Students' Attitude in Teaching Learning Activities
Exploring student attitudes in the context of higher education
by Tolanath Kafle*, Dr. Ningappa Basappa Kongawad,
- Published in Journal of Advances and Scholarly Researches in Allied Education, E-ISSN: 2230-7540
Volume 16, Issue No. 5, Apr 2019, Pages 478 - 482 (5)
Published by: Ignited Minds Journals
ABSTRACT
Attitude is a special psychological character associated with an individual. Attitude is developed with impacts of social transformation, norms, values, environment and activities. Attitude, known as positive presentation on any matter and circumstance, is depended on individual differences. This study is carried with a goal to change the concept of learning and to test the increments of learning among students of masters. This research has taken questions on areas on concept of learning, teaching helpful for behavioral changes and mutual relations between teacher and student. This study, limited within the first and second year students of masters in Janata Multiple Campus, has taken researches by AV. Nwaekezi, N.J. Okoli Sam A. Mezieobi (2011), AA candaij, N.RibeloOlivers as related literature. Taking samples of first and second year students of masters, the information is collected and described with the help of Likert's scale to measure attitude. Information is collected from 33 areas. The collected information is divided into 8 opinion areas by qualitative methods. The findings obtained in 8 areas are used with the methods of statistics. In terms of analysis, areas related to teaching and facilities are found positive attitude. And, areas like behaviors of teaching and capacity, behavior of employed student, among others, were associated with negative attitude. This study has carried on things like to be unable to impart student in the importance of higher education, to be unable to impart importance of education, to give stress on exam-oriented studies, to study just for job, to be unable to seize opportunity, and the likes.
KEYWORD
attitude, teaching, learning, students, masters, concept of learning, behavioral changes, mutual relations, teachers, likert's scale, qualitative methods, statistics, higher education, importance of education, exam-oriented studies, job-focused learning, opportunity seizing
1. INTRODUCTION
Teaching is considered as a creation of learning considering capacity and necessities of a child. With the change of time, the definitions and values of teaching are being changed. With the change of development, the concept is also being changed. In an ancient time, telling information to students would consider as teaching. The teacher-controlled procedure is described as ancient teaching. In today's time, teaching is motivation, guidance, direction and to make courageous is considered as teaching. According to Dr. Jitendra Patidar Paridar, the process of improving educative behavior of student of a teacher is teaching. Likewise, teaching is considered as planned process, triangular process of teacher, student and subjects and physical and mental motivation of teachers and students on syllabus. The Real Academia Española mentions three definitions of the word attitude, a term that comes from the latin actitudo. According to the SAR, the attitude is the mood that is expressed in a certain way (such as a conciliatory attitude). The other two definitions refer to the posture: the body of a person (when transmitting something effectively or when posture is associated to the psychic disposition) or an animal (when manages to arrange care for any question). Three examples with this term: "I don't like the attitude that Manuel is taking with employees", "If you go with that attitude, you'll be outside of the team", "the attitude of the Leopard showed that the animal was not willing to let yourself be caught easily". The attitude has also been defined as a State of the nervous and mental disposition that is organized from the experiences and guides or directs the response of a subject to certain events. Therefore, the attitude is rather a social motivation rather than a biological motivation. From experience, people acquire a certain predisposition that allows them to respond to stimuli. An attitude is the way in which an individual actively adapts to its environment and is the consequence of a process of cognitive, affective and behavioral.
