The Learning Environment
in which difference is good and desirable
Physical Environment
Includes the physical condition of the
classroom, the arrangement of furniture,
seating arrangement, the classroom
temperature and lighting
Psychological Climate
Researchers agree that in addition to
conducive physical environment, the favorable
school climate includes:
1. Safety
Rules and norms
Physical safety
Social-emotional safety
2. Relationships
Respect for diversity
School connectedness/engagement
Leadership
3. Teaching and learning
Social, emotional, ethical and civic learning
Support for learning
Professional relationship
Pine and Horne (1990) described a facilitative
learning environment. It is one:
1. which encourages people to be active
- A psychological classroom environment which
is supportive of learning engages the learners in
the learning process.
2. which promotes and facilitates the
individual’s discovery of the personal
meaning of idea.
- Meaning is not imposed by teacher.
This is personally arrived at by the learners
considering the uniqueness of their
experiences.
3. which emphasizes the uniquely personal
and subjective nature of learning
- Every learner is unique
4.
- There is respect for diversity. To be
different does not mean to be deficient.
5. which consistently recognizes people’s
right to make mistakes
- Learner feel at ease and learn best
when mistakes are welcome because they are
recognized as part and parcel of the learning
process.
6. which tolerates ambiguity
- This leads to openness to ideas and
prevents teacher and learners alike to be
judgmental.
7. in which evaluation is a cooperative
process with emphasis on self-evaluation
- This makes evaluation less
threatening. The learner is not alone when he
evaluates learning, he is with a group. His/her
progress is seen against his/her targets not
against the performance of his/her classmates.
8. which encourages openness of self rather
than concealment of self
- People feel at ease and so aren’t
afraid to be transparent.
9. in which people are encouraged to trust
in themselves as well as in external sources
- There is a strong social support and it
is not difficult to trust others.
10. in which people feel they are respected
- Everyone is convinced of the inner
worth/dignity of each individual and so it is easy
to respect everyone.
11. in which people feel they are accepted
- There is a sense of belongingness.
12. which permits confrontation
- Since learners feel at ease and feel
they are accepted, they are not afraid to
confront themselves.
13. A conducive learning environment is
necessary in the full development of the
cognitive and appetitive faculties of the
learner
- His senses, instincts, imagination,
memory, feelings, emotions and will.
Teaching Strategies
Guiding Principles in the Selection and Use of
Appropriate Teaching Strategies
1. Learning is an active process
- We have to give students
opportunities to participate in classroom
activities. We have to give varied activities to
our students for “hands-on-minds-on” learning.
- Researchers found out that the most
effective approaches- resulting in 75 percent
and 90 percent retention rates, respectively-
are learning by doing and learning by teaching
others.
2. The more senses that are involved in
learning, the more and the better the learning
- What is seen and heard are learned
more than what are just seen or just heard.
- One research finding confirms this:
“Humans are intensely visual animals. The eyes
contain nearly 70 percent of the body’s
receptors and send millions of signals along the
optic nerves to the visual processing centers of
the brain...We take in more information visually
than through any of the other senses” (Wolfe,
2001)
- This implies the use of a teaching
methodology that makes use of more visual
aids than more audio aids
- The most effective is the use of
combination of three or more senses, thus the
term “multi-sensory aids”
The Contribution of the Senses to learning
3. Emotion has the power to increase retention
and learning
- We tend to remember and learn more
those that strike our hearts!
- Then let us not feel afraid to bring in
emotion into our classrooms. Let us add an
emotion touch to learning.
- Wolfe states that “our own experience
validates that we remember for a longer time
events that elicit emotion in us.”
4. Learning is meaningful when it is connected
to students’ everyday life
- Abstract concepts are made
understandable when we give sufficient
examples relating to the students’ experiences.
 - banking system of education

- The manner of teaching can be simply

reduced to what they call the “answering
pedagogy”

- The students see meaning in what

they learn when teachers, show the
connectedness of the lessons to their everyday
concern, to their daily life.

5. Good teaching goes beyond recall of

information

- Good thinking concerns itself with

higher-order-thinking skills to develop creative
and critical thinking.

- Most teachings are confined to recall

of information and comprehension.

- The teaching should reach the levels

of application, analysis, evaluation and
synthesis to hone our students’ thinking skills.

6. An integrated teaching approach is far more

effective than teaching isolated bits of
information.

- Corpus and Salandanan (2003) claim

that an instructional approach is integrated
when it considers the multiple intelligences (MI)
and varied learning styles (LS) of students.