Abstract
There are a number of factors that lead to efficient learning and teaching, especially for children. This discussion will center around two different episodes that have occurred in the English as a Second Language (ESL) classroom-- these two episodes will be analyzed in the context of a number of different motivation and learning theories, including Maslow’s theory of motivation and the theories of multiple intelligences. The goal for ESL classrooms is always to encourage the best possible functional use for the English language; understanding students and encouraging them to participate in the learning process is the first step in encouraging good, life-long language skills in students. Teachers or instructors may never know what will happen in a classroom at any given moment, but understanding the structural theories that govern learning, motivation, and intelligence provide them with the structural support to determine the best course of action in the face of uncertainty.
- INTRODUCTION
There are a number of factors that lead to efficient learning and teaching, especially for children. This discussion will center around two different episodes that have occurred in the English as a Second Language (ESL) classroom-- these two episodes will be analyzed in the context of a number of different motivation and learning theories, including Maslow’s theory of motivation and the theories of multiple intelligences. The goal for ESL classrooms is always to encourage the best possible functional use for the English language; understanding students and encouraging them to participate in the learning process is the first step in encouraging good, life-long language skills in students.
- MOTIVATION AND LEARNING
A student cannot learn if they are unmotivated to do any learning; learning is a process that the learner must be engaged in, and if the learner in question is not engaged in the process, then that learner will absorb very little. However, according to Maslow, every human being has a set of needs that dictate whether or not an individual is inspired to work towards a certain goal or not.
In Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, the bottom step on the pyramid-- the step that defines one’s physiological needs, are the basics that an individual needs to live: food, water, oxygen, and so on all make up needs in this part of the pyramid (Maslow, 1954). After this comes the individual’s safety needs, then love and belongingness, then esteem, and finally self-actualization needs (Maslow, 1954). In Episode 1 (see Appendix 1), the child who was causing so much disruption in the classroom was, potentially, acting out because the safety and belongingness needs in his pyramid were not being met. He was not motivated to behave well or excel in school despite his obvious talents because he felt both unsafe and unloved in his home environment (Maslow, 1954). Although there could be other events happening in this child’s life that also affected his hierarchy of needs, it is most likely that the violence that he was experiencing and the difficulty communicating that he sometimes had made him unmotivated to excel in school despite his obvious talent.
Some students may need to be motivated extrinsically before they can be motivated intrinsically-- this means that sometimes the instructor needs to find a way to motivate students like the student in Episode 1, and teach them that they are capable of doing a lot of excellent things. Once the student believes that and starts seeing the benefits of his or her hard work, the intrinsic motivation can begin to be developed.
Intrinsic motivation becomes more and more important as a student grows, which is why it is so important to help students develop this ability as young as possible. While a young child may be offered rewards for behaving in the ways that they should, older students are only ever really rewarded for outstanding achievement. For this reason, the motivation to work must come from within the child; if he or she is motivated only by external factors, then it is much more likely that this student will fail.
- INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES AND LEARNING
In a classroom, there will almost always be children of a variety of different levels and abilities. The difference in levels can be extremely problematic for the instructor who is unable to vary his or her teaching to the different levels that the students have. The students in Episode 2 (See Appendix 1) are almost all going to be at different levels of language use. Encouraging intrinsic motivation-- the motivation that comes from within-- with extrinsic motivation-- the motivation that comes from winning the game, the instructor can both assess the differences in levels that the students are displaying and also adjust the level to ensure that the students do not become disheartened by the learning process.
All students learn differently-- there is no one set learning path that will be best for all the students involved. One of the best ways to deal with these differences is to force students to utilize their own intelligence and creativity to solve problems or address issues in the classroom; this gives them the chance to solve problems in their own manner and by going through their own learning process. This stops the tendency for the instructor to force all the students into a single learning style; more will be said about the use of intelligence and creativity Section IV below.
