cause a child to analysis, synthesis and evaluate content knowledge, it is a good learning environment.
I would like comment on the notion of the learner's needs in the learning environment with relation to my experience.I am citing an example from my secondary school experience. I wasw hopelessly bad in Maths.It was one subject where I never made the grade. The teachers who taught me from Sec 1 -4 never made any impression on me. Not until a young undergraduate, an unqualified relief teacher taught me and through her guidance and patience I was able to pass a Maths test. It was the first time I passed my Maths test which left me overjoyed. I guess what we can gather from here is that the so- called qualified teachers who taught me were teaching the class not individuals. The relief teacher who stayed with us for a short while taught me as an individual,made me feel secured, valued my self esteem and realised whatever little potential I may have. Maths may not be my cup of tea for years to come but the memories of that relief teacher will forever stay on my mind. Well, my viewpoint here is that we may introduce many initiatives, educational policies and concepts whatever but if there is no care or concern or if the learner's needs are not addressed, I doubt we will make any achievements or progress in any learning environment.
Firstly, I would like to share my own views and personal experiences on what an effective school learning environment constitutes. I feel that an effective school learning environment is one where pupils can engage themselves in optimal learning, meaningful, interactive and intellectual discourse with both their teachers and with their own schoolmates or classmates.
From a macro level, I feel that the school’s staff culture plays an important role in building an effective school learning environment as teachers will very likely need the support of one another in all areas of school life – eg: instructional and resource materials, committees, CCAs, etc. For instance, in my own current school that I teach at, there is a very strong sharing culture among the teachers, and we would always discuss our pedagogy either at an informal setting, with our own colleagues sitting near us, or at a more serious level, eg: during departmental meetings, when we would reflect among ourselves the pros and cons of certain strategies.
Not only that, at a more micro level, I have also seen many teachers trying to make their classrooms a conducive and effective learning environment for their students. As I am a Class Committee teacher, I had observed how teachers actually stayed behind after school hours to decorate the class notice boards (amidst other school duties!) with their pupils and I could see that they had put in a lot of effort to make the classroom a very comfortable place for learning. And very often, this decorating exercise seems to be a very good way of building rapport with the pupils, who always enjoyed the process and the teachers, in the meantime, also got to know the pupils better, which I feel is an important process that contributes significantly to an effective classroom learning environment for the pupils.
Hi everyone, I would like to inform you that the previous posting titled ‘REFLECTIONS’ was written by me. ;-)
I wish to share about another incident which I feel is quite a good example of an ineffective learning environment. About two years back, when I was still rather new in my current school, the school’s computer labs were rather run down and the computers looked old. Worse, the seating arrangement was so badly organised, that the back of the monitors were facing the teachers, who had a very difficult time monitoring the pupils’ behaviour, and pupils often took the liberty to do their ‘own’ tasks, whenever they were expected to listen to instructions or look at the teacher’s demonstrations.
But, things started to change after the computer laboratories were renovated. Not only were the computers newer and more appealing, thus making the whole environment more pleasant for the pupils, the whole layout of the seating arrangement was changed in such a way that teachers could monitor pupils’ activities easily and very vigilantly, compared to its earlier façade. Of course, some might think that in the first scenario, perhaps the teachers should have been stricter in laying out the rules and had taken some stringent actions to make pupils behave better, but I really feel that the physical situation at that time was certainly not to the teachers’ advantage, as moving around the computer lab was rather difficult since it was rather cramped, let alone monitoring pupils’ activities.
Hence, I think that in certain cases, the physical aspect of the environment does play a very important role because ever since the new labs started operating, pupils do seem to be mindful of that fact that they are under easy surveillance, compared to the past, and they have certainly become more on task.
Learning environment in the classroom is very much dependent on how the teacher creates it. I was just watching the show "Triumph" last week on hallmark channel. It was a very meaningful show. It is a true story of a teacher named Ron Clarke who tried to teach English to a class of underprivileged and unmotivated students. The class was the one with the worst academic performance and to make them pass needed slightly more than a miracle. Ron instead of being in a state of despair, took up the challenge to bring them up to par with the rest. He of course used uncoventional methods like drinking packets of chocolate milk,until he puked to get them pay attention to grammar lessons he conducted. It may be silly, but it really got their attention.. He even sang songs to help them remember the presidents of USA. He even promised the Headmaster that the whole class will pass by the end of term. He knew he had to try all these unusual methods to win them over.. in doing so he appealed to their personal needs.. win he did.. finally he managed to bring tremendous changes to the learning environment of the class. I always wanted to learn in such a fun way but more than often in my school days, I had been disappointed. I remember when I was in Secondary school learning Domestic Science(called Home econs now), I had a very strict and ferocious teacher. I used to dislike her as she was always screaming her head off even if I had committed a small mistakes. I never learned much from her and was even frightened to meet her along the corridors.How can a child learn when she is not able to talk to the teacher and ask questions when she is in doubt? When I became a teacher, I promised that I will become one whom the students can come for help. Learning also must not be done using chalk and talk only or the old traditional methods that the teachers used when I was in school. A learning environment should also include a variety of stimuli to help students of different learning styles learn effectively. On another year of my sec school life, I was taught English by a Math teacher. Her lessons were highly predictable: compo writing or compre exercises or forming sentences with a list of given words. I was bored to death and of course, never improved in English during the course of her teaching. Same old boring, repetitve methods used. A conducive learning environment should also cater to the needs of the students , be it physical, social or psychological, first before any real learning can take place. Students always like to know what the life of the teacher is like outside school as they enjoy connecting with them. I remember my additional math lessons always ended with my teacher relating something that happened in her life. We loved these life stories..as a result we felt more connected to the teacher and learnt better. Guess as girls, we had the appetite for some 'juicy story' she satisfied this need, thus the environment became conducive for learning. That was me then as a student.At present, as a teacher, I try to connect with the students using modern ICT tools like msn..facebook(which I was invited to join and still figuring how to use it)and of course, blogging.
Of course, learning environment is not restricted to the four walls of the classroom. There should be ample opportunity for students to learn beyond the classroom. There is a rich learning environment outside the classroom.
The learning environment is complex and dynamic. It is complex because it involves so many aspects from the physical layout of the classroom, the way the teacher makes connections with the pupils, the rapport and liking between teacher and pupils, the sense of safety felt by the pupil that is created in the classroom by the teacher, the way the teacher understands her pupils and gets the pupils to gain new knowledge by building on pre-existing knowledge, the way the teacher assesss the pupil's understanding and gives feedback to help them grow and develop in their learning and the list goes on. And is only what the teacher does to create her classroom learning environement. However, the learning environment also involves what is outside the classroom - the school environment, the family, the community - of which the teacher has only some or very little influence over.
It is dynamic because educational outcomes keep changing (compare 20 years ago to today), the type of students that make up the class is different every year (and so the kind of learning environement that fits one class may not fit another exactly as the pupils's needs and behaviours are different in different classes) and there are so many different places we use in our teaching (in the classroom, in the laboratories, in the technical workshops, outside the school grounds, cyberspace, etc). We must think through carefully the kind of appropriate learning environment that needs to be created for each situation (I find pupils behave differently when in the classroom and when they are in the science laboratory - as so the procedure, rules, expectations, mode of teaching all need to change to tailor to the change in pupils' behaviour and pupils' expectations).
It is not easy creating a challenging and effective classroom learning environment. In my school, I see teachers making an effort to create a conducive physical environement in the classroom. I see teachers with great rapport with their pupils. Many teachers try to give their pupils a sense of belonging and empowerment and make efforts to build the spirit of co-operation in the class. I have noticed that the teachers that have classroom management problems are usually those who either do not have clear rules and procedures and do not follow through on what they say or they are distant and detached from their pupils. They are obviously not meeting their pupil's needs.
I learnt from the readings given to us by Dr Quek that how we structure and conduct our lessons in the classroom is also part of the learning environment. In my school, I feel that how we conduct our lessons is a major area of concern. We know we should use a variety of teaching modes and assessments to motivate pupils and to cater to different learning styles - we know instinctively, we learn from observing others and we have had a lot of training as MOE has been quite visionary in seeing what qualities need to be developed in the younger generation for Singapore to prosper and has changed the whole educational landscape in response to our country's needs. However, actually implementing it on a consistent level and in an effective way is not that easy to achieve in reality. Yes, we do conduct the occasional engaging lesson and we do try out new media and different forms of IT, we do conduct some experential lessons and have lessons beyond the classrooms and school grounds. However, are they done regularly or ad-hoc and are they planned and carried out in such a way that meaningful learning takes place and not used to simply momentarily catch the pupils' attention. At times we get so involved with finishing the syllabus that we put aside all these wonderful ways of teaching and go back to the "chalk and board" method (not that this is an unacceptable method, but 80% of the time!). We get involved in so many programms that are running in the school (which creates an enriching school learning environment, so that is good) but it is at the expense of our classroom learning environment - we do not find the time to create engaging and effective lessons. This is what I find happening in my school. The teachers are great, get along well and are willing to share their resources with each other - however, there is not much resources to share as priority has not been given to setting time aside to build up these resources/lesson plans, to think and reflect on lessons carried out and plan on how to improve on them. The reason given always is that there is not enough TIME. Is it because we find it difficult to change - inertia, a feeling of inadequacy or we are not being pushed enough by the school leaders? I hope this is not the case as this reflects poorly on us as teachers - if we believe in what we are doing, if we have the passion and if we are professionals, we would do what it takes to ensure our pupils receive a holistic education. No, I do not beleive this is the case - I see the passon in the teachers in my school. I think what we need is to build a culture of generataive conversation in the school, to have lots of encouragement and support and to lead by action - some teachers to lead the way and in the process carry the rest of us on this exciting new ride that leads to all kinds of opportunities - opportunities that make us better teachers/faciliators. When teachers see the positive ways pupils respond to their changed teaching styles, then we would be on the road to building a school with teachers able to create effective classroom learning environments.
To me an effective classroom learning environment is one that is able to engage students so that they become more responsible for their own learning and take control of themselves, they realize benefits from being more independent and accountable in the classroom. As a teacher, I constantly make an effort to provide my students this sense of ownership in the classroom. Through ownership, they become more responsible and engaged in their learning, and also see the necessity to include all other students in all class activities, and this helps to create a balanced ecosystem in the classroom. Furthermore when students are able to participant in the classroom decision-making process, they can develop as whole persons (not just cognitively, but emotionally, socially, aesthetically, physically, and spiritually as well). One of my ex-students ever told be that students learn best when they are welcomed by caring, competent teachers who recognize and value their diversity, and where their teachers are always ready to listen and learn form them. I always keep this in mind and strive towards creating a non-treating learning environment in my own classrooms. I also believe that schools should nurture self-esteem and contribute to a sense of belonging that allow students to focus their efforts on the higher level needs necessary for personal and academic success. Besides the above mentioned, technology also plays a very important role in creating effective learning environments in our classrooms today. It engages and motivates diverse groups of learners in order to meet their goals. However, meeting the needs of diverse learners does not rely totally on technology integration in the classrooms; an effective classroom learning environment is possible because of careful design. Planners first must have a clear picture of the kinds of interactions and processes they want to achieve. Technology integration, then, should not be an outcome, but rather a part of the larger instructional design process. With that said, we must also not forget the physical environment of the classroom as it also affects students’ learning. An effective classroom environment is one that is clean, organized and dedicated to promoting feelings of well-being and therefore motivation to learn and focus.
We often hear the comments from students that they would study the subject if they like the teacher. Students often describe their favourite teachers as non judgmental, friendly, approachable and committed. These teachers offer the students joint partnership in the learning process to cultivate a sense of ownership in the students.
The classroom is also an important factor. It must be clean and conducive for learning. In my school, we organize the ‘My Classroom My Pride’ competition and encourage the students to decorate the class based on a theme. Through the process we hope that students can develop greater bond with each other and the form teacher. When students have greater ownership and a sense of belonging, learning can take place effectively.
I personally experienced an ineffective learning environment. I enrolled in a yoga lesson a month ago. The teacher was late for the first lesson. We were not informed that we had to bring our own mat and the teacher explained that she had intended to cancel the class because she was not feeling well. She had earlier postponed the lesson once. She did not greet us nor ask for our names.
I felt that the teacher had created a bad impression on the first day. She does not seem interested in conducting the lesson. She was definitely not mentally present with us as she had even forgotten to bring the class attendance and music CD for the lesson.
I felt rather lost and was already dreading the class. She passed sarcastic comments if anyone cannot get into the posture that she demonstrated. Some participants were looking around for assurance and felt rather nervous. I think the teacher did not bother to find out about her students’ background and we were apprehensive to ask her any questions because she seems unapproachable. It was definitely not a fun learning experience.
The fundamental goal of learning would be about enhancing cognitive learning potential and/or collaborative processes (Whidschitl, 2002).
Effectiveness has to take into account the objective that LE is created for. Different learning objectives would dictate instructional methods as would different disciplines naturally subscribing to different environments.
Take for example if the objective was to develop students creativity through the use of ICT. If the design was such that students product has to be a PowerPoint presentation as opposed to one where students could expressed themselves freely either through blogs, podcasts etc, it is obvious which one is more effective.
If the teacher is one that encourages students participation in class through the use of wait time and good questioning skills, students would feel more at ease at voicing their opinions. However if the teacher is unable to facilitate discussions well, students would take over the lesson and much time could be wasted. In addition, students who are less vocal or academically weaker may feel embarrassed to speak up resulting in teachers thinking that they are not paying attention or are just plain freeloaders.
The classroom learning environment can also be affected by outside influences. A good partnership with parents may lead to pupils paying more attention in class as pupils may feel that their parents are concerned about their learning. This is one of the goals of the No Child Left Behind Act in US.
Thus how a student copes with the environment (both in and out of a classroom) created by a teacher determines in part its effectiveness, and this could be partly seen through results. I say, partly as assessments are primarily targeted at curriculum / knowledge based goals and not the social emotional aspects.
About 6 years back when I was a beginning teacher I was conducting a lesson (Sec 1 Express - TAMIL) on the topic, "Observing and Admiring the Nature". I simply followed the activities given in the Textbook. It did not interest my pupils at all. I had the feeling that it was too boring for them. That lesson was a failure because there wasn't any pupils’ participation. I just used the chalk and talk method which gave little opportunity for them to engage themselves. They were easily put off. As for me when I reflect on this lesson, I feel that this was a good example of an ineffective learning environment.
After the reflection, I began to feel that I need to build an effective learning environment with a variety of stimuli which will help pupils learn effectively. The following year I decided to think of other innovative ideas on how to interest the pupils in that same topic. I decided not to follow the Textbook. I made arrangements to bring the pupils out of the classroom. I brought them to the nearest park (one of the public National Park) which was located just opposite my school. The minute they heard about going out of classroom, they got very excited. It was like a picnic for them. I gave them the freedom to move around and observe. I instructed them to do a reflection on what they observed at the end of the 2 periods. I was amazed by the way they were engaged in that activity. At the end of the day the pieces of work (reflection) which were given to me were very impressive. I was able to see my pupils' talents and creativity. Some expressed their thoughts not only in words but also through their drawings. I was able to see a significant impact of the change of physical environment on the learning outcomes. I didn't play a role of a traditional teacher then. I was facilitating them to learn something. I was a facilitator. As for me it was a successful lesson. From this experience I feel that Learning Environment is not confined to the four walls. Even an open field can be a good learning environment provided that the teacher or rather the facilitator arrange for appropriate activities which cater to the needs of the pupils. This will help to create an effective learning environment. In order to do this we as teachers should think out of the box on how to interest the pupils and to sustain their interest in whichever subject that we are teaching. Presently if I were to teach the same topic to the present type of pupils, I would still bring them out on a 'picnic' and on top of that I would get them to take pictures and put it along with their reflection in the blog for others to see and comment on. This emphasizes the use of IT in classrooms to suite the present type of pupils who are more IT savvy. This kind of modification will help to build an effective learning environment which will enhance learning.
An effective learning environment depends on many factors; some within the teachers' control and some not. But I believe the teacher plays a very key role in creating an effective and enjoyable learning environment.
I remember in my school days, the teachers who made learning effective and fun for me were the ones who took the trouble to know the students by name and were genuinely interested in helping them improve.
In contrast, I remember some teachers who belittle students and make them feel very small and unworthy.
After listening to Dr Quek's podcast, I realize that the effective teachers reached out to the students' personal needs and the ineffective ones did not.
So, although engaging students through the use of the latest technology may be important, teachers must not forget to reach out to meet the personal needs of the students in terms of knowing them as individuals and helping them to make improvements no matter what is their current achievement.
A positive school culture and climate will directly cascade down into positive classroom learning environments. In my opinion, an effective school learning environment leaves both students and teachers fulfilled and invigorated at the end of the day from the exchange of teaching and learning, and both are excited for more.
With the emphasis on Learner-Centred learning, gone (should be) the days when students are subjected to mechanical treatment of chalk and lecture. I remember in my initial jc days, I struggled a lot with my subjects as I often had to literally "unlearn" some concepts that had been deeply ingrained in me from secondary school days. It caused me a lot of frustration and considerable self-doubt. Clinical lecture and tutorial did little to answer those question marks floating in my head, and I was too shy to approach the stern lecturers for help. Whatever sense of self efficacy and self belief I had was utterly destroyed when I was forced to drop a subject at the end of jc one. What they didn't understand was that I just needed more time. Now an educator myself and as I look back in retrospect, my teachers could have been more effective had they been more aware of our different learning styles and needs.
As I learnt about human dynamics and multiple intelligences, I began to appreciate my own unique chracteristics and learning styles, be able to celebrate my own strengths, so that I can also be able to appreciate and celebrate that of others.
No doubt, students always change with the times and are constantly enticed by new gadgets and technology. It takes a sincere, dedicated teacher to be able to make use of these to appeal to interests, to create a rich learning environment and to make the learning experience more enriching for learners. After all, Learning Environments affect the psycho-social domain and this is what 'Touching Hearts, Engaging Minds' is about.
Learning environment will vary from school to school, individual to individual. A schools culture plays an important role in how this environment is created. An environment that caters to the needs of its pupil is considered an effective LE while one that does not address a child’s needs is considered ineffective.
Why do people still choose to watch certain movies in the theaters rather than the comfort of their home? Although there’s no difference in the movie, it’s the environment that makes the difference. Sometimes I feel that less distraction means better LE. Today in every school IT plays an impeccable role. This however does not mean that having IT alone will produce an effective LE; it has to be coupled with good teaching strategies, effective teachers and willing learners.
As an editorial teacher in charge, I faced problems with the way some of my students were reporting sports events. Their reports lacked credibility and reality as my reporters were not sporty type. I wanted to do something different and interesting to boost their writing skills. So I brought my pupils for a mini marathon at NYP. Though they did not win anything they turned out to be great sports reporters. Their experience made their writing more realistic and interesting. This outdoor activity provided a tremendous learning environment for my editors. Of course the teachers planning and my students willingness played a undeniable role in its success.
I have my own classroom for my MT lessons. While my classroom is considered quite conducive for my express and normal acad students, my NT students were very de motivated in my class. They did not understand what the motivational posters on the wall meant and they did not care about anything that was on display. It was increasingly difficult conducting lessons. I tried scolding, threatening (to call parents) etc. it was after I was totally exhausted and pregnant that I finally succeeded. I decided to try the soft approach. I took them outside the class very often. I did not follow the given syllabus, I planned my own lessons according to their pace and it worked. By changing the environment, the method and myself, I won them over. Now teaching is a much easier task.
I agree that the teacher is very crucial in determining whether the learning environment is effective or not. While reading some of the posts here, I just recalled the times when I was in junior college studying General Paper. I had a teacher who was able to create an effective classroom learning environment. She was able to garner the attention from us because of her strong character and the way she conducted her lessons. She did not really conduct a lot of fun/ exciting or student- centered lessons; except for the occasional debates held in class and some role plays. But, I feel that this GP teacher of mine was able to get the respect and attention of my classmates simply because firstly, she was very clear with her expectations of us and the way she carried herself made us have confidence in her.
I could vaguely remember that she would try to explain in great detail about the contents of certain readings taken from TIME/ NEWSWEEK magazines which seemed rather ‘alien’, to a bunch of just newly graduated secondary school kids who had been too used to reading and writing short stories and narratives. She was clear in her explanations and she made sure that we grew accustomed to reading such genres and she provided quite a bit of scaffolding in our writing tasks too. Throughout our learning process, I remember that no one really disrupted the class or were disrespectful to her, despite her sometimes seemingly predictable lessons. Instead, on hindsight, I feel that this erudite teacher had contributed to a large extent in raising my and my classmates’ awareness on current affairs. I guess the reason why she was able to create a successful learning environment for her pupils was due mainly to her confidence, sincerity, knowledge, the vision that she had for her pupils, her firmness and of course, the fact that she could also show empathy and concern for us whenever we didn’t exactly understand what she was saying. ;-)
I remember watching a documentary on some school environment in either Hong Kong or China. Parents spent quite a handsome sum of money just to enrol their children in these schools. Smaller class size, students are allowed to move around during lesson, students are provided board and lodging etc. I wonder how it can be implemented for those study in our neighbourhood schools?
I remember watching a documentary on some school environment in either Hong Kong or China. Parents spent quite a handsome sum of money just to enrol their children in these schools. Smaller class size, students are allowed to move around during lesson, students are provided board and lodging etc. I wonder how it can be implemented for those study in our neighbourhood schools?
An effective learning enivironment is one which affects students' behaviour positively towards goals of education. A school which gives students a sense of securtiy, a caring and nurturing learning environment which also allows them to make mistakes and ignite their passion for learning is what i percieved as effective. When i was a secondary school student, the school i was in has a very strong positive school culture. Discipline was the most valued virtue. Though we were all girls, we got booked for keeping hair longer than the top part of our collar. We were not suppose to unbutton our first button as we must put on ties everyday. Though discipline was strict, we love our school and we take pride to be a member. We strived in both academic and CCA. For doing the school proud made us feel good. In this case, the effectiveness of the LE comes mainly via strong school culture. I do not remember having any impressive school facilities. the school building was old, but we excel. My teachers were strict, but not the innovative types we have these days. we were still having chalk and board type of lessons. But everyone were studious. That spurred everyone to work hard.
Many students view a conducive learning environment as one which is disciplined and orderly. That in fact, is just the most basic criteria for effective LE.
Personally, the school i am currently in was in a total lost state when i first joined the school 4 years ago. There was totally no culture for learning. In fact there was a chaotic mess. The damage was so bad to the school's reputation that up till now, fresh sec 1s were still told by seniors, they can get by the school in a breeze as there is no pressure at all, in all sense. The most fundamental missing screw, was discipline. Students were not taking the school seriously. Ill disciplined students in red or blonde coloured hair were running outside my classroom, to my horror. That was a 3 normal academic class. i doubt there is any learning at all, least to say, effective. To my relief this was the past. In conclusion, i fully agree that an effective LE will help to shape positive human behaviours. a positive and disciplined school culture will affect how effective learning is. Ho Chui Mei
During my childhood days, i could still remember having this "good" tuition teacher giving me tuitions. I always enjoyed going there for tuition even though i hate to study then. He would spoon feed me with answers the moment i found difficulty in solving them. Of course, he also provided a lot of good food. I though he was the best teacher on earth, it made my learning so easy. All i need to do is to ask for answers and it is there, without a thought of my own! However, this created a serious learning problem for me which i was totally ignorant about it then. Well, i would only realise it when i was being punished by my parents for not understanding a single concept during the lesson. I start to blame the tuition teacher for not providing a conducive and stimulating environment for me to learn and actualise. It really has affected me alot in such an ineffective learning environment. It was only in my secondary education that i realise a truely effective teacher not only provides a conducive learning environment through taking care of our physiological and safety needs but equally important, is to empower us to learn on our own, accept as what we are as a student and giving us the space to develop and actualise our own thinking. That is learning. Till date, i am still practising that as a teacher as i believe positive teaching and learning cannot take place without an effective learning environment.
I could not agree more with Dr Quek on how good learning environment is fundamental to a child’s cognitive & socio-psychological growths. It comprises more than just the complete fulfillment for the need for proper physical space to study. Personally I feel that a good learning environment would be one that provides both physical and psychological safety to its learners. Good classroom discipline or management is essential in the provision of both because with disorderliness and disruption, learners could no longer acquire new knowledge with ease of mind. As ‘discipline, most simply stated, is the business of enforcing simple classroom rules that facilitate learning and minimize disruption’ (Jones; 1979), it is arguably key in establishing a conducive learning environment. The teacher must develop a systematic method of delineating acceptable versus unacceptable behavior and the consequences of engaging in unacceptable behavior so that learning can take place comfortably.
Besides having an effective classroom discipline in place, motivation is another important factor in any learning environment. First and foremost, students must be highly motivated to learn as motivation will be the driving force that makes learners want to learn even when they are facing stumbling blocks in the course of learning. How to get the learners motivated? The relationship that teachers engender between themselves and learners is key in getting the learners to be interested in learning. The teacher should be motivated to wanting to learn more about his learners, beyond the outer details of their lives. As the teacher's familiarity and affection towards them grow, the learners’ would be receptive to learning, so the potency of his teachings and advice deepens proportionately. Hilda Taba reminds us that ‘the behavior of the teacher more than that of any other individual sets the climate of the classroom.’ The resistance and disinterest of learners evaporate in a climate of happy, friendly and cooperative relationships between learner and teacher.
When asked why I’m in this self-fulfilling profession, I would have to thank my greatest influence, that is, Mr Bentley Williams who was my form teacher for two years when I was in Secondary 3 in Jurong Secondary School (1994-95). His strict enforcement of classroom discipline was absurdly ridiculous to me at first but later as weeks grew, I understood the need for such to ensure that everyone understood what was required of him/her and provide a secure learning environment. With a good system in place, little time was used to address any discipline issue and hence more quality time was spent in dispensing of knowledge in a very interactive and creative way. I remembered having an (informal) English lesson at 4 in the afternoon while watching an interclass soccer match at the pitch. Mr Williams made us deliver an impromptu commentary on the match using the appropriate adjectives and adverbs and then got us to journalize the experience with the best entry winning a recess treat. He had reached out to his many students, the good and notorious ones alike, and not surprisingly, many of this wonderful man’s ex-students are teachers themselves now. Mr Williams indeed embodied a perfect teacher who not only ensured that we got the best of what each day had to offer, but he was also there for support should the day fail us.
Hi all, The comments above made by sara are actually mine. I'm still trying to figure out how to change the nickname sara to cikgumartina (aka me). Sorry for the confusion.
When i was visiting some schools in New Zealand a few months back, I noticed that the physical environment was very people oriented. There was that sense of community-spiritedness. Walls are adorned with photos of students and one gets the idea that it's not just names of people but actual people instead. Just look around most school foyers and you may know what i mean.
S'pore's school climate reeks of achievement and meritocracy with a strong economic focus. In NZ, the community is upheld so much that it's part of school life to tie curriculum goals with community projects so that they can raise funds for the less fortunate. Our students on the other hand, have to be pushed to perform CIP.
But that said, the learning environment is very much tied once again to the educational outcome that we wish to see. Use cooperative learning strategies and you'll develop pupils to learn to work together. Use a traditional lecture-type approach and you'll get pupils who are generally more docile. The latter may have worked in the past due to the need for obedient workers in manufacturing companies but the need for creativity in the service industry, where our students will be in demands a learning environment that encourages them to voice their opinions yet combined with adequate knowledge.
It was interesting reading all the comments. Many of you mentioned the importance of the teacher in creating an effective classroom environment. This is so true. I can see that you all are good teachers from the examples that that you have given - I feel inspired to give more to my pupils.
Some mentioned a sense of security and discipline as being very important aspects. I feel that this is so important, especially the school level. 15 years ago, my school was notorious in the neighbourhood. Then a new principal came and he was extremely "ruthless". He patrolled the school like a policeman, went out of the school with a cane and chased the truants back to school. He had very high expectations and drove the pupils and teachers to live up to them. He tolerated no nonsense. Now this might seem draconian but he tempered this with reason and explanation and the pupils could see that he was doing this to make the school a safe and better place. In 3 years, there was a 180 degree change in the attitudes of the pupils. Pupils said that felt safer coming to school. There was discipline in the school and learning was actually occuring and results were improving tremendously. Once he established the discipline, he then changed - he was no longer the dragon-master. He began to give the pupils more independence, listened to their needs and gave them more responsibilites. He gave more autonomy to the teachers. The school blossomed. The 1st thing I learnt from him is that discipline is very important to create a learning environment - I probably could not and would not have done it the way he did it but there are many ways of establishing discipline. The point is that pupils need to know what their boundaries are, they need to know what the expectations are and must know that there are consequences for breking the rules and that they must accept the consequences of breaking these rules. Only then can learning occur. The 2nd thing I learnt from him is that we must be able to adapt to different situations. He was still strict and discipline was still imprtant, but his whole approach was different. Once he established discipline, he set out to build the pupils confidence and self esteem by showing them that he trusted them. He created an effective learning environemt by changing his style when the pupils changed in their behaviour and attitudes.
Learning Environment is a key factor in the education of any individual. We live in Digital Age now. Many things around are changing from day to day. As educators it is very important to reflect and re- assesses our objectives. In my opinion a paradigm shift should involve 21st century skills - e.g. digital age literacy, inventive thinking, effective communication etc. As we make these changes, we see the transcendence into our classrooms. It is important to create a condusive and inclusive Learning environment. My memories of ineffective learning environments would be those of which I had to sit through boring chalk and talk lessons, memorize chunks of information, mugging for exams which required me to regurgitate those info, knots of tension that formed just before dreaded lessons which I was weak in, and intimidating teachers who only made matters worse. As I look back those incidents have only become bitter memories and not lessons learnt. As I started out as a teacher I did my fair share of creating ineffective learning environments as I groped around finding my footing. It took a while for me to realize that teachers’ guide is not going to help me achieve my objectives for my lessons. I learnt to analyse individual needs, experiment with methodologies, vary modes of assessment and soon my lesson objectives were becoming achievable. Education in Singapore has come a long way with the many new thrusts ranging from I&E, TSLN , IT Masterplan ,Future School etc. As I journeyed on in the teaching field I have realized that different schools have different climates, cultures and environments created. Each unique in its own style with a common objective of providing a holistic curriculum to develop all rounded individuals. Being in a school where there is a pervasive use of ICT- enabled pedagogies coupled with student learning style approach I have realized the importance of creating the right kind of environment which will be challenging for our 21st century students. Students these days have great potential which when tapped the right way will yield the results we want. Mobile learning, and E learning and problem based learning tasks are some of the ways of I have experimented with which had resulted in a very motivating and engaging Learning Environment where students learn and achieve.
I liked the pace of vocal delivery which I thought was just nice. The content was also clearly and systematically delivered and articulated. I thought it was useful foundational knowledge to kick-start the course on learning environments.
Podcast/blog allows the learners the freedom and opportunity to revisit the slides and the oral explanation as and when they need to, which is good. However, we must mindful of the limitation of technology in impacting knowlegdge between human beings.
Face to face interaction between instructor and learner is necessary to ensure the intended outcome gets transmitted to the learner, which can be observed from the body language and the interactions between people. Podcast is one-way and unless it is very well designed, it may not be effective as a learning tool. For eg in Dr Quek's Blog, James (or Jimmy) aimed to provide a balance to this one-way instrument by asking questions. However, the questions were not probing enough to trigger in-depth discussion, which I can understand may not be practical in a blog environment. Also, the presentation slide was too small to make up the words on it.
In summary, blog and podcast supplement the face-to-face instruction, and with a well-designed one, it definitely serves as a multipler to learning experience.
I feel that the landscape for learners to actually learn has definitely gone too far beyond textbooks.
Educators who still have resistance to change and adequately equipped themselves with the many advances of web tools will find themselves very distant from their students.
The glocal students I came across when introducing elearning concept esp. may not understand how exactly learning can take place out of physical face-to-face lesson (not web conference) depending on their countries background but they can pick up the skills very fast in learning tools that are 'cool' or 'in-thing' such as facebook, myhappyplanet, etc.
It is then up to the educator to find ways to integrate the social networking tools or other web 2.0 which are good tools for collaboration usage in education for their learning environment. the content for learning can be tweaked from one platform to another depending on the technology used but the learning objectives are usually similar.
I believe effective learning to a learner is the ability to attain the desired end-state of the learning outcomes. These outcomes can be in the form of knowledge and/or skills to execute the required standards to accomplish the tasks either in a controlled or uncontrolled environment. Separately, effective learning to a trainer is the ability to design and deliver the learning outcomes using the optimal pedagogical approaches.
Notably, ineffective learning environment is the disconnection among people, information, communications & technologies. It results to the lack of self-motivation, passion and drive.
Hi Dr Quek, I like the podcast on your blog. It gives a summary of the What, why and 3 key concepts of LE. I would certainly like to learn more on what makes a good LE and the strategies involved in creating a conducive, interactive and enjoyable environment for learning to take place.In this way, both learners and trainer can benefit for optimal learning.
An effective learning environment takes into account the profiles of students and their needs. While students are responsible for their learning, the learning approaches adopted by the trainer and the physical classroom environment affect not only the amount of knowledge transferred, but also, the attainment of that particular lesson objectives.
An ineffective learning environment is one where the lesson objectives were stunted due to the failure in knowledge transferred. This could be attributed to lack of motivation by both the students and trainers, poor classroom conditions and ineffective learning strategies adopted.
I look forward to learn more on how to assess and improve learning environment.
An effective learning environment is one where people can interact safely with each other. Learning through sharing of different perspectives. The teacher or facilitator play an important role in shaping the learning environment. Focusing on both the physiological and social needs of the participants. An effective environment appeal both to the senses and emotional aspect of the participants. An ineffective learning environment is one where there is only a one way communication where the lecturer simply download information to the learner. It make the learning dull and not interesting.
Hi Dr Quek, I am Serene Chua. My reflections on building a good learning environment are as follows:
1. We need to start with the physical aspects. That is, to build a conducive environment, it must be able to cater to the needs and learning styles/ preferences of the learners. For Generation X, most of them prefer a quiet environment that is not distracting and noisy.
