Learning and its Characterictics

 All people deserve to learn.  As we live life, learning always happens.  Learning serves as our stepping stone to move on to the next level of our lives.  But what it really means when we say learning?

            Learning is the process of acquiring or attaining knowledge, skills from either our experiences or from the things being taught to us that will be applied in our everyday lives.  Through learning, one's life will be changed or improved in terms in his/her attitude and behavior.

Learning is said to have three characteristics.  First, learning is fundamental. It is said to be fundamental because it is a process by which an individual acquires or gets various habits, knowledge, skills and attitudes that will help him/her to meet the demands of his life.  Second, learning is interactive.  Everyone needs to interact with other people.  It is said that learning is interactive because people can or will learn while socializing with other people.  People that surround the learner will be an instrument of his learning or vice versa.  As teachers, we can apply this characteristic of learning by giving activities to our students involve groupings.  With this, we can help them not just only to gain more knowledge but also to develop their interaction or socialization with their classmates.  The third one, learning is developmental.  Every now and then we learn, because people never stop learning.  And as we continue to live life, those learning will be developed as we experience it from time to time.

Theories applied in Classroom Teaching

             Teaching has an important role in education.  Without this, information about a certain subject will not be disseminated.  It is an important factor that everybody should know.

            Teaching can be developed through practice and there are lots of theories applied in classroom teaching according to different authors .  The theories are as follows:  Information Processing Theory, Cumulative Learning Theory and Meaningful Learning Theory.

            Information Processing Theory.  Information processing theory and learning follow a certain pattern.  First pattern is the sensory register.  It receives the big amount of information that will be initially processed since it will be soon transferred to the short term memory.  Short term memory is the second pattern.  Information in this memory will either be stored or discarded.  The stored information will be transferred to long term memory, which is the last pattern. It keeps information for long period of time and somehow may not be forgotten. 

           

            Cumulative Learning Theory.  According to Klaus Meir, “Learning occurs as the individual develops higher level skills that build successively on lower skills”.  With that, as teachers we need to observe sequence in teaching in terms of level of learning skills and capabilities required of the learner.  We need to become sensitive with the capabilities of the learner so that as we teach them we may be able to do it step by step based on the learning skills of the students.  Let us check learner’s capabilities in each level of learning and be sure that the prerequisite learning skills are required before moving to the next level.  This is important since it is for student’s good because moving to the next level but not acquiring those prerequisites would be harder for them, while acquiring those would be easier for them to move along to the next level.

            Meaningful Learning Theory.  In this theory, ones learning will become a part of his long term memory.  It is where a person learns by relating his new learning with what he learned before.  Meaningful Learning Theory as applied in classroom teaching guides learners to remember those learning before that serves as a step for the new learning. 

            As teachers, these theories are important to us because it serves as our guidelines to be able to become a sensitive teacher in terms of the learning of our students. It also helps us to become an effective teacher.

           

A Teacher and a good Teacher......

Education is very important tool for learning that one should acquire, but how can we attain this without them?  How can that important information are disseminated without their presence.

         Thus, a teacher plays an important role in every student's lives.  They are the one who relays important information about the subject matter. The one who motivates his/her students to give their best in the class, to raise questions and opinions about the lesson being discussed, and to study hard in order to gain success.

But how can we define a good teacher? A good teacher, as what I have learned, leaves a legacy to his/her students.  They will never be forgotten since they have touched someone else lives.  They are role model or a good example to every eye that are looking at them.  They are those passionate teachers who are willing to teach and to share their time regardless of how much money they will earn since they are not looking forward unto it. Those teachers who can somehow say, "Teaching is not my profession, but my vocation."  Teachers who cannot live without teaching someone since teaching became their lifestyle.