Reflection
In EDU 533: Social Interpretations of Education, I was challenged to examine the American school system as a whole and purpose of schools. I reviewed readings and answered questions that discussed how schools are affected by social, institutional, economic, and cultural changes. The following artifact reflects a paper that I completed to demonstrate my knowledge and discovery of the coursework. The paper is a literature review on Project-Based Learning and Intrinsic Motivation.
The role of schools is a major discussion topic throughout this course. In the introduction of my literature review I detailed the view of schools and how their role is defined to develop intelligence to adapt to skills. That role extends to a vision of sound curriculum and pedagogy in order to communicate and teach skills to build student intelligence. In order to do that successfully, a student must be intrinsically motivated to learn in order to build this intelligence. Expanding upon this notion I looked to see connections between project-based learning and intrinsic motivation. I was permitted to choose my own topic for this assignment which allowed me to revisit a personal topic of interest, project-based learning (PBL). The assignment and the coursework enhanced my perspective on project-based learning because it demanded me to look at PBL and its effects on learning when dealing with cultural, social, and economic concerns. More importantly this literature review expanded my interests and knowledge about student learning because of the introduction of a growth versus fixed mindsets of intelligence. This review grew into helping me better understanding motivation, learning, growing intelligence, and PBL.
Having awareness of developing curriculum and pedagogy that encourages intrinsic motivation creates an environment that will enhance student learning and intelligence. The review shares many various rationales to why PBL is an effective method to achieve this goal. For instances PBL connects student learning to encourage application of knowledge and content while simultaneously producing connections to students’ lives and life ambitions. Its instruction and practice provides individuals choices of tasks, reporting formats, learning goals, and behaviors. The instructional practices promote positive emotions and connections to students’ individual background knowledge to enact their working memory. The information presented to the students will be deemed personally important and enhances intrinsic motivation. PBL provides an environment for contextual learning. The beneficial qualities of project-based learning instruction and practice create intrinsic motivation for a student’s inner appreciation of interconnectedness, meaning for the whole, and reflective intelligence for the moment and the future. PBL creates authentic learning for students. Its instruction and practice provides benefits on the importance of students both making better sense of what they learn and process of the content so that it is truly understood by each individual. The environment of the instructional setting, including the institution of particular pedagogy, helps determine the degree of student motivation while receiving information. The external influences, such as project-based learning instruction and practice provide direct engagement for individuals and allow for the recall of internal influences on motivation through the provisions of background knowledge and past experiences.
This review helped me better understand how PBL can be a useful in my classroom to enhance learning while also encouraging intrinsic motivation. This assignment made me think about how a classroom environment is important to student learning. Also it made me explore my notion to use PBL and how aspects of that concept encourage learning and motivation. This helps me better understand the role of the school environment, which is to provide an environment that supports, enacts, and enhances the goal of developing students to become life-long learners.
Literature Review Paper.docx
Reflection
I feel as an educator it is imperative to know our students and to learn about their families, traditions, and cultures. This was one of my favorite assignments to complete in my graduate work. I enjoyed the opportunity of getting to know about a family and their country in great detail. When we think about our students in our classrooms and the pressures that are put upon these children, it is important to remember that the child sitting in the chair in the back of your room taking a standardized test is more than just a student. That student is a child. A child in a family that may or may not be similar to our own family. That child has a home filled with traditions and cultures that may seem completely foreign to us.
Sensitivity to cultural diversity is an important component in creating a positive classroom environment that fosters in students a desire not only to learn about but also appreciate one another’s differences. In order to create this positive environment, I find that I must seek to educate myself as well as my students about the cultural diversity in my classroom. Although I always strive to make myself aware of the cultural diversity that exists in my classroom, I am aware that there is always more that I can learn about this important aspect of teaching. Attending events such as the Islamic service gave me a deeper appreciation for a cultural environment that was unfamiliar to me. It is through experiences such as these that I hope to develop in myself a balanced view of the world around me and in turn bring this balanced view into my classroom so that my students will also have an increased appreciation for the differences that exist between themselves and the people they interact with.
If you walked into my classroom during my first four years of teaching, you would have observed a teacher who was struggling to create a classroom environment that both matched my personality and provided students with the warmth, structure, and safety needed to engage in positive learning experiences. I was torn between what I knew was right and what the other teachers in the school were doing in their respective classrooms. Many teachers back then, and still to this day, relied heavily on negative reinforcement. Red, yellow, and green behavior systems, calls home every time a rule was broken, and a belief that students should perform expected tasks simply because they were told to do so, were just some of the things you would have seen in my classroom and many others. It wasn’t until I fully established myself in the school that I began to understand there was a better way. A small percentage of today’s students respond to negative reinforcement. For me, positive reinforcement was a way to reach all students and create a classroom environment centered on kindness, exploration, and mutual respect. I began to ignore students’ negative behaviors and actively seek out the positive ones. Those positive behaviors were rewarded, with tangible rewards, awards, praise, calls to parents and students were encouraged, through whole class rewards, to monitor their own behaviors and the behaviors of their classmates. Finding the positive behaviors in some students isn’t always easy, but even the most difficult student does countless things on a daily basis that are worthy of praise, you just have to know them well enough.
Taking the time to get to know your students, pairing with them, is critical in developing the trust between teacher and student that is the basic requirement for learning. The process of pairing is equally important in creating a classroom environment centered on positive reinforcement. Knowing what each student’s home life is like, what they enjoy learning about, who they are friends with, how they react to difficult situations or word problems, allows the teacher to uniquely interact with each of the students in his classroom. For example, a student who receives little attention at home because he is one of six children is not acting out in the classroom because he is bad. He wants attention and is seeking it out in any way possible. A teacher, who has taken the time to get to know this child, can provide the student with positive attention through morning check-ins or by making him the classroom helper. If these teacher makes an effort to do the very same thing for his other 23 students, he can essentially eliminate all negative behaviors, leaving students free to operate in a caring, safe, and respectful classroom environment.
The case study represents the beginning of my shift from a classroom environment created using negative consequences to an environment were positive student behaviors were emphasized. This case study forced me to spend a few recesses with a student and learn about her life outside of school. The information gathered during these recess interviews most certainly shaped my future interactions with this child. While I don’t sit down for extended periods of time with my current students, say an entire recess, I utilize morning routines, extra recesses, lunch time, and the end of the day as opportunities to check-in and gather information that will inform future interactions and help me understand their behaviors
EDU 528 Case Study.docx
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