RONÉL KOCH
MY STUDENTS' LEARNING NEEDS
MY STUDENTS' LEARNING NEEDS
After reading this section you will have an idea of who the students at UWC are and why it is important to have a sound understanding of their learning needs for teaching and learning and how this informs curriculum development in my practice.
WHY IT IS IMPORTANT TO KNOW MY STUDENTS
Maree and Ebersöhn (2002) speaks about the necessity to provide students with 'identity and survival kits' for the twenty-first century. “A survival kit should provide [students] with a set of emergency lifeskills and equip them with the willingness to remember and preserve the past, to respond to the demands of the present and to be well prepared for the future. [It] will ensure that young people in South Africa, today and in the future, are prepared for the challenges of a changing world.”
In order to know what to include in this metaphorical survival kit, myself as lecturer needs to understand what they already have in their kits (prior knowledge that they bring to the learning experience), what they possibly need to take out (unessecary baggage that they are carrying that could be to the detriment of their development or any faulty information and myths) and what needs to be added in order to prepare them for the 21st Century as envisaged by the UWC Graduate Attributes. In order to do this effectively, it is a prerequisite to know who my students are, to understand their learning needs, and be able to respond to that.
This links with Goal Area 2 of the UWC Institutional Operating Plan (IOP) that illustrates the importance of providing students with opportunities for excellent teaching and learning experiences that is contextually responsive to the challenges of globalisation and of a society in transition, and that enhances the students' capacities to be change agents in the 21st century.
HOW I MANAGE TO FIND OUT ABOUT MY STUDENTS’ LEARNING NEEDS
By means of enquiry, research, workshops, class activities, questionnaires on Ikamva, and e-mail and/or oral conversations I come to know a great deal about UWC students and their history.
WHO ARE OUR STUDENTS AT UWC?
The process above of finding out my students' learning needs, the "Towards professionalisation for teaching and learning" course that I have attended at UWC as well as literature I have consulted, helped me to understand who the students at UWC are.
To explain contextually who the students at UWC are I will approach my students' needs by looking at it ecosystemically, according to Bronfenbrenner's systems theory. Urie Bronfenbrenner (1917-2005) developed the ecological systems theory to explain how everything in a child and the child's environment affects how a child grows and develops. For the purpose of this writing, I will replace "the child" with "the student".
Throughout I have included quotes taken from communication between myself and students (from written tasks/assignments/class activities/questionnaires) that confirms and illustrates their realities (I left the spelling as it was originally).
THE CHRONOSYSTEM
The chronosystem is made up of the environmental events and transitions that occur throughout a persons' life, including any sociohistorical events (Bronfenbrenner, 2001).
The University of the Western Cape has a history of creative struggle against oppression, discrimination and disadvantage during the apartheid era and thereafter in South Africa (UWC official website).
Please follow this link to understand more about the history of UWC.
THE MACROSYSTEM
The macrosystem is the largest and most remote set of people and things to a person but which still has a great influence over the person (Bronfenbrenner, 2001).
In order to understand the student at UWC, you have to understand their cultural environment in which they live and all other systems that affect them. These include, among others, the way South Africa is being governed, movements such as #feesmustfall, NSFAS, public transport strikes, unrest in communities, poverty, gangsterism, unsafe and/or unhealthy living environments, availability of health care services etc.
"I will not be able to make tomorrow mornings lecture due to financial reasons. I am feeling quite anxious about missing a lecture because I already missed this previous Mondays lecture because of the taxi strike."
"This is to inform and sincerely apologize that i will not be able to come to class even in campus today due to the taxi strike. It is really hectic, people are really being injured and buses are being stoned down and burnt."
"The external stress that has an impact on anxiety in my family is our environment. The place we live in is not safe and crime is of high intensity."
At the moment my family lives in a very unsafe area, with gangsters as the main cause. This situation is stressful to us all and it is increasing our anxiety by the day."
THE EXOSYSTEM
The exosystem includes the other people and places that the [student] may not interact with often him/herself, but that still have a large effect on him/her, such as parents' workplaces, extended family members, the neighbourhood etc. (Bronfenbrenner, 2001).
Sometimes students are impacted by settings that does not involve them as an active participant, but still affects them.
"My mother has been working for many years, and she was the bread winner of the house. A few months ago she gave up her job as it was too stressful for her and this has an impact on the anxiety experienced in my family."
"In our family my father are the one that has an impact on anxiety experienced in our family because the job that he do is very stressful.He is a prison warden where he takes care of prisoners and he also reveal to us how stressful it is to work with them."
THE MESOSYSTEM
The mesosystem consists of the interactions between the different parts of a person's microsystem. The mesosystem describes how the different parts of a [student's] microsystem work together for the sake of the [student] (Bronfenbrenner, 2001).
Students often experience conflict in relationships between various micro systems.
"I'm only 19 and the amount of anger and hatred i have bottled up is getting to me. my mother is also sick with a useless boyfriend who is a self seeking alcoholic."
THE MICROSYSTEM
The microsystem is the system closest to the person and the one in which they have direct contact. Some examples would be home, school, or work. The microsystem is the small, immediate environment the [student] lives in. Microsystems will include any immediate relationships or organizations they interact with, such as their immediate family or school(Bronfenbrenner, 2001).
"Being situated in a community drenched in drugs poverty and gang violence, stress factors would emanate from our Community. This would often create anxiety amongst our family,due to the crime rate being so high.
