Walter Geerts & René van Kralingen - The Teachers' Handbook

1.1  A powerful learning environment motivates

The degree of a student’s engagement  How engaged a student is will be indicative of the intensity with which he applies himself to his task. This engagement can be described in five levels: ■■ no activity; ■■ interrupted activity; ■■ activity without intensity; ■■ activity with some intensive moments; ■■ uninterrupted, intensive activity. The strength of a learning environment can be measured by gauging the engage ment of an individual student or of the whole group. A simple method to get an impression of the group’s engagement is to start by observing a few random stu dents. Presenting these observations in a table will then provide a clear picture of the engagement of the group as a whole.

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1.1.2

How can you achieve a strong learning environment?

A strong learning environment provides a good foundation for students’ basic needs (Stevens, 1997). In order for them to feel comfortable and engaged, three basic needs must be ad dressed: ■■ competence: the student needs to feel he is able to manage the task; ■■ relationship: the student needs to feel in cluded; ■■ autonomy: the student needs to have the freedom to make choices of his own. For a student to feel competent, he needs to be convinced that he is up to the task. In practice, this comes down to a level of education which is slightly above his current level, but not out of his reach (see Vygotsky’s zone of proximal de velopment in section 1.4.3). In order to achieve this, the teacher will need to understand the student’s learning process. This is referred to as making the learning process transparent.  Feeling competent and up to the task not only leads to the student learning more, it in creases his motivation as well. After all, it’s fun

Adaptive education provides three basic needs – competence, relationship and autonomy – and is appropriate to the individual student’s potential. Adaptive education is synonymous with peda gogical, didactic and organisational ac tions which offer students enough room to learn in a motivating setting.

1.1.3

Competence: making tasks transparent and motivating

During their engineering lessons stu dents have to complete a task from their course book. They have to weld two plates together with an underhand weld by setting the welding transform er, sawing off the practice material and attaching the sawn-off plates. In practice, this turns out to be quite a challenge for them. They find it difficult to read the as signment, don’t know how to set the ma chines and lack the required motor skills.

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