Tashi Dorji*
Principal, Tongmijangsa Primary School, Trashiyangtse.
*Corresponding Author: Tashi Dorji, Principal, Tongmijangsa Primary School, Trashiyangtse.
DOI: 10.31080/ASPE.2022.05.0504
Received: January 03, 2022; Published: February 25, 2022
Citation: Tashi Dorji. “Adoption of Learning Techniques for Enhancing Student Performance”. Acta Scientific Paediatrics 5.3 (2022): 07-18.
This essay on Adoption of Learning Techniques for Enhancing Student Performance presents the worldwide issues related to student learning using various learning techniques in this modern world relating to children’s learning. To make the essay rich and easy to understand for readers, it includes an action plan. To make the action plan easy to understand, a literature on education, its importance and emerging challenges of education has been highlighted in the introduction of the essay. The introduction describes the importance of education along with the emerging challenges due to the fast growing world of science and technology. In the emerging challenges, the focus is more on the quality of education. To address this properly, a brief note on the education system in Bhutan and a brief explanation on importance of education is given in Bhutan is discussed. This is further carried on with the emerging issues of quality of education in Bhutan.
The essay discusses about the rapidly developing world and the growing expectation of the people around the globe for good education. This is further explained by the growing expectation of people giving birth to people thinking, assessing and determining the quality of education. The essay further progresses on with the description on the ten adopted learning techniques for enhancing student performance. The learning techniques are further linked with how it can help reduce or eliminate the issues of degrading quality of education. The next discussion in the essay is about adopting learning techniques to enhance student performance. The review of the literature that is used is used in framing an action plan that is used to implement the learning techniques that is further made as the leadership action plan.
The essences of leadership philosophy and leadership qualities are discussed. Owing the importance given to leadership direction, several leadership philosophy related with the execution of the plan is also mentioned in the plan. The leadership plan included proper strategies identified to put the action plan into actions effectively. The plan also identified the strength and weaknesses of the chosen learning techniques. Its feasibility in implementation as implementation issue is also studied and presented. Further the essay also reflected on the work I carried out to complete the action plan. It is further strengthened by the examples I provided on the areas where I demonstrated leadership, professionally and personally. Lastly my experiences in working with teams and leading them are also highlighted.
Keywords: Adoption of Learning Techniques; Enhancing Student Performance
“Education is like a diamond necklace, the one who wears it is accounted amongst the richest.” - Unknown True to the above statement, the value of education has risen sharply over time due to its importance. Every countries around the world are making huge investment in educating their youths. The best investment any country can make is the investment in educating her citizens. Education is widely held to be crucial for the survival and success of individuals and countries in the emerging global environment [1]. The massive importance education has been endowed or entrusted with has made many to think of quality education from just the education that is prevailing around the world. Every parent desires to educate their children with best education, every school strives to provide high quality education to children coming to study in their school, every country, in fact the entire world is working towards providing quality education.
The today’s rapidly changing world is a big challenge for all and everywhere as this dynamic world keeps changing everyday with new development. Thus, Dunlosky., et al. [2] emphasised that helping students to discipline their learning by using effective learning techniques is very important to let students keep pace with the advancing technology. There are results of education and improving educational outcomes that required efforts on many fronts thus teaching and learning practices in education today need constant and urgent enhancement/improvement [2]. The thought that development of the person should be the central purpose of education is one that guides the needs and urgency into looking at learning techniques. Besides, critical thinking of student, competency level of teachers and student, compulsion and teacher efficacy in enhancing student performance are some factors that leads in the argument for ‘quality education’ which indirectly or directly urges the need to look into various learning techniques.
Bhutan, a small landlocked country, sandwiched amidst two giants of the world, India in the south and China in the north invests the largest portion of its development budgets in education system. Education in Bhutan is given paramount importance because it has help the nation build and sustain the citizen and the nation as a whole. Education thus, is life giving like elements. Bhutan is still in the hypothetical state of determining the quality of education delivered to her students. Quality indeed, for Bhutan, for small systems like in Bhutan, quality is of the essence. Quality of education has been the talk of everybody, right from the grassroots level to those at the highest position. It is a good sign though as it indicates the concern of all for quality education.
