What do I need to know about students in order to teach them?

Overview
In the teaching learning situation the student is a critical participant. The student is the person who will learn, the person who has thoughts and feelings like each one of us, the person who has likes and dislikes, who laughs and who cries, who has views and opinions, who agrees and disagrees, who loves and maybe who hates. Each student is an individual person - and we as teachers need to reflect on that reality.

Here we view the student from just three of the many possible perspectives by which a student can be thought about, namely,

• " the make up and individuality of a student
• " students' different learning styles, and
• " the different ways that students can be helped with learning.

What is a student?
What is a student? This is a fundamental question for us as teachers. Imagine being asked to explain fully what you understand the word "student" to mean. What would you say or state? How comprehensively would you be able to explain the work? How would you start and in what logical order would you approach the task? This is your challenge and by the end of this Session hopefully you will at least have developed a whole set of questions that you would like answered about, "what is a student?"

Journal Entry

Write down as many ideas as possible that come to your mind when asked the question, "What is a student?"

Development of Self Concept

The self-concept develops through

• Reflected Appraisal is where a person is told by a significant other, such as a teacher or a parent, that they are valuable and their work is valuable.
• Social Comparison is when we make comparisons between ourselves and others whom we believe to be similar, or comparisons are made for us between ourselves and others. Through these comparisons we internalise that we are as 'good' as others.

Source: Adler, R., Rosenfeld, L. Towne, N. (1983) Interplay Holt-Saunders
What impact can this have on self-esteem?

Journal Entry

Please make an entry in your journal on what must teachers do about student self-esteem?