Abstract:

Learning in the classroom is a process involving how students do and think. One of the challenges in the education system is that teachers lack an understanding of how students learn in the classroom environment. In this study, we try to answer how to motivate the students in the classroom by using teachers in the primary, secondary, and tertiary levels in Sri Lanka. An opinion survey was conducted with teachers giving challenging scenarios of student behavior to identify the response patterns in each sector of education. Scenarios involved the classroom challenges in skills improvement, practice, feedback, motivation, behavior, knowledge organization, and prior experience of students. The qualitative study used a sample of 24 teaching staff consisting of secondary school and tertiary level teaching staff. Out of the discussed topics, student motivation, the influence of the home environment on learning, knowledge organization methods, merging learning objectives with students’ mental values, practice, and constructive feedback were the most identified factors among teaching staff to improve the learning experience of students. This study revealed that external factors directly influence the learning process which had a limited focus on curriculum design and development. Moreover, there is significant differentiation in teachers’ perception of motivating students in the learning process from secondary to tertiary level education. The findings suggest that curriculum design and development must not only focus on the course content but also on the learning behavior and subjective values imposed by the students. This study can be extended by comparing the student perception with the teacher’s objectives in teaching to optimize the learning process at different levels in the education system in Sri Lanka.

Keywords:

Learning support, student cognition, values in education, teacher perception.