· Discuss one question or confusion that you have from reading the module (on social cognitive theory). You should comment on these within others' posts.
On page 180, there is text about self-efficacy and one of the influences is verbal persuasion. In my G203 class (Communication in the Classroom) we recently read an article about the good and bad of praise. The main point of the article is that praise should be specific praise, and younger children should not be praised constantly over everything they do. I’m wondering how the studies from this article (Researchers took two groups of students, one they praised for effort, and one for their intelligence, and the ones praised for their intelligence gave up easier and the kids praised for their effort was more okay with bad test results versus the other students who started guessing their intelligence right away) and the studies about self-efficacy relate to each other and what results would come from research that combines the two studies.
The big idea of this week is that other PEOPLE (even on the large scale of culture and society) can affect the way that you learn, and also affect what counts as learning.
· Who or what can be a model? How do models support learning?
Anyone can be a model, models are just people who perform an activity and other people watch them, but sometimes models are people that students know or don’t know. Live models are people that students can directly observe and symbolic models are people who do not live in the same environment, but students model them from far away. Models support learning by showing individuals what they can do, and implant the idea into their brain in a way that make the individual more likely to model that behavior. Models though can only support behavior with a certain individual when they have certain characteristics like relevance to the individual, competence, high status and gender appropriateness. Also the imitator must have certain characteristics like attention to the subject, be able to remember the behavior, be able to produce the behavior, and must have motivation to repeat the behavior.
· What kind of models have affected your learning most significantly? OR, What kind of models are important in teaching your content area? Discuss this idea from the chapter and your own experiences.
The models that are most important in teaching Spanish in my opinion is having competence in speaking and teaching Spanish. Spanish is one subject that many students lack confidence in because they are learning a new language, and their experience with it is very little compared to other subjects, therefore the teacher must be very comfortable and know—not everything—but all the important things in the Spanish language, and the teacher should not guess themselves when teaching the material. Students in Spanish often are guessing themselves, and it would be bad for students to see the teacher doing this, because then they might model that behavior. Also, another important point is that teachers do not know everything and neither will a student speaking Spanish, so it is important that when a teacher does not know something that they say they will look it up later or at the moment, so that students can see that behavior and possibly see good resources to go to on the internet or such so that they will model such behavior when not sure about something in Spanish.
You bring up a really good point with the "good praise versus bad praise" idea. I definitely agree that praise should be specific. I had a teaching project one time, and my professor's critique was that I praised even when the ensemble didn't sound good. He explained that when you always say "good!" after they're finished, even if it wasn't good, they'll get used to hearing it and desensitize themselves to it. Then, even when they do play well, saying "good!" won't mean anything to them. I think this example and self efficacy are somewhat related, but have their differences.. Verbal persuasion is essentially telling someone they can be successful. When saying things such as "good!" after the band doesn't play well, you're not telling them they can be successful - you're telling them they were successful. I do think these two are related, though, because telling them they can be successful, and then praising them when they are, work together in creating a good learning environment.
ReplyDeleteWe will talk about your question in the motivation section, but yes, it is true that children who believe that their success is a result of their EFFORT try harder (because effort is something they can change). Children who believe it is because of something innate, like intelligence or natural ability, are less intrinsically motivated (because natural ability is something they CANNOT change, but have to live with).
ReplyDeleteYou bring up an important point. It can be very frustrating to have a teacher who appears to know very little of the material they are teaching (I hope I haven't fallen into this category at times!) It's good to have the solid background that you would expect a teacher to have, but also the adaptive skills to find unknown information or work without it.