As one important strategies to fulfill the goal of quality education, it is important to come up with program of expansion of educational facilities of which adopting learning techniques that best suits the students in achieving good academic achievements.
So, here, the paper will be presenting an action plan on leadership, which includes reflections on the adoption of various learning techniques to improve student learning so that student are always aligned towards enhanced academic performance. It also focusses on solutions that involves the critical analysis on helping students make the best use of the effective learning techniques that will regulate their learning. The paper will be presenting on identifying learning techniques that directly or indirectly foster the improvement of educational practices and student learning. It will also clarify how successful learning techniques directly and indirectly influence the quality of teaching and learning. This will be done by describing the learning techniques which help to acquire the will and skill required to improve student learning. In the process learning techniques will be identified that encourage the values, capacities, and use of the practices that improve student learning.
Effective learning techniques alone is not enough for bringing positive student performance, it requires the hard work and commitment of the teachers along with efforts of effective leaders. Effective leaders must have the ability to execute their vision successfully to ensure that it becomes reality besides the vision inspires others. The today’s rapidly changing world is a big challenge for leaders to proficiently execute their vision. It matters a lot for leaders to ensure the successful execution of vision in this dynamic world. Some of the strategic leadership approaches in contemporary organizations relevant to this action plan includes the Instructional Leadership where the paper discusses the kind of administrative leadership and support might be required to execute this plan. When principals and teachers share leadership, teachers ‘working relationships are stronger and student achievement becomes higher and in the process cooperative leadership is inclusive in this plan. Collective leadership, which requires to organize staff into meaningful collaborative teams that take collective responsibility for student learning and work interdependently to achieve shared goals for which members hold themselves mutually accountable. Team Dynamics is another leadership approach that is included or discussed here. Louis., et al. [1] says that team dynamics talks about taking collective responsibility for student learning, helping students achieve at higher levels, and express higher levels of professional satisfaction [1].
Teaching and learning techniques has become essentials in bringing positive improvements in student achievement academically. The diversity in the nature of preparing student for today’s challenging world is one prime difficulty for the faculty in any school [3]. Learning techniques plays an important role in this movement. Besides the teaching practices faculty can practice, the learning techniques makes many, aware of the prevailing fact that helps respective stakeholders in making concerted effort in thinking for the responsibilities they held. Owing to this importance, learning techniques has been subject of study for many educational institutes and educationists. As per Claxton and Murrell [3] their research has examined the approaches to learning techniques at four levels: (1) personality, (2) information processing, (3) social interaction, and (4) instructional methods. It was however speculated by another researcher, that there is connection between the two fundamental orientations in learning: “splitters,” and “lumpers”. The first one is about analyzing information logically and breaking it into smaller parts, and second one is about watching for patterns and relationships between the parts [4].
The advantage of the learning technique is that it helps faculty to identify the differences children bring in the classroom which enables faculty to become more sensitive towards children’s learning. This is further supplemented by Claxton and Murrell [3], who supported stating that, learning techniques can also serve as a guide for teachers to design learning activities that match or mismatch the styles adopted by student. They further commented that matching in particular helps student who are poorly prepared as it was found that the most attrition occurs in these situations. Further, some studies has even shown that learning techniques contribute to more effective learning when a student is provided consistent instruction by identifying their styles and aptitudes [5].
However, some other studies showed that some mismatching proved appropriate where students’ personal experiences helped themselves in discovering and learning new ways which helped them experience ways of thinking and aspects that they never experienced before. This however should be done by carefully considering the sensivity of the student as the sudden experience of discontinuity will prove negative when students aren’t that strong in these field. Therefore, the knowledge on learning techniques can be of paramount help to teachers as they can design activities or experiences that are appropriate for students in terms of matching or mismatching and enable them to do so thoughtfully and systematically [3].
Many researchers found that the efficacy of learning techniques has been developed and evaluated for more than 100 years. Even then some effective learning techniques still remained underutilized [6] Pressley., et al. [6] also commented that the learning techniques proven with evidence of being very effective in enhancing students’ academic achievement remained unused by many teachers. This is because they don’t learn them and many students do not use them and this way it remained underutilized. Not just this, some learning techniques that are renowened and used to maximum level by students are now proving to be least effective. It was found that the availability of many techniques has contributed towards the disconnect between the efficacy of the learning techniques and the way it was used in the teaching learning process. As many educationists found that it is challenging to scrutinize the relevant learning techniques to prove the efficacy and feasibility for implementation by learners.
