How Do You Create a Positive Learning Environment in Your Classes?

Taken from http://quotesgram.com/quotes-about-learning/

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.