observed, it is feasible to foresee its mode of action. Attitudes meet various functions in social life. It can be the case of someone who adopts a defensive attitude, and thus predisposing in a particular way before the interactions. Attitude can also be oriented to adaptation, in an attempt to minimize conflicts. There are several types of attitudes: A disinterested attitude is that leads a person keep in mind another not as a means to achieve something, but as an end to achieve a self-serving. Four cualidad: disponibilidad, openness, acceptance and application are needed to get it. The manipulative attitude is what a person exerts to achieve a personal goal and takes into account the other as a medium, giving sufficient attention to achieve his goal. Interested attitude: is caused by a situation of indigence. A person sees something private that need and seeks by all means to retrieve or achieve their needs. Others are also a resource that can help you out of this situation of helplessness. An attitude integradoraes who has a person who seeks not only their benefit but also that of those who surround her. It is based on a close communication between two people whose objective is the unification and integration. Throughout history have been many theories about the attitude, here are some of them. On the theories of learning attitudes are learned like everything in life. We capture new information and learn the feelings, actions and thoughts that are related with them. In this line of thinking are conceived people as passive subject beings where learning is the detonator of the attitude to take. It depends intimately on the amount of positive and negative elements you have learned the subject. Theories of cognitive consistency say that people seek coherence in his life and in base to get it are that they vary their attitudes and thoughts to feel a oneness in his being internal because the presence of two States of consciousness (inconsistency) makes uncomfortable them. In this case the attitude would have to do with the succession of actions that ensure a balance for the individual. Theories of cognitive dissonance argues that, as explained in the previous theory, subjects feel awkward when they have ideas or attitudes that contradict each other (dissonance) and as a result seek to reduce this dissonance. The same happens when you perform an action that goes against what the subject believes or not related to the life that you want to carry, with who is. From the perspective of psychology, attitudes can become tangible in three ways: at the ideativo level, behavioral or emotional. We will explain it with an example: this person" (expression ideativo level); at the same time the cashier not only is it doing and thinking, but that is sientiendolo (expression to emotional level). Keep in mind these three parts is critical to getting change an attitude that is not going according to what we want. It is important to also establish the difference between positive and negative attitudes. The positive ones are those who collaborate with the individual to get face the reality of a healthy and effective way, negative ones are which hinder this relationship of the individual with its surroundings. The freedom of the individual lies in being able to choose from one attitude to another each time. Finally, it only remains to say that attitudes changed not only the individual, but also group behavior. A person with a positive attitude towards the problems, can get to encourage the group to move forward and improve; While one with a negative attitude, you get "infect" but to guide you in a behavior that will lead to failure.
Definition of attitude
According to R.Jeffress we can say that attitude is a mental and emotional response to the variety of circumstances that occur in life. They are not specifically behaviors but modes or forms of conduct or performance. It is expressed outwardly, through gestures, movements, words, cries, laughs, tears, or sometimes stillness and apathy, but it responds to internal, cognitive and affective stimuli. You cannot have an attitude to what is not known or is not valued as good or bad. It means taking a body and/or evaluative position on certain objects or facts, based on knowledge gained from them. Positive or negative, feelings that make birth a response, a cause-effect relationship are generated at that mental representation. For example, "to learn of his illness took an attitude of resignation", "Seeing his friend in danger, had a heroic attitude". A positive attitude is a strong-willed and optimistic reaction to adversity, and a negative attitude is a harrowing vision, with the consequent reaction apathetic or aggressive. "A cancer was diagnosed, and he immediately asked which was the treatment, because I wanted to fight the disease" (positive attitude) "a cancer was diagnosed, and he only managed to cry, and reject all kinds of help" (negative attitude).There are innate predisposition to react in a certain way to certain stimuli, and others acquired. A child who grows getting from their elders, challenges and punishments, will surely mimic such attitudes and will become an adult with violent attitudes. The scale of values that constructs a person throughout his life, will scale of values will surely have a committed and responsible attitude in the development of its existence. Ethical, social, religious and legal standards to create the consciousness of duty tend to achieve positive attitudes. It is said that to know and to get knowledge is learning. The change seen on an individual after training and experience is called learning. According to Shrestha-2066, learning is a mental process. This is universally based on human experience. And, this is continued in one form or other in lifetime.
2. REVIEW OF LITERATURE
The process of getting knowledge, skill and concept continues till death. In course of increasing such kind of knowledge and skill, whatever positive changes are obtained by training and experience, they are considered as depends on the context. (ii) Give up ‗measuring‘ attitude, and describe it qualitatively with the pattern beliefs/ emotions / behavior and the connections between them (it may be interesting to notice that in an article written recently by Ruffell, Mason & Allen (1998) the term ‗probing‘ is used instead of ‗measuring‘). Regarding the dimension ―beliefs‖, in our opinion a questionable aspect is the observation of single beliefs rather than of belief systems. For example the belief ―Only those who are intuitive are successful in mathematics‖ does not give significant information about the individual, unless we know the belief that the individual has about his own intuition. Cooney, Shealy & Arvold (1998) underline this aspect regarding research on teachers‘ beliefs: ―It is important to understand not only what teachers believe but also how their beliefs are structured and held‖ (p. 306). Grigutsch and Törner (1998) tried to carry on a research similarly focused on this aspect, analyzing the beliefs of expert mathematicians. In this case what a ‗positive‘ attitude should mean is not clear: but referring only to the emotional dimension seems lessening to us. We think that two other possibilities are preferable. The first is to find out whether a typical pattern beliefs / emotions / behavior of students who are successful in mathematics exists, and to define this pattern as positive. The second one is to define as positive the attitude typical of experts, which obviously brings up the problem of the existence of such attitude (Grigutsch & Törner, 1998). This rises other questions: recognizing if these two possibilities lead to two different definitions of positive attitude, and, if that is the case, deciding which is more useful. The negative attitude of Despite being regular in classroom, active and attentive during class sessions, and no obstruction in teaching, the inactiveness in teacher-told activities is seen as major problem. Following were questions seen during these studies to find out increment of student, test the increment of learning in students: • Do students have positive attitude in teaching learning process? • Has teacher helped change student's behavioral change? • Has teaching contributed in practical change of students? • Is there mutual relationship between student and teacher? • Does educational institute suit the level of students? • Has state educational policy and rule of governance increased the positive increment among students? • Is increment teaching in practice? • Following theories are appropriate for this research.