So to confront this challenges, this action plan will present the efficacy of 10 learning techniques that can enhance the academic performance student. The learning techniques chosen are selected from the researched papers of many researchers based on certain criteria. On the basis of the indication that the techniques can help student achieve success in a varieties of conditions, the techniques like self-testing, distributed practice are chosen. This is on the basis of some research and survey. The techniques like rereading and highlighting were chosen because of the fact from student survey who reported saying that they use them more often than other techniques. Besides, it is also very important for students to regulate more of their learning when they progress in their learning life. This is one practice that all learners must adapt to, to regulate ones learning wherever and whenever it happens.
In this plan, the choices for the learning techniques were limited to those that can be implemented by students independently. Helps from teachers and use of advanced technologies are not included. However, certain trainings or guidelines would be required for the student to use the techniques. Moreover, the techniques chosen were those that has enough empirical evidence to support its efficacy. One good point about these learning techniques is the fact that it is very much likely that teachers would have learnt these techniques in educational psychological classes and it remains as added advantage to use the techniques [2].
Bhutan and Bhutanese education system has been confronting the issue of quality education since a decade ago. However, there is no defined benchmarks that measured the quality of education so far. Stakeholders, parents and students simply raised the issue of low quality education on the basis of independent and individual observation. In actual it is very difficult to define the quality of education [7] As an educator and a leader, I often heard the hue and cry of teachers and other educators who lost hope against the devilish face of criticism about quality education. In any ways whenever the talk on quality of education hovers around, they (teachers) feel that the comments are directed to them. If taken with positive notes then it is a matter of pride that we are prompted to do better to maintain the standard of education.
When Bhutan has the dream of becoming the knowledge-based society, education will remain as the foundation for Bhutan to achieve that success. This gives the hope and the energy for Bhutan to succeed in its endeavor. Thus with collective efforts, the lost trust can be restored to education the pledge that truly belongs to it. Adopting learning techniques can truly prove to be an essential in restoring the quality of education that is hypothetically believed to have been lost.
Table 1: The table below shows the Ten Learning Techniques with brief description.
This plan is prepared with the hope to adopt the ten learning techniques to enhance student learning. This will be done not just by identifying which learning techniques are best to use for good results but also to encourage students to use it to the fullest potential. The plan further has the some critical analysis to find how it can be further researched and improved.
The most influential leader in an educational organization like school is the principal and their leadership is indistinguishably interrelated to student performance. In a recently published literature review, “How Leadership Influences Student Learning”, Leithwood., et al. [8] mentioned that successful leadership has a very high significance in improving student learning. The leadership philosophy that is much discussed regarding the role of a school principal in developing staff members and students is the instructional leadership. Instructional leadership focusses more on principals’ role in guiding teachers to good classroom practices. Of the many models on instructional leadership, Philip Hallinger’s model is the one that has been researched the maximum. The model consists of three sets of leadership dimensions, namely, (1) defining the school’s mission, (2) managing the instructional program, and (3) promoting a positive learning climate [8] In addition to this, Leithwood., et al. [8] also metions about emotional intelligence of leaders. This is the ability and willingness of a leader to adapt to the needs expressed by people in the organization. This leadership philosophy when displayed, for example, through a principal’s personal attention to students and teachers and through the utilization of the students and teachers capacities, will help in increasing the students and teachers enthusiasm and optimism, reducing frustration, transmitting a sense of mission and indirectly increasing the performance. So those were few leadership philosophy I would adopt as a school principal in adopting the learning techniques.
The action plan in particular will highlight the basics of successful implementation of the learning techniques that is adopted for student achievements academically. Thus a very good leadership action plan is very important for successful implementation of programs to enhance student achievements. The action plan below is purely based on adopting the ten chosen learning techniques to improve student achievement academically.
Table 2: The table above that shows how the ten learning techniques will be implemented, evaluated and future recommendations be made for further improvements.
Table 3: The table below shows the strategies to put the action plan into practice.
