Family and community Essay

Several factors influence student’s learning. These may be enumerated as individual experiences, talents, and prior learning, as well as language, culture, gender, health, family, and community. It is essential to understand and analyze these factors to make successful students from the perspective of the teacher. Individual experiences Individual experiences of students influence student learning as it is only through the use of meaningful information, personal experiences and the student’s thoughts and beliefs that they can develop their knowledge and enhance their learning strategies and cognitive skills. Their experiences and responsibilities make them goal oriented and they contribute to their individual learning. Through their experiences, they will be able to access their preference of learning and its pace. However, as these preferences may not always help them, the educators must help them with their experiences and preferences and modify whenever required. Experiences also create individualism and differences among the students. Thus, the educators must be sensitive to their differences and allow them to adapt in their own ways, building their individual approaches and strategies. As the student learns to relate new information with his or her experience, his knowledge broadens and deepens. As we will learn later on, individual experiences, both academic and personal, builds our prior knowledge, which is very important for the students and effects student learning. (Edelman, 2005) Talents Some individuals are born with and some develop their individual talents and capabilities. The talent of an individual determines the nature of the relation among his new experiences and new information gathered. Thus, his talent can reorganize, modify and even add to his existing knowledge. However, there is some distinction among talent and giftedness. While giftedness requires one to possess and use his spontaneously expressed and completely untrained natural abilities or gifts or aptitudes so that he can be among the best in his age group, on the other hand talent requires the capability to systematically develop knowledge and skills or abilities in one field so that the child can be above others in his age group. Thus, talent influences the learning abilities of a child greatly. As talents are nothing but natural anilities of a child, faster and easier learning processes help to develop greater natural abilities or talents in a student. Talent affects the intelligence of a student, which determines his ability to reason things. A student’s talent also motivates him to perform better than the others helping in his learning process. (Kar, 2006) Prior learning A student’s prior learning affects his capabilities, approaches and strategies thus, influencing his learning abilities. As said earlier new knowledge needs to be integrated with the student’s prior knowledge to increase his learning abilities. Nevertheless, if the student does not have any prior knowledge then this integration will not take place isolating the new knowledge, which the student will not be able to utilize in his new tasks. In addition, those students who have some idea about a certain topic learn faster than others do. They can readily link their prior knowledge to the new one infusing them to increase their knowledge database. Prior knowledge also generates curiosity and interest in the student to learn more thus, helping him in his learning. Students also learn faster and can remember things better if they can link new information to an appropriate prior knowledge. This mainly helps during examinations. The students also listen to their educators and pay better attention increasing their learning. Prior learning definitely influences student learning since it builds up self-esteem in the student and they find themselves in familiar grounds when attending a lecture. In addition, the process of learning begins with prior knowledge and proceeds with newly presented information. In addition, if the students do not have any understanding or knowledge about what they are learning they may become frustrated feeling inadequate and unsuccessful. (Edelman, 2005) Language A student’s language greatly affects his learning abilities. As most of the students are proficient in their native languages, they are more comfortable when taught in the same language. They understand more and thus, are able to learn more. Nevertheless, they also need to learn the universally dominant language, English, even if it may be difficult for some students to learn. All the educators may not be proficient in the student’s native language and thus, if he is not able to understand the language used in the lectures he will be left behind in his studies. Thus, there should be a common language of interaction between the students and educators and among the students themselves so that they can communicate with each other. Thus, the more the student is academically sophisticated in his language skills the easier it will become for him to increase his abilities and knowledge. (Fletcher, 2005) Culture Culture includes religion, ethnicity, socio-economic background and even at times gender. Thus, it is evident that culture definitely affects student learning. Their individual experiences in their early years and values of their cultures affect their process of learning. As students remember and learn things faster when they can relate new information to prior knowledge, if they can link their classroom instructions to their experience and culture they will be able to familiarize with the topic faster. In addition, students having same cultural backgrounds have similar styles of learning and can thus, help each other to learn and perform better. This is also important as sharing information increases ones knowledge database. A child’s roots and cultural values and experiences affect his academics and learning process as it makes them independent in their thinking and open to learning new things. It also affects their accuracy, objectivity, analytical thinking and independence. Their values and cultures transform into their learning experiences increasing their knowledge, aptitude and thinking and improve their learning abilities making them better competitors. A student’s personal and cultural experiences also influence his language, which plays an important role in his learning abilities. (Kar, 2006) Gender Gender is also one of the factors that mildly influence a student’s learning process. Sometimes not only the gender of the students affect their learning process but also the gender of the teacher. This is because most of the times, female educators consider male students inattentive and disruptive and female students are a little hesitant to approach male educators. Also sometimes, the educators prefer only male or female students in their class depriving the other sex valuable instructions. It has also been seen that since female students outscore the male ones, the educators prefer to teach the female students. However, this can have negative affects on the learning process of the male students who deserve equal opportunities. Nevertheless, it has also been seen that most of the boys attend their educational institutions less than the girls attend and thus, sometimes fall behind the girls in their academics. On the other hand, in some communities the girl students are not allowed to attend schools and colleges due to their culture. This affects the learning process of the girl students who, even if they are interested in learning, are not allowed to do so. Sometimes the gender of the educator affects communication between the student and teacher as some students pay more attention and give better performance if taught by a teacher of the same gender. However, the gender of the educator does not matter as long as the educator is able to support and recognize the talent in the students and the students are able to learn from them effectively. (Edelman, 2005)