Wk 5 T2P

Today's class was a conclusion of gathering information on learning theories. The two main categories of theories we looked at were motivational or emotional and psychological.

Theories
Even though this is the last time the class would be together in a cohesive fashion, I feel that it is very important to include these theories about emotions, motivation and psychological occurrences in the brain. I know that I am not very strong in science so I was not aware of a lot of the neurological background to children's brains and how they develop over time. I think it is necessary in a program and a class such as this to make sure that the pre-service teachers are gaining theoretical knowledge from a wide spectrum of disciplines. This gives us the maximum amount of information on which to draw, not only our T2P statements from, but also our teaching and classroom management.

There are many different ways to consider using the information presented about brain development when working in a classroom. One example would be:
T2P: To make sure that students are aiming at or reaching their whole-person optimal learning, the level of development of their brains needs to be considered. As a teenager, there are so many changes occurring in the brain as far as pruning and expanding goes that a teacher really needs to take these changing attributes, attitudes and functioning levels into consideration.


As far as creating and losing neural connections, what I think is one of the better ways to try and get students to retain information (create connections) would be to increase their emotional attachment to the subject. The Kolencik reading and video on Daniel Pink on the motivation and emotion really inspired me. I am glad to see the research being done to show how strong emotions can increase motivation, whether intrinsically or extrinsically, which will lead to increased learning and exploration.

T2P: If a teacher really wants their students to succeed and utilizes a variety of teaching methods and styles, subjects and examples that will engage and interest students, then they can work to increase motivation because the students will develop more emotional engagement in the subject material and want to expand their knowledge. Sometimes the best way to improve motivation is on a one-on-one basis, so that the student knows that the teacher does have expectations for them to succeed and does not want them to simply fall through the cracks. Other times, it may be better to have a student-centered learning scenario so that students can look at what they know and what they want to know more about. I agree with Pink that learning to gain a deeper personal understanding of material that has an emotional importance to you through intrinsic motivation will often be more effective than the carrot and stick extrinsic motivators often presented in schools.



Class Reflection
The class felt as though it had less structure than previous weeks, however this was based on the attitudes or vibes that all of the students were giving off. Being one of the last weeks of the semester, most of the students are feeling tired and stressed and having the teacher recognize that adding on a lot of new information would not be useful time spent was refreshing. What this did was allow the students in the class to control what learning would be taking place and how it would be taking place which ultimately led to improved mood and engagement in the psychological material.