Our Lady of Lourdes College Foundation

Daet, Camarines Norte

1st Semester SY 2021-2022

(EdUC 7 –PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING)

Name:_______________________ Section :: ________________________

UNIT 1 – CHAPTER 1

The learner is an embodied spirit. He is neither body nor spirit alone.

The Learner
“Every child is a potential genius. ”

Learning Outcomes:
1.Describe the nature of the learner, his/her powers/
faculties, multiple intelligence, learning styles
2.Discuss the implications of the nature of the learner to
the teaching learning process___

Focus Questions:
What is the nature____the learner? What are the
implications of these to the teaching-learning process?
·What are the powers/faculties with which every learner
is equipped?

What should teachers do and not do to help develop the

learner's powers____faculties?

。 What does Howard Gardner say about the learner's

intelligence?
What are learning styles? How do these affect teaching-
learning?

The Learner as an embodied spirit

The learner has the power to see, hear, touch ,smell and taste, perceive,
imagine, retain,r Recall, recognize past mental acts, conceive ideas,
make judgment, reason out, feel and choose.

The learner is an embodied spirit. He/she is a union of.

a sentient body and a rational soul. His/her body experiences
sensations and feels pleasure and pain. His/her soul is the
principle of spiritual acts, the source of intellectual abstraction,
self-reflection, and free rational volition. Body and soul exist in
mutual dependence. (Kelly, 1965) As teachers then, let us care for
the embodied spirit-learner. Let us feed his/her body as well as his/her spirit.

A learner who is hungry, physically exhausted and sleepy

cannot be at his/her best in the classroom. That's why a school
cannot ignore the learner's physical needs. There are a lot of
practices in school that show that the school cares for his/
her physical needs. We hear or read about feeding programs in
schools. The téacher is helped by a team of health personnel that
visits every school to check on the health condition of learners.
The team measures the learners' height ,take their weight, check
their teeth and gums, eyesight, and heads for lice etc. There is
period for recess, for brushing teeth, for necessity. Teacher inserts
“energizers” such as action songs, short physical exercise, or just
a song. The learner has also a spiritual nature. So he/she must nourish
not only his body but also his spirit. “Man does not live by bread
alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God”, said
the Greatest Teacher. The learner needs “chicken soup for the soul”
or else suffers from “spiritual vitamin deficiency”. He/she needs
to be fed with sublime thoughts, words of inspiration, spiritual
advice drawn from the Bible for Christians, Koran for Muslims,
thè Vedas for the Hindus and Gautama's Buddha's teachings for the Buddhists.
Only when the learner is nourished materially and spiritually
can he/she be complete for that is his/her very nature.

The Fundamental Equipment of the Learner

Cognitive Faculties
With what faculties or powers is the learner equipped so
he/she can learn? He/She is equipped with cognitive as well
as appetitive faculties. His/her cognitive faculties include the
following: 1) five senses, 2) instinct, 3) imagination, 3) memory,
and 4) intellect. By his/her senses, the learner is able to see, hear,
feel, taste and smell whatever is to be learned. By the power of
imagination, the learner is able to form representations of material
objects which are not actually present to the senses. By his/her
power of memory he is able to retain, recall and recognize past
mental acts. By his/her intellect, s/he can form, concepts or ideas,
make judgment, and reason out.

Five senses. The five (5) senses are part of the learner's
sentient body. For effective and efficient learning, it is important
that his/her senses function normally. It is said that “there is
nothing in the mind which was not first in some manner in the
senses.” Do you agree? Which of the senses contribute most
to learning? What is the contribution of each of the senses to
learning? (See Figure 4 in Unit III, Chapter 3 for the answer.)
Instincts. The learner is also equipped with instincts. The
word instinct comes: from the Latin word instinctus which means
impulse. This means that the learner has a natural, or inherent
capacity or tendency to respond. to environmental stimuli such as
danger signs for survival or self-preservation, This is manifested
in his/her immediate tendency to flee in case of danger or to fight
when attacked or to rationalize to defend himself/herself when his/
her ego is hurt.

For the learner to learn and develop into a human person, the.
teacher must teach the learner to put his/her instincts under control.
If not, he/she will not be different from any brute that is bound
by its instinct and will be far from becoming the. human person
who is capable of understanding, reasoning, choice and self-control
that.he/she is meant to become.

Imagination. This is another cognitive faculty of the learner.

It is the ability to form a mental image of something that is not
perceived through the senses. It is the ability of the mind to build.
mental scenes, objects or events that do not exist, are not present
or have happened in the past.

