Michelle Brunton
Theory Task One (Unit 5) – part 1
How would a teacher/tutor establish and maintain a safe and supportive learning environment for their learners?
It is important to provide a safe and supportive learning environment so that all learners feel comfortable, relaxed and able to explore learning regardless of their previous experiences. For example if student behaviour is not managed, bullying, intimidation and discrimination can occur. There are a number of methods and approaches which could be used to achieve this.
Establish ground rules
In order to create safe and supportive learning environments, it is important to agree rules and boundaries with learners. Gravells stated “Having ground rules gives a firm …show more content…
In turn, this will establish a positive, agreeable and respectful environment in which to learn. According to Petty, “experiments show that classrooms become much more orderly when rules are stated, or better still negotiated, discussed and fully justified.” (2006:3) this is supported by Gravells who states that encouraging students to take part in making the ground rules, “allows the group to take ownership of their own rules, then they are more likely to keep to them” (2008:8)
Build a strong classroom community
The classroom environment allows learners to build stronger and larger networks beyond their own community. In “Evidence based teaching” Petty states “Good teacher-student relations ensure that students have a more positive attitude to the teacher and to learning, and make them more likely to accept rules and any disciplining. ” (2006:6)
The teacher/tutor can use a number of approaches to facilitate a strong classroom community such as Ice breakers, which provide students with an opportunity to share information about their backgrounds and cultures, exploring the diversity they bring to the classroom. Encouraging students to work in pairs or small groups is another way to encourage students to work with people they would not usually interact