Educational Psychology: The Role of Teachers, Parents, Peers
by This is an essay on the intertwined relationship between teachers, parents, peers and students. In this essay, I showed how this relationship affects a students’ learning, specifically Chinese Language learning in Singapore. I also evaluated both the positive/negative impact as brought about by this relationship and proceed to propose methods on improving student’s language education.
To answer how teachers, parents and peers can jointly contribute to students’ learning, we must first grapple with the intrinsic network relationship between the three factors, relating them to student’s learning; then understand the roles each of the three individual components play; and finally evaluate the extent of the effects/contributions by the three factors on individual scale, as there are differing degree to the extent of effects/contributions, and eventually the overall scale. It will then be upon this basis of evaluation that we will be able to look to applications and methods of implementations within the Singapore’s context onto the subject of Chinese Language, in a primary school classroom.
The Intertwined Network Relationship – Family, Peers & Teachers
Evidently, it is true that one is central and the main focus to his/her learning, however, it would be too myopic and narrow-minded to assume that the process of learning is one that can be “separated from the rest of our activities”(Wenger,1998)1. It is therefore, in my personal opinion, that students’ learning is part of a social process(Smith,2006)2 and that because of its intrinsic relationship with their parents, peers and teachers, students’ learning can be shaped by these three factors either individually or together – the role that each factor plays, be it negative or positive, can affect students’ learning or contribute to the success of students’ learning.
Albert Bandura stated in his social learning theory(Bandura,1977)3 that, “learning would be exceedingly laborious”, and that “most human behavior is learned observationally through modeling: from observing others one forms an idea of how new behaviors are performed, and on later occasions this coded information serves as a guide for action.” It is through Bandura’s Social Learning Theory that we build on our understanding that learning can be shaped by the environment that we dwell in: that the students’ learning can be influenced by their parents’ actions and thoughts through the students’ tender and impressionable age and at the initial stage when they begin their learning process which is essentially the foundation age where foundations are built and laid for future learning(T.Shanmugaratnam,2006)4 ; then built on as students enter into the “social”, “community” (Lave & Wenger,1998)5 stage of their life, interacting with peers and learning from their teachers.
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