By Peace Oreofe Odunfa, Arish Group of Schools, Abeokuta.
Parents often times complain bitterly on the poor performance of their children and most times the class teacher is often blamed for doing a poor job in educating the child. There are many factors that might have produced these undesirable results. Learning is the persisting change in a person’s or process of acquiring new understanding, knowledge, behaviours, skills, values, attitudes, and preferences through experience, study or being taught.
This definition has three components:
1) the duration of the change is long-term rather than short-term;
2) the locus of the change is the content and structure of knowledge in memory or the behaviour of the learner;
3) the cause of the change is the learner’s experience in the environment rather than situations under the influence of fatigue, motivation, drugs, physical condition or physiologic intervention.
Learning is used to refer to the acquisition and mastery of what is already known about something, the extension and clarification of meaning of one’s experience, or an organized, intentional process of testing ideas relevant to problems.
There are factors that affect the learning process of a child, they are:
Learner factors:
#1. Lack of attention: Attention is focusing consciousness on one object. Attention arouses interest in learners to learn a particular thing. It increases efficiency of the learner, it motivates learners to learn more, it makes the learners ready to learn, it brings a state of alternates in learners for doing task, it helps the learner to perceive events or ideas. The movement, size, contrast, intensity and colour of an object affects attention.
#2. Lack of motivation: Motivation or drive is defined as an inspiration that propels someone into an action. It is an internal state or condition that activates and gives direction to our thoughts, feelings, and actions. It is a process by which the learner’s internal energies are directed toward various goal objects in his/her environment. If there’s no motivation for a student, the learning process of the child is affected.
#3. Fatigue and tiredness.
Fatigue is the state of reduced interest and desire and this constitutes psychological explanation. It is the state or condition in which the nerves do not react and mind becomes lax and inert. Being tired as a child makes the mind not want to learn anything there by affecting the learning process.
Getting proper 8 hrs of sleep is necessary, sitting or lying in a relaxed position, doing activities which are favourites also eliminate fatigue, balancing work and rest, having a clean environment and comfortable furniture, having mid-day meals or light refreshments, having a well-ventilated room for fresh air and light to provide oxygen which is necessary to fight fatigue, having outdoor and co-curricular/extracurricular activities are ways of removing or reducing fatigue.
#4. Age and maturity. There are stages in the development of a child and this is vital in his or her reasoning and ability to use logic, interact with the physical environment, understand abstracts teachings, read at nights, and withstand the rigour of higher learning etc. A child whose promotion was hastened to a higher class before his time may not be ready emotionally for that class and may depend on parents for a long time before gaining independence. Children who are born with low birth weight, also tend to have poorer educational outcomes and higher risks for special education placement. They tend to depend on others for their advancements. Children might be in the same class, be of the same age but can never be of the same matured reasoning attainment.
#5. Self-concept
Is generally thought of as the child’s perceptions of his or her behaviours, abilities, and unique characteristics; a mental picture of who he or she is.
#6. Background
Children whose parents are rich enough to afford learning aids for their kids do better than those without such opportunity. Power, internet facility, phones, laptops, enough books and stationery etc make learning more effective.
Religious values and certain mind sets of parents have been found also to affect learning of children. The girl child may be an endangered gender in certain religions.
#7. Peer group
Peer group influence is a great factor in learning. A child finding him or herself among academically serious peers may likely do well compared to those who are unserious.
Alcohol, smoking and substance abuse kill brain cells and kids and peers engaging in such are bound to have learning disabilities.
#8. Physical handicaps or disabilities
Children with sight and hearing, handwriting, inattention, behaviour and absenteeism problems will experience difficulties in learning for obvious reasons. Teachers should refer such for medical help in order to enhance learning.
#9. Rise and fall in emotions
It has been observed that when a child is elated, the child is fully ready to learn and this increases the learning abilities of the child but when a child’s emotion is saddened, it equally decreases the child’s learning ability and blocks recalling of information when it’s needed.
Teacher factors:
#10. Subject Mastery and personality.
If the teacher doesn’t know what he or she is
teaching and is not good, it will affect the learning process of the child. The
child cannot as well learn anything if he or she is scared of the teacher due to
the teachers rage and temperament.
#11. Methods of teaching
The minds of learners sometimes stray away and this affects the outcome of learning. Changing the style of teaching when necessary in order to gain the attention of learners should be the goal of every teacher. Making learning more practical and involving children in the process will help assimilation, understanding, synthesis and recall of concepts.
#12. Personality
The personality of a teacher is his knowledge, behaviour, beliefs, the way he talks, character, life-long learning attitude etc. Does he or she love the job of teaching, the kids and the subject he or she is teaching? All these are important and determinants of a successful teaching.
Learning environment factors:
#13. The classroom
A quiet, well designed and equipped classroom is good for learning of children. A class of just four walls is not enough to help children have a relatively permanent change of behaviour.
#14. The psychological environment
Are the students happy or there is a serious disagreement between the learners affecting concentration and focus? This may upset the learning objectives set for teaching.
#15. Home and the larger society
Homes and societies that value education will give support for children’s home work, practical assignments etc. Repairing roads leading to a school by communities encourages learning.