- INTELLIGENCE AND CREATIVITY
In Episode 2, the instructor must be careful not to over-value the use of perfect grammar and vocabulary; although this should be valued, of course, the purpose of the exercise is to encourage creativity in a student or, indeed, an entire class of students. When students are asked to “fight” a crocodile and a hummingbird, for instance, the student with the hummingbird should not automatically lose the round; they must be given an equal chance to make a case for their animal, and creativity should be rewarded in the process.
Slavin (2006) suggests that intelligence can be defined as a “General aptitude for learning, often measured by the ability to deal with abstractions and to solve problems” (Slavin, 2006, p.121). By this definition, the student in Episode 1 is highly intelligent, but lacks the ability to properly channel that intelligence in the structure of the school system. It is the job of the instructor to ensure that the student can integrate properly into the school system without losing his or her motivation for learning.
The use of a second language requires significant ability insofar as creativity and intelligence are concerned. An individual who cannot be creative with language will be stuck memorizing rote passages and phrases for his or her entire life; an individual with the ability for creative language use allows grammar phrases to build the scaffolding on which they climb to utilize the language.
Dr. Armstrong writes that there are several different types of learning that can occur at every level of education. Armstrong (2014) writes:
One of the most remarkable features of the theory of multiple intelligences is how it provides eight different potential pathways to learning the theory of multiple intelligences suggests several other ways in which the material might be presented to facilitate effective learning Whatever you are teaching or learning, see how you might connect it with
- words (linguistic intelligence)
- numbers or logic (logical-mathematical intelligence)
- pictures (spatial intelligence)
- music (musical intelligence)
- self-reflection (intrapersonal intelligence)
- a physical experience (bodily-kinesthetic intelligence)
- a social experience (interpersonal intelligence), and/or
- an experience in the natural world. (naturalist intelligence) (Armstrong 2014).
The wonderful thing about the game in Episode 2 is that it engages students with all different types of intelligence; it does not dictate a single learning type or demand that a student address the problem in any specific fashion. Instead, it encourages different types of intelligence to come to the forefront in the classroom.
- SPECIAL LEARNING NEEDS
Sometimes students have special learning needs: this may come in the form of a learning or physical disability, but it also may come in the form of a language disability. Although the student in Episode 1 spoke Cantonese fluently, he was not a native speaker, and was outside the cultural bounds of his classmates. This made him feel even more isolated, as he was isolated from both his family and his friends to some extent. The student’s isolation was not complete, but his lack of native speaker status sometimes set him apart from the children in his grade who could relate completely to each other.
This student also suffered some cultural ramifications; he was, as previously stated, unable to make close friends in his grade because of his ethnicity and membership in the outside group. In addition, the violence in his home isolated him further. The instructor had to take special care to include him more readily in the classroom, but had to be certain that they were not showing favoritism that would lead to the perception of unfair treatment on the part of the other students in the classroom.
- BRONFENBRENNER’S ECOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE
In Episode 1, it is easy to see that the child has disruptions in both his microsystem and mesosystem. The peer group and parent problems both fall under the category of the microsystem, where the issues with the teachers in school constitute disruptions in the mesosystem. The student’s systems are likely to continue to be unbalanced as long as the adults in his life continue to be affected negatively by their own mesosystems and microsystems in their own lives.
- DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS
Children face any number of problems in the classroom; it can be a place full of surprises. Things can happen in the classroom that the instructor may never expect, and being ready for unexpected events by knowing the many different theories available on intelligence, learning and motivation can help an instructor be ready when something strange or unusual happens in the classroom.
Appendix 1
Description of Episodes
Episode 1
A student in a primary 5 classroom is disruptive. He is a Japanese boy in a class full of Cantonese students, who are all attending the Japanese International School. He speaks English, Cantonese, Japanese, and Mandarin, and he converses with most of his friends in Japanese or English, although most of his friends speak Cantonese natively.
In the classroom, this student’s behavior is highly disruptive, and his humor is often vulgar and inappropriate. Although he is clearly a very intelligent child and attains high marks in languages and mathematics especially, he continues to interrupt the classroom on a daily basis despite conversations had with his parents. One day, another student reports to the instructor that the student with the problem behavior had confided that one of his guardians regularly hits the child with problematic behavior with various household implements.
Episode 2
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