IDEAL CLASSROOM ENVIRONMENT

What is An Ideal Classroom Environment for Nurturing Student Motivation?

Assignment

What is An Ideal Classroom Environment for Nurturing Student Motivation?

Introduction

Classroom environment encompasses a broad range of educational concepts, including the physical setting, the psychological environment created through social contexts, and numerous instructional components related to teacher characteristics and behaviors. The study classroom environment has been widespread across nearly all subspecializations of educational psychology. Researchers are interested in relationships between environment constructs and multiple outcomes, including learning, engagement, motivation, social relationships, and group dynamics. Early researchers recognized that behavior is a function of people's personal characteristics and their environment. This paper discusses an ideal classroom environment for nurturing student motivation in a concise and comprehensive way.

What is An Ideal Classroom Environment for Nurturing Student Motivation?

Bronfenbrenner (2007) mentions in the educational setting, Urie Bronfenbrenner's work on ecological contexts secured a place in educational research for studies of classroom environment. Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Systems Theory (Bronfenbren-ner, 1977) encompasses the layered environmental system of microcosms in which human development takes place and emphasizes the importance of family, teachers, schools, and the larger sociocultural environment on the developmental process. Over the years this research has evolved from examining purely physical elements of the environment to more complex models of psychosocial relationships between students in the classrooms as well as between the teacher and students (Bronfenbrenner, 2007).

Research beginning in the mid-1990s has focused on one or more of these aspects and has associated classroom environment variables with numerous positive and negative student outcomes. In addition to the wide array of outcomes investigated in relationship to classroom environment, this area of study has also been of interest to methodologists as the data structure poses a unit of analysis dilemma; in terms of examining classroom variables in combination with student outcomes, researchers have had to determine if the data would be analyzed at the classroom level or at the student level (Moos, 2006). With the arrival in the 1990s of statistical methodologies capable of handling data collected from both levels, studies have been better able to include variables collected at both levels. Various methodologies, including survey, observations, and interviews have been used to capture aspects of the classroom environment from student, teacher, and observer perspectives. The Early Childhood group based at the University of Virginia has an extensive body of work that examines classroom environment as a validated observation system of multiple dimensions of the classroom.

Motivation and styles of learning have been proven to affect success in school. However, each individual brings her or his own strengths, weaknesses, preferences, gender and learning style to the classroom. In this light, this essay will discuss the many factors that influence motivation and accommodate different learning styles (Moos, 2006).

What are the Characteristics of a Motivating Teacher?

A motivating teacher plays an important role in motivating children. A co-operative learning strategy can be used to emphasise co-operation rather than competition in learning. This strategy involves joint participation by all members of a group in achieving a learning goal where each member contributes to the ...