2. It must be engaging and stimulating. That is, the topic or knowledge to be transferred must of important purpose and objective to the overall learning outcomes. The trainer must be able to "tickle" the curiosity of the learners and then unravel their desire to learn.
3. The Method of Instructions (MOI) can either be didactic or non-didactic. Again, there is no right or wrong answers here. It all depends on the maturity of the learners. It also depends on the type of knowledge to be transferred from the trainer. For instance, for skills-based and technical knowledge, the trainer must be didactic as these knowledge normally forms the foundational levels of the learners' knowledge domain. For subjects that are of social sciences and abstract, it will be more beneficial for the trainer to encourage peer learning.
I like the term "conducive and inclusive learning environment". More often than not, we don't use the word "inclusive" as this is the first time I come across it being used together with conducive l.e. As 'educators', I think this is the ideal l.e. to strive achieving. My past experience of one such l.e. happened when everyone, from the boss down to the clerical assistants had willingly played a part in creating a conducive and inclusive workplace. I think a good l.e. depends very much on people and their interactions, more than the physical infrastructure and environmental factors. So, in the e-learning/IT age, can we create a "conducive & inclusive" l.e., especially when the interaction between people are very much restricted?
Leraning Enviromnment has to do with the climate, culture and perception of the learner so much so that it influences his/her learning process. The most important aspect is to understand and deal with the negative perceptions of the learner
ARI What makes an effective LE? People learn through the 5 senses. The designer of teh LE must take into consideration the physical, emotional, social, spiritual, ?????(can't remember the 5th one). The physical environment addresses how the room is setup ( cafe style, fish bowl, traditional classroom, etc). The structure of the classroom has a profound effect on the learners. The brightly colored walls, posters and pictures represent visual effects on the learners. The social affects will be the interaction that takes place between people in the LE. The emotional aspect will be when people feel safe in sharing their thoughts and thinking about what they are learning. The teacher plays a crucial role in providing the emotional safety in the LE. Let me reflect on the other two aspects and come back later.
What makes an ineffective LE? When all the 5 domains of the LE is not taken into account in the design of it and when the teacher has adopted a telling or directive approach in teaching.
Its very important that the trainer creates the correct environment to the targeted audience. A mis-match usually leads to a no-learning session thus time and effort are wasted.
'Assessing the Learning Environment' is next on the agenda. From where I was trainees' were in a way 'ordered' to attend a course or undergo some form of training; interest and motivation is not always a given. I found it a big challenge to improve and sustain their level of interest well beyond the lesson. We tried to improve the qualitative side by making the environment more conducive, we had also tried different teaching styles but the gains are all marginal.
There are other areas we had not consider; the 'People' or trainees is certainly a big factor we don't usually pay much attention to. I hope go in depth into the 'People' to try to improve the learning of my trainees.
The three key components in learning environment are the person, personal needs, and human behavior. An effective trainer or facilitator is responsible to provide a conducive learning environment so that learners can learn effectively in a non-threatening situation. Whichever the learning strategies a trainer may apply, he is to ensure that learning is fun, exciting, engaging and enriching (LIFE3)
I have just completed my second module on Education Psychology in Learning Science. My take on Learning Environment stems out from there. It has to do with the Learner, the Instructor and the Learning Process.
I am sure many of us are bought up in an environment where teachers would "download" information and hope that at the end of the day, you would memorise them. Are the teachers not professional then? Or is it something wrong with he learning process?
We all know that time has change and so has our education system. My personal belief is even if you can provide the most conducive learning environment and the best learning methodogy, at the end of the day, it is still all about the learner himself.
I believe younster nowadays are really IT savvy. I am trying to learn from them. My time in school is using chalk & board. Now is using tabloid PC. Heard about online learning but I never try it before. Learning environment must be conducive and non-threatening. I want to learn more things about Assessing & Learning Environment.
I was brought up in the learning environment whereby I am taught via a one-way approach of the teacher downloading to me. The L.E. is straight forward, a class of 40, a desk and chair, a blackboard and OHP and the teacher then rock and roll. We survived. But in today's context, a classroom can be a fun but 'fearful' place. Fun in the sence that you realised we are so connected; i.e. the available tools of the computer and equipment that string us together. The learning is escalated. Fearful, because I am equally worried about my screen being posted or "jungle-booked", embarrassing...! However, having to compare the new and the old, i preferred the new. Why, I felt that it had effectively not only quicken the process for learning but also deepen the learning. The contents can be replayed, paused, cross share, etc. This was not possible then.
Wow, this is interesing! Never knew the Learning Environment can influence a Person, Person's Needs and Human Behavior. Looks like I'm gonna have a great learning experience in this week ahead. I always thought L.E. is largely concerned about the physical learning environment and probably the human factor to a little extent.... Hey! learning through blogging is fun. Never saw blogging in that manner.
Personally, I had some difficult time in the beginning of the start in the vocational training in my institution in the army many years ago. After viewing the attached video, I realised that my need for esteem, love and affection was lacking then. I felt insecure as a trainee in my unit as the instructor appear to be unfriendly and did not feel much about my needs and I was not really motivated to learn. However, when I was posted to another section outside the unit, there was a paradigm shift, the new instructor and course mates there were very encouraging. The environment in that institution allows and encourages me to rise up from my failures and reinforced my success in most situations. From then on, most of my unit days, I lifted my head tall. My esteem runs high when my unit commander promoted me to operational unit Leader in my section and I run the squad activities with other cooperating section leaders. Such empowering environment in my operational unit days! Really, perhaps a good learning environment is shaped and control by the instructor / mentor within us.
We normally forcus on only classroom atmostphere when we look into an environment. During this short clip on EL we have come to understand the 3 concepts of LE which also includes the Climate , Culture and perception and also how personal needs may even determine Human behaviour.
In the past, my learning environment is to attend classes and pay attention in class. Whatever the teachers taught, we just follow and try to learn as much as possible. Teacher who is good in their teaching skill often get apprised by the students and likewise, for those unfavourable teachers- student will tend to skip classes. As a result, I do not have good memories during my school day and I didn’t achieved good grade in school.
On the later part, at age of 32 years old – SAF encourage continuing learning and upgrade our academic study. Then I begin to further my study and try to move on. It was a total changed from my past learning and present environment. Teachers are more adapted to classroom set up and learning environment. All in all, I manage to complete my diploma, advance diploma and degree within 6 years and I am no longer afraid to go for classes anymore. In Fact, my phobia have turned out to be – I enjoy going to school and mixing with students and classmates…….hahahahahaha
In the past, my learning environment is to attend classes and pay attention in class. Whatever the teachers taught, we just follow and try to learn as much as possible. Teacher who is good in their teaching skill often get apprised by the students and likewise, for those unfavourable teachers- student will tend to skip classes. As a result, I do not have good memories during my school day and I didn’t achieved good grade in school.
On the later part, at age of 32 years old – SAF encourage continuing learning and upgrade our academic study. Then I begin to further my study and try to move on. It was a total changed from my past learning and present environment. Teachers are more adapted to classroom set up and learning environment. All in all, I manage to complete my diploma, advance diploma and degree within 6 years and I am no longer afraid to go for classes anymore. In Fact, my phobia have turned out to be – I enjoy going to school and mixing with students and classmates…….hahahahahaha
In the past, my learning environment is to attend classes and pay attention in class. Whatever the teachers taught, we just follow and try to learn as much as possible. Teacher who is good in their teaching skill often get apprised by the students and likewise, for those unfavourable teachers- student will tend to skip classes. As a result, I do not have good memories during my school day and I didn’t achieved good grade in school.
On the later part, at age of 32 years old – SAF encourage continuing learning and upgrade our academic study. Then I begin to further my study and try to move on. It was a total changed from my past learning and present environment. Teachers are more adapted to classroom set up and learning environment. All in all, I manage to complete my diploma, advance diploma and degree within 6 years and I am no longer afraid to go for classes anymore. In Fact, my phobia have turned out to be – I enjoy going to school and mixing with students and classmates…….hahahahahaha
In the past, my learning environment is to attend classes and pay attention in class. Whatever the teachers taught, we just follow and try to learn as much as possible. Teacher who is good in their teaching skill often get apprised by the students and likewise, for those unfavourable teachers- student will tend to skip classes. As a result, I do not have good memories during my school day and I didn’t achieved good grade in school.
On the later part, at age of 32 years old – SAF encourage continuing learning and upgrade our academic study. Then I begin to further my study and try to move on. It was a total changed from my past learning and present environment. Teachers are more adapted to classroom set up and learning environment. All in all, I manage to complete my diploma, advance diploma and degree within 6 years and I am no longer afraid to go for classes anymore. In Fact, my phobia have turned out to be – I enjoy going to school and mixing with students and classmates…….hahahahahaha
My initial take on learning environment (LE) was the physical environment, such as furniture, layout of clusters of furniture, lights, projectors and so on. From the podcast, I now know that LE is not just on the physical but also on the psychological perception and how the individual interact with each other in the environment. This would mean the knowledge of psychology and team dynamics will come into play when we assess LE. So besides the physical aspects, we have to look at how knowledge is sourced, retrieved, captured and stored. Also, we have to be concern about the individual's feeling, his needs when he comes to class. If there is online component in the course, we have also need to take care of the trainees' needs even outside the classroom.
Learning Environment entails climate, culture and perception of a learner. Hence, managing the learner's perception especially negative ones, is inportant in allowing the learner to excel in whatever he endaevours to achieve.
I'll always remember the story told during the Educational Psychology module by one of the classmate when she posted to the class a question asking about the difference between Israel's educational system and ours. In the Israel's system, parents and teachers encourages questioning during lessons and at home. Parents may start the day wanting their children to set the aim of asking 10 questions and returning home with answers. Teachers, on the other hand, will always encourage the class to ask instead of giving answers the first instance. Giving answers stop learning. On the other hand, asking and questioning creates the environment to feel safe and experiment, at least given the freedom to hypothesize with one's perceptions of the content/subject. Learner's instil in themselves' the spirit of inquisitiveness that's paramount to building lifelong learning behaviour. This Enquiring-type of learning environment should be seamless between the school, home and the general public such that the culture for learning is congruent enough (as in people accept others to ask) to make continual learning intuitive. In our society, in my opinion, people are made to percieve shame and discomfort even during pre-school and at home about being inquisitive. To focus attention only in certain areas (eg. certain schools) where being curious is encouraged will merely see the efforts nullified when the learners start interacting at home and the general public. Creating positive learning environment is crucial in ensuring our nation's only resource of human capital to be of quality. Efforts must be put in to educate and promote (even helping to make paradigm shifts through greater awareness) inquisitiveness at all levels of society, home and education partnerships in order to truly make Singapore a learning nation.
What is a good learning environment? You may ask... In the past, SAF have always ignored the importance of the Learning Environment, which directly and indirectly affected the learners' learning capacities and abilities. We have come along way, learning from mistakes and adopting the MOE approach in considering learning evironment during military lessons. An effective learning environment is a place where trainer has clear expectations of the students' behaviour, good instructional skills, and where the students felt a sense of belonging and empowerment. On the other hand, an ineffective learning environment is a place where the expectations were unclear and students do not have a sense of belonging and purpose. School learning environment is very much depend on the students, trainers as well as military school's vision.I find that my school's Homeroom system is a classical example of effective learning environment. Each classes have thier own unique tastes which suit both to the students and trainers. It gives ownership and sense of belonging to the class. Also, Trainers need to know and identify the different learning styles(needs)of their students and cater to them accordingly. As trainers, we have to design, experiment,reflect (both trainers and students) and improve on our strategies that we use in our classroom. Trainers have to embark on new avenues to tap on the students talents. In order to that, we have to equip ourselves with different modes of assessing,innovative lessons and creative skills. All SAF Military Schools must learn to create a better learning culture and embark on different approaches to achieve this effective learning environment. Nowadays, the students are better equipped in I.T. skills and are exposed to different media, thus it is important that we cater to the different needs of learning styles which will create a effective learning environment. As a trainer myself, I see the education scene changing in leaps and bounds over the past 10 years. Trainers were taught to understand their students and look into their personal needs (Maslow's Hieriechy of Needs) so as to bring out a sense of belonging, build up their self-esteem and empower leadership qualities in each cadet. Trainers must also adopt correct teaching strategies, methodologies and sound pedagogy to cater for the different abilities in the class. With the use of IT such as Internet, blogging, on-line chit-chat; and interactive CD Roms, lessons come alive, interesting and interactive.
I remembered Dr Quek asking us a question during tutorial 1. What is a Learning Environment? Does it just constitutes the physical environment or other factors?
After watching the video, i have learnt more about the different factors influencing learning environment.
I think an effective school learning environment largely depends on whether the needs of the student is being met. What is an "effective" learning environment defined by one, may not be that effective to another especially if one of the major needs of that person is not fulfilled.
Certain factors like physical environment of the classroom can be easily built up by the teacher with furnitures and fixtures. This physical aspect of classroom learning environment could easily fulfill the needs of students as long as the physical layout and arrangement of the classroom, produce an environment that gives the students the sense of security and conduciveness required of learning.
However, i feel that the factor that would make an environment not so effective to Student A compared to student B is when other personal needs of Student A are not fulfilled by the learning environment.
Take for instance,when Student A's need for recognition by the teacher is not met. Student A may be a weaker student in academic aspect than Student B, thus leading to him getting less praises and lower recognition from the teacher. This will result in Student A having a lower esteem. He will then feel less motivated to work hard despite the fact that the physical aspect of classroom learning environment has been taken care of.
The concepts of classroom learning environment are related to achievement goal theory and teacher interpersonal behaviour as shown in literature. Thus very often, teacher in the key person to create the classroom learning environment. I would term the teacher as the "creator" or the "designer" of classroom learning environment.
Whether a classroom learning environment is deemed as "effective" or not, is largely dependent on the tone set by the teacher. If the teacher presents himself as an encouraging educator, very often you could see that the students' levels of self-esteem are high and they are more motivated to learn compared to another teacher who is most of the time, sarcastic and shows no effort to teach and care for the students.
We were all students in the past and now as teachers. Thus we could really feel the difference in classroom environments created with different teaching styles. Everyone likes to be recognised for their efforts put in and wished to be recognised and empowered. This goes for all students and even adults ourselves.
Hence if i were to answer "What makes an effective or an ineffective school learning environment?" I would say it is we, the teachers, determining the effectiveness of the learning environment.
Because of the importance of creating a stimulating and conducive learning environment for our students, we teachers are heavily appraised for our efforts in taking care of the pastoral care and well-being of our students (quoted from the EPMS) = )
A classroom learning environment very often sets the tone of learning for pupils. How pupils interact with their teachers becomes very crucial.
Very often each class have several teachers teaching them different subjects. Each teacher has his or her own teaching style and practice which is different from the other teachers.
An effective learning environment is one where pupils are able to interact effectively with his or her teachers communicating on what is being learn and what needs further explaination and clarification.
I can safely say that most of us underwent a curriculum whereby learning was a one way channel, where the teacher teach and we learn. This was followed by endless worksheets and assignments. This results in an ineffective learning environment as not all pupils are able to keep pace with what the teacher was teaching needless to say, understanding what was being taught in class.
However each pupil have very different learning needs. Some are more visual while others are more auditory. Hence it has become a challenge for teachers to better engage pupils and design a learning environment where it is able to meet each pupil's learning needs. As such schools have looked into multiple intelligence where different pupils are engaged in different manners and they are challenged differently according to their abilities. In this manner, this will lead up to an effective learning environment.
After all as educators of our future leaders of Singapore, "What we reap now, is what we are going to sow in futre."
As mentioned by Dr Quek's podcast, learning environment influences the person, his or her needs and also the behaviour that he or she exhibits. Thus, it is vital to create a conducive learning environment for our students.
An effective learning environment definitely allows the students to discover their potentials and in hope for them to unleash. IT aided teaching facilities, professional trained teachers and excellent school culture indeed accelerate the process of learning among individuals. This make up an effective learning environment.
Computer labs, ready wireless internet access in the school and visual audio aided equipment such as visualiser are available in all classrooms. These certainly help in creating an effective school learning environment as most students are visual learners.
However, I do come across instances that make learning environment ineffective in school. The tight schedule to complete syllabus (due to other activities and events in schools) causes a lack of fun and interesting outdoor lessons. This posed a hindrance in student’s learning, especially in that of Science. I believe students will definitely appreciate the natural habitat and vegetation during the outdoor lessons rather than reading and understanding from textbooks and videos.
Moreover, the lack of classrooms in the school hinders us to carry out remedial lessons outside school curriculum. I remembered one instance that two colleagues of mine had to combine classes with mine to give a mass lecture. This definitely does not attribute to an effective school learning environment.
After having 2½ years of experience in teaching, now if I were to comment on what constitutes an effective classroom environment, it would be one which has both directed and self-directed activities.
These activities should facilitate continuous learning. The designed for these activities should be done with pupils’ need in mind.
Pupils will have to know the order and the system in the environment for them to reap its maximum benefit. In this way at any one point of time, pupils will be actively participating and thus this will give them time to think about misbehaving. This will also allow time for the teacher to work with the struggling learners.
The environment has to be changing in accordance to the changing needs of the pupils as well.
In the school I am teaching in, we have incorporated learning centres e.g. Computer Centre, Learning Palette Centre and etc. This is a superbly great inclusion in the environment as it allows us to have independent tasks and teacher-led ones too. As soon as pupils finish their task for the day, they will go to these centres to do self-directed tasks which reinforces on the concepts learnt. Pupils are to self-check with the provisions made at the respective centres.
On the other hand, ineffective environments will therefore be the ones where pupils are seen disengaged in activities. It is a place where there are episodes of misbehaviour, low academic achievements and sad to say teachers are least interested or motivated to make changes.
The school learning environment is made up of many components, apart from physical attributes like layout, technical equipment and facilities just to name a few; we also have the stakeholders whose vested interests vary. When we mention effectiveness of the school-learning environment, we could be looking at how well the desired outcomes of education are achieved in our context.
The school-learning environment will directly or indirectly shape the classroom-learning environment. Similarly, the individual classroom learning environments, collectively, will form the school-learning environment. Therefore, for a school to have an effective learning environment, it must have a culture built upon a mutual understanding of teaching and learning to meet every individual’s needs. The individual, be it a teacher or pupil should perceive the school positively and feel safe and secure in an environment very much like home.
If the classroom-learning environment is a subset of the school-learning environment, then the teacher in every individual classroom is the best person to take on the task of making the learning environment an effective one. Many a time, as teachers, we do not have the luxury of teaching in a homogenous classroom. Even in the seemingly homogenous classes, in the way that the pupils are streamed according to their results, there will be tremendous difference in the pupils’ learning styles and preferences.
Teachers are tasked to teach pupils - not only to pass exams - to pass exams with flying colours. We are required to adopt differentiated teaching strategies to cater to the pupils’ different learning needs, and at the same time pay attention to their emotional learning needs. We are like the teacher, mentor, friend, nanny, guardian, and disciplinarian all rolled into one.
Within the classroom and beyond, we should give our pupils frequent opportunities to apply their skills and understanding, and to develop their knowledge, within a secure and flexible learning environment. The learning culture should be pupil-centred, valuing pupils' own interests and learning styles; encourage independence and autonomy, and support pupils in using their initiative; encourage pupils to be open to ideas and initiatives presented by others; be unconstrained by subject boundaries or established conventions; encourage the use of a variety of resources, ideas, methods and tasks; involve pupils in working in a range of settings and combinations - as individuals, in pairs, as a class, cross-year, cross-school and inter-school; encourage pupils to reflect on the process of their own learning and to understand the factors that help them to make progress. (The points in this paragraph are gathered from http://www.eic-middlesbrough.gov.uk/gandt/practice/practice_docs/effectivelearningenvironment.htm)
As teachers, we hope to achieve the above mentioned but we know sometimes there are factors that hinder our effort to make the learning environment less effective. For instance, we may have pupils who are uncooperative. What can we do to win these individuals over? Through experience, I realized that I might not have the time in class to cater to every individual. However, I will always make it a point to take note of any improvements made by the pupils, no matter how insignificant it may seem.
For instance, there was a pupil whom I came across whose handwriting is almost illegible. On one occasion, I noticed that he actually took the effort to erase a word and rewrite it. I wrote a remark at the end of his work that I appreciate his effort in taking little steps to ensure that his handwriting was neater. I did that on a regular basis and true enough, the child’s handwriting did improve. His parents were also every happy. One day, as I talked to the class, I mentioned the effort put in by the individuals that I had observed and I showed how this boy’s handwriting has improved using the visualiser. I could see that he was very shy about it but at the same time beaming with joy. The whole class clapped for him and I was glad I had helped this boy achieve what was seemingly an uphill task as he had been labeled untidy, having incorrigible handwriting and so on before.
Some times, it just takes a little effort on the teacher to be more observant and reflective. Reflections help the teacher go through the events that happen in the classroom and how to handle situations better, if similar situations arise. Reflections also help the teacher improve on teaching strategies and to understand every individual pupil better.
Uncooperative parents could be another reason that hampers our effort. Very much like the way we win the kids over, sometimes we have to win the parents over. However, the parents are not always the ones at fault. Perhaps they do not understand the way certain things are done in school. If we have communicated with them regularly, they would understand where we are coming from and lend us their support. If we can convince them to be partners in educating their kids, they would be more than willing to give their full support.
What makes for an effective learning environment? The facilities, the resources available, IT may all play an important role in making a school learning environment effective. However, I think the teacher is the key to an effective learning environment. The teacher can nurture a sense of wanting to learn and know more, feelings of a sense of “belonging and empowerment” in a child, help a child bloom. At the same time an uncaring teacher can make a learning environment ineffective by lowering his/her self-esteem, boring a child, misunderstanding a child, making a child averse to school. I remember my pre-school teacher. Everyday, I would go to school screaming. My mother was at wit’s end on what to do. A turning point was when my teacher (inspite of my behavior), gave me a role in a small class play. I have observed teachers who are both knowledgeable, know how to impart this knowledge and make school a haven for learners. I remember my secondary literature teacher. I loved reading stories, books, and novels. However, poems, I did not like much-it was more an indifference towards poems. That was until I met my literature teacher. She would come in her class and you could literally see her eyes light up. When she would talk to us and help us understand poems-her eyes were always bright and shiny. It was her passion for poems that helped us get to love it. However, it was not just her love for literature. It was also because she was a person who cared, not in an overboard manner. In contrast, we had this teacher who was unkind to my naughty classmates or to my classmates who did not answer well in class. Even if I was not the brunt of her put downs, it was still unnerving to go to a class whose teacher belittled others. It made for an ineffective learning environment since the atmosphere became psychologically “unsafe”. I know I was ineffective in my teaching when I would not prepare well for class. It would be hard for me to hold my students` attention. Aside from the teacher, what I find also most helpful is if the family of a child is also supportive. Majority of my students who are avid independent learners, also have families whose goals are aligned with the school`s mission-vision; whose values are aligned with the school`s values. An effective school environment is actually a whole mix of everything in the environment: the faculty, the curriculum, the resources, facilities, administration, the classmates, the community and even the learner himself. But a teacher is crucial in promoting an effective learning environment.
In my own personal opinion, a good learning environment would be one whereby there are differentiated structures which are necessary for effective individualised learning. Teachers have to ensure that the resources used are appropriate and relevant to the pupils' learning needs.
At the school level, good learning and teaching displays can also be used in corridors and play areas to support a planned set of values.
Display of pupils' works can also help to enhance the pupils' self-esteem and sense of belonging to his learning environment.
With the advancement in technology, provision of a variety of hands-on materials and a good and effective classroom management system, teachers can try out many ways to create a condusive and inclusive classroom environment for learning and teaching.
Nur Azah Roslan http://www.nurazahroslan@blogspot.com
After listening to Dr Quek’s podcast as well as reading my course mates’ comments, I realised that although our definitions of learning environment covers a spectrum of ideas and definition but it all converges to enhancing learning and teaching with the resources available in the respective schools.
Susyna Chan Pierre Dillenbourg defined learning environments to include the following characteristics: • It is designed information space • It is a social space • Explicitly represented • Where students are not only active but actors • Not restricted to distance education • Use s multiple tools • Overlap the physical environment I have always thought that teaching strategies and passion for teaching are the essential tools to ensure a child learns best. However, it takes two hands to clap for effective teaching and learning to take place. This means both teacher and students are involved. In this way, the learning environment plays an important role for both teachers and pupils. To me, a good learning environment would be one that has good ventilation, space that are meaningful used, suitable furniture for the children, healthy and non-threatening environment, appropriate displays, manipulative and resources. It also takes experience for a teacher to see how the learning environment can further enhanced or improved. For example, after teaching primary 1 for almost 3 years, I realised that some factors such as big prints (of vocabulary taught), displays of pupils’ work (either group or individual), pupils names and pictures , colours and many more help to make the classroom more appealing to the children as well as develop their sense of belonging to the class and ownership of their work. A safe and non-threatening environments is also very important especially so for the reserved learners. Perhaps we can use more positive reinforcements instead of the negative ones. Also, we should consider the help and support required for those pupils with special needs or short attention span. However, teachers today also face some restrictions. It can be the lack of resources and facilities in the school. My school, for instance has a huge student population. Thus, we do not have enough space for the activities to be carried out. Remedial classes are conducted not within classrooms but in the space between classrooms which are not conducive, in my opinions, (with other teachers and pupils running alongside) and thus can be very distracting. Although our classrooms are designed to maximise the best, it may not to be as conducive to the pupils. For instance, our humid and warm climate can the one factor that pupils’ attention span to be shorter especially the younger ones despite of the 6 fans installed (all switched on to the maximum). Even teachers are complaining and rushing to the air-conditioned staff room. Whatever, the restrictions may be, we as teachers will then have to try to enhance the classroom learning environments to make teaching and learning effective. For example, on warm days, I would bring my class to the library to cool down themselves as well as to enhance reading ability.
Before one can conclude that a particular school has an effective learning environment, we need to evaluate it from various perspectives. It wouldn't be just a single attributing factor. For instance, incorporating cooperative learning strategies in lessons do seem like taking a learner-centred perspective towards an effective school learning environment. However, an effective environment must also provide teachers with opportunities to obtain feedback on students' learning. As such, various factors ought to be considered when assessing what constitutes an effective school learning environment.
My current school encourages the use of cooperative learning strategies in lessons. This is done in the spirit of TLLM and getting pupils to be engaged in learning. To prepare for this, most teachers were trained on the CL strategies so the teachers feel empowered and see the usefulness of these strategies. As a result, lessons are more interesting as pupils are more on-task. At the same time, the teacher gets to assess formatively how his/her pupils are performing by observing them completing the assigned tasks and by discussing about the activities after they have completed them.
In another instance, to illustrate an ineffective learning environment, I have observed beginning teachers who have selected teaching resources of a rather foreign context. It is not entirely inappropriate but there is a need to assess if the pupils have prior knowledge of the subject matter or it may leave the learners more confused than ever. Duckworth (1987) explains this need to understanding learners' prior experiences as building 'bridges' to new understanding. By taking the learner-centred perspective, teachers are also addressing the needs of their pupils. In the instance highlighted above, a simple explanation on the subject matter will better prepare the pupils for the new knowledge.
Learning Environment - I should say before I listened to the podcast and caught up with a few readings I was totally unaware of al the factors that could actually influence the learning environment. Now I have a clearer perspective and I am sure as a teacher, it becomes very handy to know these issues as it would be of utmost importance to us.
Effective Learnig Environment:- 1) influences the person, personal needs and human behaviour - as such in our schools we can first start off by looking at the students as well as teachers. If the classroom is suitable for the class to be conducted in - that is already adding to a good learning environment. When we say classroom, many other factors have to be considered. -Is it properly ventilated? Are the equipments used optimaaly? Are the students feeling threatened in any way ? Is the teacher able to deliver the lessons well? Most importantly, how are we able to measure all these are done properly ? By experimenting with ideas and different approaches, one will be able to arrive at an effective learning environment. Experience with such situations come in handy as well. One size sure does not fit all.
Ineffective Learning Environments This boils down to all the "complains" of students and even teachers at times :) a) Too much work and too little time - covering more than what could be done for Exams in school ? b) Trying to implement ICT in teaching when teachers are not even fully trained yet or when facilities are not up to date yet.
There are many other practical instances that I am sure we teachers have seen in our own schools. Since we are doing this module, let us try to help and weave our way through to achieve an effective learning environment with the help of Dr Quek.
What makes an effective school learning environment? This is a critical question that every teacher must ask. However, many of us did not consciously ask this question per se or directly in this manner. To be fair though, many teachers of us would take time to reflect on our teaching to find better ways to improve our teaching so that our pupils can understand better. We also take time to share informally what works for our pupils.
Personally, I would share and discuss classroom management approaches, teaching methods and assessment literacy with my colleagues teaching the same level. An effective classroom learning environment would firstly begin with (1) good classroom management. In my experience, pupils learn best when expectations are clear, rules are defined and enforced, discipline is respected. This means that there is a safe and respectable environment for every pupil to study and learn together. A lawlessness classroom cannot foster learning. Secondly, (2) appropriate teaching approaches are used to engage learning. In my experience, my pupils enjoy hands-on experience, simulation computer programme, problem-based learning and inquiry-based learning. However, at times I also need to prepare my pupils for examination and I deteriorated into meaningful and painful drill and practice via worksheets. I reluctantly become a worksheeter giving worksheets for my pupils to do and going through the questions in class. I refuse to say meaningless as pupils need certain critical amount of practice to familiar themselves to the structure and rigor of examinations. Giving appropriate worksheets for practice in itself is pedagogy. Thirdly, (3) timely formative assessment to gather feedback on pupils learning so that I can check and self-check whether my pupils learn what I taught and what is expected as learning outcomes. I adopt a few methods to gather feedback, they include verbal check, blogs entries, work-in-progress and peer evaluation.
I have not provided an exhaustive list and there could be more contributing factors for an effective classroom learning environment. With regards to a more macro view – effectiveness of a school learning environment, then a more complicated system is in play. This include the School Leadership and Key Personnel setting the tone of the school culture, the Vision, Mission, Goals and Strategic Thrusts of the school interplay with teachers, pupils, parents and the wider community. My school has chosen to provide teachers and pupils a caring environment. This then becomes the culture of the school and you can really feel this in the air.
Learners in supportive environments have high levels of self-efficacy and self-motivation and use learning as a primary transformative force. (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1989) Personally, i feel that the mentioned quote proves to be an ideal ideology of every educators.
As mentioned in Dr Quek's podcast, learning environment is all about individuals, their needs that need to be met and their observed behaviours, in this case in the school environment.
I believe that having an effective learning environment for pupils, is to provide a conducive and inclusive environment where pupils are able to receive knowledge, skills as well as values which they can bring forward in their future education, workplace and lives.
However, what is meant by effective learning environment? In the school context, with regards to my personal experience and observations, it is all about providing and creating the best classroom and school atmosphere where transfer of knowledge, skills and values is maximise and where pupils feel safe and happy at all times.
In classroom for instance, using ICT resources to aid teaching and learning may prove to enliven pupils' interest in the particular topic. This in turn, enable the pupils to grasp the concepts taught better.
Developing pupils' empathy and self-awareness in other topic areas will help pupils to be more aware of their surroundings and their own feelings and thoughts. By having open discussions in the classrooms, it will provide a healthy platform where pupils can grow emotionally and stimulate their sense of curiosity and thinking.
Pupil A may not be the same as Pupil B. Pupil A's strengths and weaknesses are different from Pupil B's. The way Pupil A perceive knowledge will also be different of that of Pupil B. Thus, to minimise the gaps, teachers have to be aware of the multiple intelligence of their own pupils. They need to adopt a variety learning styles to cater to the needs' of the pupils in order to get the best out of them. Hence, teachers need to do away from the traditional chalk and talk and infuse creative ways of teaching the concepts.
Differences in pupils' socio-economic background is another factor that teachers need to be concern of. Not every pupils are exposed to rich literacy and numeracy environments and experiences. Setting up a mini-library and Math games sets in the classrooms provide this group of pupils the opportunities to read as well as learn Math in a fun and interesting way.
Pupils need to grow socially healthily. Incorporating cooperative learning strategies enable pupils to work together socially as a team and this create opportunities for discussions to take place. Pupils will also learn values like respecting one another views, taking turns to talk and be responsible for the roles assigned to them.
The school culture plays an integral role in providing pupils with an effective learning environment. Pupils not only need to be successful academically, they need to be nurtured emotionally and socially as well.
For instance, schools are providing financial aid to the less fortunate families. Pupils from these families will get free textbooks and thus lighten the burden of their families. These pupils are also provided with free breakfast that enables them to learn "without an empty stomach".
In my school, a character value is tagged to each month (respect, resposibility, perseverance etc) and a focus of the day is read to the pupils in the morning. This practice serves as a reminder as well as teaches the pupils on the correct way of behaving to become a good and responsible pupil and citizen.
Pupils leaders (prefects, conflict managers) are given exposures in terms of carrying out duties inside and outside schools. Leadership workshops and camps are provided for them to harness their leadership skills.
So what constitute to an ineffective learning environment? My personal belief is that when a pupil leaves the school without attaining any personal achievements, be it academically, socially or emotionally, then it can be said that the educators and the school has failed to impart any knowledge, skills and values to the child.
The learning environment provides the bridge between what the teacher intends to teach and what the learners are supposed to learn or experience. What makes a school learning environment effective?
The physical learning environment must first be conducive to promote learning. This may include the physical arrangement of classroom furniture to facilitate learning requirements (such as group discusion) and availability of resources to support the learning. This will set the tone of the learning environment. In addition, going beyond the physical domain, tone of learning environment will also be shaped by how the teacher communicates with the learners, her use of non-verbal cues, her expectation of her learners and very importantly, her classroom management style.
