eJournal Entry No. 2

I have experienced classical and operant conditioning inside the classroom, both as a student and teacher. I remember whenever my chemistry high school teacher arrived with her index cards where our names were written, we knew that there would be a graded recitation. All of us feel the nerve and tension in answering her questions correctly. When our CAT commandant arrives with a scissor, we anticipate that he will inspect the length of the haircut of the boys in the line. These experiences are examples of classical conditioning that, even up to this date, I still remember the class’ reactions whenever we see the index cards and scissors. While I experienced the operant conditioning in the form of punishments for being noisy inside the classroom, being late, and for not submitting the requirements assigned by the teacher. During college, I became active in participating in institutional and national quiz bees in Chemistry. Aside from the medals and certificates, there were cash prizes for the winners. We were also given a chance to travel outside Nueva Ecija since the quiz bee is a Luzon-wide competition. All these experiences made my college years very memorable. And for me, the best reward I was able to get after graduation was passing the licensure exams for chemists. Getting a license is the best reward for studying hard and perseverance in finishing studies.

The assertions of the social cognitive theory that learning occurs in a social context with progressive and mutual interactions of person, environment, and behavior are true. The environment and people around contribute very much to the learning of one individual. We learn from experiences, from the people around us, and from the place we live in. With these ideas, I agree with the theories presented by Piaget and Vygotsky. As we can observe, child cognitive development happens in stages and with interaction with the environment. Likewise, language, culture, and society are essential in one’s cognitive development.

Metacognition is simply described as thinking about one’s thinking, and as a teacher, the practice of metacognition in a classroom is important as we should be aware of the students’ thinking and learning. We as teachers should plan and design teaching and learning strategies and tasks based on the identified learning styles of students. Furthermore, mistakes are monitored, and the success of assigned tasks is checked. And then lastly, the success of any learning strategies and adjustments is evaluated. In every classroom, students must be encouraged to become critical thinkers and goal-setters. Later on, this will benefit the confidence and competency of the students since they are in control of their learning.

Motivation is one of the essential factors attributed to one’s success in learning and teaching. This may start from the childhood experiences that motivate them to study and finish their education. This is the same motivation that I have that is why I really strive hard to finish my studies despite the financial difficulties. These financial issues became my driving force to achieve my goals in life. Motivation is also an important factor in our students’ learning and development. As teachers, we motivate them by encouraging them and tapping their potential in accomplishing a specific assigned task. We motivate them by instilling in their minds that the fruit of their hard work and perseverance is a passing grade and eventually a successful life. Even if the subject matter has a certain difficulty level, motivation to learn and accomplish the task will contribute to the students’ success in their academic journeys.

All these boil down to the knowledge and competencies of the teacher to condition their students’ learning and cognitive development, metacognition, and motivation. Teachers should be continuously developed and trained to have adaptive, challenging, high-yield, and motivating teaching methodologies that will benefit the students’ learning and development. Just like in my case, since I am not an Education graduate, aside from experience, I am learning other teaching styles by enrolling in further studies in Education. During the enhanced community quarantine (ECQ), I enrolled and finished the 18 units of Professional Education from NTC. And currently, I am enrolled at UPOU to further learn other teaching styles that I can apply to learners with different learning styles and mechanisms. As an educator, we must also continuously evolve academically since every day; new knowledge is being tapped, discovered, and applied. We must be updated and aware of the current trends in science instruction that will benefit our students. As an educator, we should develop our craft because this will significantly impact the learning and development of our students. We improve ourselves to improve the instruction we deliver to our students. At the end of the day, this improvement will impact the quality of teaching and learning. As a teacher, I believe that my “bosses” are my students, and their evaluation and feedback will further improve my quality of work.

I am not well-versed in doing educational research since my orientation is more on chemistry wet-lab research. But since I am in the academe now, I am starting to learn how to conduct science educational research with the main objectives of improving teaching and learning, innovative teaching techniques, and low-cost and simplified lab experiments. I am very eager to learn how to conduct science educational research since I am planning to pursue a Doctor of Philosophy in Science Education in the near future. Knowledge in conducting science education research is, therefore, a pre-requisite. One factor to be considered, however, is the ethics part of conducting these types of research since the responses to be gathered for the research are from human respondents. Nevertheless, I will include it in the things that I need to study in conducting science education research. My goal is to absorb whatever new knowledge I can obtain that will enable me to become a better version of myself every day for the benefit of my students and for the love of science.