Creating Positive Environment for Learning - Assignment Example

In order to achieve this, the kind of learning environment where the child is exposed to is of primary importance. Making a student learn with so many distractions from the environment poses a problem to many teachers and institutions today. Because of much advancement in technology, parents and schools compete with media and a host of other information providers that catch the learner's attention. How to create a positive environment for learning is a challenge that institutions and education providers greatly face, and is the main focus of this literature review.

Indeed, mounting evidence indicates that a strong relationship exists between Student academic performance and classroom conduct (e.g., Cantwell & Baker, 1987; Delaney & Kaiser, 2001; Kaiser & Hester, 1997). Research also demonstrates that students who do not perform well in class often have an increased incidence of discipline problems (Nelson, Scott, & Polsgrove, 1999). Other classroom factors, such as improper curricular placement, negative management styles, and ineffective instruction, can exacerbate an already difficult situation (Kauffman, 2001).

Given these circumstances, it follows that school personnel need to reconsider young adolescents' needs and create a learning environment that contributes to positive behavior as well as academic achievement.Media headlines appear to suggest that schools today are hotbeds of aggressive and violent behavior. In fact, statistics show that these incidents, fortunately, occur very infrequently, and that schools remain the safest place for middle school students. Nevertheless, school personnel have a responsibility to recognize the effects of lesser yet more predictable misbehaviors on learning, and to take deliberate action to create a positive school environment.

There is a growing consensus that a positive and safe learning environment is one that emphasizes cooperation, collaboration, and peaceful existence, and is one that is free from threats of psychological or physical harm--that is, an environment that reflects caring and concern for all students (Manning, 2000). Drawing upon the accumulated literature, we found evidence that effective learning environments usually: * Recognize and accept the differences among young adolescents' physical, psychosocial, and cognitive development, and provide developmentally appropriate instruction ; * Place value on gender, sexual orientation, cultural, and linguistic differences, and provide classroom organization and instructional approaches that account for these differences ; * Provide curriculum that enhances young adolescents' acceptance of self and others, and that enables them to accept differences and similarities among people ; * Provide instruction that ensures a high degree of academic engagement and success for all young adolescents; * Utilize management procedures that emphasize the idea that students constitute a community of learners, all of whom should accept (or be taught to accept) responsibility for their behavior ; * Pro