Learners would definitely learn better in an environment that they perceive as safe to ask questions, provide spontaneous answers without having the fear of making mistakes. This also brings in the aspect of how teachers can cater to the personal learning needs of learners. It would take considerable effort on the part of teachers to know the background of learners, their individual and collective needs as well as the special needs that matter to them. For example, weaker pupils would appreciate difficult concepts to be taught in bite-size portions with constant checks on understanding before the teacher goes into deeper discussion. On the other hand, fast learners may prefer the teacher in giving multiple examples or elaboration to indicate how the concepts can be applied in different situations.
Equipped with the content knowledge, teachers would need to fit this with the relevant pedagogy to scaffold and guide learners during the learning process. Inevitably, good planning and design of lessons is important in shaping the learning environment and hence impacting learning. Scaffolding and maintaining the lesson momentum will impact learners' thinking, enable them to make sense of the learning, provide the relevancy for learning and lead them into transferring the knowledge acquired.
An effective school learning environment will also be one that teachers know when to take a step back to allow learners to engage in peer learning and reflective learning. At the same time, such an environment will allow teachers to step in with intervention strategies when learning intent is not met.
The mechanisms that determine the effectiveness of school learning environment are rather extensive, some of which have been highlighted here. However, ultimately it is the skilfulness of the teacher in examining each of these mechanisms in creating the 'most ideal' learning environment which brings about effective learning.
In contrast, an ineffective school learning environment would be one where the teacher merely delivers the content of a lesson without or with little consideration of the mechanisms that could affect the 'lesson delivery'.
Learning environment is linked to the person and their needs which then lead to their desired human behavior. Therefore, and effective school learning environment must address the three main key concept of learning environment. The first key concept is that learning environment influences the person as it makes them feel a sense of belonging, sense of empowerment and cooperation among people who are present in the learning environment. The second key concept is the learning environment influences personal needs which fulfils the physiological and safety needs, need for love, affection and belonging, need for self esteem and actualization. The third key concept is that learning environment influences human behavior such as instincts, habits exhibited and which may be shaped by their learning environments. An ineffective school learning environment on the other hand does not touch on any of the three key concepts mentioned above. One such practice is the blackboard and chalk teaching practice used in the olden days. This method does not engage pupils in any way. The environment is intimidating as teachers are seen as disciplinarians and any wrong doings will result in pupils getting punished. This may result in pupils feeling scared to go to school and increases the rate of truancy. Looking at the schools of this century, we are moving towards creating a conducive and inclusive classroom environment for teaching and learning.
As educators, I think it is important for us to who our students are first even before we look at the Learning Environment. Ultimately, the kind of environment we create, is not for us but for our students.
I say this after listening to Dr Quek’s podcast in which she mentioned about Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Pupils in our classrooms come in with different needs. Some have had their physiological, safety and love needs met and are looking to satisfy their needs for self-esteem or self-actualization. However, there are pupils who don’t feel safe or loved. Therefore, it’s up to us, the teachers to create the kind of learning environment to enable pupils with different needs.
This year, I was assigned a lower primary class. It is my first time teaching a lower primary class. After interacting with the pupils for a week, I got to know them better and realised that all had different kinds of needs.
There were those who were too pampered and lacked disciplined and there were those who didn’t have parents and needed care and concern. The first group of pupils whom I thought I needed to address were those in need of safety and affection. Hence, I gave them my personal mobile number and told them they could call at anytime if they needed help. At the end of my conversation with each of them, I could see teary eyes and I knew that they would feel safe and loved in my classroom. I knew that my classroom would be an effective learning environment for those pupils.
I’m not stating that the physical environment is not important. But I just feel that if we as educators can ensure that our pupils have the basic needs, then wherever our class is, it just doesn’t matter. Children will still learn. I could put my kids in a Model future classroom but if I don’t make them feel safe all the wonderful furniture and IT equipment will count for nothing.
I also have other types who have everything and can be quite a handful in terms of discipline. There’s this pupil in my class who is ADHD and has a history running away from class. The pupil just wanted attention and previous teachers had showed a lot of care and affection. However, it was not working. The pupil would even go around hitting the classmates and biting them. So I decided that this pupil needed someone to instil discipline and self-control. From day one, I was very firm and set the dos and don’ts for the pupil in my classroom. Whenever, the pupil crossed the boundaries, the pupil was made to go the back of the class to sit in the quiet area. After a few times, the pupil was more disciplined and was able to show more interest in school work.
Hence, as teachers I feel it is important for us to concentrate more on the needs of our pupils to create an effective environment.
I think the good learning enviroment is a place where all the children engaged in learning. Children now days are very IT savvy, schools here intend to integrated more IT in all the subjects. Teacher must be equiped with good IT skills then can start the lesson nowdays.
In the podcast, one of the concepts was that the learning environment influences person. However, I also feel that the converse is true. A person (or people) can influence the learning environment. As teachers, the way we build up a conducive learning environment will influence the way each person in the class learns. Similarly, the class dynamics(people) will also influence the learning environment of the class as a whole, which will in turn influence an individual's learning environment.
I experienced an ineffective learning environment before in Secondary 4. Though we were in a top banded class, our E Math- cum- A Math teacher had low expectations of us. He would often say "You all? Go JC? Go Poly? GO ITE LAH! Even if u go JC, u will go to Choa Chu Kang JC!" Such sarcasm was really unnecessary. He tore our assignments up the minute he thought it was copied (even though it wasn't) and threw it at us. Needless to say, I hated Math. Despite that, our class worked hard to prove him wrong. I don't know if it was reverse psychology, but my dislike for Math deepened even more during those years through the tense Math learning environment.
Effective Learning Environment: Everyone should ideally be clear on their key aims and objectives in a school. For example, the primary role of a teacher is to inculcate the right values to a student. This is followed by the imparting of knowledge and skills to the student. Thus with this objective in mind, I introduce my objectives to the class. We need to have the ability to carry out certain tasks in order for us to realise our key objectives. This is where I customise the lesson, class setting and lab setting to suit my students learning ability. So for example, the entire lesson structure has to tailored for the respective stream of students. Thus there is need for me to be aware and act depending on the students' pace, width and depth of knowledge. It also involves customizing worksheets for some demanding class or topics so that there is effective learning. Finally, there is a need to be aware of the results of all the actions one strive in order to achive the objectives. Hence, I need to be aware of the student' needs and this comes with both experience in and out of teaching. For example, if my particular lesson was tough for the students, I would probe the causes and execute an effective remedy. Thus constant monitoring of all factors such as student attention, their work quality as well as their casual comment goes into my next lesson structure.
Non effective Learning Environment: A non effective learning environment arises when the teacher does not know his purpose in class. For example, in the first day of teaching, I went to class without a clear objective and thus I regretted that 1/2 and hour in class was not effectively utilised. If a teacher is clear of his objective but he does not know what actions are needed in order for the objectives to be realised, the teaching environment will be ineffective. For example, during my first few days of teaching in a NT class, I treated them in a similar manner to my Express students. The outcome is lost time and the students became wilder than ever! Finally if there is a lack of monitoring the situation the learning environment becomes ineffective. This occured when I used the same teaching speed for two classes. The problem was that although the explanations were good, the students initially did not understand as the pace of the lesson was too fast. Thus even though the students made noises and were getting noisier, I was not aware that these were signs that their attention was waning. This incident could have been prevented. Thank you.
After viewing Dr Quek’s podcast and reading other comments, I am now aware that:
1) Learning environment influences the person. 2) Learning environment influences personal needs. 3) Learning environment influences human behaviour.
An effective learning environment must therefore be a place which is non-threatening, a place which have a sense of orderliness and a place which provides opportunities to gain knowledge without the fear of making mistakes. Ideally, teachers are expected to be able to arouse students’ interests and induce intrinsic motivation for them to learn through a wide range of pedagogies.
Unfortunately, due to the exams-oriented nature of the education system and the additional burden of miscellaneous duties for school events, teachers may find it difficult to align the school’s expectation with the broader vision of education.
In addition, from the readings that I have read, I realized that in current Singapore context, for effective teaching and learning to take place, teachers have to customize their lessons to match the expectations of the students. What I mean here is that, given our advanced state of technology, students expect teachers to deliver lessons which are IT-infused or even IT-centred. We can see that students are becoming less interested with the traditional way of teaching – chalk and talk, textbook and workbook based, etc.
They expect stimulation of visualization and animation. Lessons that do not seem explicitly applicable will need to be converted to Problem-Based Learning style so that students can appreciate the meaning of these lessons and apply the knowledge learnt.
I feel that if students were given the choice, they would prefer lessons to be conducted with the usage of computers. In this way, whenever teachers mention a new concept, they would be able to ‘Google’ it and explore for themselves. Students may then ask questions after self-exploration do not satisfy what they want to know. The teacher’s role would then to mediate, fine-tune and finally realign understanding to the objectives of the lesson.
Personally, it can be quite a challenge to always catch up with the students in terms of the use of IT and multimedia technology. I salute those veteran teachers who have been in the service for 20 to 30 years or more. Imagine how hard it was for them to progress from the era of the typewriters, to that of computers, Powerpoints and now E-Learning.
To me, an effective learning environment is one where students are able to learn best in.. it is an environment where the teacher has managed to evoke the intrinsic motivation of the students in studying that particular topic, either by effectively arousing the interest of the students, good rapport with the students or just by pure sincerity in his attitude towards the students.
An ineffective learning environment, on the other hand, is one where the students are disconnected from the teacher and is disinterested and "lost". It is probably one where students' interest has not been evoked yet the teacher went on and on anyway. The students probably felt that it doesn't really matter whether they followed the lesson or not and they probably felt incompetent to engage in the lesson anyway, thus they 'switch off'.
As an educator, we play an important role in creating an effective learning environment in our classroom. The way we interact with the students and respond to their learning needs will either enhance or hinder the learning process of the students.
I am reminded of the movie "Dangerous Minds" (based on a true story) starring Michelle Pfieffer, about an army officer who became a teacher (Pfieffer) in a very challenging New York school and how she tried to reach out to the students and get them to learn. It was a school full of blacks, Hispanics, Mexicans and others condemned to drop out or not even graduate from high school. There was no hope - the principal, teachers as well as society had given up on them. There was no real learning environment for her class to speak of. Yet what she did was to consider them as human beings and slowly, she taught them about life and themselves, to hope and to do their best despite what life throws at them. Ultimately, the trust and respect she earned (painfully) from her students based on her unwillingness to give up on them won the day. So, what makes an effective learning environment - not all the gadgets nor teaching practices nor pedagogy (alone) - but above all, the teacher's unfailing belief in the student, the gentle prodding and the firm push where necessary. This I firmly believe in, for many of our students need this social-emotional support. This fulfills the higher order need for love, affection and belonging and need for self-esteem under Maslow's hierarchy. We can all identify the NA and NT students in this story, but there are many Express students who also fit this category. So, the school climate, school culture, school learning environment and classroom learning environment is taken care of in one fell swoop, and the students' perception of the school situation is one of trust, care and respect for the learner and the teacher. Behaviour will then fall into place, slowly sometimes, but eventually.
What attributes constitute "effective learning environment"?. This is a question which has kept educational researchers pondering for decades. In a quest for answers, recent research literatures seems to be supporting a common theme, that is: social interaction amongst learners plays an important part in the learning process; in fact, it can have a significant impact on learning outcomes.
Collaboration is an essential ingredient to create an "effective learning environment" as it provides learners with the opportunity to discuss, argue, negotiate and reflect upon existing beliefs and knowledge. The learner gets involved in constructing own knowledge through a process of discussion and interaction with teachers and fellow classmates.
There is a need to have a purpose for the collaboration and the purpose needs to be meaningful to the learner. Thus it is important that an appropriate context is set for the collaborative activity, for example, assigning a "real world" task for learners or a problem to which all learners can relate. In addition to setting the context, there needs to be a environment through which collaboration can take place. In traditional face-to-face educational settings, collaboration mostly occurs through conversation, that is, individuals interacting with one another.
Therefore, in terms of creating an effective learning environment, four attributes surface as being important:
1) Providing opportunities to foster personal construction of knowledge. 2) Setting an appropriate context for the learning. 3) Facilitating collaboration amongst learners.
After going through the podcast, I am sharing what is Learning Environment from my point of views. A classroom learning environment involves the students and teachers in it, their needs, and their behaviour in the environment. All three areas area inter-related. Do you agree? Lets me share my views on a person can really influence the learning environment. I am reminded of the movie “Coach Crater” which happened to be a true life story. It is about a basketball coach in a high school who is concern for his players’ academic results than their winning in basketball matches. Or should I say their moral values. It is a school that consists of drop out or after graduate, can’t get to university. The team have witnessed what the coach is trying to do for them and finally understand why their Coach is so concern about their academic results. They finally sit down and study. What is the end of the story? I will encourage educators to catch this movie if you have not. As an educator, I believe that my primary role is to inculcate moral values to students. This is then followed by the imparting of knowledge and skills to students. With these in mind, I know where I am heading and what my students will learn at the end of the day. I begin with having a conducive classroom. Spending time studying every student’s character and behaviour and arrange them to sit at the best sitting arrangement in the classroom. I would like to share my 2-1-2-1-2 sitting arrangement. So far, it has worked for my NA class. Once the disruptive activities in the class are reduced to the minimum, the students are able to pay attention to what the teachers are teaching. Lessons have to be customised to tailor for the respective stream of students. Some students are naturally more visual learners and some are not. Integrating ICT in learning process is one way to capture the attention of the students, thus helping them to learn better. Most important, get to know them and create the teacher-student bond.
What an ineffective school learning environment will be like? School or classroom that are too noise for students to study in. Teachers that really just teach in class. No effort make to crater to different needs. No resource available to enhance learning. Badly maintain environment.
In general, every of our young soul sitting in the classroom is different. As educator we play an important role in creating conducive and inclusive classroom environments for students to best learn and teachers concentrate on teaching. As educator, we have to crater to our students learning abilities and needs. It must be an environment that the child feel safe in, and where can make mistakes and being recognised as a learning process not a failure. As educator, we have to keep on upgrading and find out the needs of the new generation in order to provide an effective learning environment.
I think over the years, MOE has recognized how Learning Environments can shape Perception and Human Behaviour. As such, great amounts of resources have been allocated to make the School Climate Survey for teachers a regular affair. This is followed by QSE (Quality of School Experience) Survey for students. The NE Survey is another instrument to provide indicators for National Education Programme in schools. The thing now is how school leaders and middle management make use of these survey results to create a better Learning Environment for staff and students.
Teachers is also a leader in the classrooom. The teacher creates the appropriate climate for learning to take place.
Hope to learn more about Learning Environments to add value to my class and my school.
"What is a conducive learning environment?" "How can we create a conducive learning environment?" I learned it not only from the paper, but also through the real life experience which Dr. Quek gave me. Definitely, I will remember it and apply it to my every day world. There is a Chinese Proverb, I want to share with you. "Tell Me I forget,Show Me I remember, Involve Me I understand..." Dear Dr. Quek, thank you very much for the wonderful learning experience you gave me, and I want to be able to share this experience with people who want to grow with me!
"What is a conducive learning environment?" "How can we create a conducive learning environment?" I learned it not only from the paper, but also through the real life experience which Dr. Quek gave me. Definitely, I will remember it and apply it to my every day world. There is a Chinese Proverb, I want to share with you. "Tell Me I forget,Show Me I remember, Involve Me I understand..." Dear Dr. Quek, thank you very much for the wonderful learning experience you gave me, and I want to be able to share this experience with people who want to grow with me!
I think an effective learning environment must be congruent to the subject being taught/educated. I do not agree with the notion that the just because our youth are IT savvy we can solve our problems by immersing them in the virtual environment. The effective learning environment must still get the learner interested. Even though we can move learning to blogs, there must be an effort to interest the student. Example, just because we moved SAF education onto blogs, it does not guarantee that the students will learn better if they are not interested in the SAF in the first place. Similarly just because i blog does not mean that i want to use it for learning and sharing. I think an effective Learning environment involves partnership with the Learner. Have we asked them what they want?
Pod casting attracts attention to the panky young generation. They like to search and seek for answers and they loves to see videos and especially like Mr Brown who made it even more popular and condusive to listen and pick up things from it. But caution to make is that the slides can be better it the screen size is bigger.
Times is changing and things are moving faster than before especially technology. I still can remember in the school days we start the day by cleaning the blackboard for the teacher and class monitor will make sure that we are ready to welcome our teacher when he came in.Today, technology comes in handy, students longer need to do the preparation. This really helps and save a lot of time, we can access the web and learn where we like and when we feel like.
Alot has changed since we last left school. Children are now guided to look for the knowledge and to establish their own learning. With the technology advances these days, we have to constantly keep up to close the gap.
In my opinion, there is no such thing as "Effective" or "Non-effective" environment.
A learning environment (with all its components) merely facilitates learning. Ultimatelyu learning is still dependent on the individual's willingness or interest to learn.
Different learning environment suit different people. It may be 'effective' to some, but 'non-effective' to others. So how to 'grade' a learning environment to be 'Effective'?
For learning to takes place effective, majority of the emphasis should be put on the learner themselves and the learning environment would play more of a supporting role.
We should make efforts to understand the learners (in all areas like hygiene needs, personal and family problems [ if this is hampering their behavior], obsticles in understanding [ language / interest / educational background that result is mismatching of course?]
With these being looked into, the effective learning environment would naturally comes by, and of course, with additional refinements [technology,carrots] the impact would be greater that ever!
Hi Dr Quek, There are many factors in making the learning environment effective. But I think the school culture plays an important factor as it has deep-rooted and long lasting effect on the environment. Though I agree that learning environment influences personal needs, but i think it would be a tall-order to handle this issue well especially in our context.
As a trainer in the Army training school for almost 20 years, I was involving in various stages of instruction and training developments, I attended many instructional courses and therefore well exposed and reminded on the effective training and teaching of our trainees to be deploy in real operation. Today, we are pressured to train “thinking soldiers” for the 3G SAF while maintaining the standard and discipline. It’s easier said than done as in all Army training institute, the pressure is on us to deliver competent soldiers to be deploy in all environments in a short time frame, this situation is made worse when the national service has been cut from 2½ years to 2 years. As we are also dealing with complex heavy equipments, weapons and munitions, all have zero margin for error. The situation calls for rapid training in drills, discipline and procedures with little or no room for exploration and creativity.
In order for learning to take place, we first take care of the emotional aspect of the learner. He must first be committed to the learning. But the problem we are facing is these young men are not interested when they report to us. Beside paying attention to the LE(physical environment), the overall organisation culture and atmosphere need to be adjusted to address to the belonging, empowerment and co-operation issues.
In the morning, the first thing we did is log into the PC and access into the internet. This show that most people are used to go into internet and do research or any learning. It is definitely a powerfull tool for learning and teaching. Even for primary school kids,school had already taught them how to access into chat room and other e-learning.
My sharing of effective learning environment, especially on Military context, it must be condusive, interactive and most importantly, there must not have any Rank Threat in terms of learning, meaning, learners should not be in their uniform when attending the lessons. In order to enhance learning, we must not always stick to just powerpoint presentation, instead, we should consider using flip charts, group research by using PBL method. We should consider using music to facilitate learning. We should do away with the conventional setting of the class room style in the olden day.
Dear Dr Quek, your embedded multi-media presentation struck me as an innovative method of delivery instructions and ideas across to Learners; considering Hofstetter's advocacy that Images, supplemented with Audio commentraies, tend to leave deeper and longer lasting impressions with the reciepients.
Although increasingly proliferated, I would remind myself to remain cognisant of the media-savviness of our Learners (esp. in the case of pre/post-war generation and the less-privilidged populus in our social structure) before implementation.
Looking forward to subsequent engagements in the coming week.
Interesting way to engage learning through the use of podcast. However, the personally, i still feel the greater need to improve the Learning Environment is still the trainees/ students ourselves...as resources, means, assessing systems in learning are aids, tools and benchmarking to our learning. The motivation and desire to learn more in the subjects or even in life can not be substituted.
Dear Dr Quek, Learning is becoming a way of life for most of us here in Singapore and in the larger World environment. As we grow with our age, our knowledge and understanding of whats going on in this world should grow too. We cannot choose to ignore what is happening out there. The new environment had made it even more necessary for all of us to be in touch with each other and with the world.
I agree with the point that all humans need their basic needs met first before going on to the next step which is learning of any sort.The three key concepts, person,personal needs and human behaviour are very closely related.As a boy for a start I came from a good primary school which was a mission school, had very basic facilities but was rich in meeting basic needs like shelter and even esteem needs.Teachers were very encouraging and motivating.I believe as a grown man I have some of these incalculated in my life at home and work.I believe that this module will further move me to explore more learning environment.
Dealing with current groups of learners, we need to understnad their needs and learning preferences. I find that Motivation is the key factor in sucessful learning especially in my contacts.
Presently, I'm using this framework in managing my company it has working well and it is quite closely linked to what you've mentioneded.
1. Engagement - constance interaction is the key relay as well as implementing ideas. Very closely linked to your Personal Needs
2. Empowerment - To respect every individual, to recognise their professional views.
3. Environment - Shaped behavior. Alot time, it take the top to implement that condusive environment. It can be quite a challenge in convincing your subordinates.
Thank you for sharing and giving us an overview to the intro on Learning Environment (LE).
Now, we understand that LE is complex as it constitutes many factors such as the organisation, tasks, people and performance of individual and group. From the Lewinian's formula and Murray's Needs-Press Model inter-relationship, it gives us a good perspective of the linkages. However, the font size of the chart is very small. It will be if a bigger font size version can be given. Looking forward to learn more about LE in the next couple of days.
In this fast paced world and people, we really need to keep up with changes around us and we need to keep pace.Learning takes place all the the time and the environment in which it takes place varies. People learn differently in different environments.
Dealing with current groups of learners, we need to understnad their needs and learning preferences. I find that Motivation is the key factor in sucessful learning especially in my contacts.
Presently, I'm using this framework in managing my company it has working well and it is quite closely linked to what you've mentioneded.
1. Engagement - constance interaction is the key relay as well as implementing ideas. Very closely linked to your Personal Needs
2. Empowerment - To respect every individual, to recognise their professional views.
3. Environment - Shaped behavior. Alot time, it take the top to implement that condusive environment. It can be quite a challenge in convincing your subordinates.
I believed many of us associate respect with discipline as given by the teacher, but that is not always the case especially dealing with Generation Y. Recently, I was told that a respectful classroom environment are important to how the students’ response to the teacher. I learned that positive learning environments come from involving students and trainers who provide clear expectations and rigorous curriculum.
The involving students in the classroom provides the sense of ownership in their learning. It is easier to keep most students engaged in a lesson when they are participating through discussions, projects and other student centered activities. Once engaged, I believed the students will create their own respectful classroom environment through their interactions with the teacher and other students.
Another way to involve students is through classroom meetings. In a class meeting students should feel comfortable asking questions, providing their opinions and also supporting their classmates. The meetings should also provide students with the opportunity to make decisions about some classroom rules and expectations, such as seating arrangements.
Whether provided by the teacher or created by the class, classroom expectations or rules should support a positive and respectful environment. The students may need to do a written or visual activity to explain what these expectations mean so that they can make a connection between the rules and themselves.
Also, be consistent in the enforcement of the expectations. Make sure to apply each rule fairly to each student.
Bottom line, the classroom setting should not be too rigid. It is important to be learner centered setting.If not, I deemed the creation of positive learning environment have failed.
Learning environment is usually shaped by the learning outcome. These outcomes may be derivative of National Education Policy in Singapore. Such policies are often borne as a consequence of how Singapore wants to showcase itself as a Education Hub that is aligned with the best practices in the world.
So in order to meet these outcomes changes have to occur in the Learning Environment to facilitate the learner. The learning outcome aligns the expectation of not only the learner but also the stakeholders and it is continually updated to remain current and relevant with the times. IT provides a huge leverage in effciciency and effectiveness to transform the learning environment. One must not leave out the humanistic aspect of the learning environment as there is so much of emphasis of being Learner Centered.
A new perspective into learning environment. Personally, I think learning environment is not just the physical aspect but should also include areas like methodologies, learning styles and the behavour of both trainers and learners, etc.
I suppose that an effective LE will have to take into consideration of the learner. This also have to do with the learner LE culture.
As the current youngers are IT, we have to engage them on this area.
The other area will be the environment; classroom, conducive. The friendly environment (learner to learner, learner to instructor) is also another area to considered.
Fortunately or unfortunately, i was brought up in 2 era. Before, teaching use to be very boring, info downloading session. Communications was kept to minimum and the teaching model is "I show, you do". Training aide was very backdated, flip chart style, rooms were dilapidated and somewhat unconducive.
However, now things have change tremendously. I can see that we have leverage on technology. Knowledge portal and archived can be easily access. People may come and go but knowledge remains.
I believe that classroom set up and environment shaped the behaviour and thinking of students. I have come across a lecture where the lecturer play a hype up music before the start of the lesson. Students upon entering it jig and moves to the music. This somewhat create and environment of learning as student sensory awareness were triggered.
So i'm looking forward to using New Media in LE. I am very keen to learn and improve the environment in my work place. However i hope that my workplace upgrade as quickly as i'm learning and acquiring my knowledge.
When I hear the word learning Environment it is a place where a group of learners come together to learn. In the past the teachers, usually does the talking and delivering more teacher centric. The paradigm shift have created new environment where information is ready available in the net. Students are very IT savvy. To create a effective one of the key factors to know the learner's
In a primary school setting, teachers try to create an effective learning environment by making it non-threatening. Children are allowed to make mistakes, not afraid to ask questions or to voice their opinions. We also look into the physical environment to ensure that the classroom setting is child-friendly, bright, and reading/writing materials are easily accessible by the children. This is the learner-centered classroom I try to create for my pupils. However, one thing that is lacking could be assessment centered which is described to be one of the designs of LE. There are few opportunities provided for giving constructive feedback to my pupils.
I believe the school climate and culture sets the tone of the LE that eventually takes shape in the school. The school climate is set by the people in the school management and culture of the school comes from the history and behaviour of its past. In D&T, the LE has to be safe foremost of all. There’s a two-way communication between teacher and students and cooperative lesson is used to encourage learning. Students are empowered to do their own design as projects. Ineffective school learning environment happens when the teacher is unable to manage the class well. This failure is reflected in the key concept 2 as the students are unable to learn where the environment is noisy and disruptive.
I believe that one of the most important factors of an effective learning environment is a non-threatening environment where it allows the students to learn and share their knowledge without having a sense of fear or threat from those around them. This would enable them to think better and more creatively in class. It must also be something that caters to their personal needs so that they would be more interested and make their learning a more meaningful journey for themselves.
On the other hand, an ineffective learning environment is where little or no sharing of knowledge takes place. This could be strongly affected by lack of discipline and only one way communication of learning that takes place in class. As a result, students are disengaged and this would result in very little learning.
Based on my understanding, an effective learning environment is one where the person, his/her needs and the human behaviour are in a way taken care of by creating a conducive and inclusive environment, where their cognitive, affective and psychomotor human behaviour are developed. In a school context, an effective learning environment can be achieved by firstly, taking care of what are the students’ needs. From the article by Kim Bryceson’s, there is a section talking about the Japanese concept of ‘Ba’, which in English means place. Hence school can start by having a platform such as internet incorporated into lessons where students can share their feelings, experiences and maybe interact and discuss homework or lesson learned. As long as the 3 key concepts are satisfied, I feel that en effective learning environment will be created.
However, in the midst of planning of such an environment, educators might forget the students’ feelings and what happens in some of the platforms they designed. There might be cases of cyber bullying or abuse of internet usage. When these happen, an ineffective learning environment results because the affected students would not have been benefited from it. There will be no sense of belonging and fulfillment of the various needs as stated in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. There might be situations where the learning environment is craved more for the brighter students; hence the slower ones might develop a fear of entering the classroom because of the tough competition and inability of catching up with the class. When these situations occur, there will be no influencing of person, personal needs and human behaviour form the learning environment created.
An effective learning environment is one that is safe and conducive. Teachers play an important role. The teachers need to have a deeper understanding of their pupils’ and their needs. With this they can build a good rapport with their pupils. Besides, the teachers need to design lessons that are learner-centered and cater to the different types of learning styles of the pupils. When the lessons are fun, the pupils are more engaged and will take responsibility in their learning.
I experienced an ineffective learning environment in my secondary school. My classmates and I dreaded to attend English lessons. Everyday the teacher would come in to the classroom and made us read passages one at a time. She would then criticized how bad we pronounced the words and scolded us for not doing it right. Every one of us was rather depress at first but after a while, since it happened so often, we just switched off from her lessons. The teacher had created a very threatening and unpleasant environment for learning.
It is very interesting to see that there were several comments about "mean" teachers who belittle their students. I believe most of us go through that because our parents were less vocal/ less trouble seeking lot. Our parents would not dare to lodge a complaint about how the teachers treat us and of course we had to live under the tyranny.
Imagine I walk into class and start throwing "lousy" compos into the wastepaper basket. Whooo hoo! I will be on STOMP /ST forum within days. Then, let us recall. Is it not the teacher who laughed and mocked you that helped you learn?
My English teacher in Pri 5 taught me not to call people billy-goats because she called us billy-goats everyday. My English teacher in Sec 1 taught me to speak properly else I would be mocked at by teenagers everyday (as she was being mocked). Today, I am still a "nasty" teacher on some days to make my students learn.
Let us consider the point of personal needs. Maslow Hierachy on ego. It is the attack on ego that made the lesson more poignant. Is it not?
But of course if we were negative everyday, it would not help either.
The school climate and teacher's attitude definitely has to take on a positive note.
A happy school climate would make teachers happy and a happy teacher would bring happiness to a classroom.
A school life with rhythm of ups and downs would help the children to have balance in life. It is not what the students have, but it is the have-nots that they yearn for.
1) What makes an effective school learning environment? Environment refers to ‘all situations, events, people etc. that influence the way in which people live or work’ (Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English). Through my personal experience, for schools to have an effective learning environment, there must be commonly shared values or goals that are upheld by all members of the school community, be they the teaching or non-teaching staff and students. Firstly, there must be a sense of purpose (objectives) as to why the school is there. This can be easily encapsulated in the school’s mission statement. All members of the school community must work towards this common purpose. Secondly, there must be a sense of direction at which the school is heading for, which is easily captured in the school’s vision statement. Likewise, all members of the school community must head towards this direction. Thirdly, setting the right tone, as in creating the right atmosphere through instituting a set of proper conduct that governs one’s behaviour (which shapes character and attitude) etc for both teachers and students to observe, thus facilitating teaching and learning. All members of the school community need to be positive. We have to work together as a cohesive team. There must be element of trust at all levels. As service providers, we need to be opened and positive to feedback, favourable or otherwise and work towards improvement. All channels of communication (teacher-teacher and/or teacher-pupil) should be kept open at all times so that the teachers and students are at ease to share and surface any concerns that goes towards creating an effective learning environment. Another point to take note would be expectations. There must be some kinds of expectations that need to be spelt out for both the teachers and students to work on so as establish effective school learning environment. There must also be a system of checks and balances, where teachers or students who go beyond their call (of duty) are challenged and rewarded and those who do not are taken to task.
2) What makes an ineffective school learning environment? When all members of a school community do not know what they are doing and in which direction they are heading for, it spells for an ineffective learning environment. When there is no set of rules to follow and both teachers and students are allowed to do what they like (and not what they should do), it contributes to an ineffective school learning environment. Likewise, when pertinent and compelling matters are not communicated to all members of the school community, it brings about an effective learning environment. There are no shared goals or targets to go for. Instead of converging, they are diverging. Through my personal experience, too, if members of a school community fail to learn, relearn and unlearn (to break the habit or end the practice of something), it signifies for an ineffective school learning environment.
After listening to the podcast, I found that it is very different from other common podcasts or e-learning lectures where there is no background music being played. Personally, I found that the music is smoothing and it makes me awake and arouse my attention in the podcast. For this, I may regard it as an effective learning environment for me.
As for an effective school learning environment, I suppose it has to be an environment which is encouraging, happy and non-threatening and i.e. a learning environment where teachers give guidance, motivate and encourage the students, and allow students to voice out their opinions and ask questions and then make mistakes. They will then learn from their own mistakes. In addition, there must be strong support given to the teachers and students from the school management and together work towards a clear and shared vision which favors the staff and students’ welfares. In this way, effective learning can then take place.
As for an ineffective school learning environment, I suppose it would be an environment where teachers put too much pressure on the students, consistently and unreasonably insult, criticize and scold students due to their poor performances in tests and assignments, punish the students unreasonably, make comparisons among the classmates’ results, and do not encourage or praise or motivate students at all. In addition, it can also be an environment where the school management often does not support the activities proposed by the students, does not offer help to the under-privileged group in terms of financial help, and instill negative thoughts in students.
I believe that an effective learning environment comprises of the physical environment as well as the human factor. For example, the D&T workshop in NIE provides the right kind of atmosphere for learning once you step into it. It has visuals such as design posters and students work to engage learner and workshop tools and machines to captivate learner’s attention. In addition, the lecturers and instructors were always around to help with any queries and will patiently guide learners to master the basic skills. It is definitely a non-threatening environment where ideas can be exchange between learner and learner and learner and lecturer. In addition, the lecturers encourage independent learning and motivate learners by giving sound advice to achieve the desire outcomes of the course.
I believe that an ineffective learning environment will be one that puts learners off. I still recall during my secondary school days, there was this Geography teacher who strikes fear into every student’s heart by shouting at the top of his voice whenever a mistake was made. This act of discouragement and intolerance of mistakes puts students off whenever he conducts a lesson. Also, he likes to conduct surprise tests when content were not even taught yet and the expected low test scores in a prolonged period of time demoralizes the class learning attitude and behaviour towards the subject.
