I think this concept is very important for us as teachers and can be important to our future classrooms. As teachers, we need to remember that we will always be the model in the classroom for our students, so they will adapt their behaviors and actions based on how we behave as teachers. For example, a teacher who tends to yell loudly and scold students very negatively will model that behavior for her students, and those students will adopt the behavior. This can lead to them yelling, speaking out during class, bullying, etc. Teachers need to be concious at all times that students are observing and modeling their behavior.
In order for a model to be most effective, he or she needs to be relevant, of high status, competent, and gender-appropriate. For example, a female student would probably imitate the most popular female student in the class because she is relevant, of high status (to the imitator), and gender-appropriate.
This leads to the next question - there are more than one model in the classroom. The teacher is not the only model. We need to also consider the "popular kids" that are looked up to by many other students in order to fit in. Kids can be popular for many different reasons - athletics, charisma, intelligence, etc. Teachers need to be concious that students can also be models for other students.
Society influences learning because many students come from different socioeconomic backgrounds, some of which may value education more than others. This is important to remember in our classrooms because students may adopt their parents' views on education through modeling.
Large-scale cultural factors can influence students' learning because there are many cultural norms that students follow, without necessarily realizing it. The "model," in this case, is society as a whole.
To be a member of my "classroom culture," a main factor would be participation. This will be reinforced by students imitating other students who participate a lot -- for example, the students who participate a lot will be rewarded by me, and therefore the other students will want to imitate that good behavior.
I agree with your comment about there being more than one model in the classroom. Not only is the teacher the main model for the students, but all of the students' peers are models as well. If one student is misbehaving, it can cause a chain effect for many other students which will decrease motivation to learn. This is a negative model, but a positive model could be students that are willing to learn about a specific topic that interests them and the teacher would be engaged in teaching this lesson too. Therefore, motivation will increase and students will follow the model and learn more. When it comes to other students not involving education, but involving social status and activities, students can act a certain way to fit in or conform to the group they want to be in which can cause both good and bad effects. Good effects can be students following groups of students that want to participate in school and bad effects can be students that want to disobey rules and misbehave.
ReplyDeleteI was interested in the classroom culture factor that you picked. Participation is so important in a classroom, and really shows how successful a classroom will be or not. Modeling plays in with participation as well because peers may want to model other peers by participating and sharing their opinions with the class. Participation will be rewarded like you said, and then hopefully show other students positively how to gain this reward by participating. I think good behavior can come from participation and think it is very important to have in your classroom.
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