Motivation and Deterrents

Learning is seen as a lifelong process whether we see it as pedagogical or andragogical. One is always learning be it in a formal or non-formal setting. However, there are many factors that contribute to the learning preference of learner in their quest for knowledge, skills and attitude.

The factors that are responsible for my own learning preference has to do with lack of adequate teaching methodology. Teachers saw learning as teacher-centred/oriented and so they did not cater for the learning style of students. Teachers used the deductive approach to teach us in those days; this made us heavily dependent on them for everything. Students were looked at as banking receptacles where knowledge was just deposited into us. The book of reading page 145 Freire claims that educators view students as depositories, who receive, memorize and repeat "deposits" made by the teacher. There were no allowances for research and inductive teaching. Learning was teacher-directed with the main approach to teaching being the lecture method.

As an adult, I am made responsible for my learning and so I take the initiative to discipline myself to studying. I have resorted to the self-directed strategy which affords me the luxury of intrinsic motivation and a desire to research, read and initiate my own professional development. According to the course material page 33, it is stated that adult learning entails using prior knowledge as the foundation for educational activities, employing methods that treat learners with respect, and acknowledging that adults have a multitude of responsibilities and are subject to time and constraints, we can now be self-directed as we pursue programs and course that will help us to develop as individual adult learners. This self-directed learning is employed in my day to day discourse with the program. The way I was taught as a child appeared to be the ideal and so, I began to memorize my notes, diagrams and time tables. Today, this has changed as I now see the need to become a good critical thinker and an ardent problem solver as I move towards adapting a professional approach to learning.

As education continues it comes with many challenges to every learner be it adult or child. I can say that environmental factors as well as socioeconomic status have contributed to challenging to my learning. The environment in which learning was done was not conducive. The classrooms were not print-rich, the strategies employed were not effective and students were not made to be accountable for their learning. The open hall in which classes were held quite often became disruptive. For example, when a student was being punished, by flogging, everyone saw and heard. This took away from the lesson as everyone's attention was diverted to what seemed to be the place of interest at that time. It took quite a while to get students to settle down and to get back to the task.

Being from a low socio economic family, there were many things we were deprived of as children. This had implications for learning and is seen as teacher expectation. Each child was not treated equally in class. Our teacher expected the teachers' children to perform at a certain level and those of us who were not belonging to that "class" were not expected to do as well as... As a consequent, some of the times we were told, this is not your work and the teachers' children were reprimanded