There are two kinds of models; live and symbolic. Live models are people that you observe within your environment such as parents, friends, teachers, peers, siblings, and other family members. Symbolic models are people that you observe that are not within your environment but in the media, movies, TV shows, and books. They can be fictional as well as real models. Models support learning because they are performing an activity that has interest to the observer and this helps the observer pay more attention and carry out that behavior in the future. Teachers can support learning by making the lessons more interesting and interacting so that the students will be more motivated to learn.
Some models throughout my life have been my brother, parents, elementary art teacher, and my friends. My brother is eight years older than me and I always wanted to be like him growing up. Anything he liked, I liked. I think that is one of the reasons why I liked math so much was because he liked it. I would feel motivated to do my math homework because he would help me with it. My parents were models toward me in the art world. If they weren't artists themselves, then I don't know if I would be as interested in art as I am today. My art teacher always encouraged me and gave me great praise in everything I did.
It depends on how relevant and competent a person i and what kind of status the person holds. If you're a younger kid, your parents and family probably hold the highest status to you, but as you get older and have more models to look at, each person can make that decision based on the three thing mentioned earlier. For a kid today, Hannah Montana is going to be more relevant to their life than their mom is just because of the situations they go through. No kid has to worry about bills, just school and social life. Because teens usually think their parents are incompetent anyway, they are probably more likely to model themselves after something or someone else.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I agree with Lauren. There really is no right answer to this question. It really depends on the person you are asking. I know that for myself I view my parents, teachers, peers opinions and actions a lot more than people in hollywood or on tv. As a little kid you do tend to look up to your parents more and model them because you don't fully understand how influentail the media could be. As I got older I also started looking up to my siblings even though my parents held the highest authority in the household. Then after my parents as I got older I started modeling others. For example with sports I modeled professinal atheletes because I wanted to be as succesful as they are, so I practiced and pushed myself just as hard.Where as my parents never played sports during their time I was alive, so I couldn't model them and look up to them in that aspect. So, it really does just depend on the person I feel like. Some people might feel that thei parents, teachers, friends, ect.. are more influenctial then hollywood and other figures.
ReplyDeleteI think it just depends on the model and the student...for a child who didn't have many friends growing up, a non-live model might mean everything to them. And a very social student might not even have a non-live model at all, because they have never needed one!
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