How Do You Create
a Positive Learning Environment in Your Classes?
How do you create an appropriate atmosphere for learning?
By Prof. Jonathan
Acuña-Solano, M. Ed.
School of English
Faculty
of Social Sciences
Universidad
Latina de Costa Rica
Monday, May 9, 2016
Post 272
A positive learning environment can be
defined as the perfect knowledge-building ambience where students and teachers
can really become a community of learning where all members can benefit from a
symbiotic relationship to attain course as well as college program goals. It is
the instructor’s task to propitiate a healthy, respectful environment to
guarantee student safety and comprehensible input to create meaningful
acquisition of course content.
And how can this
environment be created to foster deep learning in the classroom? This
environment must have very solid foundations. To start with, a community of
learning implies respect. None of the members is supposed to make derogatory
comments about any of the class members and in meant to be respectful of all
member’s opinions. A second foundation is autonomous learning. This community
of learning gets its “life” from the fact that though we learn in social
contexts, it is the student’s task to consolidate that learning on their own;
otherwise, we are going back to Piaget’s time of academic teaching. And the
last foundation is the importance of making one’s expertise develop while
finding the right teaching methodology to really foster in-class, social
learning and autonomous acquisition.
A positive
deep-learning environment can be created the moment the teacher understands
that learning is not “preaching and testing.” If a good learning atmosphere is
in the lookout, it is necessary to remember that education is 50% teaching and 50%
learning. Teaching must lead to learning, the development of skills, and
competencies for their future or current jobs. Teaching is not just meant to be
verified by means of summative testing; it is acquisition that needs to be
assessed by means of meaningful practice activities that show how knowledge is
going to be acquired to be used at work.
To sum up, a positive
learning environment begins with an open-minded teaching professional who
comprehends that the building of knowledge is not entirely attached to his/her
teaching capacities but to those capacities and what learners can eventually do
with the knowledge they are grasping.
Monday, May 09, 2016
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