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Friday, November 24, 2017

Competent Learner or Successful Student?

Introduction
Have you noticed that people who had perfect grades during their college or University study not always become successful professionals in their further life? It can be partially explained by the educational system adapted in the whole world till recent times. All our system education was based on the results achieving and thus being a successful student meant only getting high grades during the tests or exams. Individual peculiarities of the learners and their psychical differences were not taken into account by the educational system. Result-centered education process came to the society people who possessed a lot of knowledge and no ability to learn something new or ability to adapt the changeable surrounding. Finally, it made the methodologists and all those interested in the effectiveness of the studying process to turn their attention to the learning process itself without such close links to its results.


We define learning as the use of the process of meta-awareness while the teaching is the process directed to develop these skills. Meta-awareness consists of several aspects. They are: mulling, connecting, rehearsing, expressing, reflecting and revising. Only when all these processes are presented in the learning process, we can hope for the positive result. Mulling defines the way of approaching the problem or activity. It also includes past experiences concerning this action. Connecting contains knowledge about the activity. Rehearsing is the process of discussing the ways to fulfill the activity. Under the expressing, we understand the presentation of the first result obtained while completing the activity. Reflecting follows expressing and its main aim is to make possible improvements. Revising also assumes making changes, but these changes are made after reflections.

Learning Process
During the extended period of type, the learning was centered on the knowledge, students, and teachers but nobody paid particular attention to the teaching as a process. Latest swift of focus in the science of methodology has proved that learning is a process and it’s necessary to teach it. Becoming a good learner is possible. There are several ways to improve your learning abilities, and some of them are self-reflection, mentoring and experience exchange with colleagues.

The changes in the methods of teaching have changed the focus from teacher-centered learning to student-centered learning. Let Me Learn Process is a learner-based education, which makes them central figures of the process.

Getting good grades and being a successful student isn’t the same as being a good learner. Suitable marks and high grades fully reflect the attitude of the past days when in the process of learning the teacher was the center of the learning process and all the attention was paid to the result. The lack of attention to the learning process itself and centering on the results only have created a misbalance in the learning process. A lot of students left learning institutions frustrated because of bad grades while their natural learning abilities haven’t been discovered.

Students were not taught to learn; they were taught only to obtain good results. Nowadays the situation has changed as the accent is shifted from the result to the process of learning. The process of education as it existed in the past can be described rather like schooling. It was characterized by the group character of the process where the individual characteristics of the learning were not taken into account, all the pupils were taught the same uniform content, and corresponding to general norms and standards was necessary. Pupils didn’t form their own educational goals and studied preferably correspond to the expectations of the society and their parents. Changes in the education process have changed it and learning became at the center of attention of teachers and methodologists. During the teaching, the main attention is paid to the socio-cultural development. The process is divided into stages, and all students are regarded as separate individuals with their peculiarities, abilities and personal characteristics. The approach is more humanist and progressive and reflects significant changes in the society, such as turn to humanism in all spheres of human life.

As we see, schooling and learning differ fundamentally. While learning centers on the individuality of the pupils applying humanistic approaches, education regards everybody as a part of the social group applying united standards.

During the development of methods of teaching, researchers turned to different approaches while treating the learning process and the personality of the learner. Socio-emotional theories of development proposed by Erikson and Gardner center on the individual abilities of the learners and the way they are applied in the society. Erikson discovered the stages personality goes through in the process of development and qualities that appear while passing these stages. Garder developed the theory of multiple intelligences, which stressed on the uniqueness of each learner and the necessity to take into account difference in the learners’ abilities.