Establishing an optimum learning environment is an art. This is because there are many factors that affect how the environment is actually created. No doubt, the teacher is the key in this pursuit. His belief, teaching pedagogy, personality, rapport with students etc will affect how the class is taught ane teachin how the students will response. However, there are factors that will affect how this teacher teaches. The teaching and learning philosophy of the school, the support and direction that is set by the school leaders, the background (e.g.SES of the students), national agenda, teacher's past experiences as student and how are teacher is trained are some of the factors that will affect the learning environment. A secondary school that has lots of disciplinary problem compared to a top tiered secondary school will have very different learning environment. For a problematic school, perhaps the learning environment must be that to meet the physiological and safety need of the students and hence a stricter and more regimental discipline tone is required. However in a top-tier secondary school, the learning environment is on that builds up esteem and allow student for self-actualisation. Even in the same school, teaching students from different stream also require different teaching strategies to engage our learners. Hence I believe, as much as we want to have an optimum learning environment, we need to be aware of the context where learning is taking place. As educators, we need to be socially aware of the environment and then use our professional judgement to create an environment to suit our learners.
I've enjoyed reading all the comments and I think some of us have experienced similar situations back when we were kids last time. I refer to Dennis Loh's comments on how he did not excel in primary school because of issues with his self esteem and how his self esteem shot up due to a more positive environment in secondary school. As for me, it was the opposite. I had a strict DM as a form teacher back in primary school. Despite of that, he proved to be a kind and encouraging teacher. He acknowledged my effort in English compositions and read some of my work in class. At 11 years old, I aspired to be writer. However, when I managed to go to one of the 'top' secondary schools here, my ambition was killed. I don't remember having any positive comments about my work and I felt really stupid compared to the rest of the class. Getting my essays thrown to me because I wrote using a cheap pen with lighter ink made it worse! Until today, I still think I cannot write well and was actually very hesitant to enrol myself in this programme..:p I teach Maths in a neighbourhood school(so much for being a writer) and is always asked to teach the slower ones. So as a teacher now, I try very hard to raise these students's self esteem by giving them positive comments in their exercise books or through acknowledging their little successes.
I believe that to create an effective school learning environment, many factors come together. Firstly, when there is a transfer of knowledge to the students or amongst the students, learning has taken place effectively. However, for this to happen, the teacher has to ensure that the learning environment is safe and how can this be achieved? In my opinion, for a safe learning environment to occur, there should be policies, procedures and practices that communicate high expectations, mutual respect and a focus on teaching and learning to support a safe environment. A strict discipline in school is also essential. I recalled when I was a trainee teacher, we were always reminded to set our expectations and rules during the very first lesson we have with the class. This will set the standard and behaviour that we require from the students. With a safe environment, students will feel at ease to come to school to study. Parents will be assured that their children are safe in the school. In this era of globalisation, it is important to equip our younger generation with the right skills and abilities besides having an innovative mind and also a critical and creative thinking in this knowledge-based economy. As such, it is necessary to adapt the pedagogical method to suit the needs of the students accordingly, such as inclusion of more projects, problem-based learning and the usage of IT in our teaching.
Everyone is different and unique. As teachers, I feel that it is essential to understand who our students are, where they come from, their family background, what interest them etc. A good rapport with the students will also help in their learning.
I believe that to create an effective school learning environment, many factors come together. Firstly, when there is a transfer of knowledge to the students or amongst the students, learning has taken place effectively. However, for this to happen, the teacher has to ensure that the learning environment is safe and how can this be achieved? In my opinion, for a safe learning environment to occur, there should be policies, procedures and practices that communicate high expectations, mutual respect and a focus on teaching and learning to support a safe environment. A strict discipline in school is also essential. I recalled when I was a trainee teacher, we were always reminded to set our expectations and rules during the very first lesson we have with the class. This will set the standard and behaviour that we require from the students. With a safe environment, students will feel at ease to come to school to study. Parents will be assured that their children are safe in the school.
In this era of globalisation, it is important to equip our younger generation with the right skills and abilities besides having an innovative mind and also a critical and creative thinking in this knowledge-based economy. As such, it is necessary to adapt the pedagogical method to suit the needs of the students accordingly, such as inclusion of more projects, problem-based learning and the usage of IT in our teaching.
Everyone is different and unique. As teachers, I feel that it is essential to understand who our students are, where they come from, their family background, what interest them etc. A good rapport with the students will also help in their learning.
The reason why I have chosen this module on learning environment is because I want to know how to create a conducice and inclusive classroom environment for teaching and learning. I like the explanation on the 3 key components of LE : person, personal needs and human behaviour. LE is very important to set the mindset of learning atmosphere in the class. I feel that all pupils must feel non-threatened and happy with the LE in order to maximise their learning. The LE must make them feel curious, able to make choices with the many activities, able to progress at their own rate, able to learn social behaviour and gain communication skills, cognitive skills and physical skills. Apart from the soft skills attained in an effective classroom environment, physical setting of the LE is equally important, to provide a bright and cheery LE, and make pupils feel happy and wanting to learn. Nowadays, with the addition of ICT into the LE, pupils are provided with more choices of learning, the move towards formative assessments and authentic assessments, teachers and pupils have a new horizon about LE.
Very informative podcast on LE. It is true that LE affects a person's learning. A good and conducive LE will influence the learner and thus, the learner will be more willing to learn. I agree that the 5 factors contributes to LE - a good school climate and culture, a conducive school and class learning environment. The most important factor will be a person's perception of his/her LE. The learner's own perception matters a lot to the learner. If he or she felt that he or she does not belong to the school or class and his or her needs are not met, then he or she will most likely perform below his or her potential. I believe that to learn and succeed, a person's self- motivation is also very important.
I cannot but fully agree with the fact that school climate and school culture are pivotal in ensuring an environment optimal for learning and teaching. In my school, the school leaders put in place structures and policies to create a culture of learning and we have no problems getting pupils to follow academic instructions even on the day right after a major examination. We also have commendable attendance for all the extra classes held outside of curriculum time. This culture of learning has obviously made life a lot easier for teachers in my school. In my personal capacity as a Mathematics teacher, I have also managed to create a classroom environment conducive for learning by providing a climate of care and ownership. I made the pupils feel responsible for their own results and giving them the confidence and believe to excel in the subject. This creates a sense of empowerment and esteem necessary for an effective learning environment. The school leaders also come down hard on bullies and gangs, providing a safe environment for the pupils. All these factors have resulted in stellar performance by our pupils at the national examinations.
At the end of this session, I am bombarded with a pretty heavy reading task. There are many materials to read and technical terms which I need to know. Well, when the going gets tough, the tough gets going! So, what makes an effective classroom learning environment? Are they solely the teacher factor, student factor or both? Or does it include other factors like the class synergy and infrastructure? In what ways computer assisted technology bring about effective classroom learning environment? Why effective classroom learning environment? Is there any implication that if there is no effective classroom learning environment, teaching and learning will not take place? How does one create an effective classroom learning environment? Does creating one depend entirely on the teachers, students or both? The advent of technology has allowed teachers to conduct on-line, e-learning lessons etc. Does that mean the physical presence of a teacher is not needed in transmitting knowledge to the students? On the other hand, how does e-learning facilitate and enhance teaching and learning? I trust that at the end of this module, I would be able to find the answers to these questions. I am not IT savvy and I find it difficult to catch up with the pace at which the lesson goes. However, with the support and help I obtain from the tutor and her assistant, I manage to overcome the fear and trudge along. I only have to thank my coursemates, tutor and her assistant for all the patience and accommodation shown which allow me to walk off the class with great pride and confidence, looking forward to the next face-to-face session with enthusiasm.
Ah. I now understand what Ruzi meant by listening to the podcast and leaving comments about it. Like Rahim, I cannot profess to be IT savvy. I am learning and trying because I know that this is the direction and I need to lead by example.
In any case... What makes an effective learning environment? I believe that an effective learning enviornment is one that is, as highlighted in the podcast, conducive and inclusive. What does it mean to be conducive and inclusive? And how do we create such an environment? At the school management level, it may first of all start with ensuring that the physical environment of the classrooms are conducive for learning - working lights and fans etc that would meet the most basic physiological needs. The school may also have structures in place to promote inclusiveness by providing leadership opportunities for students so that they may meet their own needs of esteem and actualisation. The next level would be the teachers who help to promote an effective LE through the way the plan and conduct lessons that is student centered to engage the learner. In the manner in which he builds a safe environment to build a good rapport with students will also go a long way in creating an effective LE. However, the difficulty is that there are some teachers who have great difficulty in contributing to an effective LE because many of them are under pressure by management to bring in the grades which leave very little time for these teachers to spend time planning for lessons and building rapport with them. Some teachers also do not seem to have the right attitude and aptitude to be teachers because they see teaching as a job, and not a vocation - something which the recent years massive recuitment of teachers has contributed towards. I have seen teachers come into school each day "to get the job done", which is a real pity because they spend 8 hours of their day without so much as a obligation to perform their best at their job for the best intrests of the students that they teach.
The students can also contribute to the effective LE with regards to their perceptions they have about the school and their teachers. For those who are negative and perceive their teachers pick on them vs. those who perceive the regular scoldings to be a demonstration of the teachers care. This can affect their own reactions and behaviours in the classroom which can ultimately affect their other classmates. Another example could be the prevalence of bullying in the school where students cannot learn effectively because they are afraid to be in school. Similarly, the community enviroment of stakeholders can also promote a conducive and inclusive LE when parents cooperate with teachers instead of badmouthing teachers in front of their children or when external organisations work with schools to provide students for opportunities at internship and job attachments which can easily motivate students to learn more about the related field of studies.
Ineffective learning environment is one that is threatening with minimum support and scaffolding provided by the teacher or facilitator and is teacher-centred. In this type of environment, I think learners will be 'forced' to learn rather than motivated to learn. Memories of my secondary one and two literature lessons started to flood my mind... I had a vert strict literature teacher,Mrs Goh, who seldom smile. We called her Mrs 'Ghost'. My classmates and I did not enjoy her lessons simply because we did not have a sense of belonging as she did not really talk or communicate with us about issues not related to the book she was teaching. There is no personal touch and we dragged attending her lessons. An effective learning environment is one that is non-threatening, supportive, interactive and learner-centred. I like my Secondary 4 Physics teacher who was very humourous and made good analogies of Sc concept with real life experiences. He explained concepts using different ways so that we understand the concept before he proceeded to teach another new concept. My classmates and I had a great time learning and did well for this subject.
I believe that an effective learning environment is a class setting in which students are at ease with themselves, among themselves and with the teacher. As shown in the video, learning environment influences the person's sense of belonging and need for esteem. Hence as teachers, we should try to create an effective learning environment by making it a safe and comfortable one. Often when a teacher is tensed up about delivering the lesson objective, the learning environment will be tense one and both students and teacher may not have a good lesson. But if the teacher is relaxed, able to pace her delivery of the lesson according to the needs of the students, both teacher and students may enjoy it. I felt that this extremely true when a teacher is too worried about going into a problematic class. When the students can sense that the teacher is tensed up, they also will not be able to connect or communicate positively with that teacher. But if the teacher goes into the class with confidence and beaming with happiness, the students will be able to feel the affection and hence cooperate!!!
Podcast reflection Personally, I believe an effective school LE is dynamic and involves many dimensions. It involves the (a) school climate and culture and (b) physical environment, emotional and social aspects that take place in any learning corner. A deficiency in the factor(s) would result in an ineffective school LE or at least, far from an ideal school LE.
(a) The school (top to bottom) needs to be aware of the school’s directions and goals to work towards its initiative. When the school’s staffs work together with a common mindset, the school climate and school culture are formed. From here, each department plans learning programs, activities in conjunction with the school’s goals. Thus, this creates a school learning environment setting.
In addition, the school also needs the support of the other stakeholders. On top of the school’s teaching and non-teaching staff, parents, school partners and pupils are also critical stakeholders. All stakeholders need to have a common mindset and belief on the school LE. Parents need to show support in school’s programs and activities by educating the right values and attitudes to their child.
Examples of an ineffective LE would be having each department working in isolation without a common consensus and a lack of communication among staff and management level which often results in conflicts or confusion. Lack of parental guidance could also lead to problems such as the child having the wrong attitude towards learning and/or behaviourial problems. One example would be despite the school’s initiatives in promoting avid readers as a school culture, problems such as vandalizing school library books could surface.
(b) An effective physical LE can range from providing a conducive and safe environment such as the lighting of the classrooms to an environment rich with literacy development manipulatives. Similarly, teachers can provide effective emotional and social aspects of LE when we take each child’s emotional needs into accounts (at least their basic needs) and providing affirmations on pupils’ achievements. Teachers would also allow rooms for mistakes, build the culture of providing constructive peer evaluation and feedback to their friends yet being receptive to their own mistakes. No doubt, an ineffective physical LE includes a noisy and disruptive environment and a lack in learning materials. Teachers would be conducting teacher-centered instruction lessons and teaching the knowledge in isolation. In worst situation, teachers transmit negative feelings and thoughts upon the pupils.
What makes the learning environment positive or negative? Well, from what I experienced while I was a student, the teacher played the biggest role for my learning environment. The teacher "had the power" to make or break learning. However, with the 21st century skills expected of our students, the challenge is now on us teachers to integrate the use of IT on a much larger scale. Are we ready? Am I ready for it?
I think the following factors make an effective LE: 1. a conducive and safe environment 2. supportive and encouraging teachers. 3. availability of teaching resources such as manipulatives and IT. 4. availiability of other resources such as a counselor, to take care of students' emotional and psychological aspects. 5. open to various communication channels with parents to support students' learning. 6. Teachers using variety of teaching strategies as to cater to individual differences. 7. school provides students with opportunities for leadership roles. 8. Availbility of a variety of CCAs.
An ineffective school LE occurs when there is a deficiency in any of the above factors.
LE Depends on the culture and climate of the school. In my own primary school and secondary school I experienced a classroom of teacher centred learning all the time. The teachers then were more of instructional and chalk and board teaching. Nowadays students experince more outdoor learning and IT based teaching.
I believe in order for effective learning to take place, first and foremost the school would have to ensure that the physical environment such as the classroom’s facilities (Lightings, fans, projectors, tables and chairs) would be in working conditions so that learning can take place. Next, the school would need to have a series of programs and structures lined out for the students to develop them holistically in their 4 year stay in the Secondary school. For example, my school has provided many leadership opportunities for the students to take up in class or CCA, so that we can meet their personal needs. This is a chance for them to grow and learn, thus a boost to their self-esteem. When the students feel safe in an environment, they will then have a sense of belonging and will strive for their best in whatever they do, be it academically or in their CCA. In our school, we have a programs in place named EDGE, for every level to Experience, Develop, Grow and Emerge as fine gentleman. As a teacher, we can also make a difference to the effective learning environment by taking care of our students’ psychological needs, constantly communication with the parents to understand our students better and to ensure the parents that their children are doing well in school. But most importantly is to use a variety of teaching methods to cater to the different needs of our students. For example, a shift from teacher-centered to learner centered activities, to tap on the various IT platforms which are widely and readily available. Even Mr Lee Kuan Yew mentioned that the teaching of Chinese needs to move towards IT based direction. As teachers, we need to arouse their interest through fun-filled activities such as IT or drama so as to better engage them in the lesson.
An ineffective learning environment would be one lesson that is totally teacher-centered without any activities and without the opportunity for students to work together and self- learn and internalize learning. I still remember in my sec school days, our English and Literature teacher would come into class, sits on the chair and go through our Literature text. She would not even touch the chalk and blackboard as she claims she is sensitive to chalk. All of us would have to follow line by line to understand the text. There were no group discussions or any activities carried out. No one dare to raise any questions as of all of us are terrified of her because she would always use our testimonial to ‘threaten’ us saying she would have nothing to write in our testimonial if we misbehave. Of course, I would not say learning does not take place but is effective learning taking place over here and how many students do actually benefit from it?
In the teaching of languages, there are several important factors influencing the students’ successes: • methods and techniques used by teachers to teach the language • classroom interaction • teachers planning their teaching activities • students’ motivation • learners’ goals
According to Deci and Ryan (1985), intrinsic motivation is related to basic human needs. Learners’ goals may determine how they use the language being learned, how native-like their pronunciation will be, and how much energy they will expend to understand the target language. The students’ interest is the basic key to open the learning door. Achievement goal theory (Ames & Archer, 1988; Middleton & Midgley, 1997) and self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 1985) are the two views of motivation.
i have always thought that the learning environment in a school is a simple construct and that it is something that is built up naturally. I didn't realize that 1) it is complex 2) it plays a big role in the learners, as well as the teachers academic pursuits. Given its importance, now i see the need to really know what it is all about and how one can nurture an effective learning environment.
There are 2 schools of thoughts concerning the effect of "competition" on the learning. Some believes that competition (e.g., through ranking whose first, second, and so on) helps increase learning. Others believe that competition can reduce learning (due to individuals not willing to share information, own reflection) etc. My interest is to create an environment that will increase collaboration, yet with some degree of competition (perhaps through goal setting) to challenge the students to learn more than what is taught.
To create a conducive learning environment whereby students are actively engaged in the affective, behavorial and cognitive domanins is crucial to building up a school climate and a school culture.
If students are disengaged, then little or no learning can take place. Teachers, as mentors and facilitators, should take the lead in creating the kind of learning environment that will promote self-directed learning, collaborative learning and other 21st Century Digital Age skills which students will need to acquire now.
Although the terms schools climate and school culture are widely used currently in conjunction with year end review exercises, these were terms that were hardly referred to a decade ago. I guess this reflects the growing importance and the need to acknowledge the roles that these play in the school environment.
With the emphasis toward designing learner-centred learning environments, my view is that all educators should seek to design/introduce personalised learning environments. These environments should ideally facilitate learners to take ownership of and manage their own learning and development. As they all say ' displace the sage on the stage!" In essence, a good learning environment should provide support for learners to chart their personal learning goals, manage their learning, manage the subject matter content and process as well as sharing/communicating with peers as part of the learning process.
The other attributes of an effective learning environment would include methodologies that help learners to internalize the Purpose of learning, afford the learner Autonomy in his learning journey and provide a sense of Challenge in the knowledge or skills to be attained.
The central concept here is about the motivation to learn and an effective learning environment is premised on Purpose, Autonomy and Challenge (PAC)
the word that stands out in the podcast is 'empowerment'. It is a very important element in many areas. It seems that learning environment can affect a person in both a positive and negative way. Some questions: Is there an 'ideal' learning environment? Is there a tool to measure/ assess learning environment. will a particular type of learning environment fit everyone?
Positive learning environment is one where i felt comfortable and happy. I liked the teacher and the subject. Also i felt that the subject was pitched at the correct level. Excample of this was when i was back in Secondary School, at history class. We had a teacher that would come in a make history come alive by narrating the historical occurances without a book or notes. He was professional and cool.
Negative one - all my tamil classes where the teachers were strict and made learning tamil a pain.
A conducive learning environment is an important necessity for education in school to be effective. The learning environment does influence the learner, his needs and behavior. Especially, a proper learning environment should be designed to match the nature of the subject/topic taught. I have experienced that some students’ comments on the different learning environments (classroom set-up) and some classrooms are more preferred over others. This may also depends on various factors such as the age, gender and the background of the learners. Creating and maintaining interesting learning environments can be achieved through effective and innovative classroom organisation.
I am curious to find out more on how to create a learning environment within an organisation, especially in one that has some prevailing deep set organisation culture and human behaviour. I can connect with the ideas presented on the podcast, especially on how Learnning Environment influences the individual (person), personal needs and human behaviours.
Whether effective learning takes place will be depend on the learning culture and environment. Personally engagement is key for learning and we educators have to constantly keep up with the pace of technology changes to "engage" our new generation of students.
A conducive environment is necessary for effective learning to take place. We have to create a non-threatening school culture where the pupils will be engaged in their learning. In these modern days of ICT, we will also make use of technology to facilitate learning. Remember, learning will only be effective when the learnersd want to learn.
For effective learning to take place, a conducive environment is very important. As teachers, we are responsible for creating such environment for pupils learn in. In recent years, teachers begin to make use of the various tools to engage pupils in their learning. ICT can also be used as assessment tools. Before all these changes could happen, teachers need to change their mindset to embrace the technology.
Feeling comfortable and at ease is very important for one in order to learn effectively. Similarly, pupils will feel at ease and will not be stressed when the envrironment is conducive. Besides, providing captiviting lessons can keep pupils engaged.
An effective school learning environment depends on the teachers and the students. It depends on the willingness of the teachers to try new ideas from the school. It also depends on the support offered by the school leaders to help teachers carry out new ideas and initiatives. The discipline of the students also play an important role in the school learning environment. The willingness of the students to cooperate with teachers and their willingness to learn new knowledge.
In a safe and secure learning environment, pupils are able to grow as the are allowed to be themselves regardless of their diverse needs and culture. An effective learning environment is where respect is prevalent between peers and between pupils and teachers. Students are given ownership of their work, they are engaged. Pupils are clear about expectations. Teacher is nurturing and adopts a developmental approach and allows mistakes and pupils do not fear punitive repercussions FROM VERONICA GILBERT
Learning environment- key concepts links the person with his/her personal needs and how it influences his/her behavior.Maslow's theory clearly defines this concept. Individuals' experience situations and how these situations are viewed and interpreted is dependent on the environment as a whole.
The podcast is very interactive. I am definitely gonna try it out for my students.
What makes an effective school Learning Environment: I strongly feel it is the teacher first. As I step out of my house, all my house and private matters are left at the doorstep and I walk out as a new woman, waiting to embrace the new day with the kids. happy or sad, they are always happy and even teach us how to be happy...
What makes an ineffective school learning environment:
When there is an absence of love, affection and a need of belonging.
An effective learning environment is one that there is a strong sense of belonging for all the pupils and the teachers. A physical place where the pupils call it their home. An environment where learning takes place, pupils are actively engaged in learning. Personally as a primary school teacher, an effective learning environment is one that the pupils would yearn to come to school everyday. An ineffective learning environment is one that pupils do not learn effectively and find learning to be a boring chore. A place where there is no love and trust among the pupils and teachers. For the classroom LE to be effective, I feel that that it should first start with an effective school LE. An effective school LE is one that there is no gossip among the staff, and every teachers is working towards creating a joyful learning environment for the pupils. TRUST is the key towards a happy and effective LE.
our current pupils are very IT savvy and to the fact that they know more about ICT tools than we teachers. blogging,class discussions using wiki and google sites are new forms of creating an engaging and effective learning environment as we have pupils of different learning needs (eg: visual, tactile learners). teachers no longer need to be physically present to conduct an interactive lessons. its very important to know and understand our learners' needs, strengths and weaknesses and design lessons that will create a vibrant and conducive learning environment...
My concept about learning environment before attending this course is more of the aesthetics part as in how to create (decorate)a environment that caters to learners' needs. It is interesting to know that there's so much more to learning environment and it is very much related to the psycho-social pespective of education. It is also interesting to know that learning environment can be assessed through research methods and it has been done since the 1930s.
An effective learning environment happens when there is good rapport between the teacher and the students. Teachers should be able to understand the climate and mood of the students before even starting out a lesson. Students need to feel a sense of belonging and safety so that they are comfortable and they can contribute positively to the class. I feel that an ineffective learning environment is when there is no rapport between the teachers and the students. For example when i was a student, i experienced a teacher who comes to class and always scolds us because her home environment was problematic. As such we felt ummotivated and felt that it was a waste of time attending her lessons. Teachers are important in a classroom learning environment because they are empowered with a lot of skills to make the classroom lively and approachable for students.
In an effective learning environment, there should good relations between teachers and students. Teachers should be a role model to their students and should always be a motivator. The students should feel safe and secure. The environment should be conducive and not threatening. Students should feel at ease when approaching their teacher when they want to clarify their doubts. The students must be aware of their teachers' expectation and feel free to voice out their opinions and views. Through this, both teaching and learning would be effective.
Serene Leong -An effective learning environment to me is when there is a positive relationship between the teacher and her students, which promotes an open and honest communication. This would then encourage the whole class to work together with the teacher towards a shared goal . An ineffective learning environment would be a place where there is a lot of negativity and close communication. Students would not feel valued and they would not be motivated to work towards a specific goal.
An ineffective environment occurs basically when there is a mismatch between the learner and his environment. I feel that to ensure there is an effective learning environment, it is important that we look at our students' needs and preferred learning style and provide the stimulating & supportive atmosphere for learning. For example, in my case when I have to teach the "colourful" students of the 'tail-end' classes, the " fun" & "understanding" environment is crucial to be effective so as to get them to cooperate & stay motivated. The discipline style should be more of the liberal-democratic style too:)
(a)An effective learning environment should be safe for learning and teaching to take place.Students should be allowed to make mistakes, learn new things and comment on others' views/ideas in a non-threatening environment. It should be an environment conducve for the students to grow and develop his/her intellectual and psycho-social skills The environment should meet and match the needs of the students. In an effective LE, students are motivated to learn and exhibit positive attitude towards learning.There is positive and healthy teacher-student interaction. (b) An environment that does not meet/match students' needs. Students do not have a sense of belonging to the environment and feel unsafe and threatened to make mistakes. Little learning taking place.
(a)An effective learning environment should be safe for learning and teaching to take place.Students should be allowed to make mistakes, learn new things and comment on others' views/ideas in a non-threatening environment. It should be an environment conducve for the students to grow and develop his/her intellectual and psycho-social skills The environment should meet and match the needs of the students. In an effective LE, students are motivated to learn and exhibit positive attitude towards learning.There is positive and healthy teacher-student interaction. (b) An environment that does not meet/match students' needs. Students do not have a sense of belonging to the environment and feel unsafe and threatened to make mistakes. Little learning taking place.
Learning Environment depends on three key concepts:person, personal needs and humna behaviour. All the three concepts are needed to create a conducive environment for learning. Thus, educators need to take into account all these concepts to ensure learning takes place. Learning Environment focuses on the psychosocial environment. The sense of belonging, empowerment are categorized under person. Personal needs refers to feeling of safety, esteem, love and etc. This concept is based on Maslow's theory of needs. The concept of human behaviour refers to instincts, attitudes that affects behaviour.
It seems that there are significant relationships between the LE and the participants, participants' personal needs and their behaviours. An appropriate fit between the LE and the participants would facilitate the teaching and learning process, and help to achieve the learning outcomes. It takes into the physical attributes of the environment as well as the pyschological characteristics of the participants (administrators, teachers and students), it is about the holistic evaluation of the LE.
There are many factors that contribute to a desirable learning environment (LE) depending on the aim of the learning. For example, a physical demanding LE for someone going through physical training. As for our students in schools, a LE that not only makes it conducive for the students but the teachers as well is required. An effective LE that both students and teachers would look forward to and feel free to voice and develop their ideas. An ineffective LE makes all parties involved feel incompatible and restricted with no call for learning to take place.
In an effective school learning environment, the following elements should be present: 1. Effective communication: Among the teacher, among the students, among the parents, between the teacher groups, student groups and parent groups.
2. Understanding of our objectives (Learning and teaching): Sometimes when the objectives between the different groups are not aligned, there will be misunderstanding.
3. Effective use of media to communicate, learn and teach: Use necessary tools to teach and learn effectively.
Conversely in an ineffective learning environment, the following will take place: 1. Closed communication within the groups. Though there may be communication within the group, the others are not aware of the needs of other groups (students, teachers and parents).
2. There are no clear objectives or structures for the learning and teaching process.
School climate is pertinent not only for learners, but for teachers as well. If performative pressures conflict with personal needs of learners and educators consisting of the school leaders and academic and non-academic staff members, the LE may disempower and disenfranchise participants who find the competitive psycho-social climate unbearably disaffective.
Learners, teachers and school leaders who are both disillusioned and overwhelmed by the "terrors of performativity" (Ball, 2003) often resort to unethical ways justified by the means. When deontology is displaced consequentialist thinking, learning environment becomes geared towards tangible, measurable outcomes that override the intangible and innate love for learning and intrinsic yearning to seek knowledge for its own sake.
One only has to examine the school climate of the reported learners and 6 teachers (2 men and 4 ladies: 2 Malays, and 4 Chinese) and who have committed suicide between 1959 to 2013, to appreciate the extent to which the school climate can undermine the learning environment.
Examples of learner-centered, assessment-centred, community and knowledge-centred environments that I have encountered:
(1) learner-centered: kindergarten, nursery and other non-examinable LEs (2) assessment-centred: Learners of examinable subjects in graduating classes (3) community-centred: wikipedia (4) knowledge-centred: NIE
183 comments:
Teenagers these days are very IT savvy. They may be listening to music, chat via MSN with another person and do blogging at the same time. Teachers can no longer just chalk (meaning write) and talk (meaning speak). The students may find it "very boring". A paradigm shift is needed in the teaching profession. Perhaps, students may be tested in front of the computer screen instead of writing on a piece of paper. Marking may be automated to a certain level for instant feedback and so on. It has opened up a new horizon for the learning environment.
I supposed an effective school LE depends very much on the school culture. Staff and pupil morale are very important in creating a conducive LE. In a "happy school", teachers and pupils are more likely to learn better.
On top of that, IT (or rather, ICT) is now very prevalent in schools. Its usage has definitely changed the learning environment. I've just attended a New Media workshop, and it is truly amazing to learn how things are evolving so fast. I sure some of our pupils are more IT savvy than us. We have to adapt our teaching methods accordingly, and having a complementing environment is important. For eg, having internet connections in every classroom or wireless network around the school. The use of tablets will also enable us to conduct our lessons outside the classroom. The use of interactive Smart Board will make learning more interesting.
As teachers, we have to keep pace with these changes, but amidst all these changes, we must not forget our core business of nurturing the next generation. =)
I will first start with an ineffective school learning environment I was in many years ago. I was in this enrichment art lesson at Bra Basah Road. I did not feel a sense of belonging as we (teacher & students) only met once a week. Furthermore, I also did not feel I was improving as the teacher only concentrated on the students who could draw. Though, I was keen on art, I was not a good artist and needed the teacher’s guidance which was not forth coming As a result, my self-esteem was low and I finally decided to drop out of the class as no learning was taking place.
My personal effective learning environment was when I was in this literature class in school. Though the teacher was young and a novice in the teaching profession, she made up her shortcomings by preparing her lessons well. She met our personal needs of wanting to do well in the subject. Furthermore, she was friendly and approachable, so we felt a sense of safety when we seek her help whenever we had difficulties understanding some literature concepts
I will first start with an ineffective school learning environment I was in many years ago. I was in this enrichment art lesson at Bra Basah Road. I did not feel a sense of belonging as we (teacher & students) only met once a week. Furthermore, I also did not feel I was improving as the teacher only concentrated on the students who could draw. Though, I was keen on art, I was not a good artist and needed the teacher’s guidance which was not forth coming As a result, my self-esteem was low and I finally decided to drop out of the class as no learning was taking place.
My personal effective learning environment was when I was in this literature class in school. Though the teacher was young and a novice in the teaching profession, she made up her shortcomings by preparing her lessons well. She met our personal needs of wanting to do well in the subject. Furthermore, she was friendly and approachable, so we felt a sense of safety when we seek her help whenever we had difficulties understanding some literature concepts.
koh Swee Keow
Please ignore the previous comment by 'dermaptera'. A posting error occured.
Koh Swee Keow
Personally, I had some bad experiences during my primary school days. After viewing the attached video, I realised that my need for esteem, love and affection was lacking then. I felt insecure as a student in class and in school.
However, when I was posted to secondary school, there was a paradigm shift, the teachers and classmates there were very encouraging. The environment in that school allow and encourage us to rise up from our failures. Most of my school days, I lift my head tall. School holidays are always full of activities. My esteem run high when my scoutmaster promoted me to Senior Patrol Leader in Sec 3 and I run the scout troop activities with other cooperating patrol leaders. Such empowering environment in my school days!
Really, perhaps a good learning environment is shaped and control by the teacher within us.
An effective learning environment is a place where teacher has clear expectations of the student behaviour, good instructional skills, and where the students felt a sense of belonging and empowerment. On the other hand, an ineffective learning environment is a place where the expectations were unclear and students do not have a sense of belonging and purpose.
I remembered enjoying learning Economics in junior college under a rather strict and firm teacher. The teacher was clear about her expectations of us and sets the tone for the classroom clearly. We were to prepare our tutorials before going for class and to have questions related to the topic ready. We spent every minute focused and engaged in the discussions of economics and time passed very quickly in her classroom. Although the teacher was strict, we felt a sense of belonging in her classroom, secured with the knowledge that we would definitely improve in our Economics under her charge. I remembered having high self-efficacy in her class; the effort that we put into the subject was directly proportional to our grades and we felt motivated to work even harder when our results improved. I think this positive learning experience is linked to the high level of empowerment I felt in the classroom.
I also remembered a constant fear of my English lessons in primary school. Coming from a non-English speaking family, I struggled with the language and felt inferior to my peers. It seemed that I simply could not improve my grades in English no matter how hard I tried. In retrospective, I probably did not even know the means to improve. Although the teacher was relatively gentle compared to my Economics teacher, her sudden outbursts of frustration at my poor standards frightened the daylights out of me. Those were the dark days indeed.
Wu Danping
Hi everyone,
I have started blogging. Here is my blog address. http://sweekeow-med858.blogspot.com/
Hope to hear from any of you.
koh Swee Keow(Chris)
My ideal effective school environment is depicted in the book Totto-Chan: The Little Girl at the Window by Tetsuko Kuroyanagi. What inspired me was the uncoventional headmaster who seek to recognise the students' strengths and qualities, and develop them. He created a safe and happy learning environment despite the physical constraints he faced. Moreover, World War 2 was going on at that time. There was a sense of empowerment because the child decided on his/her pace of learning and chose what they would like to learn daily. Headmaster and teachers heaped praises and encouragement on the students. Everyone is treated equally. There is no discrimination because in this book, the physically disabled students are regarded with equal importance. How I wish I am there with the author! Learning would be so meaningful. It would probably be more of a 'want' than a 'need'. :)
On the other hand, I suddenly recalled a tutor in Junior College. I was the worst student in terms of academic performance in the subject. She would be very sarcastic with her remarks and she did it openly in front of my peers. She had no respect for my feelings. This was one of my worst learning experience. My self-esteem needs were not met, based on Maslow's hierachy of needs. In the class, I was 'mute' and felt like wearing an invisible coat, so that she would not notice me. I dread going for her tutorials.
