I believe there can be many different kinds of obstacles, such as the context, some psychological issues, literacy, cultural differences,speech impediments, languages differences, etc. However, I believe that one of the greatest obstacles is related to psychological issues. If a student is stressed whether it be due to personal reasons or related to his/her studies, or even confidence, this will for sure make learning more difficult. In my opinion, confidence and some willingness to take risk are very important pieces. When one lacks confidence, he/she may fear the challenges of learning. As a teacher, there were many times I noticed my students struggling because of psychological issues, which slowed down or sometimes impeded the learning. I had to address the issue first, before we could go on, but once we recognized the problem and worked on it, the students were able to go ahead and progress.
The Immigrant and Refugee Perspectives class here at GU was an eye-opener in a lot of ways. The fact that it can take 5-10 years (or more) for people to get approved to come to the U.S. or other countries means they're sitting in a refugee camp for that whole time. Many refugee camps don't offer schooling. Some refugees may learn the language spoken at their refugee camp in order to survive, so English is actually their third (or fourth, or fifth) language. The gaps in schooling are huge, and I think that's one obstacle. Another, of course, might be psychological--whatever horrible things that refugee might have been exposed to could make him/her distrustful of authority figures (even teachers), etc.
I believe there can be many different kinds of obstacles, such as the context, some psychological issues, literacy, cultural differences,speech impediments, languages differences, etc. However, I believe that one of the greatest obstacles is related to psychological issues. If a student is stressed whether it be due to personal reasons or related to his/her studies, or even confidence, this will for sure make learning more difficult. In my opinion, confidence and some willingness to take risk are very important pieces. When one lacks confidence, he/she may fear the challenges of learning. As a teacher, there were many times I noticed my students struggling because of psychological issues, which slowed down or sometimes impeded the learning. I had to address the issue first, before we could go on, but once we recognized the problem and worked on it, the students were able to go ahead and progress.
ReplyDeleteThe Immigrant and Refugee Perspectives class here at GU was an eye-opener in a lot of ways. The fact that it can take 5-10 years (or more) for people to get approved to come to the U.S. or other countries means they're sitting in a refugee camp for that whole time. Many refugee camps don't offer schooling. Some refugees may learn the language spoken at their refugee camp in order to survive, so English is actually their third (or fourth, or fifth) language. The gaps in schooling are huge, and I think that's one obstacle. Another, of course, might be psychological--whatever horrible things that refugee might have been exposed to could make him/her distrustful of authority figures (even teachers), etc.
ReplyDelete