4. Psychological factors that determine success or failure in learning

Success in learning depends on the following psychological factors:

Motivation for educational activities;

Arbitrariness of cognitive processes (perception, attention, imagination, memory, thinking and speech);

The student has the necessary strong-willed and a number of other personality qualities (perseverance, determination, responsibility, discipline, consciousness, etc.).

The psychological factors of successful learning also include the ability to interact with people in joint activities with them, primarily with teachers and study group mates, intellectual development and the formation of educational activity as learning. All of these factors apply not only to the student, but also to the teacher.

The learning mindset is important, i.e. the teacher’s setting and the student’s acceptance of a learning task, the meaning of which for the teacher is to teach, and for the student to learn something.

All considered factors of educational success relate to the psychological characteristics of people included in the educational process. But, besides them, there are also the means and content of teaching, the educational material that the teacher and student use. It must meet certain requirements. The most important of them is accessibility and a sufficient level of complexity. Accessibility ensures that this material is assimilated by students, and sufficient complexity ensures the psychological development of students. From a psychological point of view, the optimal complexity from a psychological point of view is considered to be educational material that is at a fairly high, but still quite accessible level of difficulty.

A subjectively important point related to students’ assessment of the degree of difficulty of the material they are learning is their interest in it and the connection of this material with the needs of the student, with his experience, skills and abilities. Material that is interesting, familiar, and personally relevant is typically perceived by students as less difficult than material that has the opposite characteristics.

Another important factor in the success of learning is a well-thought-out system of rewards for students’ successes and punishments for failures in educational activities. Rewards should correspond to real success and reflect not so much the student’s ability as the effort he puts in. Punishments should play a stimulating role, that is, affect and activate important motives of educational activity aimed at achieving success, and not at avoiding failure.

Using encouragement in teaching

Encouragement is based on a positive belief in your own abilities and the abilities of others, and on accepting students for who they are rather than who they could be.

The purpose of encouragement is to help students believe in themselves and their abilities.

Encouragement helps students take the risk of appearing imperfect and realize that a mistake is not a failure. Mistakes can contribute to learning.

Encouragement is different from praise. The student does not have to earn the incentive by being the first to do so. It can be received for any positive action. Encouragement means that the student is accepted for who he is and treated with respect.

Reward is given for efforts shown. (In this case, the student is not made a value judgment, as in the case of praise.)

Encouragement begins with finding students' assets—talents, positive attitudes, and goals—rather than their weaknesses. Every student has strengths.

Encouragement is the opposite of disapproval. Don't discourage students

making negative remarks and exhibiting negative expectations,

using unreasonably high and double standards,

encouraging a competitive spirit among students and excessive ambition.

8. Encouragement is a statement that the student is trying and that it is worth trying.

What role does the teacher play in motivating students? What can a teacher do to improve it? First, the teacher may emphasize learning, or the process of acquiring skills and knowledge, rather than the achievement, or product, or outcome of that process. Teachers should respond to the effort students put in, not just their performance. Students receiving specific feedback from the teacher regarding the correctness of their completion of the task, and not just marks; a specific response to how children learn, rather than to their personal characteristics and upbringing; reacting to how they learn, without reference to other students, all help students focus on learning.

Secondly, the teacher can increase students' motivation by reducing competition between them. The collaborative approach and the mastery approach are ways to help students avoid making negative inferences about the reasons for their performance as a result of comparing it with the performance of other students. Compared to a typical classroom approach to learning, it is more likely that learning in a collaborative structure and learning to mastery will provide a sense of success for students who need it.

Third, teachers need to help students evaluate their performance based on causal factors other than ability. This is important because judgments of ability are related to self-esteem and self-confidence, with negative judgments having the most detrimental effect on a student's desire to try to do well. As noted, one way to do this is to reward effort rather than performance with incentives so that students see effort rather than ability as the reason for success.

Another way is to introduce a new causal factor - strategy. Strategy refers to the method in which you do something. If a student performs poorly on a test, it may not be due to ability or lack of effort in preparation. The problem may be poor study skills and poor test-taking skills, both of which are strategies. By helping students view (failed) strategies as causes of failure, helping them improve their strategies, and praising them for their efforts to do so, teachers can turn failure into success for many students.

Fourth, teachers should strive to set realistic goals to increase the likelihood of success and students' personal assessment of their abilities.

Fifth, teachers need to constantly monitor the information they send to students about the causes of academic failure and modify their feedback statements to students accordingly. Audio and video recordings can be very helpful in this regard. Teachers should be aware of whether and how they convey to students the message that they perceive them as incapable, and should try to change such language and the manner in which they convey it.

Sixth, teachers themselves need to avoid a state of learned helplessness as a result of their own perceived failures and disappointments experienced in the classroom.

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