There are many instances in the teaching-learning process that

call for the learner's power of imagination. His/her imaginative
.power is challenged in role playing, simulation, short story writing,
drawing, dress designing, visualizing a situation and in inventing
creative ways of reporting or presenting. The teaching-learning
process will be bare and dry without the use of imagination. The
learner's creative powers cannot be unleashed without the use of
imagination.

The teacher must, therefore, help the learner 'develop. his/her

power of imagination by encouraging them to “think outside the
box”, to be creative, to form new ideas and explore old ideas.

Memory. This is the cognitive faculty of retaining and

recalling past experience. As the teaching-learning process goes
on, you will havé à lot to commit to memory-formulà in finding
the area of a circle, the stages of mitosis, striking passages from
a literary piece, presidents of the Philippines, grammar rules and
the like. Memory work is basic in learning but, of course, we
do not encourage memorizing without understanding. The learner
must, therefore, be helped to commit things to memory. How?
One way is by making him/her repeat the information mentally
again and again such as repeating the cell phone number' you want
him/her to commit to memory. Another way. is by associating the
information you want him/her to remember with something he/she
already knows. The learner remembers Rizal's birthday, June 19
because it also his/her birthday.

A teacher will do thé learner a favor when he/she does not

bombard the learners. with too much information too rapidly and
when he/she allocates time for rehearsal /-verbal repetition of
lessons during classroom lessons. When he/she, pauses once in a
while to ask learners whether they. have any questions, he/she gives
the' learners a few moments to think over and mentally rehearse
'what they have just learned.

Intellect. This is another cognitive faculty of the learner. By

his/her intellect, the learner can engage in' cognitive processes such
as forming ideas or concepts, reasoning out and making judgment.
A child and his/her mother see a black dog. The mother tells him/
her “this is a dog” and so the child forms a concept of a dog. It
has four legs, two eyes, black, covered with hair. The next day,
they go to a neighbor's house and see another breed of dog. The
mother tells the child, “this is another dog.” The child's concept of
dog expands. Dogs come in different colors and sizes. This process
of concept formation is possible because of the child's intellect.
Early concepts get modified and expanded as the child grows and
develops. There is so much concept formation that takes in every
teaching-learning process.
The same intellect enables the learner to reason out and
judge. The use of syllogism in logic illustrates the three cognitive
processes of conception or concept formation, reasoning and
judging. Here is an example: All men are rational.
Pedro is a man.

Therefore, Pedro is rational.

There are two concepts introduced, “man/men” and “rational”.
Relating the concepts and seeing the consistency of the relation of
the concepts to each other are the essence of logical reasoning.
This reasoning leads to judgment, the conclusion, “Therefore, Pedro
is rational.”

Reasoning includes analyzing. Judging is evaluating. Notice

that analyzing and evaluating are in Bloom's cognitive taxonomy
of objectives. Other cognitive processes are classifying, inferring,
drawing generalizations, synthesizing. You add to the list when you
think of 21st century skills.

Appetitive Faculties
The learner's appetitive faculties are 1) his/her feelings and
emotions and 2) rational will.

Feelings and emotions. Emotion is the on / off switch for

learning. Positive feelings and emotions make the teaching-learning
process an exciting and a joyful, fruitful affair. Negative feelings
and emotions make the same process a burden. The lessons that
we learn and remember most are those that have struck us in one
way or another.

Learners differ in their abilities, aptitudes, interests ,home background

values and attitudes. The differences among leamers become more
accentuated with the integration of children with special needs
and children from the indigenous peoples (IP)group in the classroom.

Negative emotions adversely affect the cognitive processes

of recalling, imagining, analyzing, reasoning, judging, evaluating
synthesizing. Faced with frustration, despair, worry, sadness, or
shame, learners lose access to their own memory, reasoning, and
the capacity to make connections.
The mere thought of being asked.to read aloud in class
is enough to freeze some learners. Having to take a written
test or oral exam, which require memory, reasoning, classifying,
synthesizing can lock some learners' gears. The sight of a math
word problem knocks down some learners. You scare learners
and they perform poorly and don't learn new formation well.
Anxiety is the enemy of memory. Unfortunately, in many of
today's classrooms, we see learners whose intellectual energies and
capacities are drained by negative emotional states.

Will. The learner's will serves as guiding force and the main
integrating force in his/her character. By his/her will, the learner
wills what: his/her intellect presents as good and desirable. It is
this will that makes the learner free to choose or not to choose to
do the good as presented by his/her intellect. It is this free will
that will not allow the learner to be totally determined by his/her
environment. This means that the degree to which the learner is
influenced by his/her environment depends. ultimately on the strength
of his/her will. The learner whose will is weak will easily succumb
to the bad influence of his/her peer group even if his/her intellect
tells him/her not. But the learner with a strong will shall resist the
temptation to be influenced by bad peer group. Therefore ,the focus
of values education should be the strengthening of the will.

