Instructional leader
Abstract
This essay will discuss tools, which will assist the educational leader in promoting the learning outcome and assessment of students by guiding, encouraging, motivating and supporting the school culture and offering instructional programs in the area of mathematics, which are conducive to student learning and the professional growth of staff members. Mathematical tools are measured and structured to assist teachers who can examine distinct or various approaches to improve the mathematics performance of students in middle school. Students that are in elementary grades 3 through 9 accept the challenge and the desire to succeed. According to research, students between grades 3 and 9 by nature are motivated to excel (Covington & Mueller, 2001; Lepper, Corpus, & Iyengar, 2005.
Cheak (2005) suggest that mathematics teachers who use nurturing and motivation as a pedagogical tool assessment would probably obtain valuable information about how math tasks can be combined successfully into mathematics curricula and sustain a school instructional program. A collection of research materials could be used in planning lessons, assignments and establishing criteria for assessing and scoring assignments. According to research, motivation may be intrinsic as well as extrinsic. For example, extrinsic motivation is generated when a student receives a good grade or during performance of a job in an outstanding manner. Intrinsic motivation consists of actions that come from within the student (Cheak & Wessel, 2005).
Advocating, nurturing and motivation involve managing and developing behavior of students. Additionally, it involves pointing students in the right direction, and helping them achieve or meet their goals. Students are nurtured and motivated in a number of ways that consist of internal and external energies that empower them to remain on track (Fredrick’s, Blumenfeld, & Paris, 2004; Maehr & Meyer, 2004; Reeve, 2006).
According to Brewster and Fager (2000), students can be encouraged or motivated in different ways. For example, some students are more inclined to complete their classroom assignments or participate in classroom discussions while other students might prefer to avoid course work completely and come up with excuses as to why they could not complete the required assignment. On the other hand, the instructor leader may need to encourage those students that appear unconcerned in earning high marks on their assignment (Brewster and Fager, 2000).
Some students are more comfortable with participating in athletics, or gymnastics or gym classes, attending sporting events after school and never do their homework unless they are forced to. On the other hand, some students who have learning disabilities, are temperamental or emotional are not encouraged to study or participate in any type of body fitness activities. The educator should promote the success of every student by advocating, nurturing, motivating and through instructional programs. According to Brewster and Fager (2000) educators can and do affect students' level of engagement in learning and by recognizing that this power is a critical step in motivating students.
Brewster and Fager (2000) further indicated that developing a healthy self-esteem is the foundation for success, which in turn fosters motivation and engagement in school that the educator can see the connections between their practice and student outcomes. A greater understanding of motivational issues would empower the new teacher with a better understanding of the factors that maximize the motivational potential of the classroom-teaching learning environment (Brewster and Fager, 2000).
Educational learning theories
There are two educational learning theories that may be applied by teachers to improve student motivation. The first theory is known as the self-efficacy theory. Self-efficacy theory is based on the fact that the expectation by an individual that they are capable of succeeding in a task influences their motivation for a particular task. Having an expectation on a certain outcome is the belief that doing a particular action will lead to given preferred outcomes. A student may believe that learning algebra will improve their math. However, that student must be motivated to believe that they have what it takes to learn algebra. Students who have been motivated to reach a high efficacy level and outcome expectations are able to persist even when academic tasks are difficult (Bouffard-Bouchard, Parent, & Larivee, 1991). Teachers may enhance the intrinsic motivation of their students to learn by raising their self-efficacy. Teachers need to know which particular experiences influence self-efficacy to achieve this. According to Ames (1992) students are motivated if they have a positive attitude toward learning and because they tend to lead to a preference for challenging work. Students that have excelled in their assignments appeared to be motivated to learn while students that concentrate more on playing video games and participate in sporting activities may ignore homework assignments (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990, 1996; Schweinle, Turner, & Meyer, 2006).
