Valuing effort
All learning occurs in a social context. Even when students are sitting alone at a computer or working alone at their desks, there are a variety of contextual influences, both past and present, which are playing an important role in the student’s ability to engage in the task at hand. A few of these factors include family support and values, role models in the children’s lives outside of immediate family, acceptance by peers, etc.
The student’s first learning experiences will be within the family. As such, the family milieu will play a critical role in shaping and reinforcing the child’s responses to the challengers of acquiring new information and skills during the first years of life. Children who are taught the values of hard work, perseverance, and who are rewarded along the way are more apt to engage in such activities within the school environment. Alternatively, children who are taught the world is “rigged” against them or are punished for failure, quickly learn that engagement is useless and also carries the risk of negative consequence for underperformance.
The goal for every parent and teacher is to find the right balance so that expectations are not set so high that students believe themselves unable to meet them and become discouraged, or so low that students do not feel adequately challenged.
Parents, in particular, play a crucial role in instilling in their children the beliefs, attitudes, and values regarding the importance of academic achievement and the behaviors necessary to be successful at school. Such values as hard work, perseverance, respect for authority, and self discipline are crucial in active engagement in the learning process and sustained academic achievement. It is also important for teachers to recognize the inherent cultural differences which parents bring to the issue of academic achievement. The child is a product of their home environment and in designing effective instructional strategy, it is important to recognize and account for these early influences.
There is no doubt that the relationship between a student and his or her teacher can, and many times does, make a significant impact on the student’s motivation to participate and engage learning activities. Good teachers recognize that each student is an individual and, rather than “teach to the middle”, seek to meet each student where they are in the learning process and design activities to foster the use of their preferred learning style so that each student has the opportunity to experience success! |
