Monday, December 3, 2007

Session 3: Assessing the Learning Environment 1

Today's class started with a recap of the key ideas about LE:
students' needs, students' perception of environment, school culture, school climate, human behaviour, school environment, classroom environment (conducive?), psycho social, gender differences, assessment, attitude, cognitive development, community, motivation level.

One important thing about LE is about "fit". The "fit" between teacher and environment, students and environment, and i think, even teacher and students. If there exists a mis-fit, then problems will exist. There must be a tool to help us surface these problems, before we can do something to address them.

Murray's Need-Press Model of person and environment representation
LE can either support or hinder the development of personalities which affects human behaviour. On the other side of this model, we were introduced to Alpha Press (by a detached observer) and Beta Press.

Quantitative & Qualitative
We also learnt that both quantitative and qualitative modes should be complementary. Quantitative research, although easier to administer, might not be sufficient or reflective. When carrying out a survey/questionaire, we need to consider the following factors:

duration, time, length, wording, mode of administration, sample size etc. A sample size of 30 is consider to be sufficient.

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