Creating a positive learning environment is crucial for student success, where students feel safe, accepted, and comfortable. Teachers play a significant role in this by ensuring the tasks they assign are manageable and within the students'
Thinking needed to Develop a positive attitude towards learning
the work that the teacher gives are manageable and the students have enough skills to accomplish the work
the environment (classroom) should be a conducive environnment in which it is safe and comfortable to the students.
Learner must have be accepted by the teachers and his peers.
Bronfenbrenner's Bio-ecological Theory of Development
A person's personal, social and moral development is shaped by:
1) Genetics
- Jeremy's parents
2) Experiences
- Proximal level of influence on devlopment
~Microsystem = Peers, family, school & neighbourhood
a) Parents
- Jeremy did not get to see parents almost every night
- Authoritarian parenting style
-> Jeremy became a withdrawn & defiant child
2) Peers & school
- Alienated Jeremy
- Made snide remarks on Jeremy, refused to work with him
-> No emotional support in school
-> Cannot practise social skills
Affluenza
Perceived decrease in support of teachers by middle and high socioeconomic parents
Piaget's Theory of Intellectual Development
Experience influences development
- Experience physical world
- Social experience
-> Allows people to gain intellectual development
- Jeremy did not get to gain intellectual development through social experience as he self-isolated himself from his peers
Drive for equilibrium
- Intrinsic need for understanding, order and certainty
- Reaching a new equilibrium = higher level of intellectual development
- Difficult for people to change misconception too
- For Jeremy, difficult for him to accept school as a positive environment for learning
- Difficult to help Jeremy in his low self-image of himself
Erikson's Theory of Psychosocial Development
Morality of Teachers
- To care for student
-> Ms Low displayed insufficient care for Jeremy
People have the same basic needs & quality of support provided by social environment
- Jeremy's parents did not fulfill Jeremy's basic needs for care and concern, need for rest and social support
-> Jeremy lacked personal, social & moral support
Jeremy's life-span stage: Identify V.S. confusion stage
He needs:
- Firm, caring teachers who emphasize with him
- Provides the security of clear limits for acceptable behaviours
- Sensitive teachers
But his teachers made snide remarks of his alienation from peers
-> Further lowered his self-esteem
Behaviourism Theory
Stimulus Generalization:
Our behavior changes because of the CS, but also because of the things like the CS; we may respond to similar, multiple stimuli in the same way as to the initial CS.
- In this case, Jeremy learned to associate fear with Ms Low, it could generalize to other teachers, his classmates, the school and his parents.
Classical Conditioning:
A condition where, through contiguity and repetition in presentation of stimuli, a learner generalizes an existing stimulus-response connection to some new stimuli.
- When Ms Low shouted at Jerermy, her loud sudden noise (US) led to his startle, fear or withdrawal (UR). As this continues, Jeremy will associate any loud, sudden noise with Ms Low (CS) and he will begin to feel fearful and have a tendency to withdraw (CR).
Cognitve Development
Frontal lobes are essential in decision making, risk taking, delay of gratification and managing impulsive behaviours.
- Requires 24 years to be fully developed
-> Explains why Jeremy is prone to outburst of frustration when challenged by his teachers.
Features of development: Depends on both heredity and environment.
- Heredity may not be Jeremy's problem here as his parents are both working professionals with high achievements. Environment may be the key to why Jeremy may not be performing well in school.
Subtopic
Definition: Changes in our thinking that occur as a result of learning, maturation, and experience.
- What Jeremy experiences, what he learns and his level of maturation affects his changes in thinking.