Module 4_Muro

What stood out to me the most this week, was the section on Collaboration and Cooperation in chapter 10 (398).  This section talked a lot about how much companies value how well their employees are able to work well together.  “Most corporations are looking for employees who are not only good at the mastery of a particular set of academic skills but who also have the ability to work harmoniously with a wide variety of coworkers as a cooperative team, to demonstrate initiative and responsibility, and to communicate effectively.” (E. Aronson, 2000, p. 91) (398).  I wholeheartedly agree with this.  I believe it is very important for people who work together to share a mutual understanding of the greater good.  A shared objective or improvement in which all parties are working together to reach.  For teachers in a school, I feel this is even more critical considering there are children who rely on those teachers to maintain an environment for them full of safety and stability.  I do believe the students feel safe at the school that I work at.  As far as stability goes, I have to say that I am not so sure.  The climate of my school does not reflect a climate that revolves around healthy and positive relationships amongst the adults. 

Not all of the adults are focused primarily on their responsibilities as an educator.  Some are more concerned with petty squabbles with their colleagues.  Instead of supporting each other, they are too busy trying to tear one another down.  Far too often, I have witnessed teachers whose priorities are not what they should be and rather than engage their students meaningfully, they choose to place a Chromebook in front of them so that they can focus on other more unimportant issues.  This brings me to my next topic, Technology and Learning (410).  I have always had mixed feelings about technology in the classroom.  Yes, I do believe that technology can and has drastically improved student’s education on so many different levels.  I also believe that technology in the wrong hands can have a negative effect on a student’s overall education process.  Many teachers rely too much on technology to take on the role of teacher.  There really is no substitution for the real thing.  “Like any teaching tool, computers can be effective if used well, but just being on a computer will not automatically increase academic achievement” (410).

One last and vital component in learning is how a student views their own self-efficacy as well as their own self-concept and self-esteem.  How these three concepts are perceived can have a lasting effect on a student’s education as well as the roles they will be assigned to by their teachers, their peers, or even themselves.  I have been around students that I know are more than capable of understanding and accomplishing a particular lesson or assignment, but due to their own self-worth, they almost always shy away from taking on more assertive roles in the classroom.  “Most people assume self-efficacy is the same as self-concept or self-esteem, but it isn’t.  Although these terms refer to self-beliefs, they differ in important ways. Self-efficacy refers to a “context-specific assessment of competence to perform a specific task” (Pajares, 1997, p. 15). Self-concept, on the other hand, has historically referred to a more global self-perception. One’s self-concept is judged by both external and internal comparisons, using other people or other aspects of the self as frames of reference (Marsh, Xu, & Martin, 2012). But self-efficacy focuses on your ability to successfully accomplish a particular task with no need for comparisons—the question is whether you can do it, not whether others would be successful. Also, self-efficacy beliefs are strong predictors of behavior, but self-concept has typically shown weaker predictive power" (Anderman & Anderman, 2014; Bandura, 1997) (434). Adults also have to deal with these same concepts in their lives.