Home and close relationships: Often students experience tremendous hardships at home. This seems to be one of the most prominent themes that emerge from my contact with students.
"I have an alcoholic father who always causes conflict in the house. I have experienced this conflict all my life an I am unfortunately used to it."
"My husband used to be addicted to alcohol. Whenever he comes home he used to abuse me emotionally."
"I was abandoned at the age of five when my mother just packed her bags and left."
"As I was growing up conflict was dealt with in anger and arguments sometimes physical fights."
"Due to my father always being drunk and unreliable we can not leave him alone at home so I am the one who has to make sure that everything at home is fine."
"As long as that relationship went on, I started feeling unworthy, rejected, hurt and unloved."
School (prior schooling and the World of Work): The typical UWC student is not necessarily 18 years old and fresh from high school. An awareness of the fact that some of them have not been exposed to schooling for many years and the quality of the schooling system which they were exposed to during their schooling years, is important. As their lecturer I cannot assume that all students come to the classroom on similar grounds and that all of them are equally well prepared to embark on this journey of learning.
Parenthood: some of the students in my classroom are parents themselves and are thus responsible not only for their own learning, but for the education of their offspring as well. This goes hand in hand with having to provide, managing time, the responsibility of having to juggle many responsibilities. Students who study under these circumstances do not have the luxury to focus only on their studies.
Work: Many students work part-time in order to put food on the table and pay bills.
THE STUDENT AS AN INDIVIDUAL
Challenges:
On a personal level, my perception is that students often struggle with internal issues such as negative internal dialogue, low self-esteem, depression, loneliness, health concerns, time magement, stress management, study skills; the ability to cope with life in general.
"I am too angry, bitter, hurt and there is a lot of resentment inside me.. Many times I realize that she is trying to make things right, trying to make me happy.. but i cannot let go of all those negative feelings inside me.. i just do not know how."
"It has been three years I have been living in campus but I do not even have friends on campus."
"My uitslae het vanag gekom en ek is gediagnoseer met kanker in my linkerbors. Ek word komende Donderdag geopereer en ek is so verward en emosioneel uitgeput."
"I feel really depressed, it has been like this for three years now I feel like I cannot handle life anymore at times."
"I've been missing klass so much these passed few weeks trying my best to keep up but just feel like the load is to heavy."
Resilience:
I have tremendous respect for the students I teach that find themselves in circumstances like explained in this section. Considering these factors, I consider UWC students extremely resilient given the context they often find themselves in that is quite challenging. Sometimes I think to myself that some of my students are having to deal on a daily basis with things that some people deal with once or twice in a lifetime.
Elements of Care
When taken into account all of the abovementioned individual needs of students, as a lecturer, I cannot underestimate the importance of handling my students with care. When I say this, I would like to emphasise that I do not mean it in a patronising manner. The political ethics of care is a normative framework developed initially by Joan Tronto (1993, 2013). It is used to understand care in micro contexts as well as broader social and political institutional settings.
According to Tronto (1993, 2013) the five elements of care are:
1. Attentiveness – noticing the needs of my students.
2. Responsibility – making sure the needs of my students are met to the best of my ability.
3. Competence – hands on work of care-giving.
4. Responsiveness – how care receivers (my students) respond to the care (being aware that I do not want them to be insulted in the process, but rather uplifted and empowered).
5.Trust and solidarity – taking collective responsibility and thinking seriously about the nature of caring needs of my students.
I have referred countless students in need of psychological support to the Centre for Student Support Services (CSSS). I also provided learners with a toll free number for Free Telephonic Counselling for students dealing with stress, anxiety, depression and promote the use of the Wyza app that is freely available to all staff and students at UWC.
It is important to me to leave everybody I come in contact with either the same as I found them, or better, but never worse. Meyers-Briggs type indicator shows my personality type is ESFJ. That indicates towards a strong investment and interest in the well-being of people and I would like them to see people self-actualise (becoming the best that they could be). I am very sensitive person and while I am teaching or interacting with students I am always aware of how learning might impact them (since ww often deal with sensitive issues within my field). I am passionate about how learning and knowledge can empower students and to see and hear how they start to interact with the world around them in a different way. I once overheard a student talking on campus and she mentioned how interesting she finds it that now that she is informed about child development, she interacts differently with children at home. This made me feel excited, because students' paradigms shift and they take the knowledge to their households and their communities. Knowledge is power, and it leads to positive change in our communities and eventually our country. This is a positive ripple effect that starts to appear.
WHAT I STILL NEED TO FIND OUT ABOUT MY STUDENTS' LEARNING NEEDS
I aim to use google survey and systems such as SASI before, during and after teaching to know where my students are coming from and to plan for them before I teach them and also future students who will come after them.
Ask questions such as:
- How many local and international students are represented in my classes?
- What different languages they speak?
- Are they first timers at UWC?
- What is your prior learning with regards to the module at hand? (or any relevant question(s) to ascertain what their prior knowledge is).
- How to you like your class teaching to be done?
- Have you got any barriers to learning I needs to be aware of?
CONCLUSION
Without the understanding of learning needs, we might be filling students' survival kits with items that they don't need, that they will never use, and even worse, sending them off into the world of work only to find that what they need most in their survival kit, is not there. To me, this would mean that I have miserably failed my students and that we have failed them as an institution of learning. I would like my students to be confident that they will be able to cope with the demands of the 21st century by making use of their fully equipped set of skills in their 'survival kit' to do so.