Principle #6: Students’ current level of development interacts with the social, emotional, and intellectual climate of the course to impact learning
While our role as educators is focused on developing students’ intellectual and creative skills, it is important to recognize that students are not just intellectual beings, but also emotional and social beings. These emotional and social dimensions interact within the classroom climate to influence student learning and performance. A positive climate can energize students and keep them motivated to succeed, while a negative classroom environment can hinder learning and development.
The Chickering Model of Student Development
Chickering (1969) provides a model to account for the developmental changes that students experience through their university or college career. They are grouped into seven vectors, and each vector builds on the other vectors. Please click on the red plus signs in each vector to learn more about that vector.
Intellectual development
Perry (1968) presents a model of intellectual development that describes a student’s transition from simplistic to more nuanced ways of thinking. Generally, there are four stages of intellectual development.
Course Climate
Course climate refers to the intellectual, social, emotional, and physical environments in which our students learn, and can be thought of as operating on a continuum. Please click on the red plus signs for an explanation of each stage in the continuum.
A course climate is often determined by a host of different factors, such as stereotypes, tone, faculty-student and student-student interaction, and content.
Strategies
The following strategies can help you foster a more inclusive course climate.
- Make uncertainty safe by validating different viewpoints
- Resist a single correct answer when appropriate
- Examine and reflect on your assumptions about students
- Model inclusive language, behaviour, and attitudes
- Use multiple and diverse examples
- Establish and reinforce ground rules for interaction
- Facilitate active listening
- Turn discord and tension into valuable learning opportunities
Matching Activity!
To test your knowledge of the different kinds of course climate, consider the statements below and match the correct course climate to the corresponding example.