According to Bussey & Bandura (1999), individuals may develop their self-efficacy in four ways. First, past performance can help people achieve mastery of tasks. Secondly, being keen on other students’ performance may help improve one’s self-efficacy (Miller & Chunk, 2002). Thirdly, verbal persuasion through encouragement may improve a student’s efficacy. This may include reassurance and support for them as they go about their curriculum tasks. For example, the educator can build the students’ confidence by telling them what they did right instead of always telling them what they have done wrong and provide appropriate praise. Fourth, emotional arousal may be used as a tool for motivation. This is because students who have high self-efficacy exhibit low levels of stress, depression and anxiety when faced by academic challenges. On the other hand, students with low self-efficacy exhibit high stress, depression and anxiety levels during demanding academic tasks.
The second educational learning theory is the self-worth theory (Covington & Beery, 1976). This theory, as envisioned by Martin Covington, states that humans are always trying to keep their sense of self-worth or to appraise their own value. Humans protect their self-worth by believing that that are competent enough. Since schools value and incentivize competencies, Students’ self-worth is affected by perceptions of their ability. As a result, the primary focus of learning for students becomes to prove their self-worth. Students are thus led to become motivated to avoid having a negative outcome- lower self worth. As mentioned before, student motivation may be extrinsic or intrinsic. Intrinsic motivation is aimed at satisfying interest and curiosity. Extrinsic rewards may include high performance and good grades.
The main premise of the self-worth motivational theory is that most students want to achieve and experience levels of aspiration if they associate their self-worth with their performances. The need for achievement is increased when a student is motivated and experiences success. If students experience success their need for achievement will thus be strengthened (Ames, 1992). Students are motivated to learn and achieve when they perceive that their teachers care about them. Students who are highly motivated and make use of learning strategies are most likely to achieve.
Philosophy of Education
The instructional leader philosophy of education should be to promote the success of the student and focused on how children should be educated, what they should be taught, and the educators that are qualified to teach the students. The instructional leader should also focus on student learning as well as staff professional growth, training their teachers, which are part of pedagogy instructive strategies, and teaching students different learning styles. The instructional leader philosophy of education must be concerned with instruction or principles that expand student learning and commitment at every age particular elementary grade 3 to 9. According to Romando (2007), children may have different learning styles, and they might require more structure or challenges when learning assignments if they are motivated because motivation provides a source of energy that is responsible for why learners decide to make an effort to sustain the activity . Students are challenged differently because of their cultural backgrounds, ideas, customs beliefs, experiences, and their social behavior. The instructional leader should be aware of the different cultural backgrounds that would affect the learning outcome of each student. The educator should understand the different needs of the students and the shared patterns of student’s behaviors and their interaction. Educators must be prepared to accommodate and understand the challenges of human rights and cultural diversity in handling various learning styles in the classroom. For example, the educator can plan lesson plans and activities with cross-cultural diversity in mind. This is also a method of ensuring that the self-worth of an individual is high. According to Romamdo (2007), it is accepted that student motivation plays a key role in academic learning. In general, a classroom environment that promotes mutual respect, motivation and caring attitude amongst students and teachers is more conducive to student participation and learning. The challenge of the teacher is to engage the whole class as a learning community with all the students participating in the learning process (Romamdo, 2007).
The purpose of philosophy of education is to focus on learning theories that motivate and offer valuable means for understanding and, in some cases, changing the interaction between educators and students (Arends, 2009). Teachers can inspect their own beliefs about students. Further, they can inspect why students succeed or fail at the tasks that the teacher assigns. Based upon these analyses, teachers can make changes, if necessary, in the tasks they assign, the learning environments they create, and their verbal interactions with their students, processes, student advocating, nurturing and sustaining the relationship between education and the instructions, which are presented by the educator in the schools of education. As an activity or process, educational instructions should be presented differently according to the various learning styles. The different teaching methods will determine students’ motivation levels.