The above table (Table 4) shows the risk factors, evaluation of each learning techniques and suggests how applicable each of the learning techniques are. Though four learning techniques are found to be highly risky to implement, yet if the negative aspects are studied well then the applicability is found to be good. On average the 10 pedagogical learning techniques are very good techniques to enhance or promote student learning despite some factors barring its applicability. As mentioned earlier, the deteriorating quality of education in Bhutan (as assumed) has become a serious concern for all the stakeholders, student, parent and teachers. The 10 learning techniques identified here can be of help to bring down the concerns regarding the quality of education. It has the potential to boost the quality of education, provided the implementers implement the techniques when it is best suited. All of the techniques might not prove to be the best for all, yet an alternative to every technique found ineffective be made so that it works the best for the users.
For the action plan to come into action and bring in the desired goals set, a good leadership practice must prevail. Undertaking this project, I learnt a lot on how leadership can impact or influence student achievement. The leadership that has the potential to guide, support, facilitate, instruct and motivate has the positive impact in students learning and enhancing their academic achievements. Leithwood., et al. [8] has rightly said, “Leadership is second only to classroom instruction among all school-related factors that contribute to what students learn at school”. For this action plan to execute well and learning techniques to reach the learners, the following leadership was displayed.
Instructional Leadership: Instructional Leadership: Principal while displaying his instructional leadership considers quality of instruction as the top priority. Instructional leadership is one leadership philosophy that is adopted by principal of schools. Instructional leadership philosophy usually involves leaders to have a clear cut goals for any activities. As an instructional leader, the principal manages curriculum in which the learning techniques are very much integrated. The principal also assesses the lesson plans of teachers in which again the learning techniques will be integrated. The principal allocates resources and evaluate teachers regularly to promote student learning and growth.
Principals and teachers share leadership in the philosophy of cooperative leadership. For the learning techniques to achieve success, principal, teachers and students will have to collaborate and build working relationships that are stronger and this will enable good student achievement.
Table 4: The table below shows the risk and evaluation of success model of the action plan and issues related to applicability of the techniques and what further needs to be done.
The philosophy of collective leadership is very much evident while implementing the action plan of adopting the ten learning techniques to enhance student achievement. This happens when the principal of the school with the philosophy of cooperative leadership organizes staff into significant cooperative teams. The team that takes responsibility for student collectively. The team that works towards achieving organizational goals.
Altogether, I can see the prevalent of ‘Team Dynamics”. Team dynamics takes the wholesome responsibility for student learning. The team dynamics strives to help students achieve high performance. With this they express high level of professional satisfaction. Learning techniques can be easily used here when student and teachers with principal collaboratively work towards achieving enhanced academic growth.
No matter what the style of leaderships, there are some practices individuals display that works effectively than the actual leadership philosophy. Leadership has its foundation grounded in morality of mankind. Morality of mankind guides man to become good human being. I base my leadership in the words of our beloved Fifth Druk Gyalpo [1] Jigme Khesar Namgyal Wangchuk, who stress more on “Leadership of the Self”.
I value the authority bestowed upon me on my appointment as a deputy principal by the Royal Government of Bhutan. Thus, I have the moral values I derived from the words of my great King. I believe in modeling my character and action so that my teachers and students have better insights about me. I do this by being their role model not just in words but in action as well. This action I commit makes it easier for me to influence them. Thus I can lead them towards enhanced performance.
Since I mentioned about deriving my moral values from the words of my beloved King, it is very essential that I mark my words and action. So I always believe in disciplining my everyday conduct. Since I am looked upon by many as a role model so I have that moral responsibilities to have a self-discipline.
As a deputy principal, I am looked upon by many as an expert in many fields. I need to have or develop my capacity into being an individual who has the answer to questions asked by my teachers and students. I must develop myself into a mentor or coach who can be trusted and looked upon with trusts.
In this rapidly changing world it is very important to keep pace with the advancing world by reading and learning new things. A leader will always be looked upon as someone who knows many thing. This way, if a leader keeps reading and updating with every new development then the leader has the opportunity to inspire his fellow teachers and students. There are many subjects that one needs to update like Managing change and innovation, Leadership, Research methodology, and many more.
As a leader there is the general tendency of feeling the superiority over ones subordinates. This is not good in this 21st century world. The quality of humility and kindness are some of the aspects of good leadership one must practice. This will draw your student and teachers closer to you. Then as a leader you can create a good leader in you to improve the performance of student and teacher and the school as a whole.