Factors that contribute to the differences among learners.

All learners are equipped with the cognitive and appetitive
faculties. They differ however in the degree to which they
are utilized and expressed on account of the learners' abilities,
aptitudes, interests, values and attitudes and home background. Let
us take a look once. more at the learner from the point of view
of these five distinguishing elements.
1. Ability
The learners' native ability dictates the prospects of success
in any purposeful activity. Hence, the learners' proficiency
in memorization, imagination concept formation, reasoning,
judging and other cognitive skills are contingent on their
endowed potential to learn. Ability determines the learners'
capacity to understand and assimilate information for their
own use and application. As learners, they differ in the way
they observe and interpret happenings in their surroundings.
Some are more perceptive and discerning while others are less
inquisitive. With such typical reactions and facility to learn,
they may be classified generally into fast, average and slow
learners. Others are labeled high, moderate and slow achievers.
As to their mental ability, students can be categorized into
superior, above average, average and below average. A wide
range in their intelligence is a factor to consider in planning
instruction.

2. Aptitude
Aptitude refers to the learners' innate talent or gift. It
indicates a natural capacity to learn certain skills. The powers
of memory, imagination, concept formation, reasoning and
judgment on matters related to the arts function best for
those who exhibit special inclination for the arts such as
painting and designing .crafts, propensity for music and flair
for dramatics. Likewise, the same cognitive powers are at their
peak for mathematics for those with aptitude in math.
An early recognition of said natural adeptness among
learners is indeed compelling so ás not to waste such aptitude.
Provisions of a formative environment will be of great help in
enabling them to flourish and grow.

3. Interests
Learners' interest in learning makes learning no lonġer
a task but a pleasure. The learners' cognitive faculties of
sensorial experience, memory, Imagination, concept formation,
reasoning and judgment are at their height when learners'
interests are also at their peak.
Learners have varied interests A physically robust
student would go for athletics, while an artistic and stylish
student would pursue hobbies that are fascinating. Girls are
strongly attracted to flowering plants and greeneries and their
preoccupations revolve around them. Boys go for hiking
and mountain climbing. Of course, there will always be
exceptions.
Interests are not inherited. They are developed. A classroom
set-up. could offer centers of interest to give learners an
opportunity to develop interests in many things. Interest clubs
organized by different disciplines may. serve as outlet of
special interests shared by the members.

4. Family and cultural background

Students who come from different socioeconomic
background manifest a wide range of behavior due to
differences in upbringing practices. Some families allow their
members to express their preferences regarding self-discipline
while others are left to passively follow home regulations.
Their participation in classroom activities are influenced by
their home training and experiences. Either they become
attained and confident in their ways or inactive and apathetic.
Today, we speak of multi-cultural, diverse, pluralistic
classrooms.
Beneficial relationships of learners with their mentors
and with one another affirm the kind of bond they enjoy at
home. Cooperation, coupled with a willingness to share, is
instilled and is carried over to all associations they join. The
tendency to readily affiliate with a group is most welcomed
in a classroom setting where teamwork achieves desired lesson
objectives.

5. Attitudes and values

A positive attitude will enhance the maximum and
optimum use of the learner's cognitive and affective faculties
for learning. A negative attitude towards learning robs them
of many opportunities for learning. Learners with a positive
.attitude will demonstrate the value of persistence in their.
studies. Persistent students sustain interest in a learning.
activity not mindful of the extrá time and effort being spent.
They pursue the task: to completion and never give up: when
confronted with problems. They develop the attitude of trying
alternative procedures until they obtain satisfactory results.
They are driven by a never-ending search for more knowledge
and information.
We will always find time for things we consider to be of
value. If we value learning, we will give it a priority. If we
don't value it, we will always find a ready excuse for not
engaging in it.
When we have positive learning beliefs and attitudes, we
can relax, remember, focus and absorb information as we
learn.
Answer the following questions: Explain briefly

1. Do imperfections in the functioning of the sense organs

Affect learning ? explain your answer
2. How do feelings and emotions affect the learner’s learning
3. Does each student have all these multiple intelligences ?
Explain your answer

4. Do you believe that every child is a potential genius?

5. Research on the following learning styles given by Harvey F. Silver
a. Mastery
b. Interpersonal
c. Understanding
d. Self-expressions