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Spotlight on effective learning.
A) The meaning of effective learning and the appropriate management.
"Learning is the act of acquiring new, or modifying and reinforcing, existing knowledge, behaviors,
skills, values, or preferences and may involve synthesizing different types of information." (Wikipedia,
2016). According to the previous definition, we can claim that learners can obtain or modify behaviors and
skills throughout the learning process. Therefore, the effective learning is the learning process itself at the
best case in which learners can obtain or modify knowledge and behaviors effectively in addition to the
instant and regular formative assessment and monitoring throughout the learning process. Chris et al (2002)
state that the effective learning is promoted by the activities and tasks which encourage learners to be
involved effectively in learning inside the classroom. Teachers and school administration here have the
essential role in reinforcing the effective learning inside the classroom. In some countries, like Germany,
Switzerland and Taiwan, have improved some individual school policies which enrich and support the
effective learning inside the school classrooms environment. These policies can be summarized in using
technology in learning inside the classroom, supporting teachers with high-quality resources and using the
whole class interactive teaching strategy. Thus, supporting and reinforcing the effective learning through
individual polices can be achieved individually in the educational settings.
As mentioned above, the role of the school administration and educators have a significant function
in achieving the effective learning inside the school classroom. Hence, School has to wide its context from
being decontextualised to a real context and also learning in schools needs more motivation to be achieved
effectively as indicated by Chris et al (2002). In addition to the role of school administration, the role of
teachers has the same importance in achieving the effective learning inside the classrooms. Therefore, one
of the teachers' duties is managing learning process inside the classroom effectively. Teachers should have
time management for maximum time utilization inside the classroom, managing discussions which take
place inside the effective classroom and managing learning themselves as teachers should concern on not
only the academic achievements but also the emotional side. The well-managed classrooms have less
overload stress than these unmanaged classrooms. As the effective learning takes place easily in the well-
managed classrooms where the effective discussions and effective relation between teachers and learners
take place in a safe and healthy educational atmosphere. This relation which is between both teachers and
learns helps learners to be motivated to learn more. Therefore, effective teachers' managing ,as mentioned
above, enables teachers to achieve the effective learning inside the school classrooms.
B) The characteristics of the effective learning
The effective learning has characteristics which differ from those of traditional learning. As
teachers move from the traditional learning environment to the effective learning environment
should notice the change of learning characteristics. It's necessary to achieve the effective learner
not only to concentrate on the learner's mind but also on both learner's mind and body. In other
words, using the effective learning/teaching activities and tasks which use learner's senses are more
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preferable than these activities which depend on just individual mental works. These learning styles
which called VAK learning styles (visual, auditory, kinesthetic) are appropriate for engaging the
learners in learning process as they deal with learners' senses and all learners types. Thereby we can
notice the change happening and learning process is being transmitted from the traditional learning
to effective and active learning. Thus, we can conduct the characteristics of effective learning as
follows:
1- Motivation is a must in the effective learning process as it is often the key like so many aspects
of learning. Learners have to be motivated to engage and enroll in the learning process.
2- Learners have to participate in setting the objectives to be clear, easy to understand and
applicable.
3- The effective learning encourages and leads learners to think critically.
4- The teachers have to be skillful and guide the learners through the learning process.
5- Using the VAK learning styles which deal with the learners' sensory receivers (visual, auditory
and kinesthetic) to reinforce and accelerate the learning process.
6- The regular assessment must be done through the learning process to evaluate the learners to
stand on the learners' strength and weakness points.
7- Teachers should be aware of teaching with ICT. Teaching with ICT is considered the key of
effective learning in the 21st century.
8- Using cooperative learning is very important. As in the cooperative learning each learner is
motivated to increase both his/her learning and the learning of others.
C) The effective learner.
Showing deep understanding and reflection on what has been taught/learnt through learning process
is a vital skill must be acquired for the learner to be an effective learner. Once teachers create effective
reflection discussions inside the classroom, the effective learner is promoted to develop his/her thinking
skills, engage and share knowledge with hi/her peers. (Chris et al., 2002) suggests some characteristics of
effective learner as follows:
1- The effective learner is more active and strategic than others.
2- The effective learner has skills of collaboration and the ability of creating and sharing knowledge
with his/her peers.
3- The effective learner has the ability of developing goals and plans.
4- The effective learner always monitors his/her own learning and is
adaptable to contexts.
Also (Clark, 2010) claims some effective learner characteristics as follows:
1- The effective learner should be self-directed through learning process.
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2- The effective learner is a curious one. His/her curiosity motivates the learner to ask and create
connections between the ideas s/he learns.
3- The effective learner is honest with self. While facing something difficult through learning process,
the learner which is honest has to admit that s/he does not have all answers and goes to look for help
instead of leaving it and taking something easier.
4- The effective learner does not afraid of making mistakes. The learner should take risk and do not
afraid of making mistakes or trying something new s/he learns.
5- The effective learner should be open minded in order to be able to work out any issue/case in a
different way whether s/he agree or no with that issue/case.
From what is mentioned above, we can conclude that the effective learner is motivated and ready for
engaging and involving in learning activities in addition to creating knowledge and sharing it with his peers
with the ability of self-assessment and the ability of learning effectively.
D) The effective teacher.
Teachers are the backbone of learning process as they play the essential role in learning process to
facilitate and illustrate the content and knowledge for learners. Hence, the characteristics of teachers which
qualify them to be effective teachers have to be clear and achievable. (Meador, 2016) suggests ten qualities
must be obtained by every teacher to be effective as follows:
1- The effective teacher enjoys and loves teaching. This quality should be possessed by every teacher.