Based on these two examples I have given, I feel that teachers play an important role in shaping a conducive and effective learning environment. Effective learning environment makes one desire to learn but an ineffective learning environment can disable a learner.
I guess school learning environment is very much depend on the students, teachers(All staffs) as well as school's vision.I find that my school's Homeroom system is a classical example of effective learning environment. Each classes have thier own unique tastes which suit both to the students and teachers. It gives ownership and sense of belonging to the class. Also, Teachers need to know and identify the different learning styles(needs)of thier students and cater to them accordingly. As teachers we have to design, experiment,reflect(both teachers and students) and improve on our strategies that we use in our clasroom. Teachers have to embark on new avenues to tap on the students talents. In order to that, we have to equip ourselves with different modes of assessing,innovative lessons and creative skills. School must create a better learning culture and embark on different approaches to achieve this effectine learning environment. Nowadays, the students are better equipped in I.T. skills and are exposed to different media, thus it is important that we cater to the different needs of learning styles which will create a effective learning environment.
What makes an ineffective school learning environment is evident during my primary and secondary school education. All I can remember is that the teacher makes us memorize chunks of information, in fact I memorize sentence after sentences for my geography and literature. When it comes to examination, I regurgitate all the information that I have learnt, not even focusing on the question at hand and at times I cannot even remember what I have learnt. Obviously, I did not do well in my examinations and the school environment has not effectively supported me in learning with understanding.
Now, as a teacher myself, I see the education scene changing in leaps and bounds over the past 30 years. Teachers are taught to understand their pupils and look into their personal needs so as to bring out a sense of belonging, build up their self-esteem and empower leadership qualities in each pupil. Teachers must also adopt correct teaching strategies, methodologies and sound pedagogy to cater for the different abilities in the class. With the use of IT such as Internet, blogging, on-line chit-chat; and interactive CD Roms, lessons come alive, interesting and interactive. However, the teacher must align these activities with the objectives of the lessons to create a learner and knowledge centred environment. An effective school learning environment would also look into the assessment modes and connect learning to the community at large. In my school, pupils’ academic performance is not only based on tests and examinations (summative assessment), but other modes such as project work, presentation of work in drama, songs and lyrics are also taken into consideration. Pupils are also stretched when they apply their knowledge to serve the community such as the involvement in NYAA and this has an important effect on pupils’ academic achievement as it raises their self-esteem. I am proud to say that most of the schools now strive to achieve conducive school climate and school culture where effective teaching and learning takes place.
An effective school learning environment is dependent upon many factors such as being learner- centred, knowledge centred, assessment centred and community centred. Personally I feel that a supportive school culture that promotes these factors will help to create a conducive learning environment for the students and teachers. My personal experience with my school is that the teachers constantly review on what is being taught, how it is being taught, the modes of assessment used and how the teaching and learning is related to reality and current trends. Through this practice, the staff is strongly motivated with high morale and there is a sense of belonging and empowerment.Cooperation is also seen to be present.This is indirectly transcended to the students'level whereby they modelled after the teachers' behaviour and try their best to learn effectively and efficiently. Take for instance, the school recognises that teenagers of these days are IT savvy and courses are actually organised to meet their needs in terms of blogging and podcasting.At the same time, the teachers are also sent for these courses to keep up with the trend.
As for an ineffective learning environment,I recalled one of my secondary school teachers who made this comment," if students from another class can do this problem, why can't you?" In fact, the whole class hated this teacher because we are constantly being compared to another class. Her chalk and talk style of teaching did not meet our learning needs and she did not understood that each of us has different learning styles.
To sum it all,this illustrates how great an influence a teacher can have on the students. As such, the teacher plays an important role in helping to shape a conducive environment in order to make the students happy and desired to learn.
The attention spans of teenagers are very short nowadays. Their desire for instant gratification and wanting to be heard is ever so strong (read: personal blogs, online forums, mass multi-player online gaming etc).
It is difficult for teachers to compete with the kind media that is reaching out to our students if we continue to teach the way we were taught. With GOOGLE getting stronger by the day, teaching is slowly no longer about the teaching of content. It is about providing a child with the direction, purpose and meaning to the world in which he lives in.
A good learning environment is not about decorating the classroom, it is also not just a display of content neither is it confined to the four walls of the classroom (read: field trips, online blogs, online forums, self discovery).
A good learning environment is one that is able to intrinsically motivate a child to seek direction, purpose and meaning to the content that is presented in a lesson. The way to tell whether a learning environment is effective or not, is by the fruits produced. If an environment is able to cause a child to analysis, synthesis and evaluate content knowledge, it is a good learning environment.
I would like comment on the notion of the learner's needs in the learning environment with relation to my experience.I am citing an example from my secondary school experience. I wasw hopelessly bad in Maths.It was one subject where I never made the grade. The teachers who taught me from Sec 1 -4 never made any impression on me. Not until a young undergraduate, an unqualified relief teacher taught me and through her guidance and patience I was able to pass a Maths test. It was the first time I passed my Maths test which left me overjoyed. I guess what we can gather from here is that the so- called qualified teachers who taught me were teaching the class not individuals. The relief teacher who stayed with us for a short while taught me as an individual,made me feel secured, valued my self esteem and realised whatever little potential I may have. Maths may not be my cup of tea for years to come but the memories of that relief teacher will forever stay on my mind.
Well, my viewpoint here is that we may introduce many initiatives, educational policies and concepts whatever but if there is no care or concern or if the learner's needs are not addressed, I doubt we will make any achievements or progress in any learning environment.
Firstly, I would like to share my own views and personal experiences on what an effective school learning environment constitutes. I feel that an effective school learning environment is one where pupils can engage themselves in optimal learning, meaningful, interactive and intellectual discourse with both their teachers and with their own schoolmates or classmates.
From a macro level, I feel that the school’s staff culture plays an important role in building an effective school learning environment as teachers will very likely need the support of one another in all areas of school life – eg: instructional and resource materials, committees, CCAs, etc. For instance, in my own current school that I teach at, there is a very strong sharing culture among the teachers, and we would always discuss our pedagogy either at an informal setting, with our own colleagues sitting near us, or at a more serious level, eg: during departmental meetings, when we would reflect among ourselves the pros and cons of certain strategies.
Not only that, at a more micro level, I have also seen many teachers trying to make their classrooms a conducive and effective learning environment for their students. As I am a Class Committee teacher, I had observed how teachers actually stayed behind after school hours to decorate the class notice boards (amidst other school duties!) with their pupils and I could see that they had put in a lot of effort to make the classroom a very comfortable place for learning. And very often, this decorating exercise seems to be a very good way of building rapport with the pupils, who always enjoyed the process and the teachers, in the meantime, also got to know the pupils better, which I feel is an important process that contributes significantly to an effective classroom learning environment for the pupils.
Hi everyone, I would like to inform you that the previous posting titled ‘REFLECTIONS’ was written by me. ;-)
I wish to share about another incident which I feel is quite a good example of an ineffective learning environment. About two years back, when I was still rather new in my current school, the school’s computer labs were rather run down and the computers looked old. Worse, the seating arrangement was so badly organised, that the back of the monitors were facing the teachers, who had a very difficult time monitoring the pupils’ behaviour, and pupils often took the liberty to do their ‘own’ tasks, whenever they were expected to listen to instructions or look at the teacher’s demonstrations.
But, things started to change after the computer laboratories were renovated. Not only were the computers newer and more appealing, thus making the whole environment more pleasant for the pupils, the whole layout of the seating arrangement was changed in such a way that teachers could monitor pupils’ activities easily and very vigilantly, compared to its earlier façade. Of course, some might think that in the first scenario, perhaps the teachers should have been stricter in laying out the rules and had taken some stringent actions to make pupils behave better, but I really feel that the physical situation at that time was certainly not to the teachers’ advantage, as moving around the computer lab was rather difficult since it was rather cramped, let alone monitoring pupils’ activities.
Hence, I think that in certain cases, the physical aspect of the environment does play a very important role because ever since the new labs started operating, pupils do seem to be mindful of that fact that they are under easy surveillance, compared to the past, and they have certainly become more on task.
Learning environment in the classroom is very much dependent on how the teacher creates it. I was just watching the show "Triumph" last week on hallmark channel. It was a very meaningful show. It is a true story of a teacher named Ron Clarke who tried to teach English to a class of underprivileged and unmotivated students. The class was the one with the worst academic performance and to make them pass needed slightly more than a miracle. Ron instead of being in a state of despair, took up the challenge to bring them up to par with the rest. He of course used uncoventional methods like drinking packets of chocolate milk,until he puked to get them pay attention to grammar lessons he conducted. It may be silly, but it really got their attention.. He even sang songs to help them remember the presidents of USA. He even promised the Headmaster that the whole class will pass by the end of term. He knew he had to try all these unusual methods to win them over.. in doing so he appealed to their personal needs.. win he did.. finally he managed to bring tremendous changes to the learning environment of the class.
I always wanted to learn in such a fun way but more than often in my school days, I had been disappointed.
I remember when I was in Secondary school learning Domestic Science(called Home econs now), I had a very strict and ferocious teacher. I used to dislike her as she was always screaming her head off even if I had committed a small mistakes. I never learned much from her and was even frightened to meet her along the corridors.How can a child learn when she is not able to talk to the teacher and ask questions when she is in doubt?
When I became a teacher, I promised that I will become one whom the students can come for help.
Learning also must not be done using chalk and talk only or the old traditional methods that the teachers used when I was in school. A learning environment should also include a variety of stimuli to help students of different learning styles learn effectively. On another year of my sec school life, I was taught English by a Math teacher. Her lessons were highly predictable: compo writing or compre exercises or forming sentences with a list of given words. I was bored to death and of course, never improved in English during the course of her teaching. Same old boring, repetitve methods used.
A conducive learning environment should also cater to the needs of the students , be it physical, social or psychological, first before any real learning can take place. Students always like to know what the life of the teacher is like outside school as they enjoy connecting with them. I remember my additional math lessons always ended with my teacher relating something that happened in her life. We loved these life stories..as a result we felt more connected to the teacher and learnt better. Guess as girls, we had the appetite for some 'juicy story' she satisfied this need, thus the environment became conducive for learning.
That was me then as a student.At present, as a teacher, I try to connect with the students using modern ICT tools like msn..facebook(which I was invited to join and still figuring how to use it)and of course, blogging.
Of course, learning environment is not restricted to the four walls of the classroom. There should be ample opportunity for students to learn beyond the classroom. There is a rich learning environment outside the classroom.
The learning environment is complex and dynamic. It is complex because it involves so many aspects from the physical layout of the classroom, the way the teacher makes connections with the pupils, the rapport and liking between teacher and pupils, the sense of safety felt by the pupil that is created in the classroom by the teacher, the way the teacher understands her pupils and gets the pupils to gain new knowledge by building on pre-existing knowledge, the way the teacher assesss the pupil's understanding and gives feedback to help them grow and develop in their learning and the list goes on. And is only what the teacher does to create her classroom learning environement. However, the learning environment also involves what is outside the classroom - the school environment, the family, the community - of which the teacher has only some or very little influence over.
It is dynamic because educational outcomes keep changing (compare 20 years ago to today), the type of students that make up the class is different every year (and so the kind of learning environement that fits one class may not fit another exactly as the pupils's needs and behaviours are different in different classes) and there are so many different places we use in our teaching (in the classroom, in the laboratories, in the technical workshops, outside the school grounds, cyberspace, etc). We must think through carefully the kind of appropriate learning environment that needs to be created for each situation (I find pupils behave differently when in the classroom and when they are in the science laboratory - as so the procedure, rules, expectations, mode of teaching all need to change to tailor to the change in pupils' behaviour and pupils' expectations).
It is not easy creating a challenging and effective classroom learning environment. In my school, I see teachers making an effort to create a conducive physical environement in the classroom. I see teachers with great rapport with their pupils. Many teachers try to give their pupils a sense of belonging and empowerment and make efforts to build the spirit of co-operation in the class. I have noticed that the teachers that have classroom management problems are usually those who either do not have clear rules and procedures and do not follow through on what they say or they are distant and detached from their pupils. They are obviously not meeting their pupil's needs.
I learnt from the readings given to us by Dr Quek that how we structure and conduct our lessons in the classroom is also part of the learning environment. In my school, I feel that how we conduct our lessons is a major area of concern. We know we should use a variety of teaching modes and assessments to motivate pupils and to cater to different learning styles - we know instinctively, we learn from observing others and we have had a lot of training as MOE has been quite visionary in seeing what qualities need to be developed in the younger generation for Singapore to prosper and has changed the whole educational landscape in response to our country's needs. However, actually implementing it on a consistent level and in an effective way is not that easy to achieve in reality. Yes, we do conduct the occasional engaging lesson and we do try out new media and different forms of IT, we do conduct some experential lessons and have lessons beyond the classrooms and school grounds. However, are they done regularly or ad-hoc and are they planned and carried out in such a way that meaningful learning takes place and not used to simply momentarily catch the pupils' attention. At times we get so involved with finishing the syllabus that we put aside all these wonderful ways of teaching and go back to the "chalk and board" method (not that this is an unacceptable method, but 80% of the time!). We get involved in so many programms that are running in the school (which creates an enriching school learning environment, so that is good) but it is at the expense of our classroom learning environment - we do not find the time to create engaging and effective lessons. This is what I find happening in my school. The teachers are great, get along well and are willing to share their resources with each other - however, there is not much resources to share as priority has not been given to setting time aside to build up these resources/lesson plans, to think and reflect on lessons carried out and plan on how to improve on them. The reason given always is that there is not enough TIME. Is it because we find it difficult to change - inertia, a feeling of inadequacy or we are not being pushed enough by the school leaders? I hope this is not the case as this reflects poorly on us as teachers - if we believe in what we are doing, if we have the passion and if we are professionals, we would do what it takes to ensure our pupils receive a holistic education. No, I do not beleive this is the case - I see the passon in the teachers in my school. I think what we need is to build a culture of generataive conversation in the school, to have lots of encouragement and support and to lead by action - some teachers to lead the way and in the process carry the rest of us on this exciting new ride that leads to all kinds of opportunities - opportunities that make us better teachers/faciliators. When teachers see the positive ways pupils respond to their changed teaching styles, then we would be on the road to building a school with teachers able to create effective classroom learning environments.
To me an effective classroom learning environment is one that is able to engage students so that they become more responsible for their own learning and take control of themselves, they realize benefits from being more independent and accountable in the classroom. As a teacher, I constantly make an effort to provide my students this sense of ownership in the classroom. Through ownership, they become more responsible and engaged in their learning, and also see the necessity to include all other students in all class activities, and this helps to create a balanced ecosystem in the classroom.
Furthermore when students are able to participant in the classroom decision-making process, they can develop as whole persons (not just cognitively, but emotionally, socially, aesthetically, physically, and spiritually as well). One of my ex-students ever told be that students learn best when they are welcomed by caring, competent teachers who recognize and value their diversity, and where their teachers are always ready to listen and learn form them. I always keep this in mind and strive towards creating a non-treating learning environment in my own classrooms. I also believe that schools should nurture self-esteem and contribute to a sense of belonging that allow students to focus their efforts on the higher level needs necessary for personal and academic success.
Besides the above mentioned, technology also plays a very important role in creating effective learning environments in our classrooms today. It engages and motivates diverse groups of learners in order to meet their goals. However, meeting the needs of diverse learners does not rely totally on technology integration in the classrooms; an effective classroom learning environment is possible because of careful design. Planners first must have a clear picture of the kinds of interactions and processes they want to achieve. Technology integration, then, should not be an outcome, but rather a part of the larger instructional design process.
With that said, we must also not forget the physical environment of the classroom as it also affects students’ learning. An effective classroom environment is one that is clean, organized and dedicated to promoting feelings of well-being and therefore motivation to learn and focus.
We often hear the comments from students that they would study the subject if they like the teacher. Students often describe their favourite teachers as non judgmental, friendly, approachable and committed. These teachers offer the students joint partnership in the learning process to cultivate a sense of ownership in the students.
The classroom is also an important factor. It must be clean and conducive for learning. In my school, we organize the ‘My Classroom My Pride’ competition and encourage the students to decorate the class based on a theme. Through the process we hope that students can develop greater bond with each other and the form teacher. When students have greater ownership and a sense of belonging, learning can take place effectively.
I personally experienced an ineffective learning environment. I enrolled in a yoga lesson a month ago. The teacher was late for the first lesson. We were not informed that we had to bring our own mat and the teacher explained that she had intended to cancel the class because she was not feeling well. She had earlier postponed the lesson once. She did not greet us nor ask for our names.
I felt that the teacher had created a bad impression on the first day. She does not seem interested in conducting the lesson. She was definitely not mentally present with us as she had even forgotten to bring the class attendance and music CD for the lesson.
I felt rather lost and was already dreading the class. She passed sarcastic comments if anyone cannot get into the posture that she demonstrated. Some participants were looking around for assurance and felt rather nervous. I think the teacher did not bother to find out about her students’ background and we were apprehensive to ask her any questions because she seems unapproachable. It was definitely not a fun learning experience.
The fundamental goal of learning would be about enhancing cognitive learning potential and/or collaborative processes (Whidschitl, 2002).
Effectiveness has to take into account the objective that LE is created for. Different learning objectives would dictate instructional methods as would different disciplines naturally subscribing to different environments.
Take for example if the objective was to develop students creativity through the use of ICT. If the design was such that students product has to be a PowerPoint presentation as opposed to one where students could expressed themselves freely either through blogs, podcasts etc, it is obvious which one is more effective.
If the teacher is one that encourages students participation in class through the use of wait time and good questioning skills, students would feel more at ease at voicing their opinions. However if the teacher is unable to facilitate discussions well, students would take over the lesson and much time could be wasted. In addition, students who are less vocal or academically weaker may feel embarrassed to speak up resulting in teachers thinking that they are not paying attention or are just plain freeloaders.
The classroom learning environment can also be affected by outside influences. A good partnership with parents may lead to pupils paying more attention in class as pupils may feel that their parents are concerned about their learning. This is one of the goals of the No Child Left Behind Act in US.
Thus how a student copes with the environment (both in and out of a classroom) created by a teacher determines in part its effectiveness, and this could be partly seen through results. I say, partly as assessments are primarily targeted at curriculum / knowledge based goals and not the social emotional aspects.
About 6 years back when I was a beginning teacher I was conducting a lesson (Sec 1 Express - TAMIL) on the topic, "Observing and Admiring the Nature". I simply followed the activities given in the Textbook. It did not interest my pupils at all. I had the feeling that it was too boring for them. That lesson was a failure because there wasn't any pupils’ participation. I just used the chalk and talk method which gave little opportunity for them to engage themselves. They were easily put off. As for me when I reflect on this lesson, I feel that this was a good example of an ineffective learning environment.
After the reflection, I began to feel that I need to build an effective learning environment with a variety of stimuli which will help pupils learn effectively. The following year I decided to think of other innovative ideas on how to interest the pupils in that same topic. I decided not to follow the Textbook. I made arrangements to bring the pupils out of the classroom. I brought them to the nearest park (one of the public National Park) which was located just opposite my school. The minute they heard about going out of classroom, they got very excited. It was like a picnic for them. I gave them the freedom to move around and observe. I instructed them to do a reflection on what they observed at the end of the 2 periods. I was amazed by the way they were engaged in that activity. At the end of the day the pieces of work (reflection) which were given to me were very impressive. I was able to see my pupils' talents and creativity. Some expressed their thoughts not only in words but also through their drawings. I was able to see a significant impact of the change of physical environment on the learning outcomes. I didn't play a role of a traditional teacher then. I was facilitating them to learn something. I was a facilitator. As for me it was a successful lesson. From this experience I feel that Learning Environment is not confined to the four walls. Even an open field can be a good learning environment provided that the teacher or rather the facilitator arrange for appropriate activities which cater to the needs of the pupils. This will help to create an effective learning environment. In order to do this we as teachers should think out of the box on how to interest the pupils and to sustain their interest in whichever subject that we are teaching. Presently if I were to teach the same topic to the present type of pupils, I would still bring them out on a 'picnic' and on top of that I would get them to take pictures and put it along with their reflection in the blog for others to see and comment on. This emphasizes the use of IT in classrooms to suite the present type of pupils who are more IT savvy. This kind of modification will help to build an effective learning environment which will enhance learning.
An effective learning environment depends on many factors; some within the teachers' control and some not. But I believe the teacher plays a very key role in creating an effective and enjoyable learning environment.
I remember in my school days, the teachers who made learning effective and fun for me were the ones who took the trouble to know the students by name and were genuinely interested in helping them improve.
In contrast, I remember some teachers who belittle students and make them feel very small and unworthy.
After listening to Dr Quek's podcast, I realize that the effective teachers reached out to the students' personal needs and the ineffective ones did not.
So, although engaging students through the use of the latest technology may be important, teachers must not forget to reach out to meet the personal needs of the students in terms of knowing them as individuals and helping them to make improvements no matter what is their current achievement.
A positive school culture and climate will directly cascade down into positive classroom learning environments. In my opinion, an effective school learning environment leaves both students and teachers fulfilled and invigorated at the end of the day from the exchange of teaching and learning, and both are excited for more.
With the emphasis on Learner-Centred learning, gone (should be) the days when students are subjected to mechanical treatment of chalk and lecture. I remember in my initial jc days, I struggled a lot with my subjects as I often had to literally "unlearn" some concepts that had been deeply ingrained in me from secondary school days. It caused me a lot of frustration and considerable self-doubt. Clinical lecture and tutorial did little to answer those question marks floating in my head, and I was too shy to approach the stern lecturers for help. Whatever sense of self efficacy and self belief I had was utterly destroyed when I was forced to drop a subject at the end of jc one. What they didn't understand was that I just needed more time. Now an educator myself and as I look back in retrospect, my teachers could have been more effective had they been more aware of our different learning styles and needs.
As I learnt about human dynamics and multiple intelligences, I began to appreciate my own unique chracteristics and learning styles, be able to celebrate my own strengths, so that I can also be able to appreciate and celebrate that of others.
No doubt, students always change with the times and are constantly enticed by new gadgets and technology. It takes a sincere, dedicated teacher to be able to make use of these to appeal to interests, to create a rich learning environment and to make the learning experience more enriching for learners. After all, Learning Environments affect the psycho-social domain and this is what 'Touching Hearts, Engaging Minds' is about.
Learning environment will vary from school to school, individual to individual. A schools culture plays an important role in how this environment is created. An environment that caters to the needs of its pupil is considered an effective LE while one that does not address a child’s needs is considered ineffective.
Why do people still choose to watch certain movies in the theaters rather than the comfort of their home? Although there’s no difference in the movie, it’s the environment that makes the difference. Sometimes I feel that less distraction means better LE. Today in every school IT plays an impeccable role. This however does not mean that having IT alone will produce an effective LE; it has to be coupled with good teaching strategies, effective teachers and willing learners.
As an editorial teacher in charge, I faced problems with the way some of my students were reporting sports events. Their reports lacked credibility and reality as my reporters were not sporty type. I wanted to do something different and interesting to boost their writing skills. So I brought my pupils for a mini marathon at NYP. Though they did not win anything they turned out to be great sports reporters. Their experience made their writing more realistic and interesting. This outdoor activity provided a tremendous learning environment for my editors. Of course the teachers planning and my students willingness played a undeniable role in its success.
I have my own classroom for my MT lessons. While my classroom is considered quite conducive for my express and normal acad students, my NT students were very de motivated in my class. They did not understand what the motivational posters on the wall meant and they did not care about anything that was on display. It was increasingly difficult conducting lessons. I tried scolding, threatening (to call parents) etc. it was after I was totally exhausted and pregnant that I finally succeeded. I decided to try the soft approach. I took them outside the class very often. I did not follow the given syllabus, I planned my own lessons according to their pace and it worked. By changing the environment, the method and myself, I won them over. Now teaching is a much easier task.
I agree that the teacher is very crucial in determining whether the learning environment is effective or not. While reading some of the posts here, I just recalled the times when I was in junior college studying General Paper. I had a teacher who was able to create an effective classroom learning environment. She was able to garner the attention from us because of her strong character and the way she conducted her lessons. She did not really conduct a lot of fun/ exciting or student- centered lessons; except for the occasional debates held in class and some role plays. But, I feel that this GP teacher of mine was able to get the respect and attention of my classmates simply because firstly, she was very clear with her expectations of us and the way she carried herself made us have confidence in her.
I could vaguely remember that she would try to explain in great detail about the contents of certain readings taken from TIME/ NEWSWEEK magazines which seemed rather ‘alien’, to a bunch of just newly graduated secondary school kids who had been too used to reading and writing short stories and narratives. She was clear in her explanations and she made sure that we grew accustomed to reading such genres and she provided quite a bit of scaffolding in our writing tasks too. Throughout our learning process, I remember that no one really disrupted the class or were disrespectful to her, despite her sometimes seemingly predictable lessons. Instead, on hindsight, I feel that this erudite teacher had contributed to a large extent in raising my and my classmates’ awareness on current affairs. I guess the reason why she was able to create a successful learning environment for her pupils was due mainly to her confidence, sincerity, knowledge, the vision that she had for her pupils, her firmness and of course, the fact that she could also show empathy and concern for us whenever we didn’t exactly understand what she was saying.
;-)
I remember watching a documentary on some school environment in either Hong Kong or China. Parents spent quite a handsome sum of money just to enrol their children in these schools. Smaller class size, students are allowed to move around during lesson, students are provided board and lodging etc. I wonder how it can be implemented for those study in our neighbourhood schools?
I remember watching a documentary on some school environment in either Hong Kong or China. Parents spent quite a handsome sum of money just to enrol their children in these schools. Smaller class size, students are allowed to move around during lesson, students are provided board and lodging etc. I wonder how it can be implemented for those study in our neighbourhood schools?
An effective learning enivironment is one which affects students' behaviour positively towards goals of education. A school which gives students a sense of securtiy, a caring and nurturing learning environment which also allows them to make mistakes and ignite their passion for learning is what i percieved as effective.
When i was a secondary school student, the school i was in has a very strong positive school culture. Discipline was the most valued virtue. Though we were all girls, we got booked for keeping hair longer than the top part of our collar. We were not suppose to unbutton our first button as we must put on ties everyday. Though discipline was strict, we love our school and we take pride to be a member. We strived in both academic and CCA. For doing the school proud made us feel good. In this case, the effectiveness of the LE comes mainly via strong school culture. I do not remember having any impressive school facilities. the school building was old, but we excel. My teachers were strict, but not the innovative types we have these days. we were still having chalk and board type of lessons. But everyone were studious. That spurred everyone to work hard.
Many students view a conducive learning environment as one which is disciplined and orderly. That in fact, is just the most basic criteria for effective LE.
Personally, the school i am currently in was in a total lost state when i first joined the school 4 years ago. There was totally no culture for learning. In fact there was a chaotic mess. The damage was so bad to the school's reputation that up till now, fresh sec 1s were still told by seniors, they can get by the school in a breeze as there is no pressure at all, in all sense.
The most fundamental missing screw, was discipline. Students were not taking the school seriously. Ill disciplined students in red or blonde coloured hair were running outside my classroom, to my horror. That was a 3 normal academic class. i doubt there is any learning at all, least to say, effective.
To my relief this was the past.
In conclusion, i fully agree that an effective LE will help to shape positive human behaviours. a positive and disciplined school culture will affect how effective learning is.
Ho Chui Mei
During my childhood days, i could still remember having this "good" tuition teacher giving me tuitions. I always enjoyed going there for tuition even though i hate to study then. He would spoon feed me with answers the moment i found difficulty in solving them. Of course, he also provided a lot of good food. I though he was the best teacher on earth, it made my learning so easy. All i need to do is to ask for answers and it is there, without a thought of my own! However, this created a serious learning problem for me which i was totally ignorant about it then. Well, i would only realise it when i was being punished by my parents for not understanding a single concept during the lesson. I start to blame the tuition teacher for not providing a conducive and stimulating environment for me to learn and actualise. It really has affected me alot in such an ineffective learning environment. It was only in my secondary education that i realise a truely effective teacher not only provides a conducive learning environment through taking care of our physiological and safety needs but equally important, is to empower us to learn on our own, accept as what we are as a student and giving us the space to develop and actualise our own thinking. That is learning. Till date, i am still practising that as a teacher as i believe positive teaching and learning cannot take place without an effective learning environment.
I could not agree more with Dr Quek on how good learning environment is fundamental to a child’s cognitive & socio-psychological growths. It comprises more than just the complete fulfillment for the need for proper physical space to study. Personally I feel that a good learning environment would be one that provides both physical and psychological safety to its learners. Good classroom discipline or management is essential in the provision of both because with disorderliness and disruption, learners could no longer acquire new knowledge with ease of mind. As ‘discipline, most simply stated, is the business of enforcing simple classroom rules that facilitate learning and minimize disruption’ (Jones; 1979), it is arguably key in establishing a conducive learning environment. The teacher must develop a systematic method of delineating acceptable versus unacceptable behavior and the consequences of engaging in unacceptable behavior so that learning can take place comfortably.
Besides having an effective classroom discipline in place, motivation is another important factor in any learning environment. First and foremost, students must be highly motivated to learn as motivation will be the driving force that makes learners want to learn even when they are facing stumbling blocks in the course of learning. How to get the learners motivated? The relationship that teachers engender between themselves and learners is key in getting the learners to be interested in learning. The teacher should be motivated to wanting to learn more about his learners, beyond the outer details of their lives. As the teacher's familiarity and affection towards them grow, the learners’ would be receptive to learning, so the potency of his teachings and advice deepens proportionately. Hilda Taba reminds us that ‘the behavior of the teacher more than that of any other individual sets the climate of the classroom.’ The resistance and disinterest of learners evaporate in a climate of happy, friendly and cooperative relationships between learner and teacher.
When asked why I’m in this self-fulfilling profession, I would have to thank my greatest influence, that is, Mr Bentley Williams who was my form teacher for two years when I was in Secondary 3 in Jurong Secondary School (1994-95). His strict enforcement of classroom discipline was absurdly ridiculous to me at first but later as weeks grew, I understood the need for such to ensure that everyone understood what was required of him/her and provide a secure learning environment. With a good system in place, little time was used to address any discipline issue and hence more quality time was spent in dispensing of knowledge in a very interactive and creative way. I remembered having an (informal) English lesson at 4 in the afternoon while watching an interclass soccer match at the pitch. Mr Williams made us deliver an impromptu commentary on the match using the appropriate adjectives and adverbs and then got us to journalize the experience with the best entry winning a recess treat. He had reached out to his many students, the good and notorious ones alike, and not surprisingly, many of this wonderful man’s ex-students are teachers themselves now. Mr Williams indeed embodied a perfect teacher who not only ensured that we got the best of what each day had to offer, but he was also there for support should the day fail us.
Hi all,
The comments above made by sara are actually mine. I'm still trying to figure out how to change the nickname sara to cikgumartina (aka me). Sorry for the confusion.
When i was visiting some schools in New Zealand a few months back, I noticed that the physical environment was very people oriented. There was that sense of community-spiritedness. Walls are adorned with photos of students and one gets the idea that it's not just names of people but actual people instead. Just look around most school foyers and you may know what i mean.
S'pore's school climate reeks of achievement and meritocracy with a strong economic focus. In NZ, the community is upheld so much that it's part of school life to tie curriculum goals with community projects so that they can raise funds for the less fortunate. Our students on the other hand, have to be pushed to perform CIP.
But that said, the learning environment is very much tied once again to the educational outcome that we wish to see. Use cooperative learning strategies and you'll develop pupils to learn to work together. Use a traditional lecture-type approach and you'll get pupils who are generally more docile. The latter may have worked in the past due to the need for obedient workers in manufacturing companies but the need for creativity in the service industry, where our students will be in demands a learning environment that encourages them to voice their opinions yet combined with adequate knowledge.
I agreed with Andrew. You need not go to New Zealand. Just visit Australian International School in Singapore, you will see the difference.
It was interesting reading all the comments. Many of you mentioned the importance of the teacher in creating an effective classroom environment. This is so true. I can see that you all are good teachers from the examples that that you have given - I feel inspired to give more to my pupils.
Some mentioned a sense of security and discipline as being very important aspects. I feel that this is so important, especially the school level. 15 years ago, my school was notorious in the neighbourhood. Then a new principal came and he was extremely "ruthless". He patrolled the school like a policeman, went out of the school with a cane and chased the truants back to school. He had very high expectations and drove the pupils and teachers to live up to them. He tolerated no nonsense. Now this might seem draconian but he tempered this with reason and explanation and the pupils could see that he was doing this to make the school a safe and better place. In 3 years, there was a 180 degree change in the attitudes of the pupils. Pupils said that felt safer coming to school. There was discipline in the school and learning was actually occuring and results were improving tremendously. Once he established the discipline, he then changed - he was no longer the dragon-master. He began to give the pupils more independence, listened to their needs and gave them more responsibilites. He gave more autonomy to the teachers. The school blossomed. The 1st thing I learnt from him is that discipline is very important to create a learning environment - I probably could not and would not have done it the way he did it but there are many ways of establishing discipline. The point is that pupils need to know what their boundaries are, they need to know what the expectations are and must know that there are consequences for breking the rules and that they must accept the consequences of breaking these rules. Only then can learning occur. The 2nd thing I learnt from him is that we must be able to adapt to different situations. He was still strict and discipline was still imprtant, but his whole approach was different. Once he established discipline, he set out to build the pupils confidence and self esteem by showing them that he trusted them. He created an effective learning environemt by changing his style when the pupils changed in their behaviour and attitudes.
Learning Environment is a key factor in the education of any individual. We live in Digital Age now. Many things around are changing from day to day. As educators it is very important to reflect and re- assesses our objectives. In my opinion a paradigm shift should involve 21st century skills - e.g. digital age literacy, inventive thinking, effective communication etc. As we make these changes, we see the transcendence into our classrooms. It is important to create a condusive and inclusive Learning environment.
