M1: Assess the impact of key influences on the personal learning process on own learning - There are several factors that have and still do influence on my own individual learning process. However some have impacted greater than others and they are as followed:
•Learning Style
•Motivation
•Attitude and Self Discipline
• Aspirations
•Previous educational experience
It’s important for me to identify my ‘Learning Style’ because it maximises my own personal learning; Honey and Mumford states ‘’each learner ought to understand their learning style and seek out opportunities to learn using that style’’ to do this. I’d say I’m very particular about the way I go about learning and I am not entirely open-minded in my approach to learning. I would say I am ‘’ Theorist’’ because as it states ‘’these learners like to understand the theory behind the actions’’ and I am very much like this in a sense I’m not happy to settle for the facts; I like to know why something’s the way it is and come to a logical reasoning for most things. Motivation is what plays a huge part in my learning process.
I’ve been in a position all too many times where I’ve struggled immensely because my motivation was almost non-existent. This was mainly as a result of my lack of self-motivation. I overcome this by Identifying a way I like to learn best that made me feel at ease and able to get on with things. ‘’ The acronym VARK stands for Visual, Aural, Read/write, and Kinaesthetic sensory modalities that are used for learning information’’ I discovered I learnt best by Auditory. My reasons for this being is that I feel I excel when lectured and partake in group discussions and when using mobile phones, speaking, web-chat and talking things through. Another thing that plays a large part in my motivation is listening to music whilst doing independent studying.
My attitude changes regularly and I find it difficult to maintain a positive attitude towards my learning. I think it’s important to keep a positive attitude towards my learning because it enables me keep motivated and get things done effectively and efficiently. Self-discipline has a huge impact on my learning because it gives me the ability to control my feelings and overcome my weaknesses. The emotional intelligence theory talks about ‘’understanding yourself, your goals, intentions, responses, behaviour and all’’ which all ties is with knowing and managing the emotions of yourself and others which for me is what mainly affects my attitude towards things.
My aspirations have changed massively whilst growing up and it’s only recently I’ve decided I want to work in a Health and Social Care setting. ‘’ Behaviourism, also known as behavioural psychology, is a theory of learning based upon the idea that all behaviours are acquired through conditioning. Conditioning occurs through interaction with the environment. Behaviourists believe that our responses to environmental stimuli shape our behaviours’’. I believe this theory is what I’ve done because my aspirations and behaviours have been shaped through the environment I’ve put myself in. For example; attending a college for a year and realising I am capable of more and developing a self-motivated attitude to follow a different aspiration.
‘’Cognitive psychology is the branch of psychology that studies mental processes including how people think, perceive, remember, and learn’’ and with that said I think my mental action process of acquiring knowledge and understanding was developed massively through previous educational experience. For example; before starting my current college course I did a year at another college doing a science based course which has helped me to now think and perceive things better on my current course.
