Reflection on Learner Characteristics

 

Reflection on Learner Characteristics

Author: Santosh Kumar Biswa, Sr. Teacher, Damphu CS, Tsirang, Bhutan

 

The eight learner characteristics such as intellectual skills, cognitive strategies, verbal information, attitudes, motor skills, schemas, abilities, and traits put forward by Gagne, Briggs, & Wager, 1992, p. 119) clutch meaningful implications for teachers while designing instructional design for different learner characteristics. They are meant to develop and promote a kind of new scheme during the learning process in the minds of the learners. Knowing the different levels of characteristics of learners is integral to any teaching process. Gagne’s theory suggests that every learning category needs different levels of teaching methods and strategies to enable students to acquire knowledge and learn the content (Hare, 2019).

I am an English teacher in grade 12 in one of the central schools in my country. I know that I successfully incorporate each learner's characteristics into my classroom through my lessons. I believe that my students should develop in all aspects of learning. Mostly, I integrate intellectual skills, cognitive strategies, verbal information, attitudes, abilities, and traits through my class lessons to attain effective learning outcomes.

While dealing with intellectual skills in my classroom, I usually stimulate students’ learning and thinking by making to recall the previously learned knowledge and skills by asking questions during the start of the lesson, lesson development, and the closure of the lesson so that they can retrieve information based on the experience gained. This enables them to form new knowledge for effective further learning to take place. In doing so, their attention is drawn so that the distinctive features of the concept can meet the complex skills through accurate learning for more retention (UK Essay, 2018). Moreover, I also provide verbal skills to enhance their verbal information learning whereby my students understand some procedural knowledge based on how to do or handle things.

To achieve those cognitive characteristics in my classroom, while teaching English literature through literary peace, to boost their learning, my students are explored through various mediums such as rehearsal, elaboration, and organizing that allow them to think and learn the context effectively. Students are sometimes asked to copy the notes using paraphrasing skills in their own words and are asked sometimes to take notes after reading the text or listening to the lecture. Moreover, concept mapping is considered an important aspect of learning during the teaching lessons in the classroom. I ask them to design a concept map based on the content they learn, summarize the whole lesson, or sometimes engage them in verbal-to-nonverbal writing or nonverbal-to-verbal writing. On the other hand, to boost their thinking ability, I use metacognition strategies in the classroom by making them set their learning goals and track their process of learning through peer evaluation and a feedback system. Sometimes I also modify the learning strategies based on the abilities of the students to meet the goals.

After every activity, I ask my students to write a reflection so that they learn by reflecting on their own learning process. It serves as a self-reporting and serves to improve attitude effectively. Students are also reinforced when they are involved in the activities so that they get encouraged and come up with the expected behavior. I believe that with the change in their attitude, they would be able to present themselves as a role model to their mates who are appealing and can display the desired choice of action (WSU, n.d.).

My teaching philosophy is not only about enabling students to score points in the exam, but it is directed more towards producing an independent learner-through process model. Thus, after any group activities or research study, I always make them do the presentation to the class. I believe that such activity will help them improve their verbal information through the display of their ability to state accurate facts and concepts previously learned. On the other hand, abilities and traits are also dealt with following the adaptation of the instructions based on the learning and abilities differences of students. Mostly, I try providing detailed instructions to the students in the form of printed copies so that everyone in the class understands the intended directions clearly. Because there will be some students in the classroom who are verbally low in comprehension. I provide frequent and on-the-spot feedback to those students who are encountering anxiety. Such steps helped me fill the gap between the learners and their understanding.

In my understanding, all characteristics are practical in classroom practices and are equally important. I feel that a teacher should be taking all the characteristics mentioned above seriously in the classroom and should not be prioritizing only a few. But sometimes we might be drawn only to some characteristics due to many factors. With the introduction of the Bhutan Baccalaureate curriculum in my school, I see that there is a shift from an academic-oriented system of education to a human growth process. We teach these days based on the five areas of development as social, physical, emotional, spiritual, and cerebral, based on the skills, processes, and watermarks with less emphasis on cerebral aspects, they are purely process based that cater to the expectations of those five areas of development. Thus, with such a change, I am focused more on attitude (Growth mindset) abilities, traits, and process learning towards making students develop as the goal set. This is because the entire process focuses on human building with a growth mindset. I believe that a person with a growth mindset will naturally perform well in life if all the areas of development are catered to in the class.

I think I have no external conditions of the teaching environment that have influenced my selection of the learner characteristics because all the selected characteristics are processed based on what my system demands, and they are all applicable in my classroom and also in my school. As an English domain head in my school, I orient my domain members about them every Monday during our one-hour PLC meeting to discuss the process and make it inclusive in my school. Moreover, the implementation part is monitored through lesson observation and appraisal. I believe that if all those learner characteristics were taken seriously, the success of our learners wouldn’t be far because every aspect of their learning is taken care of to make it inclusive and practical.

 

References

Essays, UK. (2018). Gagne's Conditions of Learning Lecture. Retrieved from https://www.ukessays.com/lectures/education/approaches/gagnes/?vref=1

Gagne, R. M., Briggs, L. J., & Wager, W. W. (1992). Principles of instructional design. Harcourt Brace College Publishers. https://www.hcs64.com/files/Principles%20of%20instructional%20desig

Hare, C. (2019). Using Instructional Learning Theory as an Approach to Content Development. https://labrlearning.medium.com/using-instructional-learning-theory-as-an-approach-to-content-51d88c9140ce

WSU. (n.d.). Gagne's Learning Outcomes. https://weber.instructure.com/courses/351142/pages/gagnes-learning-outcomes?module_item_id=2642036