My Personal Reflection on Learning

Teaching and learning are relatively complex process since they require collaboration between different stakeholders including school administrators, teachers, and students. In this regard, teachers need to develop their knowledge and skills in order to develop suitable teaching strategies and practices. This course has played an important role in my development of knowledge and skills in teaching practice. The course has focused on different aspects of teaching and learning with respect to the development and use of suitable strategies and practices. This paper provides a personal reflection on the various things I have learned in this course, particularly in relation to student motivation and engagement, enhancing the participation of the disengaged learner, and mastery goal and performance goal practices.

Connections Among Motivation, Engagement and Learning
One of the most important aspect toward achievement of desired learning outcomes and improvement of a school’s overall performance is student engagement and motivation. Student engagement and motivation play a critical role in determining the effectiveness of teaching practices and mastery of learning content by students in the classroom setting. Engagement is a term utilized to refer to the tendency by students to cognitively, emotionally and behaviorally participate in learning activities and tasks (Stephens, 2015). In this case, it’s the degree with which students are cognitively, emotionally and behaviorally prepared to participate in academic activities. This implies that students perceive academic activities as crucial components for the learning and participate in these activities in a desired manner.
Existing literature in the field of education demonstrate that there is a strong link between student motivation and engagement. As a result, student engagement has emerged as a major construct in motivation research in the field of education (Stephens, 2015). Saeed & Zyngier (2012) state that student motivation and engagement is considered in existing literature in the educational field as one of the most important factors toward improving learning outcomes of all students. The link between student motivation and engagement is the fact that motivation is the pre-requisite for student engagement in academic activities. When students are highly motivated, they tend to increasingly engage in learning activities/tasks and vice versa. Motivation is an intrinsic factor that influences a student’s cognition, emotion, and behavior in participating in academic activities (Saeed & Zyngier, 2012). Additionally, motivation is the premise with which students make a psychological investment in learning by increasing their participation in learning activities/tasks.
In light of these factors, there is also a strong link between student engagement in academic activities and learning. Engagement determines the extent with which a student will master the learning content/material and his/her overall learning outcomes. This essentially means that engagement influences the degree with which learning occurs. Student engagement is the extent with which students are willing, desire and participate in the learning process to enhance their level of understanding (Saeed & Zyngier, 2012). Therefore, it influences the degree with which students learn and achieve learning outcomes and objectives.
How to Engage the Disengaged Learner
Even though student engagement is an important factor in student learning and overall learning outcomes, the classroom setting still comprises of disengaged learners. Teachers are sometimes faced with the need to devise suitable strategies and teaching practices to engage the disengaged learner. For a teacher who is trying to engage a disengaged learner in a class where everyone is engaged, identifying the level of the student’s motivation in different subjects is the first step towards enhancing his/her engagement in academic activities. Once this is examined, the teacher should seek to understand the root causes of the student’s disengagement and develop suitable measures for addressing it. The identification of the root causes of this issue is vital because the teacher will be unable to deal with the student’s problematic behaviors without understanding their root causes (Kuhlenschmidt & Layne, n.d.).
As part of addressing the root causes of the student’s disengagement in academic activities, there are various techniques that the teacher can employ. One of the techniques that could help to engage the disengaged student is adopting student-centered teaching practices. This will entail customizing teaching practices based on the needs of this individual student. Student-centered teaching practices will help engage the disengaged student by enhancing his/her motivation in the classroom and learning activities. During this process, the teacher should provide guidelines that help enhance the student’s motivation and clarify expectations at the outset of the lesson. The other technique that could help in this process is encouraging active learning through activities that are attractive and utilize the student’s energy. Active learning implies that the teacher should adopt collaborative and engaging learning activities such as using visual representation in teaching.
However, there are several factors for the teacher to consider before deciding which techniques to utilize. First, the teacher should consider the impact of the techniques on the other students in the classroom. This is vital because some of these techniques could end up having negative impacts on the other students who are already engaged in the academic activities. Secondly, the teacher should consider the root causes of the student’s problematic behavior since the causes will help to identify the best technique to adopt. Third, the teacher should consider the impact of the technique on the achievement of the learning outcomes and improving the overall performance of the student.
Mastery Goal and Performance Goal Practices
Mastery goal and performance goal are the two most common goal orientations that are adopted by schools. My school utilizes different mastery goal and performance goal practices with respect to the desired learning outcomes and objectives. An example of a mastery goal practice in my school is emphasis on students’ understanding of learning content/material over performance. For example, teachers specify learning objectives at the outset of the lesson and evaluate effectiveness of teaching practices based on how students understand the learning content. On the contrary, an example of performance goal oriented practice at my school is the use of assessment tests to grade student and determine their level of competence.
One of the mastery goal practices I have utilized in my school is focusing on students’ effort rather than their intelligence or abilities. In this case, I have usually encouraged students to put more effort in their learning and highlighted the link between effort and success. I evaluate student performance based on their effort instead of intelligence or performance in tests. I would like to attempt utilizing TARGET mastery goal orientation practice, which has been found to have positive impacts on students’ mastery goal orientation (Luftenegger et al., 2014). I believe that teachers can establish mastery goal orientation in a performance goal-based school. This can be realized through adopting student-centered teaching approaches, encouraging students to put more effort in learning, and highlighting the link between effort and success.
In conclusion, this course has played an important role in my personal and professional growth and development in education. Through this course, I have obtained the requisite skills to improve my teaching strategies and practices. Based on the insights I have obtained from the course, I will adopt student-centered approaches in my teaching practice while encouraging collaborative and active learning in the classroom.
References
Kuhlenschmidt, S.L. & Layne, L.E. (n.d.). Strategies for Dealing with Difficult Behavior. Retrieved from University of Wollongong website: https://www.uow.edu.au/content/groups/public/@web/@stsv/@swd/documents/doc/uow068340.pdf
Luftenegger et al. (2014, June). Promotion of Students’ Mastery Goal Orientations: Does TARGET Work? Educational Psychology, 34(4), 451-469.
Saeed, S. & Zyngier, D. (2012, November 27). How Motivation Influences Student Engagement: A Qualitative Case Study. Journal of Education and Learning, 1(2), 252-267.
Stephens, T.L. (2015, August 21). Encouraging Positive Student Engagement and Motivation: Tips for Teachers. Retrieved March 24, 2018, from https://www.pearsoned.com/education-blog/encouraging-positive-student-engagement-and-motivation-tips-for-teachers/