Variables and Factors Influencing Teaching and Learning Young People - Research Paper Example

FACTORS INFLUENCING TEACHING AND LEARNING OF YOUNG CHILDREN by Date Introduction Education psychology is concerned with evaluating all the factors that influence teaching and learning in schools. Most of the times the children are blamed for their failure to perform well and others are praised for their successes. As such, children are treated as the cause and solution for their school achievement. What we fail to understand is that it is not always the fault of the children but rather the influences of other factors such as their environment and cognitive development. Sometimes, the school context or the teachers themselves are the cause of failure and children are not to be blamed. Consider a case where the teacher uses instructional methods which not all students can understand, who is to blame? What if the content being taught is way above what the students can comprehend, is it their fault. This is the main reason why educators need to understand the children and reasons for their underperformance so as to help them achieve their goals. Two theorists that give much insight on how cognitive development affects teaching and learning are Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky. For Piaget, children develop in stages and failure to progress to the next stage can cause psychological problems and fixation. This has an implication on what teachers should teach at each stage. On the other hand, Vygotsky puts much emphasis on sociocultural factors. This essay will describe and analyse the different variables and factors that influence teaching and learning of children and young people using Piaget’s and Vygotsky theories of cognitive development. One of the factors that influence teaching and learning are the individual or personal factors such as attitude and motivation and these according to Piaget are result of cognitive development. According to Piaget’s cognitive development theory, children development takes place in four stages: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational and formal operational. These developments take place in succession and one stage must be completed before proceeding to the next stage (Piaget, 1958). At sensorimotor stage, children can sense and perform basic motor functions such as grasping, sucking, and turning their neck. This is because they have schemas that help them perform these actions. Piaget asserts that children are not born with innate ideas, nor learn from others, but construct their own world through experience (Sigelman & Rider: 46). As such, new information is required for these children to develop these schemas and deal with more complex problems. This is done at preoperational stage where children assimilate and accommodate. A schema in this case refers to cohesive, repeatable actions or building blocks of knowledge. For example, children know that when they hear a sound, they should turn towards that sound but as they grow up, they recognize the sounds and do not have to turn after hearing every sound but selectively. This means the child can explain its surroundings. Through experience, the schema becomes more advanced and elaborate. Assimilation occurs when the child is able to apply schema to new situations while adaptation occurs when the existing schema is no longer effective to deal with current situation and need to be changed (Piaget, 1962). Equilibration in this case drives the learning process from assimilation to accommodation. At the concrete operational stage, children are able to think logically although they cannot hypothesize. For example, a student may learn to do a certain task using logic using real objects but if given abstract situations, they may not be able to predict the solution. However, when they reach formal operational stage, they can think logically, hypothesize and also use deductive reasoning (Sigelman & Rider, 2009). These stages have a lot of implication for teaching and learning. Most of the times when a child fails to perform well in exams, the teacher blame the student’s ability especially if ability tests were in use. However, the fact is that the child is on an educational level that does not fit him or her. May be the student has not learned to use deductive reasoning hence may fail in subjects that require such skill such as mathematics and sciences. This influences teaching and learning in that the teacher may think the child is unteachable. On the other hand, the student feels he/she cannot catch up with the rest of the students thus loses the morale to continue learning (Chen & McNamee, 2007). Grouping students therefore, according to ability tests is not advisable. Retaining students for low achievement is also not advisable as it affects child’s motivation to learn and may force him/her to drop out of school. Instead, the teacher should use Piaget’s theory to understand that different students have different abilities depending on level of cognitive development. As such, instead of ignoring them they should provide them with new learning experiences so that their schemas can advance and mature. Furthermore, they should use different instructional methods such as group work or collaborative learning to help the slow learners learn from the more knowledgeable peers instead of retaining them or isolating them in ability groups (Wadsworth, 2004). They should also look at the curriculum and offer content that is in line with the level of child’s cognitive development. Play is also important as it enhances learning new skills through experience. Most of all, Piaget recommends discovery learning whereby the student is given the opportunity to construct own knowledge and discover new information hence build on his schema. The role of the teacher is to facilitate that student to learn on his own. For example, the teacher can a child pebbles and show him/her how to group them and count then leave the child to practice on his own or give him a challenging task to perform so that the child can learn problem-solving skills. Moreover, the teacher should assess the readiness of children to understand when to introduce new concepts. This is because according to Piaget cognitive development is achieved through biological maturation and environmental experience (Sigelman & Rider, 2009: 47). Another group of factors that influence teaching and learning are the environmental factors. Students as well as teachers bring different experiences into the school which affects teaching and learning. For example, the background of the student is a very important determinant of student achievement. Students from poor socioeconomic backgrounds are likely to perform poorly in school than those from high socioeconomic status (Chen & McNamee 2007). Teachers also have a tendency of underrating children from minority races and poor backgrounds as they are assumed to be low achievers. They thus do not give much attention to them leading to poor performance. These children have less access to early intervention programs as opposed to those from wealthy families. It gets even difficult for those trying to learn second language as they experience many hardships such as English proficiency problem. Other environmental factors include: class size, school size, parental involvement, and peer influence. The influence of environmental factors is best explained by Vygotsky in his sociocultural theory of cognitive development. According to this theory, individual development is to be understood in reference to social and cultural context as Vygotsky unlike Piaget argues that social learning is a precondition for development (1978: 90). For him, cognitive development does not proceed in stages but is a continuous process through social interaction. In a school setting, the interaction between the teachers, students, peers and school environment is very critical for successful development. The parents can also not be left out as first learning begins at home and affects how