What Do You Believe About Your Students' Potential?

What Do You Believe About Your Students' Potential

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Have you considered what assumptions you hold about your students at the start of class? Do you assume that students are prepared to participate in the process of learning and motivated to complete their assignments or do they need your guidance to get started? What do you believe about your students and do those beliefs change as the class progresses? Initial beliefs may include perceptions about students' abilities and their need for community, freedom, expression, and meaningful interactions. What instructors believe about their students may inform their approach to teaching and these perceptions are likely to change through interactions and discussions. A helpful approach to effective classroom facilitation involves self-examination of the beliefs held and the impact of those beliefs on the process of learning.

Conducting a Belief Self-Check

Examine the beliefs you hold about your students by looking at the words you would use to describe your students. Would your description include the words potential, capable, flawed, or self-motivated? Next, consider what you believe your students' needs are at the beginning of your class. Would their needs include guidance, support, or personal and professional development? Finally, take into consideration what your role or involvement in the class should be and how you will interact with your students. Will this description include mentor, coach, teacher, or facilitator? Do you believe that you need to facilitate a process, teach students, or tell them what it is they need to learn? These beliefs create a lens through which you view your students.

Beliefs: Validity & Impact

Once you examine your beliefs you can consider what factors have influenced and shaped your beliefs. It is likely that interactions, experiences, assignments, and discussion question responses from prior classes have had a direct bearing on your current lens. As part of this self-examination you have an opportunity to evaluate the validity of your beliefs and determine the impact of your current lens on the classroom environment. Beliefs can be limiting when students are viewed collectively. One method of overcoming this challenge is to ask students to post an introduction at the beginning of the class so you can shift your view from seeing students as a group to evaluating students on an individual basis. Your perspective will be further updated as you begin evaluating students' performance.

Positive Beliefs

Development of a nurturing classroom environment that supports students' learning requires instructors to have positive beliefs about their abilities. As your class progresses ask yourself if can you develop a positive view of your students and maintain that belief despite their initial setbacks, questions, frustrations, and developmental challenges. If your beliefs are limiting your lens or view may be restricted; whereas, a belief about students that is unrestricted will encourage a broad view of their potential and prevent the possibility of making over-generalizations.

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