The educational process is a complex of various activities that are helping to discover new information. It is important to understand that this process is an eternal between all the actors that are participating in it. Both teachers and students are involved and, though, responsible for the learning and the consequences that it brings. Different complexities are arising during the studies. I personally also face them as a future professional. For me, the main complexity is to build up a strategy of self-positioning that would help me to teach my students and to do it efficiently. In my opinion, this positioning includes emotional, motivational and learning style compounds.
Sometimes students lack the support of their teachers during the learning process because not all the teachers understand the importance of their involvement . I agree with this statement as teachers tend to be focused on their specialization and intentionally or not they lose important components in the time of interaction with their students. One of the representative examples of the importance of self-positioning of the teacher was described in the research of Yoon , where the different styles of teaching foreign English learners was presented. There were cases with alienated outsider students because the teacher was not positioning himself as a tutor for the foreign people . This is bringing us to the value of the previous experience and background knowledge that can be different not only for the international students but also between all of them. It is claimed that such knowledge can influence both positively and negatively on the students’ capacity to learn . This is why it is once again important for the teacher to be flexible and have a multi-approach in order to facilitate the experience of learning, even though it is a complicated process.
The role of the student is also important for the results, however, teachers are influencing it, by creating the motivational environment. For example, students could experience the working process together in collaborative working that is somehow a social regulation inside the collective and can be useful for the educational results. On the other hand, in order to unite children for such type of collaboration and make it work in a productive way, there should be a teacher work involved to motivate this to happen. Another reason why teachers’ motivation is important is because it helps to create a positive emotional environment. I agree that the emotional side affects a lot the educational process . All of them are important, from the sense of shame or fear until the complete flow of excitement. Nevertheless, the creation of positive emotions is not always enough to improve the student’s performance. The illustration of the research about the perception of math abilities of the students by Rattan has shown that comforting students in case they are weak in some subject can be a harmful practice as it can result in poor performance in not favorite subject, as, for example, math . This brings me personally to thoughts that the teacher, while working on the emotional compound, also should include the adequate understanding of how to control and motivate in a no harmful way, which is a hard mission for me, as I tend to show compassion to my students and support them.
The attempts to create the most effective way to teach have provoked the development of a huge number of various learning styles . The fact is, their quantity not always support the quality aspect and should be examined more profound. This once again shows the complexity of the studying process both for the teacher and the student. In my opinion, to achieve the balance between the self-positioning and the way it affects the student, the teacher need to build a strong communication link that will empower all the previously mentioned complexities.
References
Pashler, H., McDaniel, M., Rohrer, D., Bjork, R. . (2008). Learning Styles: Concepts and Evidence. Psychological Science in the Public Interest , 105-119.
Rattan, A., Good, C., Dweck, C. (2012). "It's ok - Not everyone can be good at math": Instructors with an entity theory comfort (and demotivate) students . Journal of Experimental Social Psychology , 731-737.
Shallert, D., Martin, D. (2003). A psychological analysis of what teachers and students do in the language arts classroom. In Handbook of Research on Teaching the English Language Arts (pp. 31-45).
Volet,S., Summers, M., Thurman, J. (2008). High-level co-regulation in collaborative learning: How does it emerge and how is it sustained? . Learning and Instruction , 128-143.
Yoon, B. (2008). Uninvited Guests: The Influence of Teachers' Roles and Pedagogies on the Positioning of English Language Learners in the Regular Classroom. American Educational Research Journal , 495-522.
