Nature

So earlier this week,we did a discussion on the topic of “School of Thought” in the context of Learning and Teaching.We went through 3 different types of methods,one would say,on how a lecturer should/could incorporate them into their teaching.The 3 thoughts are Cognitive,Humanistic and Behavioural.Just by looking at these 3 words,you can already get the definition of it,its almost self explanatory but just to be sure everyone knows what I’m talking about,I wilL try to explain it in lay man’s term so you can get a clearer picture.

Cognitive,what is it?.We can say it’s the psychological processes involved in obtaining and understanding knowledge, formation of beliefs and attitudes, and decision making and problem solving. They are distinct from emotional and volitional processes involved in wanting and intending. Cognitive capacity is generally tested with an IQ test.

Remember what I said about Cognitive being distinct from emotional and volitional processes in the above paragraph? This is where Humanistic comes into play,it touches mainly on the more human meanings, understandings, and experiences involved in growing,teaching, and learning. They emphasize characteristics that are shared by all human beings such as love, grief, caring, and self-worth aspects of life.The main emphasise here is the mental well being of the students,thus making them more subject to learning

This leads me to my 3^rd and final school of thought,which would be the Behavioural school of thought. In behavioural,the factor that plays a key role here is the environmental factor,when I say environmental,I’m not talking about trees or stuff like that but more like the classroom and the lecturer,For instance,having a lesson where there’s no much verbal interactions between the lecturer and the students will lead to the students not wanting to learn,its human nature isn’t it,if something doesn’t grab our attention, why waste our time?.Another example would be lecturers with no commitment in their line of work,just walking into the classroom and telling the students what to do without giving them a reason to do it gives a negative vibe to everyone thus leading to their students losing interest

As a economics major,I have to implement one of this methods into my teaching but before I do that, I have a theory,we shouldn’t base our choice of a teaching method solely on what we teach but on our nature as well.How would a person with no sense of empathy and sympathy be able to incorporate humanistic method in their particular field. A moral education teacher which has to teach about forgiving and respecting in the classroom but not having the values himself /herself won’t do much on the students.The right approach here is to know your strength and weakness and what you are given to work with before you start.I’m a more understanding,loving and caring person by nature therefore the right approach for me would be Humanistic as I can use these values I have to my benefit in the classroom.