My memories of ineffective learning environments would be those of which I had to sit through boring chalk and talk lessons, memorize chunks of information, mugging for exams which required me to regurgitate those info, knots of tension that formed just before dreaded lessons which I was weak in, and intimidating teachers who only made matters worse. As I look back those incidents have only become bitter memories and not lessons learnt. As I started out as a teacher I did my fair share of creating ineffective learning environments as I groped around finding my footing. It took a while for me to realize that teachers’ guide is not going to help me achieve my objectives for my lessons. I learnt to analyse individual needs, experiment with methodologies, vary modes of assessment and soon my lesson objectives were becoming achievable.
Education in Singapore has come a long way with the many new thrusts ranging from I&E, TSLN , IT Masterplan ,Future School etc. As I journeyed on in the teaching field I have realized that different schools have different climates, cultures and environments created. Each unique in its own style with a common objective of providing a holistic curriculum to develop all rounded individuals. Being in a school where there is a pervasive use of ICT- enabled pedagogies coupled with student learning style approach I have realized the importance of creating the right kind of environment which will be challenging for our 21st century students. Students these days have great potential which when tapped the right way will yield the results we want. Mobile learning, and E learning and problem based learning tasks are some of the ways of I have experimented with which had resulted in a very motivating and engaging Learning Environment where students learn and achieve.
Shamini
I liked the pace of vocal delivery which I thought was just nice. The content was also clearly and systematically delivered and articulated. I thought it was useful foundational knowledge to kick-start the course on learning environments.
Podcast/blog allows the learners the freedom and opportunity to revisit the slides and the oral explanation as and when they need to, which is good. However, we must mindful of the limitation of technology in impacting knowlegdge between human beings.
Face to face interaction between instructor and learner is necessary to ensure the intended outcome gets transmitted to the learner, which can be observed from the body language and the interactions between people. Podcast is one-way and unless it is very well designed, it may not be effective as a learning tool. For eg in Dr Quek's Blog, James (or Jimmy) aimed to provide a balance to this one-way instrument by asking questions. However, the questions were not probing enough to trigger in-depth discussion, which I can understand may not be practical in a blog environment. Also, the presentation slide was too small to make up the words on it.
In summary, blog and podcast supplement the face-to-face instruction, and with a well-designed one, it definitely serves as a multipler to learning experience.
I feel that the landscape for learners to actually learn has definitely gone too far beyond textbooks.
Educators who still have resistance to change and adequately equipped themselves with the many advances of web tools will find themselves very distant from their students.
The glocal students I came across when introducing elearning concept esp. may not understand how exactly learning can take place out of physical face-to-face lesson (not web conference) depending on their countries background but they can pick up the skills very fast in learning tools that are 'cool' or 'in-thing' such as facebook, myhappyplanet, etc.
It is then up to the educator to find ways to integrate the social networking tools or other web 2.0 which are good tools for collaboration usage in education for their learning environment. the content for learning can be tweaked from one platform to another depending on the technology used but the learning objectives are usually similar.
I believe effective learning to a learner is the ability to attain the desired end-state of the learning outcomes. These outcomes can be in the form of knowledge and/or skills to execute the required standards to accomplish the tasks either in a controlled or uncontrolled environment. Separately, effective learning to a trainer is the ability to design and deliver the learning outcomes using the optimal pedagogical approaches.
Notably, ineffective learning environment is the disconnection among people, information, communications & technologies. It results to the lack of self-motivation, passion and drive.
Hi Dr Quek, I like the podcast on your blog. It gives a summary of the What, why and 3 key concepts of LE. I would certainly like to learn more on what makes a good LE and the strategies involved in creating a conducive, interactive and enjoyable environment for learning to take place.In this way, both learners and trainer can benefit for optimal learning.
An effective learning environment takes into account the profiles of students and their needs. While students are responsible for their learning, the learning approaches adopted by the trainer and the physical classroom environment affect not only the amount of knowledge transferred, but also, the attainment of that particular lesson objectives.
An ineffective learning environment is one where the lesson objectives were stunted due to the failure in knowledge transferred. This could be attributed to lack of motivation by both the students and trainers, poor classroom conditions and ineffective learning strategies adopted.
I look forward to learn more on how to assess and improve learning environment.
An effective learning environment is one where people can interact safely with each other. Learning through sharing of different perspectives. The teacher or facilitator play an important role in shaping the learning environment. Focusing on both the physiological and social needs of the participants. An effective environment appeal both to the senses and emotional aspect of the participants. An ineffective learning environment is one where there is only a one way communication where the lecturer simply download information to the learner. It make the learning dull and not interesting.
Hi Dr Quek, I am Serene Chua. My reflections on building a good learning environment are as follows:
1. We need to start with the physical aspects. That is, to build a conducive environment, it must be able to cater to the needs and learning styles/ preferences of the learners. For Generation X, most of them prefer a quiet environment that is not distracting and noisy.
2. It must be engaging and stimulating. That is, the topic or knowledge to be transferred must of important purpose and objective to the overall learning outcomes. The trainer must be able to "tickle" the curiosity of the learners and then unravel their desire to learn.
3. The Method of Instructions (MOI) can either be didactic or non-didactic. Again, there is no right or wrong answers here. It all depends on the maturity of the learners. It also depends on the type of knowledge to be transferred from the trainer. For instance, for skills-based and technical knowledge, the trainer must be didactic as these knowledge normally forms the foundational levels of the learners' knowledge domain. For subjects that are of social sciences and abstract, it will be more beneficial for the trainer to encourage peer learning.
I like the term "conducive and inclusive learning environment". More often than not, we don't use the word "inclusive" as this is the first time I come across it being used together with conducive l.e. As 'educators', I think this is the ideal l.e. to strive achieving. My past experience of one such l.e. happened when everyone, from the boss down to the clerical assistants had willingly played a part in creating a conducive and inclusive workplace. I think a good l.e. depends very much on people and their interactions, more than the physical infrastructure and environmental factors. So, in the e-learning/IT age, can we create a "conducive & inclusive" l.e., especially when the interaction between people are very much restricted?
Leraning Enviromnment has to do with the climate, culture and perception of the learner so much so that it influences his/her learning process. The most important aspect is to understand and deal with the negative perceptions of the learner
ARI
What makes an effective LE?
People learn through the 5 senses. The designer of teh LE must take into consideration the physical, emotional, social, spiritual, ?????(can't remember the 5th one). The physical environment addresses how the room is setup ( cafe style, fish bowl, traditional classroom, etc). The structure of the classroom has a profound effect on the learners. The brightly colored walls, posters and pictures represent visual effects on the learners. The social affects will be the interaction that takes place between people in the LE. The emotional aspect will be when people feel safe in sharing their thoughts and thinking about what they are learning. The teacher plays a crucial role in providing the emotional safety in the LE. Let me reflect on the other two aspects and come back later.
What makes an ineffective LE?
When all the 5 domains of the LE is not taken into account in the design of it and when the teacher has adopted a telling or directive approach in teaching.
Its very important that the trainer creates the correct environment to the targeted audience. A mis-match usually leads to a no-learning session thus time and effort are wasted.
'Assessing the Learning Environment' is next on the agenda. From where I was trainees' were in a way 'ordered' to attend a course or undergo some form of training; interest and motivation is not always a given. I found it a big challenge to improve and sustain their level of interest well beyond the lesson. We tried to improve the qualitative side by making the environment more conducive, we had also tried different teaching styles but the gains are all marginal.
There are other areas we had not consider; the 'People' or trainees is certainly a big factor we don't usually pay much attention to. I hope go in depth into the 'People' to try to improve the learning of my trainees.
The three key components in learning environment are the person, personal needs, and human behavior. An effective trainer or facilitator is responsible to provide a conducive learning environment so that learners can learn effectively in a non-threatening situation. Whichever the learning strategies a trainer may apply, he is to ensure that learning is fun, exciting, engaging and enriching (LIFE3)
I have just completed my second module on Education Psychology in Learning Science. My take on Learning Environment stems out from there. It has to do with the Learner, the Instructor and the Learning Process.
I am sure many of us are bought up in an environment where teachers would "download" information and hope that at the end of the day, you would memorise them. Are the teachers not professional then? Or is it something wrong with he learning process?
We all know that time has change and so has our education system. My personal belief is even if you can provide the most conducive learning environment and the best learning methodogy, at the end of the day, it is still all about the learner himself.
I believe younster nowadays are really IT savvy. I am trying to learn from them.
My time in school is using chalk & board. Now is using tabloid PC.
Heard about online learning but I never try it before.
Learning environment must be conducive and non-threatening. I want to learn more things about Assessing & Learning Environment.
I was brought up in the learning environment whereby I am taught via a one-way approach of the teacher downloading to me. The L.E. is straight forward, a class of 40, a desk and chair, a blackboard and OHP and the teacher then rock and roll. We survived.
But in today's context, a classroom can be a fun but 'fearful' place. Fun in the sence that you realised we are so connected; i.e. the available tools of the computer and equipment that string us together. The learning is escalated. Fearful, because I am equally worried about my screen being posted or "jungle-booked", embarrassing...!
However, having to compare the new and the old, i preferred the new. Why, I felt that it had effectively not only quicken the process for learning but also deepen the learning. The contents can be replayed, paused, cross share, etc. This was not possible then.
Wow, this is interesing! Never knew the Learning Environment can influence a Person, Person's Needs and Human Behavior. Looks like I'm gonna have a great learning experience in this week ahead. I always thought L.E. is largely concerned about the physical learning environment and probably the human factor to a little extent.... Hey! learning through blogging is fun. Never saw blogging in that manner.
Personally, I had some difficult time in the beginning of the start in the vocational training in my institution in the army many years ago. After viewing the attached video, I realised that my need for esteem, love and affection was lacking then. I felt insecure as a trainee in my unit as the instructor appear to be unfriendly and did not feel much about my needs and I was not really motivated to learn.
However, when I was posted to another section outside the unit, there was a paradigm shift, the new instructor and course mates there were very encouraging. The environment in that institution allows and encourages me to rise up from my failures and reinforced my success in most situations. From then on, most of my unit days, I lifted my head tall. My esteem runs high when my unit commander promoted me to operational unit Leader in my section and I run the squad activities with other cooperating section leaders. Such empowering environment in my operational unit days!
Really, perhaps a good learning environment is shaped and control by the instructor / mentor within us.
We normally forcus on only classroom atmostphere when we look into an environment. During this short clip on EL we have come to understand the 3 concepts of LE which also includes the Climate , Culture and perception and also how personal needs may even determine Human behaviour.
In the past, my learning environment is to attend classes and pay attention in class. Whatever the teachers taught, we just follow and try to learn as much as possible. Teacher who is good in their teaching skill often get apprised by the students and likewise, for those unfavourable teachers- student will tend to skip classes. As a result, I do not have good memories during my school day and I didn’t achieved good grade in school.
On the later part, at age of 32 years old – SAF encourage continuing learning and upgrade our academic study. Then I begin to further my study and try to move on. It was a total changed from my past learning and present environment. Teachers are more adapted to classroom set up and learning environment.
All in all, I manage to complete my diploma, advance diploma and degree within 6 years and I am no longer afraid to go for classes anymore. In Fact, my phobia have turned out to be – I enjoy going to school and mixing with students and classmates…….hahahahahaha
“Isn’t is a Good Learning Environment”
In the past, my learning environment is to attend classes and pay attention in class. Whatever the teachers taught, we just follow and try to learn as much as possible. Teacher who is good in their teaching skill often get apprised by the students and likewise, for those unfavourable teachers- student will tend to skip classes. As a result, I do not have good memories during my school day and I didn’t achieved good grade in school.
On the later part, at age of 32 years old – SAF encourage continuing learning and upgrade our academic study. Then I begin to further my study and try to move on. It was a total changed from my past learning and present environment. Teachers are more adapted to classroom set up and learning environment.
All in all, I manage to complete my diploma, advance diploma and degree within 6 years and I am no longer afraid to go for classes anymore. In Fact, my phobia have turned out to be – I enjoy going to school and mixing with students and classmates…….hahahahahaha
“Isn’t is a Good Learning Environment”
In the past, my learning environment is to attend classes and pay attention in class. Whatever the teachers taught, we just follow and try to learn as much as possible. Teacher who is good in their teaching skill often get apprised by the students and likewise, for those unfavourable teachers- student will tend to skip classes. As a result, I do not have good memories during my school day and I didn’t achieved good grade in school.
On the later part, at age of 32 years old – SAF encourage continuing learning and upgrade our academic study. Then I begin to further my study and try to move on. It was a total changed from my past learning and present environment. Teachers are more adapted to classroom set up and learning environment.
All in all, I manage to complete my diploma, advance diploma and degree within 6 years and I am no longer afraid to go for classes anymore. In Fact, my phobia have turned out to be – I enjoy going to school and mixing with students and classmates…….hahahahahaha
“Isn’t is a Good Learning Environment”
In the past, my learning environment is to attend classes and pay attention in class. Whatever the teachers taught, we just follow and try to learn as much as possible. Teacher who is good in their teaching skill often get apprised by the students and likewise, for those unfavourable teachers- student will tend to skip classes. As a result, I do not have good memories during my school day and I didn’t achieved good grade in school.
On the later part, at age of 32 years old – SAF encourage continuing learning and upgrade our academic study. Then I begin to further my study and try to move on. It was a total changed from my past learning and present environment. Teachers are more adapted to classroom set up and learning environment.
All in all, I manage to complete my diploma, advance diploma and degree within 6 years and I am no longer afraid to go for classes anymore. In Fact, my phobia have turned out to be – I enjoy going to school and mixing with students and classmates…….hahahahahaha
“Isn’t is a Good Learning Environment”
My initial take on learning environment (LE) was the physical environment, such as furniture, layout of clusters of furniture, lights, projectors and so on. From the podcast, I now know that LE is not just on the physical but also on the psychological perception and how the individual interact with each other in the environment. This would mean the knowledge of psychology and team dynamics will come into play when we assess LE. So besides the physical aspects, we have to look at how knowledge is sourced, retrieved, captured and stored. Also, we have to be concern about the individual's feeling, his needs when he comes to class. If there is online component in the course, we have also need to take care of the trainees' needs even outside the classroom.
Learning Environment entails climate, culture and perception of a learner. Hence, managing the learner's perception especially negative ones, is inportant in allowing the learner to excel in whatever he endaevours to achieve.
I'll always remember the story told during the Educational Psychology module by one of the classmate when she posted to the class a question asking about the difference between Israel's educational system and ours. In the Israel's system, parents and teachers encourages questioning during lessons and at home. Parents may start the day wanting their children to set the aim of asking 10 questions and returning home with answers. Teachers, on the other hand, will always encourage the class to ask instead of giving answers the first instance. Giving answers stop learning. On the other hand, asking and questioning creates the environment to feel safe and experiment, at least given the freedom to hypothesize with one's perceptions of the content/subject. Learner's instil in themselves' the spirit of inquisitiveness that's paramount to building lifelong learning behaviour. This Enquiring-type of learning environment should be seamless between the school, home and the general public such that the culture for learning is congruent enough (as in people accept others to ask) to make continual learning intuitive. In our society, in my opinion, people are made to percieve shame and discomfort even during pre-school and at home about being inquisitive. To focus attention only in certain areas (eg. certain schools) where being curious is encouraged will merely see the efforts nullified when the learners start interacting at home and the general public. Creating positive learning environment is crucial in ensuring our nation's only resource of human capital to be of quality. Efforts must be put in to educate and promote (even helping to make paradigm shifts through greater awareness) inquisitiveness at all levels of society, home and education partnerships in order to truly make Singapore a learning nation.
What is a good learning environment? You may ask...
In the past, SAF have always ignored the importance of the Learning Environment, which directly and indirectly affected the learners' learning capacities and abilities. We have come along way, learning from mistakes and adopting the MOE approach in considering learning evironment during military lessons.
An effective learning environment is a place where trainer has clear expectations of the students' behaviour, good instructional skills, and where the students felt a sense of belonging and empowerment. On the other hand, an ineffective learning environment is a place where the expectations were unclear and students do not have a sense of belonging and purpose. School learning environment is very much depend on the students, trainers as well as military school's vision.I find that my school's Homeroom system is a classical example of effective learning environment. Each classes have thier own unique tastes which suit both to the students and trainers. It gives ownership and sense of belonging to the class. Also, Trainers need to know and identify the different learning styles(needs)of their students and cater to them accordingly. As trainers, we have to design, experiment,reflect (both trainers and students) and improve on our strategies that we use in our classroom. Trainers have to embark on new avenues to tap on the students talents. In order to that, we have to equip ourselves with different modes of assessing,innovative lessons and creative skills.
All SAF Military Schools must learn to create a better learning culture and embark on different approaches to achieve this effective learning environment. Nowadays, the students are better equipped in I.T. skills and are exposed to different media, thus it is important that we cater to the different needs of learning styles which will create a effective learning environment.
As a trainer myself, I see the education scene changing in leaps and bounds over the past 10 years. Trainers were taught to understand their students and look into their personal needs (Maslow's Hieriechy of Needs) so as to bring out a sense of belonging, build up their self-esteem and empower leadership qualities in each cadet. Trainers must also adopt correct teaching strategies, methodologies and sound pedagogy to cater for the different abilities in the class. With the use of IT such as Internet, blogging, on-line chit-chat; and interactive CD Roms, lessons come alive, interesting and interactive.
I remembered Dr Quek asking us a question during tutorial 1. What is a Learning Environment? Does it just constitutes the physical environment or other factors?
After watching the video, i have learnt more about the different factors influencing learning environment.
I think an effective school learning environment largely depends on whether the needs of the student is being met. What is an "effective" learning environment defined by one, may not be that effective to another especially if one of the major needs of that person is not fulfilled.
Certain factors like physical environment of the classroom can be easily built up by the teacher with furnitures and fixtures. This physical aspect of classroom learning environment could easily fulfill the needs of students as long as the physical layout and arrangement of the classroom, produce an environment that gives the students the sense of security and conduciveness required of learning.
However, i feel that the factor that would make an environment not so effective to Student A compared to student B is when other personal needs of Student A are not fulfilled by the learning environment.
Take for instance,when Student A's need for recognition by the teacher is not met. Student A may be a weaker student in academic aspect than Student B, thus leading to him getting less praises and lower recognition from the teacher. This will result in Student A having a lower esteem. He will then feel less motivated to work hard despite the fact that the physical aspect of classroom learning environment has been taken care of.
The concepts of classroom learning environment are related to achievement goal theory and teacher interpersonal behaviour as shown in literature. Thus very often, teacher in the key person to create the classroom learning environment. I would term the teacher as the "creator" or the "designer" of classroom learning environment.
Whether a classroom learning environment is deemed as "effective" or not, is largely dependent on the tone set by the teacher. If the teacher presents himself as an encouraging educator, very often you could see that the students' levels of self-esteem are high and they are more motivated to learn compared to another teacher who is most of the time, sarcastic and shows no effort to teach and care for the students.
We were all students in the past and now as teachers. Thus we could really feel the difference in classroom environments created with different teaching styles. Everyone likes to be recognised for their efforts put in and wished to be recognised and empowered. This goes for all students and even adults ourselves.
Hence if i were to answer "What makes an effective or an ineffective school learning environment?" I would say it is we, the teachers, determining the effectiveness of the learning environment.
Because of the importance of creating a stimulating and conducive learning environment for our students, we teachers are heavily appraised for our efforts in taking care of the pastoral care and well-being of our students (quoted from the EPMS) = )
A classroom learning environment very often sets the tone of learning for pupils. How pupils interact with their teachers becomes very crucial.
Very often each class have several teachers teaching them different subjects. Each teacher has his or her own teaching style and practice which is different from the other teachers.
An effective learning environment is one where pupils are able to interact effectively with his or her teachers communicating on what is being learn and what needs further explaination and clarification.
I can safely say that most of us underwent a curriculum whereby learning was a one way channel, where the teacher teach and we learn. This was followed by endless worksheets and assignments. This results in an ineffective learning environment as not all pupils are able to keep pace with what the teacher was teaching needless to say, understanding what was being taught in class.
However each pupil have very different learning needs. Some are more visual while others are more auditory. Hence it has become a challenge for teachers to better engage pupils and design a learning environment where it is able to meet each pupil's learning needs. As such schools have looked into multiple intelligence where different pupils are engaged in different manners and they are challenged differently according to their abilities. In this manner, this will lead up to an effective learning environment.
After all as educators of our future leaders of Singapore, "What we reap now, is what we are going to sow in futre."
As mentioned by Dr Quek's podcast, learning environment influences the person, his or her needs and also the behaviour that he or she exhibits. Thus, it is vital to create a conducive learning environment for our students.
An effective learning environment definitely allows the students to discover their potentials and in hope for them to unleash. IT aided teaching facilities, professional trained teachers and excellent school culture indeed accelerate the process of learning among individuals. This make up an effective learning environment.
Computer labs, ready wireless internet access in the school and visual audio aided equipment such as visualiser are available in all classrooms. These certainly help in creating an effective school learning environment as most students are visual learners.
However, I do come across instances that make learning environment ineffective in school. The tight schedule to complete syllabus (due to other activities and events in schools) causes a lack of fun and interesting outdoor lessons. This posed a hindrance in student’s learning, especially in that of Science. I believe students will definitely appreciate the natural habitat and vegetation during the outdoor lessons rather than reading and understanding from textbooks and videos.
Moreover, the lack of classrooms in the school hinders us to carry out remedial lessons outside school curriculum. I remembered one instance that two colleagues of mine had to combine classes with mine to give a mass lecture. This definitely does not attribute to an effective school learning environment.
After having 2½ years of experience in teaching, now if I were to comment on what constitutes an effective classroom environment, it would be one which has both directed and self-directed activities.
These activities should facilitate continuous learning. The designed for these activities should be done with pupils’ need in mind.
Pupils will have to know the order and the system in the environment for them to reap its maximum benefit. In this way at any one point of time, pupils will be actively participating and thus this will give them time to think about misbehaving. This will also allow time for the teacher to work with the struggling learners.
The environment has to be changing in accordance to the changing needs of the pupils as well.
In the school I am teaching in, we have incorporated learning centres e.g. Computer Centre, Learning Palette Centre and etc. This is a superbly great inclusion in the environment as it allows us to have independent tasks and teacher-led ones too. As soon as pupils finish their task for the day, they will go to these centres to do self-directed tasks which reinforces on the concepts learnt. Pupils are to self-check with the provisions made at the respective centres.
On the other hand, ineffective environments will therefore be the ones where pupils are seen disengaged in activities. It is a place where there are episodes of misbehaviour, low academic achievements and sad to say teachers are least interested or motivated to make changes.
The school learning environment is made up of many components, apart from physical attributes like layout, technical equipment and facilities just to name a few; we also have the stakeholders whose vested interests vary. When we mention effectiveness of the school-learning environment, we could be looking at how well the desired outcomes of education are achieved in our context.
The school-learning environment will directly or indirectly shape the classroom-learning environment. Similarly, the individual classroom learning environments, collectively, will form the school-learning environment. Therefore, for a school to have an effective learning environment, it must have a culture built upon a mutual understanding of teaching and learning to meet every individual’s needs. The individual, be it a teacher or pupil should perceive the school positively and feel safe and secure in an environment very much like home.
If the classroom-learning environment is a subset of the school-learning environment, then the teacher in every individual classroom is the best person to take on the task of making the learning environment an effective one. Many a time, as teachers, we do not have the luxury of teaching in a homogenous classroom. Even in the seemingly homogenous classes, in the way that the pupils are streamed according to their results, there will be tremendous difference in the pupils’ learning styles and preferences.
Teachers are tasked to teach pupils - not only to pass exams - to pass exams with flying colours. We are required to adopt differentiated teaching strategies to cater to the pupils’ different learning needs, and at the same time pay attention to their emotional learning needs. We are like the teacher, mentor, friend, nanny, guardian, and disciplinarian all rolled into one.
Within the classroom and beyond, we should give our pupils frequent opportunities to apply their skills and understanding, and to develop their knowledge, within a secure and flexible learning environment. The learning culture should be pupil-centred, valuing pupils' own interests and learning styles; encourage independence and autonomy, and support pupils in using their initiative; encourage pupils to be open to ideas and initiatives presented by others; be unconstrained by subject boundaries or established conventions; encourage the use of a variety of resources, ideas, methods and tasks; involve pupils in working in a range of settings and combinations - as individuals, in pairs, as a class, cross-year, cross-school and inter-school; encourage pupils to reflect on the process of their own learning and to understand the factors that help them to make progress. (The points in this paragraph are gathered from http://www.eic-middlesbrough.gov.uk/gandt/practice/practice_docs/effectivelearningenvironment.htm)
As teachers, we hope to achieve the above mentioned but we know sometimes there are factors that hinder our effort to make the learning environment less effective. For instance, we may have pupils who are uncooperative. What can we do to win these individuals over? Through experience, I realized that I might not have the time in class to cater to every individual. However, I will always make it a point to take note of any improvements made by the pupils, no matter how insignificant it may seem.
For instance, there was a pupil whom I came across whose handwriting is almost illegible. On one occasion, I noticed that he actually took the effort to erase a word and rewrite it. I wrote a remark at the end of his work that I appreciate his effort in taking little steps to ensure that his handwriting was neater. I did that on a regular basis and true enough, the child’s handwriting did improve. His parents were also every happy. One day, as I talked to the class, I mentioned the effort put in by the individuals that I had observed and I showed how this boy’s handwriting has improved using the visualiser. I could see that he was very shy about it but at the same time beaming with joy. The whole class clapped for him and I was glad I had helped this boy achieve what was seemingly an uphill task as he had been labeled untidy, having incorrigible handwriting and so on before.
Some times, it just takes a little effort on the teacher to be more observant and reflective. Reflections help the teacher go through the events that happen in the classroom and how to handle situations better, if similar situations arise. Reflections also help the teacher improve on teaching strategies and to understand every individual pupil better.
Uncooperative parents could be another reason that hampers our effort. Very much like the way we win the kids over, sometimes we have to win the parents over. However, the parents are not always the ones at fault. Perhaps they do not understand the way certain things are done in school. If we have communicated with them regularly, they would understand where we are coming from and lend us their support. If we can convince them to be partners in educating their kids, they would be more than willing to give their full support.
What makes for an effective learning environment? The facilities, the resources available, IT may all play an important role in making a school learning environment effective. However, I think the teacher is the key to an effective learning environment. The teacher can nurture a sense of wanting to learn and know more, feelings of a sense of “belonging and empowerment” in a child, help a child bloom. At the same time an uncaring teacher can make a learning environment ineffective by lowering his/her self-esteem, boring a child, misunderstanding a child, making a child averse to school. I remember my pre-school teacher. Everyday, I would go to school screaming. My mother was at wit’s end on what to do. A turning point was when my teacher (inspite of my behavior), gave me a role in a small class play. I have observed teachers who are both knowledgeable, know how to impart this knowledge and make school a haven for learners. I remember my secondary literature teacher. I loved reading stories, books, and novels. However, poems, I did not like much-it was more an indifference towards poems. That was until I met my literature teacher. She would come in her class and you could literally see her eyes light up. When she would talk to us and help us understand poems-her eyes were always bright and shiny. It was her passion for poems that helped us get to love it. However, it was not just her love for literature. It was also because she was a person who cared, not in an overboard manner. In contrast, we had this teacher who was unkind to my naughty classmates or to my classmates who did not answer well in class. Even if I was not the brunt of her put downs, it was still unnerving to go to a class whose teacher belittled others. It made for an ineffective learning environment since the atmosphere became psychologically “unsafe”. I know I was ineffective in my teaching when I would not prepare well for class. It would be hard for me to hold my students` attention. Aside from the teacher, what I find also most helpful is if the family of a child is also supportive. Majority of my students who are avid independent learners, also have families whose goals are aligned with the school`s mission-vision; whose values are aligned with the school`s values. An effective school environment is actually a whole mix of everything in the environment: the faculty, the curriculum, the resources, facilities, administration, the classmates, the community and even the learner himself. But a teacher is crucial in promoting an effective learning environment.
In my own personal opinion, a good learning environment would be one whereby there are differentiated structures which are necessary for effective individualised learning. Teachers have to ensure that the resources used are appropriate and relevant to the pupils' learning needs.
At the school level, good learning and teaching displays can also be used in corridors and play areas to support a planned set of values.
Display of pupils' works can also help to enhance the pupils' self-esteem and sense of belonging to his learning environment.
With the advancement in technology, provision of a variety of hands-on materials and a good and effective classroom management system, teachers can try out many ways to create a condusive and inclusive classroom environment for learning and teaching.
Nur Azah Roslan
http://www.nurazahroslan@blogspot.com
After listening to Dr Quek’s podcast as well as reading my course mates’ comments, I realised that although our definitions of learning environment covers a spectrum of ideas and definition but it all converges to enhancing learning and teaching with the resources available in the respective schools.
Susyna Chan
Pierre Dillenbourg defined learning environments to include the following characteristics:
• It is designed information space
• It is a social space
• Explicitly represented
• Where students are not only active but actors
• Not restricted to distance education
• Use s multiple tools
• Overlap the physical environment
I have always thought that teaching strategies and passion for teaching are the essential tools to ensure a child learns best. However, it takes two hands to clap for effective teaching and learning to take place. This means both teacher and students are involved. In this way, the learning environment plays an important role for both teachers and pupils.
To me, a good learning environment would be one that has good ventilation, space that are meaningful used, suitable furniture for the children, healthy and non-threatening environment, appropriate displays, manipulative and resources. It also takes experience for a teacher to see how the learning environment can further enhanced or improved. For example, after teaching primary 1 for almost 3 years, I realised that some factors such as big prints (of vocabulary taught), displays of pupils’ work (either group or individual), pupils names and pictures , colours and many more help to make the classroom more appealing to the children as well as develop their sense of belonging to the class and ownership of their work. A safe and non-threatening environments is also very important especially so for the reserved learners. Perhaps we can use more positive reinforcements instead of the negative ones. Also, we should consider the help and support required for those pupils with special needs or short attention span.
However, teachers today also face some restrictions. It can be the lack of resources and facilities in the school. My school, for instance has a huge student population. Thus, we do not have enough space for the activities to be carried out. Remedial classes are conducted not within classrooms but in the space between classrooms which are not conducive, in my opinions, (with other teachers and pupils running alongside) and thus can be very distracting.
Although our classrooms are designed to maximise the best, it may not to be as conducive to the pupils. For instance, our humid and warm climate can the one factor that pupils’ attention span to be shorter especially the younger ones despite of the 6 fans installed (all switched on to the maximum). Even teachers are complaining and rushing to the air-conditioned staff room.
Whatever, the restrictions may be, we as teachers will then have to try to enhance the classroom learning environments to make teaching and learning effective. For example, on warm days, I would bring my class to the library to cool down themselves as well as to enhance reading ability.
Before one can conclude that a particular school has an effective learning environment, we need to evaluate it from various perspectives. It wouldn't be just a single attributing factor. For instance, incorporating cooperative learning strategies in lessons do seem like taking a learner-centred perspective towards an effective school learning environment. However, an effective environment must also provide teachers with opportunities to obtain feedback on students' learning. As such, various factors ought to be considered when assessing what constitutes an effective school learning environment.
My current school encourages the use of cooperative learning strategies in lessons. This is done in the spirit of TLLM and getting pupils to be engaged in learning. To prepare for this, most teachers were trained on the CL strategies so the teachers feel empowered and see the usefulness of these strategies. As a result, lessons are more interesting as pupils are more on-task. At the same time, the teacher gets to assess formatively how his/her pupils are performing by observing them completing the assigned tasks and by discussing about the activities after they have completed them.
In another instance, to illustrate an ineffective learning environment, I have observed beginning teachers who have selected teaching resources of a rather foreign context. It is not entirely inappropriate but there is a need to assess if the pupils have prior knowledge of the subject matter or it may leave the learners more confused than ever. Duckworth (1987) explains this need to understanding learners' prior experiences as building 'bridges' to new understanding. By taking the learner-centred perspective, teachers are also addressing the needs of their pupils. In the instance highlighted above, a simple explanation on the subject matter will better prepare the pupils for the new knowledge.
Learning Environment - I should say before I listened to the podcast and caught up with a few readings I was totally unaware of al the factors that could actually influence the learning environment. Now I have a clearer perspective and I am sure as a teacher, it becomes very handy to know these issues as it would be of utmost importance to us.
Effective Learnig Environment:-
1) influences the person, personal needs and human behaviour - as such in our schools we can first start off by looking at the students as well as teachers. If the classroom is suitable for the class to be conducted in - that is already adding to a good learning environment. When we say classroom, many other factors have to be considered. -Is it properly ventilated? Are the equipments used optimaaly? Are the students feeling threatened in any way ? Is the teacher able to deliver the lessons well? Most importantly, how are we able to measure all these are done properly ? By experimenting with ideas and different approaches, one will be able to arrive at an effective learning environment. Experience with such situations come in handy as well. One size sure does not fit all.
Ineffective Learning Environments
This boils down to all the "complains" of students and even teachers at times :)
a) Too much work and too little time - covering more than what could be done for Exams in school ?
b) Trying to implement ICT in teaching when teachers are not even fully trained yet or when facilities are not up to date yet.
There are many other practical instances that I am sure we teachers have seen in our own schools.
Since we are doing this module, let us try to help and weave our way through to achieve an effective learning environment with the help of Dr Quek.
What makes an effective school learning environment? This is a critical question that every teacher must ask. However, many of us did not consciously ask this question per se or directly in this manner. To be fair though, many teachers of us would take time to reflect on our teaching to find better ways to improve our teaching so that our pupils can understand better. We also take time to share informally what works for our pupils.