3. SOCIAL COGNITIVE THEORY
From a social learning perspective, human nature is characterized as a vast potentiality that can be fashioned by direct and vicarious experience into a variety of forms within biological limits (Bandura, 1977). Modeling serves as the principal model of transmitting new forms of behavior. Children‘s math attitudes form as a result of environmental influences, especially those that occur in interactions with parents (Jacobs et al., 2005; Cao, Forgasz, & Bishop, 2006) and teachers (Gunderson et al., 2012). People regulate their behaviour based on their discernment of the relationships between situations, actions, and outcomes (Bandura, 1977). People avoid things that have been associated with aversive experiences, but like and look for things that have pleasant associations. In the same manner, students form positive attitudes when presented with interesting teaching strategies (Yang, 2015). Eccles Expectancy Value Theory Expectancies and values are assumed to directly influence achievement choices. Expectancies and values also influence performance, effort and persistence. Expectancies and values, in turn, are assumed to be influenced by task-specific beliefs such as ability beliefs, the perceived difficulty of different tasks,
influenced by individuals‘ perceptions of their own previous experiences and a variety of socialization influences (Wigfield & Eccles, 2000). In this study, socializers refers to either teachers or parents who influence the children‘s learning.
4. COGNITIVE LOAD THEORY
Certain Classroom Instruction (CI) methods seek to reduce the load for the working memory while other methods increase the difficulty level of the content by overloading the working memory (Sweller, Ayres, & Kalyuga, 2011). Students‘ may feel intimidated by information presented inappropriately and may lose interesta particular subject. It seems necessary to pay more attention to choosing and carrying out the instruction method (Aliasgari, Riahinia, & Mojdehavar, 2010).
5. STUDENTS‟ ATTITUDE TOWARD MATHEMATICS
Attitude is defined as a mental set or disposition, readiness to respond and the psychological basis of attitudes, their permanence, learned nature and evaluative character (Moenikia & Zahed-Babelan, 2010). In the context of mathematics, attitude should be viewed as a predisposition to respond in a favorable or unfavorable way to mathematics (Moenikia & Zahed-Babela, 2010). Studies showed a linkage between attitude to success in mathematics (Lipnevich et al., 2011; Lubienski et al., 2012; Moenikia & Zahed-Babelan, 2010). It is important to develop a positive attitude towards mathematics because there is a correlation between students‘ attitude towards mathematics and their mathematical results (Bilican, Demirtasli, & Kilmen, 2011; Chiesi & Primi, 2009; Dumais, 2009; Lipnevich et al., 2011; Marchis, 2011; Singh & Imam, 2013; Author, and Khoo, 2010). Students in general tend to dislike mathematics more than other subjects (Poffenberger & Norton, 1959). However, Mathematics is a compulsory subject in primary and secondary schools in most countries including Malaysia. Despite the nation-wide subject, because of lack of means and resources and time, we limited this study within Janata Multiple Campus. 210 students were selected for finding the attitude of students and guardians of secondary school (Pandit 1980) on mathematics and other subjects and for finding gender-based attitude on mathematics subjects. Based on, statistics found, i attitude on mathematics of boys was higher compared to girls. And, there were no level-based diversity in mathematics. While studying on attitude of mathematics subjects among girls and boys (Tiwari1984), both girls and higher. According to the studies carried out by of AV. Nwaekezi, N.J. Okoli& Sam A. Mezieobi (2011), in a university in Nigeria, the result of loosely planned exercise teaching was poorer. And, because of this there will be problem on student's increment. According to the studies of AA candaij, N.Ribelo & Olivers, titled 'Attitude towards school & learning of the student', the school education is impacted by social and cultural experiences of a child. After looking different finding of researches mentioned above, it is better to identify attitude of student and its reasons about them making impacts on learning activities. While studying this, students of Janata Multiple Campus has taken as a population. Among students reading in first and second year of masters in Janata Multiple Campus of Itahari, 17 were taken from first year and 15 were taken from second year after a lottery draw. Statistics of selected students were taken with Lekart's methods. Lelart's method is used in this analysis. Following is the finding of activities of masters-level students and environment of campus found after using Likert's methods. Information is collected from 33 areas. The collected information is divided into 8 opinion areas by qualitative methods. Following are 8 summaries of findings of opinions among students.