When teachers have a love and passion for teaching, he is motivated to teach better than the day
before.
2- The effective teacher concerns on caring about hie.her learners personally. The effective teacher
should show personal caring towards every learner. Forming this relationship between teachers and
learners takes a long time and needs patience. When forming this personal relationship, there is no
limit for imagination of learner's achievements.
3- The effective teacher can relate to every learner inside the classroom. It is important for the effective
teacher to share every learner's interests even s/he is not interested in the same thing at least in this
case, teacher should pretend to.
4- The effective teacher tends to thinking differently and creatively. The effective teacher should be
adaptive and creative. So, the effective teachers should have the ability of using creative learning
strategies to meet the individuals need.
5- The effective teacher is an excellent communicator. This quality is very essential for creating
communications not only with learners but also with parents, colleagues and the administration staff.
If there is smoothing missing, the communication skill has lost the effectiveness.
6- The effective teacher is proactive rather than reactive. Prediction happening troubles or problems
and looking for solving them proactively is a skill can be acquired by the effective teacher through
good planning and organizing effectively.
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7- The effective teacher always works on his/her development. The effective teacher always tries to
develop his/her skills and to be better regardless of how long s/he has been teaching and not to fall
into routine without developing his/her practice.
8- The effective teacher has the ability to integrate modern technology and media into learning process.
In the 21
st
century, learners have been influenced by the media, internet and networks. Therefore the
effective teacher in the 21
st
century should concern about using media through preparing his/her
lessons.
9- The effective teacher challenges learners. The teachers who challenge their learners and push them
harder to think, conduct and reflect on what learners have been taught, are the most effective
teachers. Those teachers are hard to be forgotten through their learners' long life.
10- The effective teacher knows and understands the content and masters the way by which teaches
his/her learners in a manner they understand that content.
Constructivist teaching.
Recently, Using technology in learning process has risen increasingly. As we live in the digital time
in which learners acquire knowledge by the means of technology, networks and social media. Thereby,
teacher's role has changed from being knowledge transcriber to being a facilitator who provides learners with
the appropriate opportunities for effective interaction learning. (Vrasidas, 2000). Hence, it is necessary for
teachers to develop and enhance their teaching strategies according to the changes of our time to be able to
move from objectivism to constructivism.
On contrary to objectivism (see Appendix B), the constructivist paradigm has received attention by
educators. According to the constructivism, there are many observable changes about the role of both
teachers and learners. In the constructivist teaching paradigm, the Teacher is not that person who owns the
whole subject of knowledge but teacher's role has changed to being the facilitator who organizes the given
information and also he is only one source of information. From this point of view, learning has become
learner-centred instead of teacher-centred. So, learner here has a role in co-designing lessons, developing
his/her own questions and creating connections throughout learning process. Thereby "... The
constructivists, however, view the learning as the activity in context." (Duffy, 1996).
Therefore, teachers should develop their teaching/learning strategies to be adaptive to the
constructivism and adaptive to the modern technology as the objective here is to engage and involve learners
in learning process through effective constructivist activities and tasks. Constructivist teaching/learning
strategies which depend on the interaction, involvement and engagement have already become necessary and
important to be applied in our classrooms. According to (Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 2016), training
learners to acquire experiences is considered the most significant purposes of using constructivist
teaching/learning strategies. So, the characteristics of the constructivist teaching/leaning strategies are as
follows:
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1. To make the learners actively involved in learning process.
2. Learning environment inside the classroom should be democratic to allow learners express
their thoughts and ideas.
3. Teaching/learning activities and tasks which take place inside the classroom should be
interactive and are student-centred.
4. Teacher should facilitate the learning process which promotes learner's responsibility and
autonomous.
It is noticed that there is a significant concentration on the collaboration and high-level skills through
learning process by constructivist activities. Here are some learning/teaching strategies which consider the
constructivist teaching/learning as a backbone of learning process.
A. Active learning strategy.
Active learning has been focused on for many years. As researches show that learners promote the
active learning approaches more than the traditional learning approaches. (Bonwell and Eison, 1991) assert
that active learning is the learning process in which learners are actively involved in the classroom. This
means that learners are positive participants in learning process inside the classroom. On the other hand, the
learners are just receivers for given information in the traditional method. Having learners involved in the
classroom activities and tasks is not enough but being engaged in higher-order thinking tasks is more
important. Therefore, teachers should be knowledgeable about the ways, activities and tasks promoting the
active learning inside the classroom. Also, teachers to enhance their experiences about active learning
approaches, they should reflect and try to experiment new methods to make learners learn actively inside the
classroom.
Active learning can promote the 21
st
century learning outcomes and positively influence on the
learners by supporting their development. Therefore, active learning can conduct learners as:
1. Successful by using high-order thinking activities, tasks and experiments which enhance their
experiences and support them toward better learning environment.
2. Confident as a result of being successful, learners become more confident. This can be supported by
achieving these tasks, activities and experiments which are given through learning process.
3. Responsible. Once teachers manage the classroom actively and open discussion, they should give
every learner responsibility to learn how to be responsible by participating in making decision which
can promote the learning process inside the classroom.
4. Effective contributors. Through the active learning, learners participate in activities, tasks,
experiments and discussions interacting in leadership roles create from them effective contributors
inside the classroom or in their communities.
B. Cooperative learning strategy.
Educators always find cooperative learning is very challenging for them and for learners as they face
some challenging questions asking about the purpose of learning and the nature of knowledge itself. As (El-
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- Hany Gaid (Author), 2017, Teaching and learning strategies for effective work inside the classroom, Munich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/431865
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