This week’s readings focused on four important topics that influence educational. These are Learner Differences and the Learning needs (Chapter 4), Language Development, language diversity and immigrant education (Chapter 5), Culture and Diversity (Chapter 6) and Cognitive views on Learning (Chapter 8).
I found Learner Differences and Learning Needs (Chapter 4)
to really hit home. As the mother of a
child who learns differently I am somewhat familiar with the processes of
testing, diagnosing, and educating diverse learners. I was able to relate the section on Student
Characteristics (Pg. 138 & 139) where it talked about how “Students with
learning disabilities often lack effective ways of approaching academic tasks”.
Approaching academic tasks is something that I believe most of us take for
granted. Normally we would see an
assignment, read the instructions, and dive right in. Unfortunately for those
who learn differently this is half the battle. Often times students don’t fully
understand what they are expect to do with an assignment. The logical solution is to raise your hand
and ask what you are supposed to do. Students that learn differently don’t like
to bring attention to themselves and are fairly self-conscious as they don’t want
to look like they do not understand or are dumb. On page 139 is states “They
tend to be passive learners, in part because they don’t know how to learn –
they have failed so often”.
On page 139 we read about learned helplessness. I found
this section to be somewhat shocking.
After some reflection I realized that the book is spot on. Students that try and constantly fall short
eventually stop trying as hard or stop trying all together. They “learned to be helpless victims”. Personally in my situation with my son one
way I have found to combat this helpless victim syndrome is to empower him. I have done this by using an online video
course from Coursera.org called Learning
How to Learn: Powerful mental tools to help you master tough subjects.
The course is from UC San Diego and taught by This course has done
wonders not only for my son but for myself. It literally breaks down how you
learn and why you do such thing like procrastinating and what to so do avoid
it. I recommend this class for anyone who wants to learn how to learn!
Over all I thoroughly enjoyed this week’s readings as they
have caused me to reflect and figure out where I stand on the crucial issues
that are present in teaching today.
Emily,
ReplyDeleteI like how you blog has some awesome personal reflection along with what you have learned. You open up about your family and even the fact that you use the website to help you figure out how you learn and what can help you learn. I find this quite interesting as I did not know that there was a website out there like that, although I probably should have known because the internet has pretty much everything.
I am with you on the aspect of learned helplessness. I didn't know much about it, as if I didn't understand something I always asked. But not many feel like they can and so they eventually just give up. I find this disappointing but I can see why they would just want to give up if after all their trying they still aren't getting it. As an upcoming teaching, my hope would be to make sure that I can reduce this learned helplessness as much as possible.
Thank you for being so open and honest!