Foundations of teaching and learning

Introduction

As a teacher, it is significant to manifest concentration on stimulating a better learning and caring

environment within the classroom. It fosters sustainable learning of the children as well as helping them
to grow and function optimally. There comes the need of a science which articulate with each of the
growth requirement of the children and building a foundation for teaching and learning, i.e., pedagogy.
Pedagogy refers to a branch of science and that of teaching, through the use of principles, theories and
practices used within education. Education is seen as crucial to supporting social development as well as
a student’s wellbeing and psychological safety.1 There are certainly diverse learning needs of the
students, as they are from different backgrounds, cultures and their intellectual abilities also varies.
Hence, it is obligatory to incorporate flexible and dynamic teaching methods through discussions, role
plays and experiments within the classroom environment. Likewise, it is crucial to focus on the
psychological factors i.e., affecting the children and creation of a kind of inclusive environment to which
they can grow and express themselves freely. This essay will cover the theories related to pedagogy and
sustainable as well as caring teaching environment, personal beliefs, pedagogical techniques which can
be implemented over the period of time to cater the needs that each of the learners would be having in
their lives.

Theories applied

Several theories define the foundation of learning through the use of different perspective. Vygotsky's
Sociocultural Theory encompassing on learning being influenced by the social and cultural factors 2. The
things that the children learn is hugely influenced by how or what kind of culture to which they are
brought up and what kind of understanding they have about it. The children would learn to apply
theories as well as move on with struggles that he would be facing in the everyday lives in relation to the
norms, values, ethics that he or she had been following since birth. Hence for a proper foundation, the
teacher needs to link the conceptual understanding through interaction with culture, with adults and
with peers. The collaboration of culture with teaching methods and mechanism would definitely be
helping in fostering the learning environment over the period of time. Another theory which explains
child development and how they learn things over the period of time is piaget’s cognitive development
theory3. He believed that children actively construct different sort of ideas in their lives through the help
of experiences, interactions as well as their own encounter with the environment. The sensorimotor
stage occurs on approximately 2 years old, where they learn about the senses and movements. In pre-
operational stage, they learn about the external environment, and also have difficulty in terms of
understanding the perspectives of other people around them. Concrete operational stage helps them to
think logically and understand about things as well as how changes has been occurred on things that
they have seen. The formal operational stage is a stage where they learn about some of the abstract
concept as well as hypothetical solution and ending with drawing some sort of logical conclusion. Hence

1
https://tophat.com/glossary/p/pedagogy/
2
https://www.mcw.edu/-/media/MCW/Education/Academic-Affairs/OEI/Faculty-Quick-Guides/Sociocultural-
Theory-of-Cognitive-Development.pdf
3
https://www.structural-learning.com/post/jean-piagets-theory-of-cognitive-development-and-active-
classrooms#:~:text=The%20Theory%20of%20Cognitive%20Development,world%20(Miller%2C%202011).
one needs to encompass on all these factors and the stage where the learning is in to enhance the caring
learning environment for them as well.

Personal values and beliefs

Proportional and sustainable growth of the children is mandatory. It helps them to get sense of the
outside world and also help the teaches to assess the kind of challenges that are being faced while
moving on with the beautiful journey towards academic excellence. The personal views of mine involves
within the analysis of own past teachers and how they have been dealing with me and what kind of
learning approaches which was being followed. Most of the teaches who taught me followed
participatory approach in which they always thrives to enlighten me and the other learners through the
way of active listening and creative thinking4. They provided me with the questions and helped to think
and analyze those questions with different perspective. The logical understanding of the concepts that
we learn in theories are not going to be enough for learning. There is continuous requirement for
encouraging the students and providing them with reinforcement for things that they have attained 5.
They need to learning through experience and through their own practical lives. The teaches that I have
been with were always open to the feedbacks. The another most important thing is assessing the
condition where the learner is in and starting with that specific phase. It is difficult of the teachers to do
so. But they have had the ability to help out each of the learners from the position where they were in.

Self-concept and self-esteem played huge role in terms of shaping the attitudes of children in sustainable
as well as optimal learning. A positive self-concept would definitely be leading to higher level of
academic achievement6. Having positive self-concept means they have belief in themselves in terms of
creating and following better learning approach. Praising the students who have shown some kind of
improvements and helping them to provide with some kind of positive as well as constructive feedback
would help them to grow in their lives7. Further, they need to be attached with some sort of motivation
factor or rather say reinforcement to continuous improve their abilities in classroom. Furthermore,
creating a culture of respect, and inclusiveness, acceptance of the attitudes or perspectives that the
learners had provided would definitely going to be vast advantage for them as well.