children learn in school. Since different cultures learn differently, it therefore follows that cognitive development varies across culture. This has a lot of implication for learning and teaching as teachers have to understand where the students are coming from to understand their behaviour and performance. According to Vygotsky children are born with basic abilities for intellectual development as they can pay attention, sense, and perceive. They then learn from the environment to develop more effective mental processes. This learning takes place through imitation, instruction and collaboration (Vygotsky 1978). As such, teachers, parents and peers as role models can influence learning. They should provide a good example to the child to imitate so that they can develop successfully. Teachers should learn to interact with students so that they can pass knowledge to them in the process and this is where the role of class and school size comes in. Chen and McNamee (2007: 50) argue that a small class size and small school are effective in socialisation and consequently learning and high performance that large schools especially for the minorities. This also influences teaching in that the teacher has to form small groups to enhance interaction and learning. Through collaboration with students and peers, these children can get motivated to learn more (Rogoff 1998). Furthermore, Vygotsky believes that the children should interact with the More Knowledgeable Other (MKO) to learn efficiently and these include the teacher, adult or peers who are more knowledgeable. Group work should thus not comprise of same ability students only but a mix up of high ability and low ability students so that the low ability ones can learn from the high ability students. The Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) also can influence teaching and learning. This is the difference between what the students actually know and what they can learn from the MKO (Vygotsky 1978: 86). He asserts that the teacher or mentor can recognize where the learner is within the ZPD by asking questions and recognizing the learner’s individual learning style. Once they identify where the learner is, they can then help the learner to progress through scaffolding. Scaffolding in this case refers to change in social support in the course of teaching session and enhances mastery of subject hence improved performance. Other ways the teachers can help learners is through questioning, directing, explaining, task restructuring and offering feedback. If the teacher gives a student a task to accomplish, and does not give feedback thereafter demoralises the student hence hindering learning (Pearson & Taplin 2013). The role of the teacher is to give instructions to the learners and the learners follow these instructions to perform future tasks on their own hence develop their cognition. The teachers are thus forced to change their teaching styles from the traditional lecturing and reading and listening by students to active participation of learners through collaboration with teachers in meaningful tasks. The curriculum thus needs to be flexible to allow proper interactions in the classroom. The child should not be understood as the source and cause of poor performance, but performance as the product of interaction between individual and factors in the environment. In the process of interaction language is crucial. According to Vygotsky cognitive development is all about internalisation of language (1978: 90-95). At birth, language and thought are separated but as the child grows, the two merge to produce verbal thought or the inner speech. External speech on the other hand, is the use of language for social communication. Without language, social interaction cannot take place and consequently, cognitive development cannot progress. The teacher needs to communicate effectively with the child so that he/she can take clear instructions to help in self-regulation of behaviour. If the teacher communicates vague or unclear goals and expectations, the child cannot know what is expected of him/her. Language is thus a tool for regulating or guiding the children’s action. The inner speech helps develop inner thought thus enabling a child to handle difficult situations or challenging tasks (Vygotsky 1978). In this way, the child develops problem-solving skills by thinking out loud. The teachers also use language to clarify points and transmit important information to learners. Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky give individual and environmental factors that influence teaching and learning as well as their impact on teaching and learning. However, these can be criticised on various grounds. First, Piaget gives universal stages of development thus assuming that they affect all children. However, he fails to take into account cultural factors that influence cognitive development. The environment the child grows in is very crucial in development and this means the content of the curriculum not only needs to consider the stages but also cultural background. Besides, Piaget does not give exact ages when these stages occur. He also emphasises learning discovery hence individual and ignores the role of language and social interaction (Vygotsky 1978). For him, private speech hinders development while for Vygotsky; it is the essence of learning development. Vygotsky on the other hand stresses the use of language, more knowledgeable others and Zone of Proximal Development and scaffolding. However, many students have problems in language acquisition meaning teachers have to adopt other modes to pass information to such students hence language may not be that important. He also emphasises guided learning through scaffolding thus ignoring individual capabilities of children. Children should be left free to explore and learn through mistakes. Besides, he does not explain how the teacher can recognise this ZPD so that the MKO can assist learners to develop. Conclusion There are many factors that influence teaching and learning of young children. Most of them arise from cognitive development as in most cases; it is the intelligence of the students that is assessed in schools through achievement tests. It is therefore crucial to understand theories of cognitive development to understand the behaviour of learners and how they can be assisted to achieve maximum development. Teachers now need not rely on traditional teaching methods whereby they lectured and the students listened and read textbooks to perform well in exams. Teachers have a role to engage students in active learning by giving them challenging tasks to perform and collaborating with them for better results. Teachers also need to guide students on what to do but leave them alone to self-direct themselves hence improve their cognition. This has implication for curriculum as it now needs to be flexible and adaptive to student’s needs as well as the teaching and learning styles. References Chen, J and McNamee, GD (2007). Bridging: assessment for teaching and learning in early childhood classrooms, Prek-3. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. Diaz, R. M., & Berk, L. E. (1992). Private speech: From social interaction to self-regulation. Lawrence Erlbaum. Pearson, E & Taplin, M (2013). Teaching in primary schools in China and India. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. Piaget, J. (1958). The growth of logical thinking from childhood to adolescence. AMC, 10, 12. Piaget, J., & Cook, M. T. (1952). The origins of intelligence in children. Cambridge MA: MIT Rogoff, B. (1998). Cognition as a collaborative process in: D. Kuhn & R. S. Siegler (eds.) Handbook of child psychology. Vol. 2 (5th ed.) NY: Wiley. Sigelman, C.K and Rider, E.A (2009) Life-span human development. 6th ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning. Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wadsworth, B. J. (2004). Piagets theory of cognitive and affective development: Foundations of constructivism. Longman Publishing Read More