Takeaways For Session 3 - Lecture By Dr Quek & Presentations By Coursemates

Today's lesson was informative and insightful on 2 levels - that we had been given a good overview of two major authors in the field of Learning Environment, Murray and Levin and their contributions to the study of learning environments. My own knowledge of learning environment was later expanded by the interesting findings shared by my coursemates. Each group actually specialised in finding out more about an author's contributions to share with the rest of the class. It was simply amazing, to be sitting here listening to different perspectives and taking in new informative - this mode of sharing and reflecting, looking at other coursemates' blogs simply saves much time in having to surf for information on our own.

Such was my personal learning experience for today, which was certainly enriching in a sense. Also, I have been made more aware of the importance of learning about major contributors' works in this area because their research has been firmly grounded and carefully carried out for the benefit of educators and to serve as a platform for future research on learning environment studies to be carried out.

Of course, certain concepts such as what exactly make up the learning environment, the range of different surveys and instruments used have been reiterated again, and I believe this serves as a reminder that in order to have a comprehensive discussion/ research on the learning environment, we can't afford to miss any of the facets that make it up, because the concept of the learning environment is simply too encompassing and dynamic. Or perhaps, more importantly, each facet plays a part - whether direct or subtle, to pupils' outcomes - in terms of academic, social well-being, emotional aspects, etc, and we can't afford to be ignorant in any aspect.

Brief notes on lecture:

There was a brief recap on what makes up the learning environment at the beginning of the lecture - students' needs, perceptions of environment, school culture, school climate, human behaviour, school environment, classroom environment, conducive envrionment, psychosocial, gender differences, assessment, attitude, cognitive development and community. Against this myraid background, which makes up many dimensions of the learning evnrionment, there are many aspects to assess, and these are grouped into 3 main groups - physical, students and social. One of the major features of the lecture was the detailed explanation on the diagram on the inter-relationship between Lewinian's formula and Murray's needs-press formula. At this point, some techinical terms were introduced - alpha press (a term used to describe the environment as assessed by a detached observer) & beta press (a term used to describe the environment as perceived by mileu habitants)

There were some other interesting facts that Dr Quek mentioned during the lecture about doing research. For instance, the sample size for a quantitative research must be 30 (as a rule of thumb) while the sample size for qualitative research, the sample size is just 1. It is also more useful to utilise a 4 pt Likert's scale, compared to a 5 pt Liker's scale as people tend to choose the option 'not sure', thus giving results which are not very meaningful. Other useful information that Dr Quek mentioned included - taking into account of the cultural environment when we administer the tools and knowing the guidelines and principles behind the instruments before we apply them.