Teaching Learning Process Research Papers (original) (raw)

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the subject of diverse, innovative learning and teaching strategies that aim to foster a positive climate for learning in the classroom. This is because creativity in ‘the networked century’ can spread exponentially quicker and can be transplanted into related disciplines such as education, medicine, or technology while upgrading human societies and leaving the world a little better for next generations. There is a rapidly growing research which indicates that the state of flow over time is a straightforward recipe for passion (Kotler, 2015). For example, one source of passion could be promoting creativity at schools. Many schools suppress creativity. It often happens that after children have attended school for a while, most become more cautious and less innovative (Dacey and Lennon, 1998: part 2). It was observed by John Devey (1958) that, "education is not an affair of 'telling' and being told, but an active and constructive process, is a principle almost as generally violated in practice as conceded in theory." Is not this deplorable situation due to the fact that the doctrine is itself merely told? Is there something like universal educations or should educations be tailored to the particular individual needs of the learner? Educations "is preached; it is lectured; it is written about. But its enactment into practice requires that the school environment be equipped with agencies for doing, with tools and physical materials, to an extent rarely attained." (Ibid.). It requires that methods of instruction and administration be modified to allow and to secure direct and continuous occupations with things. Language as an educational resource should not lessen; but its use should be more vital and fruitful by having its normal connection with shared activities. "These things ought yet to have done, and not to have left the others undone." (Dewey, 1958: 46). "These things" mean equipment with the instrumentalities of cooperative or joint activity. For when the schools depart from the educational conditions effective in the out-of-school environment, they necessarily substitute a bookish, a pseudo-intellectual spirit for a social spirit. "Children doubtless go to school to learn, but it has yet to be proved that learning occurs most adequately." (Dewey, 1958: 46). Whereas the reality is that the curriculum is deficient in proper cognitive development and lacks activities that would improve children's executive functions. Sometimes teachers lack the time, skill, patience, motivation, or perhaps even, freedom within the formal environment of the classroom, to encourage learners to experiment, develop character, build skills, develop subconscious processes, participate in scientific experiments or simply create something original and beautiful. Above all teachers could: (a) help children exercise their wide-ranging skills and constantly challenge them to do so at higher levels; (b) reduce stress in the classroom; (c) rarely embarrass a child; (d) cultivate children’s joy, pride, and self-confidence; (e) take an active and hands-on approach to learning; (f) easily accommodate children progressing at different rates; (g) emphasise character development as well as academic development; (h) emphasize oral language; (i) engage children in teaching one another; and (j) foster social skills and bonding (Diamond, 2014). For that reason, schools could do better had they encouraged creativity, character development, searching for novelty, participation in experiments, and originality. As educational institutions, they could begin by harnessing the chance to think and learn more creatively. Schools must not kill creativity, instead, they have to begin by empowering teachers with the proper training, resources and encouragement that would give them the opportunity to give their learners the chance to think and learn more creatively. For that purpose coaching is necessary. As Learning Cultures (2019) showed, ''Developing a range of coaching skills for pupils gives them the opportunity to reflect on their thinking, how they remember facts, how they sift those facts and how they use them to reason, infer and analyse. Where pupils learn how to work in groups, sharing ideas, comparing answers, determining fact from fiction they learn more and retain more. When pupils learn how to listen deeply and intently, take notes and select the most important and relevant information they are likely to deepen their understanding and raise their awareness of the power of active listening.'' To paraphrase John Garrett, the job of a teacher should be to excite in the young people the boundless sense of curiosity about life, so that the growing child shall come to apprehend it with an excitement tempered by awe and well-developed sense of wonder. As Best and Thomas (2008: 67) observed, "there are many practical steps teachers can take to address the climate for learning in the classroom." Edutrust (2014) found out that students who attend schools with a positive school climate have increased self-esteem and self-concept, decreased absenteeism, reduced behavioural issues and disciplinary actions, and increased school completion. School climate refers to the quality and character of school life. It has been described as "the heart and soul of the school... that essence of a school that leads a child, a teacher, and an administrator to love the school and to look forward to being there each school day." (Freinerg, 1999). It is about the classroom environment in which learners value positive behaviour when they struggle teachers can create an oasis in their classrooms where students are cocooned from everyday pressures, peer pressure, allowing them to develop creative strengths (Best and Thomas, 2008: 67). In the past, the idea of the climate for learning has often been overlooked as a factor in improving students' performance (Ibid.). Given that teachers can still do much to work on this critical area. By doing so, imaginative teachers could assist learners to enter their "Effective Learning Zone" and help them to stay there to transform their weakness into a strength. An opportunity to struggle through a challenging subject offers a student the chance to strengthen a weakness and learn something new. Many educators are optimistic that a better understanding of the psychological processes underlying self-control and grit in combination with the idea of 'the appropriate climate for learning" could lead to high-impact, cost-effective, and more effective interventions (Walton, 2014). Duckworth (1996) explained that students naturally develop meaningful understanding when teachers enable them some unrestricted thinking processes and when they recognise and cherish the following values: surprise, puzzlement, excitement, patience, caution, honest attempts, and wrong outcomes as legitimate and important elements of learning. Recognizing this “virtue of not knowing” affords students the opportunity to engage in the natural, creative process of meaning-making and solution-finding. Teachers, in this view, create opportunities to test out, refine, and modify their conceptions such that they eventually and their own unique yet appropriate path to a particular outcome. This in no way suggests that learning is a solipsistic endeavour in which each student is left swimming in his or her own self-constructed reality. Rather it recognizes that meaningful learning is a creative process (Beghetto and Plucker, 2016: 84). Teachers have a wide variety of toolboxes and can apply them with sophistication and imagination to stimulate optimal conditions for the learning to occur so that it is enjoyable and desirable. This would hopefully lead to a positive vicious circle of creative educational leaders fostering creative skills in students. In turn, they would go on to their own mentoring roles and serve as examples to the next generations. As Galton (1892: 1) noted, "each generation has enormous power over the natural gifts of those that follow, and maintain that it is a duty we owe to humanity to investigate the range of that power and to exercise it in a way that, without being unwise towards ourselves, shall be most advantageous to future inhabitants of the earth." Knowledge must not be tarnished so that each individual is fully empowered. So, once we have identified our passion of passing knowledge to the next generations, we can try to establish how to turn it into a purpose, so we have to think intuitively in terms of challenges in the world that we would like to see solved and that need to be solved (Silva, 2016a). As a result of this progressive, advancement process, we find a deeper purpose not only to our lives but something that the world needs. We can impregnate our lives with the sense of significance and meaning enabling us to move beyond narrow horizons to achieve more amazing and more extraordinary dreams that serve some greater good.