Personally, I would share and discuss classroom management approaches, teaching methods and assessment literacy with my colleagues teaching the same level. An effective classroom learning environment would firstly begin with (1) good classroom management. In my experience, pupils learn best when expectations are clear, rules are defined and enforced, discipline is respected. This means that there is a safe and respectable environment for every pupil to study and learn together. A lawlessness classroom cannot foster learning. Secondly, (2) appropriate teaching approaches are used to engage learning. In my experience, my pupils enjoy hands-on experience, simulation computer programme, problem-based learning and inquiry-based learning. However, at times I also need to prepare my pupils for examination and I deteriorated into meaningful and painful drill and practice via worksheets. I reluctantly become a worksheeter giving worksheets for my pupils to do and going through the questions in class. I refuse to say meaningless as pupils need certain critical amount of practice to familiar themselves to the structure and rigor of examinations. Giving appropriate worksheets for practice in itself is pedagogy. Thirdly, (3) timely formative assessment to gather feedback on pupils learning so that I can check and self-check whether my pupils learn what I taught and what is expected as learning outcomes. I adopt a few methods to gather feedback, they include verbal check, blogs entries, work-in-progress and peer evaluation.
I have not provided an exhaustive list and there could be more contributing factors for an effective classroom learning environment.
With regards to a more macro view – effectiveness of a school learning environment, then a more complicated system is in play. This include the School Leadership and Key Personnel setting the tone of the school culture, the Vision, Mission, Goals and Strategic Thrusts of the school interplay with teachers, pupils, parents and the wider community. My school has chosen to provide teachers and pupils a caring environment. This then becomes the culture of the school and you can really feel this in the air.
Learners in supportive environments have high levels of self-efficacy and self-motivation and use learning as a primary transformative force. (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1989) Personally, i feel that the mentioned quote proves to be an ideal ideology of every educators.
As mentioned in Dr Quek's podcast, learning environment is all about individuals, their needs that need to be met and their observed behaviours, in this case in the school environment.
I believe that having an effective learning environment for pupils, is to provide a conducive and inclusive environment where pupils are able to receive knowledge, skills as well as values which they can bring forward in their future education, workplace and lives.
However, what is meant by effective learning environment? In the school context, with regards to my personal experience and observations, it is all about providing and creating the best classroom and school atmosphere where transfer of knowledge, skills and values is maximise and where pupils feel safe and happy at all times.
In classroom for instance, using ICT resources to aid teaching and learning may prove to enliven pupils' interest in the particular topic. This in turn, enable the pupils to grasp the concepts taught better.
Developing pupils' empathy and self-awareness in other topic areas will help pupils to be more aware of their surroundings and their own feelings and thoughts. By having open discussions in the classrooms, it will provide a healthy platform where pupils can grow emotionally and stimulate their sense of curiosity and thinking.
Pupil A may not be the same as Pupil B. Pupil A's strengths and weaknesses are different from Pupil B's. The way Pupil A perceive knowledge will also be different of that of Pupil B. Thus, to minimise the gaps, teachers have to be aware of the multiple intelligence of their own pupils. They need to adopt a variety learning styles to cater to the needs' of the pupils in order to get the best out of them. Hence, teachers need to do away from the traditional chalk and talk and infuse creative ways of teaching the concepts.
Differences in pupils' socio-economic background is another factor that teachers need to be concern of. Not every pupils are exposed to rich literacy and numeracy environments and experiences. Setting up a mini-library and Math games sets in the classrooms provide this group of pupils the opportunities to read as well as learn Math in a fun and interesting way.
Pupils need to grow socially healthily. Incorporating cooperative learning strategies enable pupils to work together socially as a team and this create opportunities for discussions to take place. Pupils will also learn values like respecting one another views, taking turns to talk and be responsible for the roles assigned to them.
The school culture plays an integral role in providing pupils with an effective learning environment. Pupils not only need to be successful academically, they need to be nurtured emotionally and socially as well.
For instance, schools are providing financial aid to the less fortunate families. Pupils from these families will get free textbooks and thus lighten the burden of their families. These pupils are also provided with free breakfast that enables them to learn "without an empty stomach".
In my school, a character value is tagged to each month (respect, resposibility, perseverance etc) and a focus of the day is read to the pupils in the morning. This practice serves as a reminder as well as teaches the pupils on the correct way of behaving to become a good and responsible pupil and citizen.
Pupils leaders (prefects, conflict managers) are given exposures in terms of carrying out duties inside and outside schools. Leadership workshops and camps are provided for them to harness their leadership skills.
So what constitute to an ineffective learning environment? My personal belief is that when a pupil leaves the school without attaining any personal achievements, be it academically, socially or emotionally, then it can be said that the educators and the school has failed to impart any knowledge, skills and values to the child.
Siti Nuraishah Rosli
The learning environment provides the bridge between what the teacher intends to teach and what the learners are supposed to learn or experience. What makes a school learning environment effective?
The physical learning environment must first be conducive to promote learning. This may include the physical arrangement of classroom furniture to facilitate learning requirements (such as group discusion) and availability of resources to support the learning. This will set the tone of the learning environment. In addition, going beyond the physical domain, tone of learning environment will also be shaped by how the teacher communicates with the learners, her use of non-verbal cues, her expectation of her learners and very importantly, her classroom management style.
Learners would definitely learn better in an environment that they perceive as safe to ask questions, provide spontaneous answers without having the fear of making mistakes. This also brings in the aspect of how teachers can cater to the personal learning needs of learners. It would take considerable effort on the part of teachers to know the background of learners, their individual and collective needs as well as the special needs that matter to them. For example, weaker pupils would appreciate difficult concepts to be taught in bite-size portions with constant checks on understanding before the teacher goes into deeper discussion. On the other hand, fast learners may prefer the teacher in giving multiple examples or elaboration to indicate how the concepts can be applied in different situations.
Equipped with the content knowledge, teachers would need to fit this with the relevant pedagogy to scaffold and guide learners during the learning process. Inevitably, good planning and design of lessons is important in shaping the learning environment and hence impacting learning. Scaffolding and maintaining the lesson momentum will impact learners' thinking, enable them to make sense of the learning, provide the relevancy for learning and lead them into transferring the knowledge acquired.
An effective school learning environment will also be one that teachers know when to take a step back to allow learners to engage in peer learning and reflective learning. At the same time, such an environment will allow teachers to step in with intervention strategies when learning intent is not met.
The mechanisms that determine the effectiveness of school learning environment are rather extensive, some of which have been highlighted here. However, ultimately it is the skilfulness of the teacher in examining each of these mechanisms in creating the 'most ideal' learning environment which brings about effective learning.
In contrast, an ineffective school learning environment would be one where the teacher merely delivers the content of a lesson without or with little consideration of the mechanisms that could affect the 'lesson delivery'.
Learning environment is linked to the person and their needs which then lead to their desired human behavior. Therefore, and effective school learning environment must address the three main key concept of learning environment. The first key concept is that learning environment influences the person as it makes them feel a sense of belonging, sense of empowerment and cooperation among people who are present in the learning environment. The second key concept is the learning environment influences personal needs which fulfils the physiological and safety needs, need for love, affection and belonging, need for self esteem and actualization. The third key concept is that learning environment influences human behavior such as instincts, habits exhibited and which may be shaped by their learning environments.
An ineffective school learning environment on the other hand does not touch on any of the three key concepts mentioned above. One such practice is the blackboard and chalk teaching practice used in the olden days. This method does not engage pupils in any way. The environment is intimidating as teachers are seen as disciplinarians and any wrong doings will result in pupils getting punished. This may result in pupils feeling scared to go to school and increases the rate of truancy.
Looking at the schools of this century, we are moving towards creating a conducive and inclusive classroom environment for teaching and learning.
As educators, I think it is important for us to who our students are first even before we look at the Learning Environment. Ultimately, the kind of environment we create, is not for us but for our students.
I say this after listening to Dr Quek’s podcast in which she mentioned about Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Pupils in our classrooms come in with different needs. Some have had their physiological, safety and love needs met and are looking to satisfy their needs for self-esteem or self-actualization. However, there are pupils who don’t feel safe or loved. Therefore, it’s up to us, the teachers to create the kind of learning environment to enable pupils with different needs.
This year, I was assigned a lower primary class. It is my first time teaching a lower primary class. After interacting with the pupils for a week, I got to know them better and realised that all had different kinds of needs.
There were those who were too pampered and lacked disciplined and there were those who didn’t have parents and needed care and concern. The first group of pupils whom I thought I needed to address were those in need of safety and affection. Hence, I gave them my personal mobile number and told them they could call at anytime if they needed help. At the end of my conversation with each of them, I could see teary eyes and I knew that they would feel safe and loved in my classroom. I knew that my classroom would be an effective learning environment for those pupils.
I’m not stating that the physical environment is not important. But I just feel that if we as educators can ensure that our pupils have the basic needs, then wherever our class is, it just doesn’t matter. Children will still learn. I could put my kids in a Model future classroom but if I don’t make them feel safe all the wonderful furniture and IT equipment will count for nothing.
I also have other types who have everything and can be quite a handful in terms of discipline. There’s this pupil in my class who is ADHD and has a history running away from class. The pupil just wanted attention and previous teachers had showed a lot of care and affection. However, it was not working. The pupil would even go around hitting the classmates and biting them. So I decided that this pupil needed someone to instil discipline and self-control. From day one, I was very firm and set the dos and don’ts for the pupil in my classroom. Whenever, the pupil crossed the boundaries, the pupil was made to go the back of the class to sit in the quiet area. After a few times, the pupil was more disciplined and was able to show more interest in school work.
Hence, as teachers I feel it is important for us to concentrate more on the needs of our pupils to create an effective environment.
I think the good learning enviroment is a place where all the children engaged in learning. Children now days are very IT savvy, schools here intend to integrated more IT in all the subjects. Teacher must be equiped with good IT skills then can start the lesson nowdays.
In the podcast, one of the concepts was that the learning environment influences person. However, I also feel that the converse is true. A person (or people) can influence the learning environment. As teachers, the way we build up a conducive learning environment will influence the way each person in the class learns. Similarly, the class dynamics(people) will also influence the learning environment of the class as a whole, which will in turn influence an individual's learning environment.
I experienced an ineffective learning environment before in Secondary 4. Though we were in a top banded class, our E Math- cum- A Math teacher had low expectations of us. He would often say "You all? Go JC? Go Poly? GO ITE LAH! Even if u go JC, u will go to Choa Chu Kang JC!" Such sarcasm was really unnecessary. He tore our assignments up the minute he thought it was copied (even though it wasn't) and threw it at us. Needless to say, I hated Math. Despite that, our class worked hard to prove him wrong. I don't know if it was reverse psychology, but my dislike for Math deepened even more during those years through the tense Math learning environment.
Effective Learning Environment:
Everyone should ideally be clear on their key aims and objectives in a school. For example, the primary role of a teacher is to inculcate the right values to a student. This is followed by the imparting of knowledge and skills to the student. Thus with this objective in mind, I introduce my objectives to the class.
We need to have the ability to carry out certain tasks in order for us to realise our key objectives. This is where I customise the lesson, class setting and lab setting to suit my students learning ability. So for example, the entire lesson structure has to tailored for the respective stream of students. Thus there is need for me to be aware and act depending on the students' pace, width and depth of knowledge. It also involves customizing worksheets for some demanding class or topics so that there is effective learning.
Finally, there is a need to be aware of the results of all the actions one strive in order to achive the objectives. Hence, I need to be aware of the student' needs and this comes with both experience in and out of teaching. For example, if my particular lesson was tough for the students, I would probe the causes and execute an effective remedy. Thus constant monitoring of all factors such as student attention, their work quality as well as their casual comment goes into my next lesson structure.
Non effective Learning Environment:
A non effective learning environment arises when the teacher does not know his purpose in class. For example, in the first day of teaching, I went to class without a clear objective and thus I regretted that 1/2 and hour in class was not effectively utilised.
If a teacher is clear of his objective but he does not know what actions are needed in order for the objectives to be realised, the teaching environment will be ineffective. For example, during my first few days of teaching in a NT class, I treated them in a similar manner to my Express students. The outcome is lost time and the students became wilder than ever!
Finally if there is a lack of monitoring the situation the learning environment becomes ineffective. This occured when I used the same teaching speed for two classes. The problem was that although the explanations were good, the students initially did not understand as the pace of the lesson was too fast. Thus even though the students made noises and were getting noisier, I was not aware that these were signs that their attention was waning. This incident could have been prevented.
Thank you.
Effective Learning Environment:
After viewing Dr Quek’s podcast and reading other comments, I am now aware that:
1) Learning environment influences the person.
2) Learning environment influences personal needs.
3) Learning environment influences human behaviour.
An effective learning environment must therefore be a place which is non-threatening, a place which have a sense of orderliness and a place which provides opportunities to gain knowledge without the fear of making mistakes. Ideally, teachers are expected to be able to arouse students’ interests and induce intrinsic motivation for them to learn through a wide range of pedagogies.
Unfortunately, due to the exams-oriented nature of the education system and the additional burden of miscellaneous duties for school events, teachers may find it difficult to align the school’s expectation with the broader vision of education.
In addition, from the readings that I have read, I realized that in current Singapore context, for effective teaching and learning to take place, teachers have to customize their lessons to match the expectations of the students. What I mean here is that, given our advanced state of technology, students expect teachers to deliver lessons which are IT-infused or even IT-centred. We can see that students are becoming less interested with the traditional way of teaching – chalk and talk, textbook and workbook based, etc.
They expect stimulation of visualization and animation. Lessons that do not seem explicitly applicable will need to be converted to Problem-Based Learning style so that students can appreciate the meaning of these lessons and apply the knowledge learnt.
I feel that if students were given the choice, they would prefer lessons to be conducted with the usage of computers. In this way, whenever teachers mention a new concept, they would be able to ‘Google’ it and explore for themselves. Students may then ask questions after self-exploration do not satisfy what they want to know. The teacher’s role would then to mediate, fine-tune and finally realign understanding to the objectives of the lesson.
Personally, it can be quite a challenge to always catch up with the students in terms of the use of IT and multimedia technology. I salute those veteran teachers who have been in the service for 20 to 30 years or more. Imagine how hard it was for them to progress from the era of the typewriters, to that of computers, Powerpoints and now E-Learning.
To me, an effective learning environment is one where students are able to learn best in.. it is an environment where the teacher has managed to evoke the intrinsic motivation of the students in studying that particular topic, either by effectively arousing the interest of the students, good rapport with the students or just by pure sincerity in his attitude towards the students.
An ineffective learning environment, on the other hand, is one where the students are disconnected from the teacher and is disinterested and "lost". It is probably one where students' interest has not been evoked yet the teacher went on and on anyway. The students probably felt that it doesn't really matter whether they followed the lesson or not and they probably felt incompetent to engage in the lesson anyway, thus they 'switch off'.
As an educator, we play an important role in creating an effective learning environment in our classroom. The way we interact with the students and respond to their learning needs will either enhance or hinder the learning process of the students.
I am reminded of the movie "Dangerous Minds" (based on a true story) starring Michelle Pfieffer, about an army officer who became a teacher (Pfieffer) in a very challenging New York school and how she tried to reach out to the students and get them to learn. It was a school full of blacks, Hispanics, Mexicans and others condemned to drop out or not even graduate from high school. There was no hope - the principal, teachers as well as society had given up on them. There was no real learning environment for her class to speak of. Yet what she did was to consider them as human beings and slowly, she taught them about life and themselves, to hope and to do their best despite what life throws at them. Ultimately, the trust and respect she earned (painfully) from her students based on her unwillingness to give up on them won the day.
So, what makes an effective learning environment - not all the gadgets nor teaching practices nor pedagogy (alone) - but above all, the teacher's unfailing belief in the student, the gentle prodding and the firm push where necessary. This I firmly believe in, for many of our students need this social-emotional support. This fulfills the higher order need for love, affection and belonging and need for self-esteem under Maslow's hierarchy.
We can all identify the NA and NT students in this story, but there are many Express students who also fit this category. So, the school climate, school culture, school learning environment and classroom learning environment is taken care of in one fell swoop, and the students' perception of the school situation is one of trust, care and respect for the learner and the teacher. Behaviour will then fall into place, slowly sometimes, but eventually.
What attributes constitute "effective learning environment"?. This is a question which has kept educational researchers pondering for decades. In a quest for answers, recent research literatures seems to be supporting a common theme, that is: social interaction amongst learners plays an important part in the learning process; in fact, it can have a significant impact on learning outcomes.
Collaboration is an essential ingredient to create an "effective learning environment" as it provides learners with the opportunity to discuss, argue, negotiate and reflect upon existing beliefs and knowledge. The learner gets involved in constructing own knowledge through a process of discussion and interaction with teachers and fellow classmates.
There is a need to have a purpose for the collaboration and the purpose needs to be meaningful to the learner. Thus it is important that an appropriate context is set for the collaborative activity, for example, assigning a "real world" task for learners or a problem to which all learners can relate. In addition to setting the context, there needs to be a environment through which collaboration can take place. In traditional face-to-face educational settings, collaboration mostly occurs through conversation, that is, individuals interacting with one another.
Therefore, in terms of creating an effective learning environment, four attributes surface as being important:
1) Providing opportunities to foster personal construction of knowledge.
2) Setting an appropriate context for the learning.
3) Facilitating collaboration amongst learners.
Thank you
Jarina
After going through the podcast, I am sharing what is Learning Environment from my point of views.
A classroom learning environment involves the students and teachers in it, their needs, and their behaviour in the environment. All three areas area inter-related.
Do you agree?
Lets me share my views on a person can really influence the learning environment.
I am reminded of the movie “Coach Crater” which happened to be a true life story. It is about a basketball coach in a high school who is concern for his players’ academic results than their winning in basketball matches. Or should I say their moral values. It is a school that consists of drop out or after graduate, can’t get to university. The team have witnessed what the coach is trying to do for them and finally understand why their Coach is so concern about their academic results. They finally sit down and study. What is the end of the story? I will encourage educators to catch this movie if you have not.
As an educator, I believe that my primary role is to inculcate moral values to students. This is then followed by the imparting of knowledge and skills to students. With these in mind, I know where I am heading and what my students will learn at the end of the day. I begin with having a conducive classroom. Spending time studying every student’s character and behaviour and arrange them to sit at the best sitting arrangement in the classroom. I would like to share my 2-1-2-1-2 sitting arrangement. So far, it has worked for my NA class. Once the disruptive activities in the class are reduced to the minimum, the students are able to pay attention to what the teachers are teaching. Lessons have to be customised to tailor for the respective stream of students. Some students are naturally more visual learners and some are not. Integrating ICT in learning process is one way to capture the attention of the students, thus helping them to learn better. Most important, get to know them and create the teacher-student bond.
What an ineffective school learning environment will be like?
School or classroom that are too noise for students to study in. Teachers that really just teach in class. No effort make to crater to different needs. No resource available to enhance learning. Badly maintain environment.
In general, every of our young soul sitting in the classroom is different. As educator we play an important role in creating conducive and inclusive classroom environments for students to best learn and teachers concentrate on teaching. As educator, we have to crater to our students learning abilities and needs. It must be an environment that the child feel safe in, and where can make mistakes and being recognised as a learning process not a failure. As educator, we have to keep on upgrading and find out the needs of the new generation in order to provide an effective learning environment.
I think over the years, MOE has recognized how Learning Environments can shape Perception and Human Behaviour. As such, great amounts of resources have been allocated to make the School Climate Survey for teachers a regular affair. This is followed by QSE (Quality of School Experience) Survey for students. The NE Survey is another instrument to provide indicators for National Education Programme in schools. The thing now is how school leaders and middle management make use of these survey results to create a better Learning Environment for staff and students.
Teachers is also a leader in the classrooom. The teacher creates the appropriate climate for learning to take place.
Hope to learn more about Learning Environments to add value to my class and my school.
"What is a conducive learning environment?"
"How can we create a conducive learning environment?"
I learned it not only from the paper, but also through the real life experience which Dr. Quek gave me.
Definitely, I will remember it and apply it to my every day world.
There is a Chinese Proverb, I want to share with you.
"Tell Me I forget,Show Me I remember, Involve Me I understand..."
Dear Dr. Quek, thank you very much for the wonderful learning experience you gave me, and I want to be able to share this experience with people who want to grow with me!
"What is a conducive learning environment?"
"How can we create a conducive learning environment?"
I learned it not only from the paper, but also through the real life experience which Dr. Quek gave me.
Definitely, I will remember it and apply it to my every day world.
There is a Chinese Proverb, I want to share with you.
"Tell Me I forget,Show Me I remember, Involve Me I understand..."
Dear Dr. Quek, thank you very much for the wonderful learning experience you gave me, and I want to be able to share this experience with people who want to grow with me!
I think an effective learning environment must be congruent to the subject being taught/educated. I do not agree with the notion that the just because our youth are IT savvy we can solve our problems by immersing them in the virtual environment. The effective learning environment must still get the learner interested. Even though we can move learning to blogs, there must be an effort to interest the student. Example, just because we moved SAF education onto blogs, it does not guarantee that the students will learn better if they are not interested in the SAF in the first place. Similarly just because i blog does not mean that i want to use it for learning and sharing. I think an effective Learning environment involves partnership with the Learner. Have we asked them what they want?
Pod casting attracts attention to the panky young generation. They like to search and seek for answers and they loves to see videos and especially like Mr Brown who made it even more popular and condusive to listen and pick up things from it. But caution to make is that the slides can be better it the screen size is bigger.
Times is changing and things are moving faster than before especially technology. I still can remember in the school days we start the day by cleaning the blackboard for the teacher and class monitor will make sure that we are ready to welcome our teacher when he came in.Today, technology comes in handy, students longer need to do the preparation. This really helps and save a lot of time, we can access the web and learn where we like and when we feel like.
Alot has changed since we last left school. Children are now guided to look for the knowledge and to establish their own learning. With the technology advances these days, we have to constantly keep up to close the gap.
In my opinion, there is no such thing as "Effective" or "Non-effective" environment.
A learning environment (with all its components) merely facilitates learning. Ultimatelyu learning is still dependent on the individual's willingness or interest to learn.
Different learning environment suit different people. It may be 'effective' to some, but 'non-effective' to others. So how to 'grade' a learning environment to be 'Effective'?
For learning to takes place effective, majority of the emphasis should be put on the learner themselves and the learning environment would play more of a supporting role.
We should make efforts to understand the learners (in all areas like hygiene needs, personal and family problems [ if this is hampering their behavior], obsticles in understanding [ language / interest / educational background that result is mismatching of course?]
With these being looked into, the effective learning environment would naturally comes by, and of course, with additional refinements [technology,carrots] the impact would be greater that ever!
Hi Dr Quek,
There are many factors in making the learning environment effective. But I think the school culture plays an important factor as it has deep-rooted and long lasting effect on the environment.
Though I agree that learning environment influences personal needs, but i think it would be a tall-order to handle this issue well especially in our context.
Lye Thiam
As a trainer in the Army training school for almost 20 years, I was involving in various stages of instruction and training developments, I attended many instructional courses and therefore well exposed and reminded on the effective training and teaching of our trainees to be deploy in real operation. Today, we are pressured to train “thinking soldiers” for the 3G SAF while maintaining the standard and discipline. It’s easier said than done as in all Army training institute, the pressure is on us to deliver competent soldiers to be deploy in all environments in a short time frame, this situation is made worse when the national service has been cut from 2½ years to 2 years. As we are also dealing with complex heavy equipments, weapons and munitions, all have zero margin for error. The situation calls for rapid training in drills, discipline and procedures with little or no room for exploration and creativity.
This offers another method for learning using new technology available.
In order for learning to take place, we first take care of the emotional aspect of the learner. He must first be committed to the learning. But the problem we are facing is these young men are not interested when they report to us. Beside paying attention to the LE(physical environment), the overall organisation culture and atmosphere need to be adjusted to address to the belonging, empowerment and co-operation issues.
In the morning, the first thing we did is log into the PC and access into the internet. This show that most people are used to go into internet and do research or any learning. It is definitely a powerfull tool for learning and teaching. Even for primary school kids,school had already taught them how to access into chat room and other e-learning.
My sharing of effective learning environment, especially on Military context, it must be condusive, interactive and most importantly, there must not have any Rank Threat in terms of learning, meaning, learners should not be in their uniform when attending the lessons. In order to enhance learning, we must not always stick to just powerpoint presentation, instead, we should consider using flip charts, group research by using PBL method. We should consider using music to facilitate learning. We should do away with the conventional setting of the class room style in the olden day.
Dear Dr Quek, your embedded multi-media presentation struck me as an innovative method of delivery instructions and ideas across to Learners; considering Hofstetter's advocacy that Images, supplemented with Audio commentraies, tend to leave deeper and longer lasting impressions with the reciepients.
Although increasingly proliferated, I would remind myself to remain cognisant of the media-savviness of our Learners (esp. in the case of pre/post-war generation and the less-privilidged populus in our social structure) before implementation.
Looking forward to subsequent engagements in the coming week.
Interesting way to engage learning through the use of podcast. However, the personally, i still feel the greater need to improve the Learning Environment is still the trainees/ students ourselves...as resources, means, assessing systems in learning are aids, tools and benchmarking to our learning. The motivation and desire to learn more in the subjects or even in life can not be substituted.
Dear Dr Quek, Learning is becoming a way of life for most of us here in Singapore and in the larger World environment. As we grow with our age, our knowledge and understanding of whats going on in this world should grow too. We cannot choose to ignore what is happening out there. The new environment had made it even more necessary for all of us to be in touch with each other and with the world.
thank you.
I agree with the point that all humans need their basic needs met first before going on to the next step which is learning of any sort.The three key concepts, person,personal needs and human behaviour are very closely related.As a boy for a start I came from a good primary school which was a mission school, had very basic facilities but was rich in meeting basic needs like shelter and even esteem needs.Teachers were very encouraging and motivating.I believe as a grown man I have some of these incalculated in my life at home and work.I believe that this module will further move me to explore more learning environment.
Today's educational goals are vastly different and perhaps it is timely that we get ourselves familiarised with this need for a paradigm shift.
Dealing with current groups of learners, we need to understnad their needs and learning preferences. I find that Motivation is the key factor in sucessful learning especially in my contacts.
Presently, I'm using this framework in managing my company it has working well and it is quite closely linked to what you've mentioneded.
1. Engagement - constance interaction is the key relay as well as implementing ideas. Very closely linked to your Personal Needs
2. Empowerment - To respect every individual, to recognise their professional views.
3. Environment - Shaped behavior. Alot time, it take the top to implement that condusive environment. It can be quite a challenge in convincing your subordinates.
Cheers
Hi Dr Quek,
Thank you for sharing and giving us an overview to the intro on Learning Environment (LE).
Now, we understand that LE is complex as it constitutes many factors such as the organisation, tasks, people and performance of individual and group. From the Lewinian's formula and Murray's Needs-Press Model inter-relationship, it gives us a good perspective of the linkages. However, the font size of the chart is very small. It will be if a bigger font size version can be given. Looking forward to learn more about LE in the next couple of days.
In this fast paced world and people, we really need to keep up with changes around us and we need to keep pace.Learning takes place all the the time and the environment in which it takes place varies. People learn differently in different environments.
Dealing with current groups of learners, we need to understnad their needs and learning preferences. I find that Motivation is the key factor in sucessful learning especially in my contacts.
Presently, I'm using this framework in managing my company it has working well and it is quite closely linked to what you've mentioneded.
1. Engagement - constance interaction is the key relay as well as implementing ideas. Very closely linked to your Personal Needs
2. Empowerment - To respect every individual, to recognise their professional views.
3. Environment - Shaped behavior. Alot time, it take the top to implement that condusive environment. It can be quite a challenge in convincing your subordinates.
Hope to learn more form here.
Cheers
I believed many of us associate respect with discipline as given by the teacher, but that is not always the case especially dealing with Generation Y. Recently, I was told that a respectful classroom environment are important to how the students’ response to the teacher. I learned that positive learning environments come from involving students and trainers who provide clear expectations and rigorous curriculum.
The involving students in the classroom provides the sense of ownership in their learning. It is easier to keep most students engaged in a lesson when they are participating through discussions, projects and other student centered activities. Once engaged, I believed the students will create their own respectful classroom environment through their interactions with the teacher and other students.
Another way to involve students is through classroom meetings. In a class meeting students should feel comfortable asking questions, providing their opinions and also supporting their classmates. The meetings should also provide students with the opportunity to make decisions about some classroom rules and expectations, such as seating arrangements.
Whether provided by the teacher or created by the class, classroom expectations or rules should support a positive and respectful environment. The students may need to do a written or visual activity to explain what these expectations mean so that they can make a connection between the rules and themselves.
Also, be consistent in the enforcement of the expectations. Make sure to apply each rule fairly to each student.
Bottom line, the classroom setting should not be too rigid. It is important to be learner centered setting.If not, I deemed the creation of positive learning environment have failed.
Learning environment is usually shaped by the learning outcome. These outcomes may be derivative of National Education Policy in Singapore. Such policies are often borne as a consequence of how Singapore wants to showcase itself as a Education Hub that is aligned with the best practices in the world.
So in order to meet these outcomes changes have to occur in the Learning Environment to facilitate the learner. The learning outcome aligns the expectation of not only the learner but also the stakeholders and it is continually updated to remain current and relevant with the times.
IT provides a huge leverage in effciciency and effectiveness to transform the learning environment.
One must not leave out the humanistic aspect of the learning environment as there is so much of emphasis of being Learner Centered.
A new perspective into learning environment. Personally, I think learning environment is not just the physical aspect but should also include areas like methodologies, learning styles and the behavour of both trainers and learners, etc.
I suppose that an effective LE will have to take into consideration of the learner. This also have to do with the learner LE culture.
As the current youngers are IT, we have to engage them on this area.
The other area will be the environment; classroom, conducive. The friendly environment (learner to learner, learner to instructor) is also another area to considered.
Fortunately or unfortunately, i was brought up in 2 era. Before, teaching use to be very boring, info downloading session. Communications was kept to minimum and the teaching model is "I show, you do". Training aide was very backdated, flip chart style, rooms were dilapidated and somewhat unconducive.
However, now things have change tremendously. I can see that we have leverage on technology. Knowledge portal and archived can be easily access. People may come and go but knowledge remains.
I believe that classroom set up and environment shaped the behaviour and thinking of students. I have come across a lecture where the lecturer play a hype up music before the start of the lesson. Students upon entering it jig and moves to the music. This somewhat create and environment of learning as student sensory awareness were triggered.
So i'm looking forward to using New Media in LE. I am very keen to learn and improve the environment in my work place. However i hope that my workplace upgrade as quickly as i'm learning and acquiring my knowledge.
When I hear the word learning Environment it is a place where a group of learners come together to learn.
In the past the teachers, usually does the talking and delivering more teacher centric.
The paradigm shift have created new environment where information is ready available in the net. Students are very IT savvy. To create a effective one of the key factors to know the learner's
Dear madam, thank you for your generosity and your sharing. Thank you for everything.
In a primary school setting, teachers try to create an effective learning environment by making it non-threatening. Children are allowed to make mistakes, not afraid to ask questions or to voice their opinions. We also look into the physical environment to ensure that the classroom setting is child-friendly, bright, and reading/writing materials are easily accessible by the children. This is the learner-centered classroom I try to create for my pupils. However, one thing that is lacking could be assessment centered which is described to be one of the designs of LE. There are few opportunities provided for giving constructive feedback to my pupils.
I believe the school climate and culture sets the tone of the LE that eventually takes shape in the school. The school climate is set by the people in the school management and culture of the school comes from the history and behaviour of its past. In D&T, the LE has to be safe foremost of all. There’s a two-way communication between teacher and students and cooperative lesson is used to encourage learning. Students are empowered to do their own design as projects. Ineffective school learning environment happens when the teacher is unable to manage the class well. This failure is reflected in the key concept 2 as the students are unable to learn where the environment is noisy and disruptive.
I believe that one of the most important factors of an effective learning environment is a non-threatening environment where it allows the students to learn and share their knowledge without having a sense of fear or threat from those around them. This would enable them to think better and more creatively in class. It must also be something that caters to their personal needs so that they would be more interested and make their learning a more meaningful journey for themselves.
On the other hand, an ineffective learning environment is where little or no sharing of knowledge takes place. This could be strongly affected by lack of discipline and only one way communication of learning that takes place in class. As a result, students are disengaged and this would result in very little learning.
Based on my understanding, an effective learning environment is one where the person, his/her needs and the human behaviour are in a way taken care of by creating a conducive and inclusive environment, where their cognitive, affective and psychomotor human behaviour are developed. In a school context, an effective learning environment can be achieved by firstly, taking care of what are the students’ needs. From the article by Kim Bryceson’s, there is a section talking about the Japanese concept of ‘Ba’, which in English means place. Hence school can start by having a platform such as internet incorporated into lessons where students can share their feelings, experiences and maybe interact and discuss homework or lesson learned. As long as the 3 key concepts are satisfied, I feel that en effective learning environment will be created.
However, in the midst of planning of such an environment, educators might forget the students’ feelings and what happens in some of the platforms they designed. There might be cases of cyber bullying or abuse of internet usage. When these happen, an ineffective learning environment results because the affected students would not have been benefited from it. There will be no sense of belonging and fulfillment of the various needs as stated in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. There might be situations where the learning environment is craved more for the brighter students; hence the slower ones might develop a fear of entering the classroom because of the tough competition and inability of catching up with the class. When these situations occur, there will be no influencing of person, personal needs and human behaviour form the learning environment created.
An effective learning environment is one that is safe and conducive. Teachers play an important role. The teachers need to have a deeper understanding of their pupils’ and their needs. With this they can build a good rapport with their pupils. Besides, the teachers need to design lessons that are learner-centered and cater to the different types of learning styles of the pupils. When the lessons are fun, the pupils are more engaged and will take responsibility in their learning.
I experienced an ineffective learning environment in my secondary school. My classmates and I dreaded to attend English lessons. Everyday the teacher would come in to the classroom and made us read passages one at a time. She would then criticized how bad we pronounced the words and scolded us for not doing it right. Every one of us was rather depress at first but after a while, since it happened so often, we just switched off from her lessons. The teacher had created a very threatening and unpleasant environment for learning.