According to research, it is recommended that the instructional leaders integrate math tools of assessment in middle school mathematics classrooms. According to research, students are falling behind in math once they reach middle school and a large number of students are not passing the required standardized math test. Molina (2004 argue that a guiding educator should encourage all students to develop a solid background in mathematics. This may be achieved through the first theory of motivation: Self Efficacy theory. Molina (2004) suggests that the challenges of motivating and nurturing middle school students may be because of the lack of understanding math concepts as they are emerging into adolescence(Molina, 2004). Standardized testing being the qualitative measure by which several states evaluate and rate our schools has proven to be a failed practice. We have known for decades that standardized tests are not a reliable evaluation for a vast population of students.
According to Steel (1999), minority students who have not applied themselves maybe and who are susceptible to emotional and motivational problems indicates that high achieving minority students often become so concerned about avoiding the stereotype of intellectual inferiority that they fall apart in situations in which they are asked to demonstrate their competency, such as on standardized tests.
Research indicated that there are many kinds of philosophy, many philosophies, and many ways of philosophizing, so there are many kinds of educational philosophy and ways of doing it. In a sense, there is no such thing as a philosophy of education; there are only philosophies of education that can be classified in many different ways (Steele, 1999).
According to Skinner (1969), the educator should be approachable, demonstrate, provide real life experiences, knowledgeable, maintain a positive environment, role models and finally, communicate with the student and provide feedback for improving or feedback that requires raising the bar. Skinner (1969) further highlights that as educators we have to remember that we are providing a service and the students are our number one priority.
Future Implications to Practice
According to Oakes (2007), students that are performing below expected requirements in kindergarten, first grade and elementary grades will perform poorly in middle school for different reasons. For example, the root of the problem maybe that children in kindergarten, first grade and middle school may have trouble adapting or find it difficult to accomplish or understand assignments and might lack the nurturing and motivation that they received while in a lower grade. The level of difficulty of assigned tasks in relation to the students’ ability is another factor that exhibits potential influence on student motivation (Oakes, 2007). A difficult task leads to full effort from the student without any progress with a consequent reduction in motivation (Oakes, 2007).
Instructional leaders must realize that math is considered to be one of the most challenging areas that student’s scores are extremely low. My philosophy of education includes motivating, nurturing, providing hands own applications, feedback, assessment outcome, individual creativity, and problem solving techniques in the classroom. The concept of motivation stands at the center of the educational enterprise and student’s achievement (Maehr & Meyer 1997. According to research, students who are motivated to learn are more goal-oriented and more self-regulated for learning than those students who were not nurtured or motivated to a lesser degree (Ames 1992, Dweck & Leggett 1988, Pintrich & De Groot 1990, Pintrich & Schrauben, 1992). Research further suggests that they should monitor the students’ understanding of what is being taught and their ability to successfully accomplish their assignments (Meece & Holt 1993, Middleton & Midgley 1997). Secondly, the educator should employ organizing strategies such as paraphrasing and summarizing (Archer 1994), and thirdly, the educator should make positive, adaptive attributions in motivating the student to understand the required assignments. According to research, the key to a student’s success or failure, does not necessarily imply incompetence, but may indicate the educator’s lack of utilization of learning or motivational strategies (Nicholls 1984, Pintrich & Schunk 1996). The benefits of adopting motivational strategies also extend to affective reactions. For example, learning goals are positively associated with motivation, pride and satisfaction in success and negatively associated with anxiety in the event of student’s failure (Ames 1992, Jagacinski & Nicholls 1984, 1987).
Conclusion
Advocating, nurturing and motivation relates to the existence, management, and development of behavior of students acting in a certain way and points students in a particular direction keeping them willing to achieve or meet goals. Students are nurtured and motivated in a number of ways that consist of internal and external energy that empower them to stay on track (Fredrick’s, Blumenfeld, & Paris, 2004; Maehr & Meyer, 1997; Reeve, 1997).
The instructional leader should be aware of the different cultural backgrounds that would affect the learning outcome of each student. Philosophy of education is concerned with how children should be educated and what they should be taught. Educator should commit to developing the minds of our students, to comprehend, evaluate and decide on an outcome assessment.
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