Pavlov, Watson, Thorndike, and Skinner developed the behaviorist theories of instinctive response. Vygotsky, Dewey, Eysenck, von Glasersfeld, Slavin, Sternberg worked with cognitive approach. They regarded the learning as the process, which existed inside the mind and was based on previous experiences. They also believed that intelligence could be measured. Latest theories tend to turn to humanistic approach as the most effective one. Such specialists as Dewey, Montessori, Maslow, Rogers, Gardner developed their concepts using humanistic and progressive methods. The range of techniques proposed by them includes the ideas of the necessity of learning through interaction with social institutions, applying playing while learning and the use of non-directive teaching model. As we see, the last methods reflect the humanistic tendency in education and the change in the accents of teaching from teacher-based model to learner-based one. Despite the changes in the accents of the learning process, the role of a teacher is still vital in the process of education. The teacher nowadays meets a lot of challenges and needs to decide a lot of problems to make his students effective learners. First of all the teacher should be open to new experience to meet the changing needs of the developing society. The teacher should be aware of the institutional expectations for learning, be acquainted with the big number of teaching approaches and operate different ways of curriculum delivery. The role of a teacher is no way diminished in the educational process nowadays. The teacher is still the leader and the authority for students. It’s only necessary to remember that individual interests of students are of primary importance and the best results can be achieved only if the teacher shares responsibilities with learners. At the same time, the institutional expectations from the educational process should not also be neglected.

The changes in the attitude to the role of a teacher in the education process will naturally lead to the changes in the learners’ roles in the process. The education model used in the past left a lot of pupils aside the learning process not giving the opportunities to realize themselves as successful learners or successful students. Not interested in the process of learning itself and motivated only by grades, they couldn’t find enough motivation and were rejected by the educational system. The idea that the learning process can be valuable itself and can bring joy and make students interested and passionate has changed the concept of contemporary education. What is notable, centering on the process of learning and paying less attention to the results makes not only students more interested and involved in the process but also improves their grades. It proves one more time that new approach is more effective.

Approach to Education
The modern approach to education process is based on the student’s creative freedom and is aimed to develop all talents of each student. This approach is confluent, and it will try to satisfy the requirements both the students and the teachers. First of all the student won’t be criticized for his ideas and will be allowed to begin the assignment and do it in his unique manner choosing methods and ways. He will have the possibility to ask for directions and teacher’s help later. The student will be allowed to show his own performances and speeches and always receive feedback. Such kind of approach provides the individual development of students and teachers and guarantees confluent ties between a successful student and a competent learner.

Robert Sternberg developed his own theory that is based on the combination of three main principles: analytic, creative and practical. Analytic principle provides individual cognitive activity, which includes metacognition and information processing. The creative policy is based on the individual activity to use previous life experience to react to events. Practical principle assumes to show person’s reaction to the everyday environment, that principle is based on the adapting existing skills while the background of the creative principle is responding to unusual events. Combining all these principles allows not just to get the basic knowledge of the subject but to develop analyzing thinking. So, such a way, learning is aimed not at grades and the development of successful students but on the quality of learning process and as a result the quality of knowledge.

Conclusion
In the modern learning process, we can name a lot of cases when the pupil or the student isn’t successful on this subject while the other subject is his favorite and he succeeds in it. At first glance for parents and teachers this phenomenon is a complete enigma. One day the child does his best and does everything in his power while the next day he isn’t interested in the subject and it seems that he’s forgotten everything. Parents can’t explain this paradox and begin to blame the child for his laziness. Cases when we see child’s misbehavior, lack of interest and stupidity is in fact not his fault. Such behavior is explained by unique central nervous system of the student and inappropriate leaning system. Such theory is given by Kephart (1971). In such a way successful cooperation between the teacher and the student is practically impossible, so it’s rather hard to speak about a successful student and a competent learner. Very often parents press down on their child and make him study all the subjects successfully. It will make the child a successful student but be not interested in what he’s learning he’ll never be a competent learner.

In this work, we’ve tried to answer the question why a competent learner may not always be a successful student, and we have found that the root of the problem lies in the education system. The flexible education system, which combines feedback to a learner, testing performance, diversity and depth of information, its quality, Learning with particular technology in the classroom, testing against arbitrary standards, will give all possibilities for the student’s all-round development. First steps in this direction have already been made, but there’s still a lot to do.

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Bibliography
1. Johnston, C.A., (1998). Let Me Learn. Corwin Press Inc., California, p. 4.
2. Kephart, N.C.(1971) The Slow Learner in the Classroom. Charles Merrill, Columbus, OH.
3. Sternberg, R. (1988). The Triarchic Mind: A New Theory of Intelligence. NY: Viking Press.