Learning Curve: student perceptions have a huge impact on understanding
When a student encounters difficulty in understanding a particular topic, teachers, myself included, form opinions based on our experience with that student. We inform parents of our perceptions, offer our views and seldom hesitate to make suggestions for overcoming those difficulties.
However, over the years, I have learned that it often helps simply to ask the student concerned why they think that they are struggling.
Students learn better when they perceive the learning environment positively
Studies repeatedly show that student perceptions are an important determinant of student behaviour - and an understanding of these perceptions can be more useful in explaining their behaviour than the well-intentioned inferences sometimes made by teachers.
Apropos of this, there is often confusion among the terms sensation, perception, thinking and cognition.
Sensation is simple - it depends upon the sense organs. Perception on the other hand is a more complex mental process. It depends not only upon the attention paid to material, but also upon previous experience.
Cognition is described as the mental process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses. Our knowledge influences the way we perceive the world. Thus perception and cognition are related.
As a parent what does one take away from all this?
Although students receive the same instruction from the same teacher in the same classroom, each student will interpret that experience differently, and take different things away from the lesson.
Research conducted over the past 30 years has shown that the quality of the classroom environment in schools is a significant determinant of learning. Simply put, students learn better when they perceive the learning environment in the class positively.
A learning environment refers to the social, psychological and pedagogical contexts in which learning occurs. It is important to distinguish between a classroom environment - which describes the atmosphere or ethos of a class - and the school environment, which is the sum of all the classroom environments within a school. Another important distinction between the two environments is that classroom environments are usually measured in terms of student or teacher perceptions.
My own doctoral studies investigate whether student perceptions of the difficulties they encounter in their study of science could be effectively measured, and whether the data generated can be used by teachers to guide changes in their teaching practices. The goal is to bring about changes in the science-learning of English-as-a-second-language students.
The instrument I designed measured students' perceptions of different dimensions in my classroom. The dimensions included motivation for language learning, language for learning science, vocabulary development, listening skills, peer support and co-operation and feedback and assessment.
These and other dimensions can serve as a starting point when engaging in a conversation with a student regarding difficulties he or she may be experiencing.
I have found that when I ask students why they think they are struggling, and what they would prefer I do differently to facilitate their learning, I am able to see the difference between what I am actually doing in my classroom and what students perceive they need to be successful in biology.
This does not always necessarily translate into an action plan. However, it allows me the opportunity to carefully consider students' needs. Should I as a teacher or parent consider an intervention to be necessary, then knowing the differences between what they perceive and what they prefer can guide the intervention.
Student perceptions are their thoughts, beliefs, and feelings about persons, situations, and events. That includes classrooms. We as parents and teachers need to consider them.
