When reading the materials on the program, I tend to compare the theories to children and apply them to child education in school. It happens maybe because I have worked as a teacher and I connect them to my own experiences, but it was different this time. This time I connected the topics to my own experience in the mastering degree studies.
We were developing a group work with students from other countries and we faced some difficulties during the task. It did not progress as it should have. I noticed the relations between the readings we were making and our task. As it was a group work, it was deeply connected to collaborative learning and we have not read things related to that, but there are also some other concepts that aroused.
One really clear is related to task instructions and its effect on student’s performance and goal setting. It was clear that the other groups did not receive a clear instruction on what, when and how they were supposed to perform the task. On the other hand, we were well instructed. I could notice the difference it made in practical issues and in the fulfilling of the task. The ones who were well instructed knew what to do and how and actually did it. The ones who were not well instructed did not know what to do and therefore could not do it, even if they had wanted. I also noticed that this lack of information caused a lack of motivation too. The other students were not aware of the importance of the task and therefore they were not motivated to do a good job and put extra effort on it. They did only what was really necessary and they let things to be done at the last minute. The difference in the group motivation and task performance was huge and in my point of view it was based on an inaccurate task instruction and as a consequence task interpretation and goal setting.
From this same work I could notice the importance of teacher’s feedback and orientation during the task development. The feedbacks pointed flaws but also strong points and it made me want to do a better work because after every feedback I had the feeling that I could do even better than the time before. As it was a work in group, the influence of feedback was less evident in the work result because it depended on everyone’s interpretation of it, but I could notice the influence it had on me personally. In fact, having a good feedback of the work done worked for me as a reward and it was a source of motivation. That does not mean I did not appreciate when weak aspects were pointed out, they worked as guidance to improving but I notice that the positive feedback worked as a motivating source and made me want to do a good job and put my efforts so that the final work would be good.
It is also interesting to notice that the feedback had no association with the teacher itself because I do not know the teacher who gave the feedback and I did not have any relationship with him except for the ones related to this specific work. As it was a written feedback, it was associated only to what was actually written not to my own ideas or impressions on the teacher or on the relationship with him. For me this is interesting because it shows how a teacher’s feedback by itself has the power to influence a student, even and adult one. This makes me think on the importance of feedback and rewards to a child that has a close relationship to a teacher during the first years of education.
Teachers can do a lot and around the world many of them actually have an impact on people’s lives and below is an example.
LETting go 