Personal and environmental factors that affect learning

Two children sit side by side, hear the same lesson and go home with very different amounts of it. One slept well, had breakfast, already knows the words the teacher used and likes the subject. The other walked five kilometres, has not eaten, speaks a different language at home and was scolded yesterday. Nothing about the lesson explains the gap. Everything about the children and their circumstances does.

The CTET syllabus lists "factors contributing to learning: personal and environmental" under Learning and Pedagogy. Questions ask you to classify a factor as personal or environmental, or give a scenario and ask what the teacher should do. The best answers focus on what the teacher can change and never blame the child.

Three groups of factors

A useful way to organise the topic is to ask three questions: what does the learner bring, what does the environment offer, and what is the task like?

Personal factors (the learner)

Physical

Psychological

Maturation and learning

Maturation is growth that unfolds from within, largely according to heredity: a baby sits, stands and walks in a roughly fixed order whatever the training. Learning is change through experience and practice.

The two work together. A child cannot learn to write until the small muscles of the hand are mature enough to hold a pencil, but maturity alone will not teach writing. Teaching a skill before the child is ready wastes effort and creates frustration; this is Thorndike's law of readiness, and it also fits Piaget's stages. See growth and development.

Environmental factors (the surroundings)

Home and family

• Parents' education and involvement, and the value placed on schooling.
• Economic situation: books, space to study, whether the child must work.
• Home language: whether it matches the school language.
• Emotional climate: warmth and stability, or conflict and stress.

School and classroom

• Teacher: attitude, expectations, relationship with children, methods.
• Classroom climate: safe, respectful and inclusive, or fearful and competitive.
• Teaching methods: activity, discussion and real-life links, or only lecture and copying.
• Physical conditions: light, ventilation, seating, noise, drinking water and toilets.
• Peer group: cooperation, friendship, bullying.
• Curriculum and textbook: relevant to children's lives, pitched at the right level.

Community and culture

• Social expectations, including gender stereotypes about which subjects suit whom.
• Access to libraries, media and technology.
• Festivals, occupations and local knowledge, which a good teacher uses as resources.

Task factors (the material)

Research on memory since Hermann Ebbinghaus in the 1880s has found that people forget quickly at first and that spaced review slows forgetting. Revising briefly after a day and again after a week works better than one long session.

What a teacher can and cannot change

This table is the key to CTET scenarios. When a child struggles because of a home factor, the correct answer is almost never "nothing can be done" or "the parents are responsible". It is the action inside the teacher's control: adapt, support, involve parents, refer for a health check.

Worked classroom scenarios

Scenario 1

A Class 2 child often squints at the blackboard and copies words wrongly. The teacher should first:

(a) seat the child near the board and inform the parents so the child's eyes can be tested
(b) move the child to the back row as a punishment
(c) conclude that the child has dyslexia
(d) give extra copying homework

Best answer: (a). A physical factor (possible poor eyesight) must be ruled out before assuming a learning problem.

Scenario 2

A child from a family of migrant workers joins in the middle of the year, speaks a different language and has missed several months of school. The most appropriate step is to:

(a) place the child in a lower class
(b) assess what the child knows, give bridge support and use the home language where possible
(c) wait for the child to catch up alone
(d) advise the parents to find a school in their home state

Best answer: (b). The RTE Act provides for age-appropriate admission with special training for children who have missed schooling; the teacher bridges the gap.

Scenario 3

Which of these is an environmental factor affecting learning?

(a) the child's motivation
(b) the child's intelligence
(c) the classroom climate
(d) the child's prior knowledge

Best answer: (c). The other three belong to the learner.

Scenario 4

A teacher notices that her class remembers more when she reviews each lesson briefly the next day and again at the end of the week. This supports the idea that:

(a) massed practice is best
(b) spaced practice reduces forgetting
(c) memory is fixed at birth
(d) revision is unnecessary

Best answer: (b).

Practice MCQs

Q1. Which is a personal factor affecting learning?

(a) classroom lighting (b) peer group (c) teaching method (d) motivation

Q2. Maturation mainly depends on:

(a) practice (b) rewards (c) heredity and growth (d) teaching method

Q3. A child is not able to hold a pencil properly at age three. This is best explained by:

(a) lack of maturation of fine motor skills (b) lack of motivation (c) poor teaching (d) low intelligence

Q4. A child who believes "I can never do maths" is showing the effect of:

(a) self-concept (b) heredity (c) physical health (d) classroom lighting

Q5. Which is the most appropriate teacher response to a child who comes to school hungry and cannot concentrate?

(a) punish the child for inattention
(b) ignore it, as it is a home matter
(c) give the child extra work
(d) ensure the child gets the midday meal and inform the school so support can be arranged

Q6. Which statement is correct?

(a) Learning depends only on intelligence.
(b) Environment has no effect once the child is in school.
(c) Learning depends on the interaction of personal and environmental factors.
(d) Heredity decides everything.

Q7. Meaningful material is learnt:

(a) more slowly than nonsense material (b) faster and retained longer (c) at the same rate (d) only by gifted children

Answers

1. (d).
2. (c).
3. (a).
4. (a).
5. (d). A basic physical need comes first (Maslow).
6. (c).
7. (b).

What to do next

• Sort ten factors into personal (physical or psychological), environmental and task.
• For each of three home factors, write one thing a teacher can do.
• Revise heredity and environment and individual differences, which connect closely to this topic.