6. ATTITUTE RELATED WITH TEACHING LEARNING
Different 8 indexes were used to examine attitude of students about teaching learning process in masters' level. Indexes were both positive and negative. Answers by answerers were given full marks of 5. And, based on finding the maximum marks by answerers were 4.36 and minimum was 2.58. The average of both turns out to be 3.42 and the teaching learning activities' attitude were seen positive. Within this area varied subjects were accommodated like relevance of study, satisfaction from educational activities, interactive activities, management of interesting subjects, medium of study as a medium to achieve goal of life, among others. The findings made from 33 answerers were as follows: teaching learning process with employment opportunities. From answerers, those agreeing teaching learning process created employment stood at an average of 2.90. And, to analysis this attitude, there were few who were optimistic on getting employment after accomplishing academic studies. Answers on change after study came at around 2.75 and 4.10. This shows that student were more inclined at employment than study. And, it can be proved that students are giving less important to studies.
Attitude related to opportunities
3 areas were allocated to find opportunities enjoyed in campus by students. Among replies from 33 students, answer on opportunities of studies stood at 4.25 which is positive one. Those answer as an opportunity of learning in campus was found to be 3.66. This was average number. Those answering by saying that campus helped improve educational status stood at 3.38. This shows students are positive on education provided by campus.
Attitude related with teachers
In order to conduct teaching learning process as planned program, teacher comes as a chief person or agency. Considering the role of teacher in maintaining effectiveness of educational programs, questions were asked. In order to measure attitude towards teachers' questions on teaching art, level of studies, level of knowledge, convincing capacity were asked. The average response stood at 2.25. This means response was not positive.
Attitude related to services
Including teaching learning and other sectors, 4 areas of services were studied. Students were seen negatives on using mobile phone during study hours and positive on campus environment, new learning opportunities and internet service. Students were seen positive on services given by campus as they gave 3.58 on educational environment and 4.19 and 4.34 on internet service.
Attitude related to students
8 different areas were formulated for self-evaluation of students. For this, 4.30 were given for topic that study is unnecessary. And, 3.75 were given for topic that 'we studied just for fun.' Likewise, student gave 4.05 and 4.62 for punctuality and diligent.
7. CONCLUSION
Based on study carried out with Likert's methods, students of masters first year, students are not concerned and gave almost no importance on and arts of teaching in teachers. Likewise, in terms of their attitude towards employment, students are seen giving more stress on employment than studies. Many were found to leave study after getting employment opportunities. Students were seen positive on services given by campus. And, service by campus is seen as per the demand of time.
8. REFERENCES
1. A. A. Candaij, N. Ribelo & Olivers, Attitude towards school & learning of the student. 2. Avport Gordon, Willard (1935), The person in phychology, America Beacon press. 3. AV. Nwaekezi, N.J. Okoli& Sam A. Mezieobi (2011), Journal of emerging educational research& policy students. 5. Gregory Robert J. (2005), Psychological Testing, fourth edition, Singapore: person education Pvt. Ltd. 6. Pandit, R. P. (1980), Attitude of secondary school student and their parents forwards Mathematics& other subjects of instruction, unpublished M.Ed. dissertalia, T.U. 7. Khanal, Shree Prashad (2068 BS), Psychological Examination, Jupital Publication 8. Bhattarai Homnat H. (2068 BS), Philosophical and Sociological Bases of Education, Kathmandu: Inclusive Publication 9. www.businessdictionary.com
Corresponding Author Tolanath Kafle*
Research Scholar, Swami Vivekanand University, Sagar (MP)