C.T.E VAIKOM

TOPIC:  A STUDY ON POSITIVE LEARNING ENVIRONMENT AND STUDENTS ACHIEVEMENT

                                                                                                                           

                                                                                                                           Neethu Joseph

                                                                                                                           Student, CTEVaikom.

ABSTRACT:

This study examined the relationship between the positive learning environment and student’s achievement. The literature suggests that recent years have shown an increase in demand for child care facilities that can contribute to the educational environment of young children. The physical environment in the school setting influences a child’s behavior. Although there is deficiency in environment and behavior studies regarding the impact of the classroom arrangement on behavior, shows an impact of the environment on behavior in education settings.

POSITIVE LEARNING ENVIRONMENT AND STUDENTS ACHIEVEMENT

INTRODUCTION

The classroom environment is an important aspect of classroom management. Properly engaging students in the classroom can foster a positive environment. This study examines the social and emotional needs of students and its implications in developing a positive classroom. The problem is that teachers have difficulty in controlling student’s behavior in the classroom. Understanding the social and emotional components in student behavior is important in developing a constructive and positive environment for learning.

 Today one of the important issues for teachers is dealing with confrontational and uncooperative learners in the classroom. Undoubtedly, keeping discipline and active involvement of learns is a legitimate and still discussed problem that teachers have to face in almost all type of schools, particularly in secondary classes.

The aim of my study is to discover how to provide an effective classroom environment and the effective solution to decrease the disruptive and uncooperative behavior as well as lack of concentration and motivations of secondary school learners. The study dealt with the areas such as school. ‘How a positive classroom environment affect the performance of a student’; its characteristics; the major problems behind the lack of positive classroom environment and the useful strategy; ideas and methodological approaches to reducing the discipline problems.

THEORETICAL OVERVIEW

Creating a positive classroom environment is a concern that all teachers face. When students exhibit disruptive behavior in the classroom, teachers find it difficult to carry on with instruction. If a teacher is giving a lesson and students descripts the class, then everyone get distracted sometimes schools still use physical punishment as a form of discipline. This could lead to students becoming disinterested and unmotivated in school. A positive classroom environment helps keep the class in order, still a difficult goal for teachers achieve.

Classroom or learning environment is an important place of a student. Students need an engaging, stimulating, and enriching learning environment to grow and trine. However, it is defined virtually all teachers and administrators, and even students, themselves recognize how valuable a positive classroom climate is to learning. The classroom management and structure, positive classroom climate, talk etc. Are the factors affecting a good learning environment.

 1. Intellectual Factor

 The term refers to the individual mental level. Success in school is generally close related to level     of intellect pupils with how intelligence of ten encounter serious difficulty in mastering school work.

2. Learning Factor

Factors owing to lack of mastery of what has been taught, faculty methods of work or study, and awareness of experimental background may affect the learning process of any pupil. If the school proceeds to rapidly and does not constantly check upon the extent to which the pupil is mastering what is being taught, the pupil accumulates a no, of deficiencies that interfere with successful progress.

3. Physical Factor

 Under this group we included factors such as health, physical development, nutrition, visual and   Physical defects, and glandular abnormality. It is generally recognized that health retards, Physical   and motor development and malnutrition interfere with learning and physical growth.

 4 .Environmental Factors

 Physical conditions needed for learning is under environmental factor. One of the factors that          affect the efficiency of learning is the condition in which learning takes place. This includes the classrooms, textbook, equipment, school supplies and other instructional material.

A classroom being such an important in the growth of a child. It is important to understand the ways in which to affect this environment in order to receive maximum effectiveness in instruction. There were many things that can affect a positive learning environment. There are physical elements such as wall art, arrangement of desks or resources. Also, there are intangible elements such as the energy of the classroom, the rules or the sounds within the room. Each of these can impact a student’s focus and achievement in the class. They can also affect a teacher’s attitude in the class.

NEED AND SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

Classroom environment is one of the most important factors affecting students learning. Student learn better when they view the learning environment or positive and supportive. A positive environment is one in which students feel a sense of belonging, trust others, and feel encouraged to take challenges, take risks, and ask questions. Such an environment provides relevant content, clear learning goals and feedback, opportunities to build social skills and strategies to help students succeed.

The influence of environment begins since the time of the conception of the child in the womb of the mother. Foetus in the womb is influenced by mother’s mental, physical and emotional conditions. The external environment starts from the time of birth of the child. The external environment refers to the surroundings which prevail in home, school and locality. At these places the child interacts with other members of the family, teachers, classmates or peers and neighbor’s. This study was conducted to investigate what are the factors affecting the positive learning environment. A positive classroom atmosphere is essential for students to learn and develop. This study shows that a positive atmosphere increases student academic achievements and lead to increased self-esteem. This study was conducted on St. LTGHS. Vaikom, and aimed to study the learning environment of this school. Positive learning environment can be acquired only by the co-operative effort of teachers and students. By setting a positive example for our students using positive reinforcement to promote positive behavior and it can turn the classroom into a positive learning environment.

  STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

The learning environment encompasses more than just the classroom learning and teaching take place. Many factors contribute the learning environment. Including student, teachers, parents, school staff etc. If the factors are functioning in an improper way. It will negatively affect the classroom environment. As a part of our B.Ed. curriculum, we held a teaching practice session at St. L.T.G.H.S.Vaikom. During that time we identified the problems that is negatively contributing to the positive learning of the school. There are no mandatory measures to overcome this difficulties. In this backdrop, I conducted a project entitled as ‘A STUDY ON POSITIVE LEARNING ENVIRONMENT AND STUDENTS ACHIEVEMENT’.

OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

1.     To find out the type of learning environment in the school.
2.      To determine how the learning environment affect the achievement of the student.
3.     To identify the reasons behind the lack of positive learning environment.

METHODOLOGY IN BRIEF

The method adopted for this present study is survey. The samples were collected from high school students of St.L.T.G.H.S Vaikom and it includes 50 students of std.1X. The tool used for the present study was inventory. The inventory consists of two sessions. First session includes general information and the second one includes ‘Statements’. It is a 3 point scale and it consists of fifteen statements. The scoring key was up to 4, 3, 2. The maximum score was 60 and the minimum score is zero.

ANALYSIS OF DATA

The investigator conducted this study regarding positive learning environment and the student’s achievement. The investigator collected data based on this study. The analysis of data is presented below.

1. In order to find out the type of learning environment in school, the investigator conducted an interview and details are given below.

Problem Identified	Proper	Improper
Seating Arrangements		√
Room Design		√
Wall Design		√
Proper Light Arrangement	√
Position Of The Classroom		√
Playground Facilities	√
Attitude Of Teachers		√
Roofing Arrangement		√

 2. In order to find out the relationship between learning environment and students achievement, the investigator collected the term achievement score of students and data’s obtained are presented in table below. The table is showing the term exam scores of students.

Category	Score	No. of pupil belongs to each class	Percentage of students in each class
poor	0-10	11	22%
Below average	10-20	10	20%
Average	20-30	18	36%
Above Average	30-40	9	18%
Excellent	40-50	2	4%
Total		50	100%

From the table, it is clear that only 45% students acquired the better achievement. ie, between 40-50 score range. About 18% of students belongs to 30-40 score range. Most of the students (36%) belongs to the average category. i.e.,   between 20-30. About 22% of students seem to be poor in their achievement.

The investigators also conducted interview with students regarding class room environment and achievement. From the interview, it was clear that those who obtained better achievement in academic subjects have better learning environment.

3. To identify the reasons behind the lack of positive learning, the investigator analyze the responses of each problems and percentage are given below.

Problem	Satisfied People	%
Seating arrangement	4	8%
Room design	15	30%
Wall design	25	50%
Proper light arrangement	37	74%
Position of the classroom	20	40%
Playground facilities	18	36%
Attitude of teachers	20	4%
Roofing arrangement	14	28%

From the analysis, it is clear that the students are not fully satisfied with overall arrangement. Among them, 74% of students almost satisfied with proper light arrangement. About 50% of students satisfied with wall design. About 40% of students are satisfied with position of the class room and attitude of teachers. About 30% and 36% of students are only satisfied with room design and playground facilities respectively. It is a pathetic condition that only 3% students are satisfied with seating arrangement. The analysis clearly identifies the reason behind the lack of positive learning environment. The reasons behind the lack of positive learning environment are `SEATING ARRANGEMENT, ROOM DESIGN, WALL DESIGN PROPER LIGHT ARRANGEMENT, POSITION OF THE CLASSROOM, PLAYGROUND FACILITIES, ATTITUDE OF TEACHERS AND ROOFING ARRANGEMENT’.

FINDINGS OF THE STUDY

The standard for many classrooms today is to have desk aligned in rows within the classroom. This system of arrangement seems to make students lose focus and create a higher number of disruptions in the classrooms. This structure does not encourage interaction between students and focuses more on the student as an individual completing their classmates their own work. Human are social creatures that want attention and if they aren’t going to be able to get attention from their teachers.

One of the area that make a noticeable impact on student’s success is the physical environment of the classroom. This can pertain to a variety of details .It can be structure, resources, color. All of these can play a role in determining whether the classroom will be active for learning. Each may not have a large effect individually, however together they can work to strengthen a student’s ability to learn.

Another way to modify the seating arrangement is to organize the desks in a circle around the classroom. This will work better with smaller class sizes, but can still be used occasionally in others. This strategy works well with promoting public speaking and classroom debate. It engages students. Because the all become the one member of the same group. They are prone to listen more actively and make more eye contact with the person who is speaking. In this model, the teacher has to make sure to create an environment where students feel invited to share their views without the fear of judgment.

CONCLUSION

Overall the classroom environment plays a crucial role in keeping students engaged and allowing them to be successful within the classroom. The teacher can modify the environment to achieve these results. There is a multitude of ways in which to do this. They can arrange the desks in different patterns. They can decorate the walls with difference assignments or items. Students can be used to help lead the classroom. In the way that the teacher wants to go. Even adapting the lighting or the temperature of the room can increase the effectiveness of instruction in the classroom. A good teacher is take care of these elements and the importance that they play in student success without giving attention to the environment of a classroom the teacher is setting their students up to be less successful.

SUGGESTIONS

1.       Create a positive physical and emotional atmosphere.
2.       Always be positive.
3.       Model good social skills.
4.       Avoid negative reinforcement.
5.       Keep your classroom organized.

   REFERENCE

•       Black P. and D. William, Assessment and classroom learning, Assessment in education,1998.
•       Emmer. ET, effect of classroom social climate on individual learning, Journal 1970.
•      Brophy. J, motivating students to learn, 2004.    
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