It is very interesting to see that there were several comments about "mean" teachers who belittle their students. I believe most of us go through that because our parents were less vocal/ less trouble seeking lot. Our parents would not dare to lodge a complaint about how the teachers treat us and of course we had to live under the tyranny.
Imagine I walk into class and start throwing "lousy" compos into the wastepaper basket. Whooo hoo! I will be on STOMP /ST forum within days. Then, let us recall. Is it not the teacher who laughed and mocked you that helped you learn?
My English teacher in Pri 5 taught me not to call people billy-goats because she called us billy-goats everyday. My English teacher in Sec 1 taught me to speak properly else I would be mocked at by teenagers everyday (as she was being mocked). Today, I am still a "nasty" teacher on some days to make my students learn.
Let us consider the point of personal needs. Maslow Hierachy on ego. It is the attack on ego that made the lesson more poignant. Is it not?
But of course if we were negative everyday, it would not help either.
The school climate and teacher's attitude definitely has to take on a positive note.
A happy school climate would make teachers happy and a happy teacher would bring happiness to a classroom.
A school life with rhythm of ups and downs would help the children to have balance in life. It is not what the students have, but it is the have-nots that they yearn for.
Students do get bored of ICT too...
1) What makes an effective school learning environment?
Environment refers to ‘all situations, events, people etc. that influence the way in which people live or work’ (Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English).
Through my personal experience, for schools to have an effective learning environment, there must be commonly shared values or goals that are upheld by all members of the school community, be they the teaching or non-teaching staff and students.
Firstly, there must be a sense of purpose (objectives) as to why the school is there. This can be easily encapsulated in the school’s mission statement. All members of the school community must work towards this common purpose.
Secondly, there must be a sense of direction at which the school is heading for, which is easily captured in the school’s vision statement. Likewise, all members of the school community must head towards this direction.
Thirdly, setting the right tone, as in creating the right atmosphere through instituting a set of proper conduct that governs one’s behaviour (which shapes character and attitude) etc for both teachers and students to observe, thus facilitating teaching and learning.
All members of the school community need to be positive. We have to work together as a cohesive team. There must be element of trust at all levels. As service providers, we need to be opened and positive to feedback, favourable or otherwise and work towards improvement.
All channels of communication (teacher-teacher and/or teacher-pupil) should be kept open at all times so that the teachers and students are at ease to share and surface any concerns that goes towards creating an effective learning environment.
Another point to take note would be expectations. There must be some kinds of expectations that need to be spelt out for both the teachers and students to work on so as establish effective school learning environment.
There must also be a system of checks and balances, where teachers or students who go beyond their call (of duty) are challenged and rewarded and those who do not are taken to task.
2) What makes an ineffective school learning environment?
When all members of a school community do not know what they are doing and in which direction they are heading for, it spells for an ineffective learning environment.
When there is no set of rules to follow and both teachers and students are allowed to do what they like (and not what they should do), it contributes to an ineffective school learning environment.
Likewise, when pertinent and compelling matters are not communicated to all members of the school community, it brings about an effective learning environment. There are no shared goals or targets to go for. Instead of converging, they are diverging.
Through my personal experience, too, if members of a school community fail to learn, relearn and unlearn (to break the habit or end the practice of something), it signifies for an ineffective school learning environment.
After listening to the podcast, I found that it is very different from other common podcasts or e-learning lectures where there is no background music being played. Personally, I found that the music is smoothing and it makes me awake and arouse my attention in the podcast. For this, I may regard it as an effective learning environment for me.
As for an effective school learning environment, I suppose it has to be an environment which is encouraging, happy and non-threatening and i.e. a learning environment where teachers give guidance, motivate and encourage the students, and allow students to voice out their opinions and ask questions and then make mistakes. They will then learn from their own mistakes. In addition, there must be strong support given to the teachers and students from the school management and together work towards a clear and shared vision which favors the staff and students’ welfares. In this way, effective learning can then take place.
As for an ineffective school learning environment, I suppose it would be an environment where teachers put too much pressure on the students, consistently and unreasonably insult, criticize and scold students due to their poor performances in tests and assignments, punish the students unreasonably, make comparisons among the classmates’ results, and do not encourage or praise or motivate students at all. In addition, it can also be an environment where the school management often does not support the activities proposed by the students, does not offer help to the under-privileged group in terms of financial help, and instill negative thoughts in students.
I believe that an effective learning environment comprises of the physical environment as well as the human factor. For example, the D&T workshop in NIE provides the right kind of atmosphere for learning once you step into it. It has visuals such as design posters and students work to engage learner and workshop tools and machines to captivate learner’s attention. In addition, the lecturers and instructors were always around to help with any queries and will patiently guide learners to master the basic skills. It is definitely a non-threatening environment where ideas can be exchange between learner and learner and learner and lecturer. In addition, the lecturers encourage independent learning and motivate learners by giving sound advice to achieve the desire outcomes of the course.
I believe that an ineffective learning environment will be one that puts learners off. I still recall during my secondary school days, there was this Geography teacher who strikes fear into every student’s heart by shouting at the top of his voice whenever a mistake was made. This act of discouragement and intolerance of mistakes puts students off whenever he conducts a lesson. Also, he likes to conduct surprise tests when content were not even taught yet and the expected low test scores in a prolonged period of time demoralizes the class learning attitude and behaviour towards the subject.
Establishing an optimum learning environment is an art. This is because there are many factors that affect how the environment is actually created. No doubt, the teacher is the key in this pursuit. His belief, teaching pedagogy, personality, rapport with students etc will affect how the class is taught ane teachin how the students will response. However, there are factors that will affect how this teacher teaches. The teaching and learning philosophy of the school, the support and direction that is set by the school leaders, the background (e.g.SES of the students), national agenda, teacher's past experiences as student and how are teacher is trained are some of the factors that will affect the learning environment. A secondary school that has lots of disciplinary problem compared to a top tiered secondary school will have very different learning environment. For a problematic school, perhaps the learning environment must be that to meet the physiological and safety need of the students and hence a stricter and more regimental discipline tone is required. However in a top-tier secondary school, the learning environment is on that builds up esteem and allow student for self-actualisation. Even in the same school, teaching students from different stream also require different teaching strategies to engage our learners.
Hence I believe, as much as we want to have an optimum learning environment, we need to be aware of the context where learning is taking place. As educators, we need to be socially aware of the environment and then use our professional judgement to create an environment to suit our learners.
I've enjoyed reading all the comments and I think some of us have experienced similar situations back when we were kids last time. I refer to Dennis Loh's comments on how he did not excel in primary school because of issues with his self esteem and how his self esteem shot up due to a more positive environment in secondary school. As for me, it was the opposite. I had a strict DM as a form teacher back in primary school. Despite of that, he proved to be a kind and encouraging teacher. He acknowledged my effort in English compositions and read some of my work in class. At 11 years old, I aspired to be writer. However, when I managed to go to one of the 'top' secondary schools here, my ambition was killed. I don't remember having any positive comments about my work and I felt really stupid compared to the rest of the class. Getting my essays thrown to me because I wrote using a cheap pen with lighter ink made it worse! Until today, I still think I cannot write well and was actually very hesitant to enrol myself in this programme..:p
I teach Maths in a neighbourhood school(so much for being a writer) and is always asked to teach the slower ones. So as a teacher now, I try very hard to raise these students's self esteem by giving them positive comments in their exercise books or through acknowledging their little successes.
I believe that to create an effective school learning environment, many factors come together. Firstly, when there is a transfer of knowledge to the students or amongst the students, learning has taken place effectively. However, for this to happen, the teacher has to ensure that the learning environment is safe and how can this be achieved? In my opinion, for a safe learning environment to occur, there should be policies, procedures and practices that communicate high expectations, mutual respect and a focus on teaching and learning to support a safe environment. A strict discipline in school is also essential. I recalled when I was a trainee teacher, we were always reminded to set our expectations and rules during the very first lesson we have with the class. This will set the standard and behaviour that we require from the students. With a safe environment, students will feel at ease to come to school to study. Parents will be assured that their children are safe in the school.
In this era of globalisation, it is important to equip our younger generation with the right skills and abilities besides having an innovative mind and also a critical and creative thinking in this knowledge-based economy. As such, it is necessary to adapt the pedagogical method to suit the needs of the students accordingly, such as inclusion of more projects, problem-based learning and the usage of IT in our teaching.
Everyone is different and unique. As teachers, I feel that it is essential to understand who our students are, where they come from, their family background, what interest them etc. A good rapport with the students will also help in their learning.
I believe that to create an effective school learning environment, many factors come together. Firstly, when there is a transfer of knowledge to the students or amongst the students, learning has taken place effectively. However, for this to happen, the teacher has to ensure that the learning environment is safe and how can this be achieved? In my opinion, for a safe learning environment to occur, there should be policies, procedures and practices that communicate high expectations, mutual respect and a focus on teaching and learning to support a safe environment. A strict discipline in school is also essential. I recalled when I was a trainee teacher, we were always reminded to set our expectations and rules during the very first lesson we have with the class. This will set the standard and behaviour that we require from the students. With a safe environment, students will feel at ease to come to school to study. Parents will be assured that their children are safe in the school.
In this era of globalisation, it is important to equip our younger generation with the right skills and abilities besides having an innovative mind and also a critical and creative thinking in this knowledge-based economy. As such, it is necessary to adapt the pedagogical method to suit the needs of the students accordingly, such as inclusion of more projects, problem-based learning and the usage of IT in our teaching.
Everyone is different and unique. As teachers, I feel that it is essential to understand who our students are, where they come from, their family background, what interest them etc. A good rapport with the students will also help in their learning.
The reason why I have chosen this module on learning environment is because I want to know how to create a conducice and inclusive classroom environment for teaching and learning. I like the explanation on the 3 key components of LE : person, personal needs and human behaviour. LE is very important to set the mindset of learning atmosphere in the class. I feel that all pupils must feel non-threatened and happy with the LE in order to maximise their learning. The LE must make them feel curious, able to make choices with the many activities, able to progress at their own rate, able to learn social behaviour and gain communication skills, cognitive skills and physical skills. Apart from the soft skills attained in an effective classroom environment, physical setting of the LE is equally important, to provide a bright and cheery LE, and make pupils feel happy and wanting to learn. Nowadays, with the addition of ICT into the LE, pupils are provided with more choices of learning, the move towards formative assessments and authentic assessments, teachers and pupils have a new horizon about LE.
Very informative podcast on LE. It is true that LE affects a person's learning. A good and conducive LE will influence the learner and thus, the learner will be more willing to learn. I agree that the 5 factors contributes to LE - a good school climate and culture, a conducive school and class learning environment. The most important factor will be a person's perception of his/her LE. The learner's own perception matters a lot to the learner. If he or she felt that he or she does not belong to the school or class and his or her needs are not met, then he or she will most likely perform below his or her potential. I believe that to learn and succeed, a person's self- motivation is also very important.
I cannot but fully agree with the fact that school climate and school culture are pivotal in ensuring an environment optimal for learning and teaching. In my school, the school leaders put in place structures and policies to create a culture of learning and we have no problems getting pupils to follow academic instructions even on the day right after a major examination. We also have commendable attendance for all the extra classes held outside of curriculum time. This culture of learning has obviously made life a lot easier for teachers in my school.
In my personal capacity as a Mathematics teacher, I have also managed to create a classroom environment conducive for learning by providing a climate of care and ownership. I made the pupils feel responsible for their own results and giving them the confidence and believe to excel in the subject. This creates a sense of empowerment and esteem necessary for an effective learning environment.
The school leaders also come down hard on bullies and gangs, providing a safe environment for the pupils.
All these factors have resulted in stellar performance by our pupils at the national examinations.
My Reflection (1st session: 16/11/09)
At the end of this session, I am bombarded with a pretty heavy reading task. There are many materials to read and technical terms which I need to know. Well, when the going gets tough, the tough gets going!
So, what makes an effective classroom learning environment? Are they solely the teacher factor, student factor or both? Or does it include other factors like the class synergy and infrastructure? In what ways computer assisted technology bring about effective classroom learning environment?
Why effective classroom learning environment? Is there any implication that if there is no effective classroom learning environment, teaching and learning will not take place?
How does one create an effective classroom learning environment? Does creating one depend entirely on the teachers, students or both?
The advent of technology has allowed teachers to conduct on-line, e-learning lessons etc. Does that mean the physical presence of a teacher is not needed in transmitting knowledge to the students? On the other hand, how does e-learning facilitate and enhance teaching and learning?
I trust that at the end of this module, I would be able to find the answers to these questions.
I am not IT savvy and I find it difficult to catch up with the pace at which the lesson goes. However, with the support and help I obtain from the tutor and her assistant, I manage to overcome the fear and trudge along. I only have to thank my coursemates, tutor and her assistant for all the patience and accommodation shown which allow me to walk off the class with great pride and confidence, looking forward to the next face-to-face session with enthusiasm.
Ah. I now understand what Ruzi meant by listening to the podcast and leaving comments about it. Like Rahim, I cannot profess to be IT savvy. I am learning and trying because I know that this is the direction and I need to lead by example.
In any case... What makes an effective learning environment? I believe that an effective learning enviornment is one that is, as highlighted in the podcast, conducive and inclusive. What does it mean to be conducive and inclusive? And how do we create such an environment? At the school management level, it may first of all start with ensuring that the physical environment of the classrooms are conducive for learning - working lights and fans etc that would meet the most basic physiological needs. The school may also have structures in place to promote inclusiveness by providing leadership opportunities for students so that they may meet their own needs of esteem and actualisation. The next level would be the teachers who help to promote an effective LE through the way the plan and conduct lessons that is student centered to engage the learner. In the manner in which he builds a safe environment to build a good rapport with students will also go a long way in creating an effective LE. However, the difficulty is that there are some teachers who have great difficulty in contributing to an effective LE because many of them are under pressure by management to bring in the grades which leave very little time for these teachers to spend time planning for lessons and building rapport with them. Some teachers also do not seem to have the right attitude and aptitude to be teachers because they see teaching as a job, and not a vocation - something which the recent years massive recuitment of teachers has contributed towards. I have seen teachers come into school each day "to get the job done", which is a real pity because they spend 8 hours of their day without so much as a obligation to perform their best at their job for the best intrests of the students that they teach.
The students can also contribute to the effective LE with regards to their perceptions they have about the school and their teachers. For those who are negative and perceive their teachers pick on them vs. those who perceive the regular scoldings to be a demonstration of the teachers care. This can affect their own reactions and behaviours in the classroom which can ultimately affect their other classmates. Another example could be the prevalence of bullying in the school where students cannot learn effectively because they are afraid to be in school. Similarly, the community enviroment of stakeholders can also promote a conducive and inclusive LE when parents cooperate with teachers instead of badmouthing teachers in front of their children or when external organisations work with schools to provide students for opportunities at internship and job attachments which can easily motivate students to learn more about the related field of studies.
Ineffective learning environment is one that is threatening with minimum support and scaffolding provided by the teacher or facilitator and is teacher-centred. In this type of environment, I think learners will be 'forced' to learn rather than motivated to learn. Memories of my secondary one and two literature lessons started to flood my mind... I had a vert strict literature teacher,Mrs Goh, who seldom smile. We called her Mrs 'Ghost'. My classmates and I did not enjoy her lessons simply because we did not have a sense of belonging as she did not really talk or communicate with us about issues not related to the book she was teaching. There is no personal touch and we dragged attending her lessons.
An effective learning environment is one that is non-threatening, supportive, interactive and learner-centred. I like my Secondary 4 Physics teacher who was very humourous and made good analogies of Sc concept with real life experiences. He explained concepts using different ways so that we understand the concept before he proceeded to teach another new concept. My classmates and I had a great time learning and did well for this subject.
I believe that an effective learning environment is a class setting in which students are at ease with themselves, among themselves and with the teacher. As shown in the video, learning environment influences the person's sense of belonging and need for esteem. Hence as teachers, we should try to create an effective learning environment by making it a safe and comfortable one. Often when a teacher is tensed up about delivering the lesson objective, the learning environment will be tense one and both students and teacher may not have a good lesson. But if the teacher is relaxed, able to pace her delivery of the lesson according to the needs of the students, both teacher and students may enjoy it. I felt that this extremely true when a teacher is too worried about going into a problematic class. When the students can sense that the teacher is tensed up, they also will not be able to connect or communicate positively with that teacher. But if the teacher goes into the class with confidence and beaming with happiness, the students will be able to feel the affection and hence cooperate!!!
Podcast reflection
Personally, I believe an effective school LE is dynamic and involves many dimensions. It involves the (a) school climate and culture and (b) physical environment, emotional and social aspects that take place in any learning corner. A deficiency in the factor(s) would result in an ineffective school LE or at least, far from an ideal school LE.
(a) The school (top to bottom) needs to be aware of the school’s directions and goals to work towards its initiative. When the school’s staffs work together with a common mindset, the school climate and school culture are formed. From here, each department plans learning programs, activities in conjunction with the school’s goals. Thus, this creates a school learning environment setting.
In addition, the school also needs the support of the other stakeholders. On top of the school’s teaching and non-teaching staff, parents, school partners and pupils are also critical stakeholders. All stakeholders need to have a common mindset and belief on the school LE. Parents need to show support in school’s programs and activities by educating the right values and attitudes to their child.
Examples of an ineffective LE would be having each department working in isolation without a common consensus and a lack of communication among staff and management level which often results in conflicts or confusion. Lack of parental guidance could also lead to problems such as the child having the wrong attitude towards learning and/or behaviourial problems. One example would be despite the school’s initiatives in promoting avid readers as a school culture, problems such as vandalizing school library books could surface.
(b) An effective physical LE can range from providing a conducive and safe environment such as the lighting of the classrooms to an environment rich with literacy development manipulatives. Similarly, teachers can provide effective emotional and social aspects of LE when we take each child’s emotional needs into accounts (at least their basic needs) and providing affirmations on pupils’ achievements. Teachers would also allow rooms for mistakes, build the culture of providing constructive peer evaluation and feedback to their friends yet being receptive to their own mistakes. No doubt, an ineffective physical LE includes a noisy and disruptive environment and a lack in learning materials. Teachers would be conducting teacher-centered instruction lessons and teaching the knowledge in isolation. In worst situation, teachers transmit negative feelings and thoughts upon the pupils.
What makes the learning environment positive or negative? Well, from what I experienced while I was a student, the teacher played the biggest role for my learning environment. The teacher "had the power" to make or break learning.
However, with the 21st century skills expected of our students, the challenge is now on us teachers to integrate the use of IT on a much larger scale. Are we ready? Am I ready for it?
I think the following factors make an effective LE:
1. a conducive and safe environment
2. supportive and encouraging
teachers.
3. availability of teaching
resources such as
manipulatives and IT.
4. availiability of other
resources such as a counselor,
to take care of students'
emotional and psychological
aspects.
5. open to various communication
channels with parents to support
students' learning.
6. Teachers using variety of
teaching strategies as to cater
to individual differences.
7. school provides students with
opportunities for
leadership roles.
8. Availbility of a variety of
CCAs.
An ineffective school LE occurs when there is a deficiency in any of the above factors.
LE Depends on the culture and climate of the school. In my own primary school and secondary school I experienced a classroom of teacher centred learning all the time. The teachers then were more of instructional and chalk and board teaching. Nowadays students experince more outdoor learning and IT based teaching.
Ching Boon's reflection:
I believe in order for effective learning to take place, first and foremost the school would have to ensure that the physical environment such as the classroom’s facilities (Lightings, fans, projectors, tables and chairs) would be in working conditions so that learning can take place.
Next, the school would need to have a series of programs and structures lined out for the students to develop them holistically in their 4 year stay in the Secondary school. For example, my school has provided many leadership opportunities for the students to take up in class or CCA, so that we can meet their personal needs. This is a chance for them to grow and learn, thus a boost to their self-esteem. When the students feel safe in an environment, they will then have a sense of belonging and will strive for their best in whatever they do, be it academically or in their CCA. In our school, we have a programs in place named EDGE, for every level to Experience, Develop, Grow and Emerge as fine gentleman.
As a teacher, we can also make a difference to the effective learning environment by taking care of our students’ psychological needs, constantly communication with the parents to understand our students better and to ensure the parents that their children are doing well in school. But most importantly is to use a variety of teaching methods to cater to the different needs of our students. For example, a shift from teacher-centered to learner centered activities, to tap on the various IT platforms which are widely and readily available. Even Mr Lee Kuan Yew mentioned that the teaching of Chinese needs to move towards IT based direction. As teachers, we need to arouse their interest through fun-filled activities such as IT or drama so as to better engage them in the lesson.
An ineffective learning environment would be one lesson that is totally teacher-centered without any activities and without the opportunity for students to work together and self- learn and internalize learning. I still remember in my sec school days, our English and Literature teacher would come into class, sits on the chair and go through our Literature text. She would not even touch the chalk and blackboard as she claims she is sensitive to chalk. All of us would have to follow line by line to understand the text. There were no group discussions or any activities carried out. No one dare to raise any questions as of all of us are terrified of her because she would always use our testimonial to ‘threaten’ us saying she would have nothing to write in our testimonial if we misbehave. Of course, I would not say learning does not take place but is effective learning taking place over here and how many students do actually benefit from it?
In the teaching of languages, there are several important factors influencing the students’ successes:
• methods and techniques used by teachers to teach the language
• classroom interaction
• teachers planning their teaching activities
• students’ motivation
• learners’ goals
According to Deci and Ryan (1985), intrinsic motivation is related to basic human needs. Learners’ goals may determine how they use the language being learned, how native-like their pronunciation will be, and how much energy they will expend to understand the target language. The students’ interest is the basic key to open the learning door. Achievement goal theory (Ames & Archer, 1988; Middleton & Midgley, 1997) and self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 1985) are the two views of motivation.
Creating a conducive learning environment in the classroom is indeed very important.
I am not too sure about the difference between school climate and school culture.
i have always thought that the learning environment in a school is a simple construct and that it is something that is built up naturally. I didn't realize that 1) it is complex 2) it plays a big role in the learners, as well as the teachers academic pursuits. Given its importance, now i see the need to really know what it is all about and how one can nurture an effective learning environment.
There are 2 schools of thoughts concerning the effect of "competition" on the learning. Some believes that competition (e.g., through ranking whose first, second, and so on) helps increase learning. Others believe that competition can reduce learning (due to individuals not willing to share information, own reflection) etc. My interest is to create an environment that will increase collaboration, yet with some degree of competition (perhaps through goal setting) to challenge the students to learn more than what is taught.
To create a conducive learning environment whereby students are actively engaged in the affective, behavorial and cognitive domanins is crucial to building up a school climate and a school culture.
If students are disengaged, then little or no learning can take place. Teachers, as mentors and facilitators, should take the lead in creating the kind of learning environment that will promote self-directed learning, collaborative learning and other 21st Century Digital Age skills which students will need to acquire now.
Although the terms schools climate and school culture are widely used currently in conjunction with year end review exercises, these were terms that were hardly referred to a decade ago. I guess this reflects the growing importance and the need to acknowledge the roles that these play in the school environment.
With the emphasis toward designing learner-centred learning environments, my view is that all educators should seek to design/introduce personalised learning environments. These environments should ideally facilitate learners to take ownership of and manage their own learning and development. As they all say ' displace the sage on the stage!" In essence, a good learning environment should provide support for learners to chart their personal learning goals, manage their learning, manage the subject matter content and process as well as sharing/communicating with peers as part of the learning process.
The other attributes of an effective learning environment would include methodologies that help learners to internalize the Purpose of learning, afford the learner Autonomy in his learning journey and provide a sense of Challenge in the knowledge or skills to be attained.
The central concept here is about the motivation to learn and an effective learning environment is premised on Purpose, Autonomy and Challenge (PAC)
the word that stands out in the podcast is 'empowerment'. It is a very important element in many areas.
It seems that learning environment can affect a person in both a positive and negative way.
Some questions:
Is there an 'ideal' learning environment? Is there a tool to measure/ assess learning environment. will a particular type of learning environment fit everyone?
Jaiganth
Positive learning environment is one where i felt comfortable and happy. I liked the teacher and the subject. Also i felt that the subject was pitched at the correct level. Excample of this was when i was back in Secondary School, at history class. We had a teacher that would come in a make history come alive by narrating the historical occurances without a book or notes. He was professional and cool.
Negative one - all my tamil classes where the teachers were strict and made learning tamil a pain.
A conducive learning environment is an important necessity for education in school to be effective. The learning environment does influence the learner, his needs and behavior. Especially, a proper learning environment should be designed to match the nature of the subject/topic taught. I have experienced that some students’ comments on the different learning environments (classroom set-up) and some classrooms are more preferred over others. This may also depends on various factors such as the age, gender and the background of the learners. Creating and maintaining interesting learning environments can be achieved through effective and innovative classroom organisation.
I am curious to find out more on how to create a learning environment within an organisation, especially in one that has some prevailing deep set organisation culture and human behaviour. I can connect with the ideas presented on the podcast, especially on how Learnning Environment influences the individual (person), personal needs and human behaviours.
Whether effective learning takes place will be depend on the learning culture and environment. Personally engagement is key for learning and we educators have to constantly keep up with the pace of technology changes to "engage" our new generation of students.
A conducive environment is necessary for effective learning to take place. We have to create a non-threatening school culture where the pupils will be engaged in their learning. In these modern days of ICT, we will also make use of technology to facilitate learning. Remember, learning will only be effective when the learnersd want to learn.
For effective learning to take place, a conducive environment is very important. As teachers, we are responsible for creating such environment for pupils learn in. In recent years, teachers begin to make use of the various tools to engage pupils in their learning. ICT can also be used as assessment tools. Before all these changes could happen, teachers need to change their mindset to embrace the technology.
Feeling comfortable and at ease is very important for one in order to learn effectively. Similarly, pupils will feel at ease and will not be stressed when the envrironment is conducive. Besides, providing captiviting lessons can keep pupils engaged.
An effective school learning environment depends on the teachers and the students. It depends on the willingness of the teachers to try new ideas from the school. It also depends on the support offered by the school leaders to help teachers carry out new ideas and initiatives. The discipline of the students also play an important role in the school learning environment. The willingness of the students to cooperate with teachers and their willingness to learn new knowledge.
In a safe and secure learning environment, pupils are able to grow as the are allowed to be themselves regardless of their diverse needs and culture. An effective learning environment is where respect is prevalent between peers and between pupils and teachers. Students are given ownership of their work, they are engaged. Pupils are clear about expectations. Teacher is nurturing and adopts a developmental approach and allows mistakes and pupils do not fear punitive repercussions
FROM VERONICA GILBERT
Learning environment- key concepts links the person with his/her personal needs and how it influences his/her behavior.Maslow's theory clearly defines this concept. Individuals' experience situations and how these situations are viewed and interpreted is dependent on the environment as a whole.
The podcast is very interactive. I am definitely gonna try it out for my students.
What makes an effective school Learning Environment:
I strongly feel it is the teacher first. As I step out of my house, all my house and private matters are left at the doorstep and I walk out as a new woman, waiting to embrace the new day with the kids. happy or sad, they are always happy and even teach us how to be happy...
What makes an ineffective school learning environment:
When there is an absence of love, affection and a need of belonging.
An effective learning environment is one that there is a strong sense of belonging for all the pupils and the teachers. A physical place where the pupils call it their home. An environment where learning takes place, pupils are actively engaged in learning. Personally as a primary school teacher, an effective learning environment is one that the pupils would yearn to come to school everyday.
An ineffective learning environment is one that pupils do not learn effectively and find learning to be a boring chore. A place where there is no love and trust among the pupils and teachers.
For the classroom LE to be effective, I feel that that it should first start with an effective school LE. An effective school LE is one that there is no gossip among the staff, and every teachers is working towards creating a joyful learning environment for the pupils. TRUST is the key towards a happy and effective LE.
our current pupils are very IT savvy and to the fact that they know more about ICT tools than we teachers. blogging,class discussions using wiki and google sites are new forms of creating an engaging and effective learning environment as we have pupils of different learning needs (eg: visual, tactile learners). teachers no longer need to be physically present to conduct an interactive lessons. its very important to know and understand our learners' needs, strengths and weaknesses and design lessons that will create a vibrant and conducive learning environment...
My concept about learning environment before attending this course is more of the aesthetics part as in how to create (decorate)a environment that caters to learners' needs. It is interesting to know that there's so much more to learning environment and it is very much related to the psycho-social pespective of education. It is also interesting to know that learning environment can be assessed through research methods and it has been done since the 1930s.
An effective learning environment happens when there is good rapport between the teacher and the students. Teachers should be able to understand the climate and mood of the students before even starting out a lesson. Students need to feel a sense of belonging and safety so that they are comfortable and they can contribute positively to the class. I feel that an ineffective learning environment is when there is no rapport between the teachers and the students. For example when i was a student, i experienced a teacher who comes to class and always scolds us because her home environment was problematic. As such we felt ummotivated and felt that it was a waste of time attending her lessons. Teachers are important in a classroom learning environment because they are empowered with a lot of skills to make the classroom lively and approachable for students.
In an effective learning environment, there should good relations between teachers and students. Teachers should be a role model to their students and should always be a motivator. The students should feel safe and secure. The environment should be conducive and not threatening. Students should feel at ease when approaching their teacher when they want to clarify their doubts. The students must be aware of their teachers' expectation and feel free to voice out their opinions and views. Through this, both teaching and learning would be effective.
Serene Leong -An effective learning environment to me is when there is a positive relationship between the teacher and her students, which promotes an open and honest communication. This would then encourage the whole class to work together with the teacher towards a shared goal .
An ineffective learning environment would be a place where there is a lot of negativity and close communication. Students would not feel valued and they would not be motivated to work towards a specific goal.
An ineffective environment occurs basically when there is a mismatch between the learner and his environment. I feel that to ensure there is an effective learning environment, it is important that we look at our students' needs and preferred learning style and provide the stimulating & supportive atmosphere for learning.
For example, in my case when I have to teach the "colourful" students of the 'tail-end' classes, the " fun" & "understanding" environment is crucial to be effective so as to get them to cooperate & stay motivated. The discipline style should be more of the liberal-democratic style too:)
(a)An effective learning environment should be safe for learning and teaching to take place.Students should be allowed to make mistakes, learn new things and comment on others' views/ideas in a non-threatening environment. It should be an environment conducve for the students to grow and develop his/her intellectual and psycho-social skills
The environment should meet and match the needs of the students.
In an effective LE, students are motivated to learn and exhibit positive attitude towards learning.There is positive and healthy teacher-student interaction.
(b) An environment that does not meet/match students' needs. Students do not have a sense of belonging to the environment and feel unsafe and threatened to make mistakes. Little learning taking place.
(a)An effective learning environment should be safe for learning and teaching to take place.Students should be allowed to make mistakes, learn new things and comment on others' views/ideas in a non-threatening environment. It should be an environment conducve for the students to grow and develop his/her intellectual and psycho-social skills
The environment should meet and match the needs of the students.
In an effective LE, students are motivated to learn and exhibit positive attitude towards learning.There is positive and healthy teacher-student interaction.
(b) An environment that does not meet/match students' needs. Students do not have a sense of belonging to the environment and feel unsafe and threatened to make mistakes. Little learning taking place.
Learning Environment depends on three key concepts:person, personal needs and humna behaviour. All the three concepts are needed to create a conducive environment for learning. Thus, educators need to take into account all these concepts to ensure learning takes place. Learning Environment focuses on the psychosocial environment. The sense of belonging, empowerment are categorized under person. Personal needs refers to feeling of safety, esteem, love and etc. This concept is based on Maslow's theory of needs. The concept of human behaviour refers to instincts, attitudes that affects behaviour.
It seems that there are significant relationships between the LE and the participants, participants' personal needs and their behaviours. An appropriate fit between the LE and the participants would facilitate the teaching and learning process, and help to achieve the learning outcomes. It takes into the physical attributes of the environment as well as the pyschological characteristics of the participants (administrators, teachers and students), it is about the holistic evaluation of the LE.
There are many factors that contribute to a desirable learning environment (LE) depending on the aim of the learning. For example, a physical demanding LE for someone going through physical training. As for our students in schools, a LE that not only makes it conducive for the students but the teachers as well is required. An effective LE that both students and teachers would look forward to and feel free to voice and develop their ideas. An ineffective LE makes all parties involved feel incompatible and restricted with no call for learning to take place.
In an effective school learning environment, the following elements should be present:
1. Effective communication: Among the teacher, among the students, among the parents, between the teacher groups, student groups and parent groups.
2. Understanding of our objectives (Learning and teaching): Sometimes when the objectives between the different groups are not aligned, there will be misunderstanding.
3. Effective use of media to communicate, learn and teach: Use necessary tools to teach and learn effectively.
Conversely in an ineffective learning environment, the following will take place:
1. Closed communication within the groups. Though there may be communication within the group, the others are not aware of the needs of other groups (students, teachers and parents).
2. There are no clear objectives or structures for the learning and teaching process.
3. Use unnecessary tools to teach.
School climate is pertinent not only for learners, but for teachers as well. If performative pressures conflict with personal needs of learners and educators consisting of the school leaders and academic and non-academic staff members, the LE may disempower and disenfranchise participants who find the competitive psycho-social climate unbearably disaffective.
Learners, teachers and school leaders who are both disillusioned and overwhelmed by the "terrors of performativity" (Ball, 2003) often resort to unethical ways justified by the means. When deontology is displaced consequentialist thinking, learning environment becomes geared towards tangible, measurable outcomes that override the intangible and innate love for learning and intrinsic yearning to seek knowledge for its own sake.
One only has to examine the school climate of the reported learners and 6 teachers (2 men and 4 ladies: 2 Malays, and 4 Chinese) and who have committed suicide between 1959 to 2013, to appreciate the extent to which the school climate can undermine the learning environment.
Examples of learner-centered, assessment-centred, community and knowledge-centred environments that I have encountered:
(1) learner-centered: kindergarten, nursery and other non-examinable LEs
(2) assessment-centred: Learners of examinable subjects in graduating classes
(3) community-centred: wikipedia
(4) knowledge-centred: NIE
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