I have always been close with my fellow teachers and students as the deputy principal and the academic secretary of the school. While being in that leadership position I have always been in touch with the leadership philosophy identified, expressed, explained and integrated above. The aforementioned leadership philosophy were the ones from among many that I always practiced and displayed. For the instructional leadership, the nature of my roles and responsibility expects me to provide direction and monitor the classroom practices of teachers. As the academic secretary, I am again supposed to look after all the matters related to academics. Thus, this responsibility gives me good opportunity to be together with my teams of teachers. Working and leading teams was an experience I always cherished and valued. This is because I get to display my leadership philosophy amidst the teachers and it enables me to learn about my mistakes through their actions and behaviors. I get the opportunity to learn from my teams and likewise they do the same from me. Altogether we work collectively, collaboratively and cooperatively towards achieving the goals set for whatever actions we strive to take.
The challenges I often confront while working with my team is the problem caused due to unavailability of resources. The place where I work is also in a remote place, so we often come across the problems of unavailability of resources for carrying out various curricular activities. The next minor challenge I come across is with the punctuality of the staff of the school. School is a place where all of us (staff) are looked upon as a role model. We cannot take anything lightly. Punctuality is one important character building activity we teach our student. Thus when staff are late for their duty, I have to confront them. Nobody likes being named of the mistakes one commits. So this is one minor challenge I often get to confront. Otherwise, my journey as a leader is going good.
All in all, doing this assignment I learnt a lot on leadership and how a good leader who practices good leadership traits can make a massive difference in developing the society where the leader dwells.
The world is fast becoming a battle field for many ignorant, illiterate, egoist and evil minded creatures in the form of human beings. These human beings are the ones who are not purified of all these dirt accumulated by living a life denied of good education. To further supplement on the importance of education, I would like to quote the statements of the first lady of the 32nd President of the United States of America, Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, who said, “Education is essential to good citizenship and that education is important to life because it enables people to contribute to their community and their country”. If people are denied good education, the growth of the aforementioned evils will traumatize the living of good people.
On the other hand, education has progressed in leaps and bounds to create a better, comfortable and heaven like world to live in. With the rapidly developing world the expectation for good education also rose. This high expectation of people gave birth to people thinking, assessing and determining the quality of education. Thus, this propelled to make educationist think about better techniques to develop the quality of education and enhance the performance of the students or learners. One ways of doing so is adopting learning techniques to enhance student performance. In this essay, I presented a review of the literature that I used in framing an action plan to be used to implement the learning techniques that I studied to plan the leadership action plan.
This is further supplemented by the leadership philosophy. A plain plan with no proper leadership direction will never be able to achieve success. Several leadership philosophy related with the execution of the plan is also discussed in the plan. The leadership plan has proper strategies identified to put the action plan into actions effectively. The plan also identified the strength and weaknesses of the chosen learning techniques. Its feasibility in implementation as implementation issue is also studied and presented. It was found that the chosen learning techniques are applicable in Bhutanese classrooms. Further the essay also reflected on the work I carried out to complete the action plan. It is further strengthened by the examples I provided on the areas where I demonstrated leadership, professionally and personally. Lastly my experiences in working with teams and leading them is also highlighted.
I conclude this essay with the 3E’s I derived from the study. 3E’s equaling to education. Equipping myself with required skills to enhancing myself with good knowledge about leadership and thus becoming an empowered leader. All this was possible because of education.
From the 10 learning techniques, it is very difficult to identify students who need additional time and support to become proficient with the learning techniques. Moreover there is no proper process to provide enrichment and extension to students who are already highly proficient.
The literature for the action plan was based on the research carried out in a foreign country. So even when reviews of the techniques are in-depth and up to date, the feasibility in the applicability in Bhutanese classroom remains a little doubtful.
The plan does little talk about reading comprehension when reading comprehension proved to be an effective learning technique. The plan does not include learning conditions which makes it difficult to trust the relevancy of the learning conditions that might prevail in real.
Thus, if future research is to be carried out then the aforementioned limitations are never to be overlooked. The plan has a very good future course of research as the aforementioned limitations if studied well will give the ten learning techniques the higher value in enhancing student performance academically.
Copyright: © 2022 Tashi Dorji. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
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