It is generally accepted that students study better if the most comfortable conditions are created for this, and teachers are demanding, but incredibly friendly. Without a good mentor, who will certainly be liked by everyone, it is almost impossible to master the material and pass exams successfully, isn’t it? You should also like the teaching methods, and the learning process should evoke extremely positive emotions. It's right. But, as scientists have found, not always.
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The lighter and more comfortable, the better
The more comfortable and easier it is to learn, the higher the results. It is a fact. It is confirmed by studies that took place in different countries - from Iran and Kazakhstan to Russia and Australia. Everyone agrees on this, and cultural differences do not have a significant impact. Yes, according to conducted by the staff of the University of Medical Sciences in Iran, the performance, motivation and degree of satisfaction of students from the educational process are directly dependent on the characteristics of the educational environment. Therefore, “faculty and course leaders must provide the best learning environment with diverse support systems for students.”
An important aspect of the educational environment is emotional assessment of subjects studied at university. Those that seem “boring” or “unnecessary” to students are often worse for them. Negative perceptions of a particular discipline negatively affect academic performance; positive - . The students themselves directly link their interest in subjects and their success. Thus, positive results in senior years may appear more often as practical work in the specialty becomes available.
Another significant component of the educational environment is attitude towards teachers, their ability to motivate students and encourage them to learn. , conducted at the Tambov Pedagogical Institute, suggests that the quality of teachers is most important for first-year students. “Yesterday’s applicants have high hopes for the teaching staff. They appreciate its impact on their attitude towards learning. This is the most powerful factor for them,” the work notes. Teachers themselves, it seems, are sometimes inclined to overestimate their own influence on students and schoolchildren - from the banal “without my lectures you will not be able to understand anything in the subject” to the idealistic “children must be loved, otherwise they will not learn.”
In this sense, an illustrative example is the emotional American teacher with 40 years of experience, Rita Pearson. A colleague once said, Pearson said during a speech, “I don’t get paid to love children. I get paid to teach them. And they must study. The question is closed". “Children don’t learn from those they don’t like,” Rita Pearson answered and received thunderous applause from the audience.
But almost everyone can remember how much they might not like a teacher or a subject at the university, but the exams went well, and the knowledge was preserved. Is there a contradiction here?
It’s possible to study well “through not being able to”
Changes in the usual presentation of material and a transition to other teaching methods can cause some dissatisfaction, negative emotions or cause stress. This is understandable: it is difficult to abandon established stereotypes in studies. However, this does not always lead to worse results. In addition, positive emotions do not always contribute to them.
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Large was conducted in the Department of Physics at Harvard University this spring. Two forms of learning were used in the classes: passive and active. And looked at attitude towards the educational process. In the first case, traditional lectures and seminars were held. In the second, there were interactive classes in question-answer mode, and students solved problems working in groups. The role of the teacher was minimal: he only asked questions and offered help. 149 people took part in the experiment.
Most students were not satisfied with the interactive format. They were outraged at being given responsibility for the process, complaining and claiming that they spent too much effort compared to listening to lectures. Most of them asked that all subjects be taught as usual in the future. The level of negative perception of the educational process, determined using a special method, was more than half higher after classes conducted in an active form than in a traditional one. The final knowledge test showed: the results of interactive classes were almost 50% higher. Thus, despite the negative perception of “educational innovations,” academic performance has increased significantly.
Of course, positive emotions are needed. But it's not that simple. They can also distract from studying, at the University of Arizona. In addition, the role of the teacher and how much he is liked may not always determine the quality of the educational process. “Students can and do learn from people they don't like. Our brains don't shut down because we're critical of someone who's imparting knowledge to us. I didn’t like my high school biology teacher, but I still remember the structure of cells,” Blake Harvard, PhD, high school psychology teacher in Alabama.
TL; DR
- It is possible to show good results in difficult conditions, for example, if teaching methods turn out to be unusual and are subjectively perceived as inconvenient and creating too many additional problems.
- Learning is influenced by many factors, including the individual qualities of the student, ranging from the characteristics of the nervous system to motivation and self-confidence.
- Of course, the connection between academic performance and a comfortable environment at the university or the quality of teachers, in general, is really important, but this is not the key factor.
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Source: habr.com