Students’ reactions

Taken from https://learnandteachstatistics.wordpress.com/tag/subjectivity/

Students’ Reactions

By Prof. Jonathan Acuña-Solano, M. Ed. School of English Faculty of Social Sciences Universidad Latina de Costa Rica Friday, April 29, 2016 Post 260

Before we get to discuss a bit about student reactions, let us consider the following scenario: You are teaching a class composed of a very diverse group of learners. On the first day of class, you see that you have younger students who have just started college, and older, returning students.

One of the activities you always do to start this course is to have students break into groups and discuss what they already know about the subject, and brainstorm a list of what they want to learn. You notice that the older students are very engaged during this discussion, while the younger students seem bored or distracted. One is taking notes as other students are talking, while others talk about the party the night before.

After class, you hear two younger students talking together as they leave the room; one says, “I wonder if we’re going to learn anything in this class. Why would the professor ask us what we want to learn? How are we supposed to know? If it’s all like this, I’m going to drop this class.”

Now that the setting has been set, and the situation is well understood, a prompt to find out what seems to be happening is asked here. Would you have answered the question the same way I did? ďƒź What do you believe is happening in the scenario above and how might the instructor respond? Base your posting on your reading and the multimedia activity.

The scenario is confronting us with the different kinds of students we are to meet in our classrooms. First of all, based on the level of maturity provided in the ethnography of the class, hierarchical thinking differences associated with age are evident: Younger students believe they are supposed to be “indoctrinated� by their professors and not to question what they are supplied by instructors. Older and more mature students are making themselves responsible for what they really want to learn and how they want to apply what they are learning in their current or future jobs.

Younger students, on the other hand, may also experience hostile behavior towards older member of the community of learning they are to be part of, the class and course they have enrolled. They find themselves not really comprehending differences because they have not been exposed to learners with various learning experiences or learning scenarios where they have to think, process information, and become deep learners. But more mature students are willing to accept the challenge of becoming autonomous and long-life learners.

The only one behavior that puzzles me the most is how and when these young students of mine, similar to the ones described in this situation, mature and decide to become responsible for their own learning.

At times I like to make my students move into the spotlight in class to have them answer what we are studying, pretty much like you describe when they cannot answer a

question. This kind of situation has a soothing effect in their mindset; that is, they somehow start thinking about their future, especially when I get to talk to them – individually- and have them question themselves if they really want to become teachers (I work with the English Teaching Major). Once I told them that the university is a nice place to make friends, but unfortunately, these friends will not be next to them to help them out along the rest of their professional lives.