Stimulating environment

It is mandatory to ensure the learners are acquiring new set of knowledge and are interested in learning
things and developing their own abilities. Teachers can use various kind of techniques to ensure that
they are learning things properly and appropriately. One of the such techniques would be active listening
where learners and students were actively participated or rather say involved in the overall learning
processes. Students are more attentive and focused in an engaged learning environment, which also
encourages meaningful learning experiences, higher levels of student performance, and the

4
https://xqsuperschool.org/rethinktogether/why-active-listening-in-the-classroom-develops-empathy-and-why-
we-need-this/#:~:text=Active%20listening%20teaches%20them%20to,and%20create%20a%20stronger
%20community.
5
https://www.iidc.indiana.edu/irca/articles/reinforcement-in-the-classroom.html#:~:text=Reinforcement%20can
%20be%20used%20to,effectively%20as%20it%20could%20be.
6
https://study.com/learn/lesson/self-concept-facts-development-early-childhood.html#:~:text=Self%2Dconcept
%20in%20children%20is,of%20self%2Desteem%2Fconfidence.
7
https://www.gre.ac.uk/learning-teaching/assessment/feedback/principles#:~:text=A%20constructive
%20feedback%20dialogue%20enables,active%20participants%20in%20the%20process.
development of advanced critical thinking abilities 8. Further exploring on it, teachers can use some of the
other methodologies like collaborative learning, where students work together with each other to
complete a task and solve problems. Participants in the collaborative learning process are able to think
more deeply and retain the information for a much longer period of time than they would in a non-
collaborative setting9. It would help them to understand the importance of the group activity for the
succession of each task that they have been doing. The use of technologies such as interactive
whiteboards and educational game would help them to follow entertaining approach and enhance their
overall learning processes. Further the use of tablets, educational software, can make the learning
experience more interactive, engaging and entertaining. Students' levels of engagement during the
learning process can be greatly increased by using educational games in the classroom. When students
participate in a game, their motivation rises, resulting in better participation, the capacity to form
connections, and positive memories of learning.10

Caring environment

Creating a caring environment involves ensuring that the children are cared for in emotional as well as
physical approaches. Furthermore, it is crucial for teachers to ensure that they children are emotionally
cared. Prosocial behaviors like cooperation, communication, empathy, and responsibility are influenced
by caring experiences and develop social-emotional skills. 11. They need to assess if there is any issue of
discrimination, bullying, prejudice and any other wrong doing. These cutting-edge strategies are created
to operate within the constraints imposed by the university (such as evaluation, semester length, the
procedure for disability disclosure and referral, etc.) and give specific recommendations that efficiently
address issues relating to access and mental health. 12From this way, there can be positive relationship
among students and promote emotional support when required. Further, teachers can also manifest
their concentration on ensuring that the children are physically cared for and there has been safe
environment for them to learn and explore about themselves, feel free to share their own opinions and
enforcing some sort of safety rules as well as helping or rather say motivating the children to develop
some sort of healthy habits like exercise, hygiene management, avoidance of contamination on their
food and so on.

Conclusion

To conclude, creating a safe, and caring classroom environment is crucial and significant for promoting
optimal learning environment among children. The techniques that are being used like collaborative
learning, active listening, respecting diversity within would be helpful for promoting better relationship.
It is also important to create safe space for them and promote self-esteem and self-concept among

8
https://www.theschoolinrosevalley.org/engaged-learning-environment/#:~:text=Research%20has%20shown
%20that%20an,higher%2Dlevel%20critical%20thinking%20skills.
9
https://www.valamis.com/hub/collaborative-learning#:~:text=Studies%20have%20shown%20that%20utilizing,in
%20a%20non%2Dcollaborative%20setting.
10
https://nearpod.com/blog/educational-games-time-to-climb/#:~:text=Educational%20games%20in%20the
%20classroom%20can%20bring%20high%20levels%20of,and%20positive%20memories%20of%20learning.
11
https://corwin-connect.com/2020/03/why-care-about-caring-in-schools-today/#:~:text=Experiencing%20caring
%20leads%20to%20social,supports%20that%20come%20from%20caring.
12
https://tatp.utoronto.ca/teaching-toolkit/effective-strategies/access-mental-health/
students. By doing so, the teachers can create a classroom which is students centric and responsive to
their own needs.