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‘Factors Influencing Our Learning and Teaching : Are We Learning for Earning?‘

When we learn, we educate and empower ourselves to decide right, rationalize, and apply that learning to make life better personally and professionally. We do not learn only for a lucrative career but a lucrative career can be a goal to keep us focused and enthusiastic. However, no longer does a lucrative career reside in our aspiration to become an engineer or a doctor.

Today, there are a host of opportunities one can tap into from being a Product Manager to a Digital Evangelist, from an Image Consultant to Creative Catalyst. Whichever field we choose, we need to prepare ourselves to take on new challenges. It's imperative our teaching provide us with a broad platform, and our learning allow us to channelize the exposure and forge ahead on our chosen path. Whether you are a student, parent or teacher, we all need to be aware of what makes learning effective. Let's have a rundown on the factors that influence our learning and teaching:

Factors influencing learning: Through our experiences we learn every day. We subconsciously absorb information, values, beliefs or systems that we encounter directly or indirectly and from the myriad perceptions that our mind registers. Our learning is conditioned by the following factors:

1. Environment: It plays the most important role in our learning. Our surrounding is our immediate contact to the world. As we explore it, the wider it becomes and so our knowledge. It is important that we are in an ambience that inculcates in us positivity, strong will and a desire to succeed. Parents and schools must ensure that they offer a stable, secure and competitive platform to the child to optimise his/her potential. Here are a few examples of how environment reflects on an individual:

Attitude: If you are always suppressed, you'll start believing your lack of confidence as your inherent trait. You'll be diffident and indecisive. On the contrary, if you grow in a non-negotiable environment, you'll know how to fight back.
Relationships:The rapport that you share with people around you especially in your formative years will impact your inter-personal skills.
Stress: If you are in a stressful situation, you tend to underperform as the finer faculties of our mind shuts down. Proper nutrition, exercise, sleep are ingredients to keep stress at bay. Healthy environment breeds healthy mind and goads us to surge ahead.
2. Intelligence (IQ) &Aptitude: These are essential parameters to gauge your proclivity to learning different skills or subjects. Howard Gartner's theory of multiple intelligence enlightens us that we are all intelligent at different things, hence intelligence cannot be measured uniformly. Schools across the globe are designing their teaching strategies and curriculum to offer multifarious scopes to maximize each student's individual capability. It is essential that parents too do not judge their children by comparing them with others, rather understand what there strengths are and tap into that potential.

3. Motivation: Your pace of learning increases when you are motivated. It helps to overcome roadblocks like lack of confidence, inadequate resources or even criticism. Some individuals are self-motivated, while others need the push from outside. Here's what can keep you motivated.

Needs: You look forward to learning when it meets your needs.
Interest: You want to explore and know more about a field that intrigues you.
learning context: You are enthusiastic about knowing something when it applies to your situation and you can connect to it.
Our education system must provide these condiments to make students want to learn for self-actualization.

4. Age and Maturation: Learning is a lifelong journey and as we gain experience with time our knowledge and understanding becomes more concrete and comprehensive. A child will learn a skill faster but will lack in an in depth understanding of its implications. Schools and parents should not expect unrealistic feats from their wards. Let your child reach the appropriate age to decide what he/she thinks will best fit his/her needs.

5. Effective Teaching: It goes without saying that learning is moulded by teaching. Such is the impact of teaching that we start seeing the world through our mentor's perspective. It is essential that teaching is based on leveraging student's potential and independent thinking rather than indoctrinating them with pre-set notions. Factors that affect effective teaching are:

Teacher's role: A teacher is the mentor, instructor, facilitator, leader, counsellor, parent and much more.
Methods of teaching: The less teacher talk and more student activity, the better the learning outcomes. Include collaborative activities, group activities, role play, etc.
Rewards/recognition: Provide motivators verbal appreciation or tangible rewards
Assessment: Analyse how far teaching has been effective and reinforce the areas that need improvement.
Effective teaching works wonders on young minds and propels them towards greater accomplishments.

Factors Influencing Teaching

Someone said, 'Education is the key to success in life, and teachers make a lasting impact in the lives of their students'. To ignite students with creativity, to inspire them for perfection and to instil in them the right values, a teacher must be well-equipped to handle this august responsibility. Here are few factors that influence how a teacher performs.

1. Qualification: Though degree is not the ultimate measure of one's knowledge, it ensures you are educated and have exposure to an area of knowledge. It's important that teachers have a tremendous grasp over their subject to tailor learning as per individual learner's need. A confident teacher can impart confident to the students.

2. Skills:It is mandatory that teachers possess strong soft skills. Some of the skills that teachers must possess are-communication, interpersonal, social, life skills, leadership. Also, a teacher must be trained in classroom management to handle unforeseen events like a fight, or unruly trouble makers. On one hand, you have to divert them into something creative, on the other do not let the pace of learning slacken.

3. Experience:Experience brings in more confidence and you know what works. Freshers must be given proper induction and be allowed to shadow veterans especially for senior classes before they take over.

4. School administration: The teaching community can grow and attract eligible candidates if the school administration facilitates professional development, provide management support and be there when a teacher needs help.

5. Rewards & recognition: Their contribution is undeniable and needs its due recognition. Felicitate teachers for their performance, appreciate them for being mentors and you'll have a proactive teaching community.

The zeal of learning and the passion of teaching together account for a great educational system. Teachers must help students identify their goals and provide resources and guidance to achieve them. Parents, students and teachers are the primary stakeholders of education and must coordinate and cooperate to fulfil their dreams.

ABOUT THE COMPANY

ReachIvy is a premium education and career advisory that helps aspiring students get accepted into top tier educational institutions globally. We have successful admits at MIT, Columbia, Harvard, University of Pennsylvania, London School of Economics, University of Michigan, Oxford, University of Chicago amongst others.

Vibha Kagzi, Founder and CEO, ReachIvy, holds an MBA from Harvard Business School, and a Bachelor of Science from Carnegie Mellon University. She has also pursued courses at the University of California, Berkeley, the London School of Economics and the Indian School of Business.

Our global team of counsellors have also acquired their degrees from premier institutes and are passionate about sharing their experiences with students worldwide.