Some Reflections on Motivating Situations and Situational Teaching

Abstract

Debates about the crisis of school teaching in the Western world have focused more on education as a state of the art and on psychological problems of either teachers or pupils than on situational features which are of importance for teaching and learning situations. In applying K. R. Popper's propensity theory and his idea of situational logic, a preliminary analysis of problem situations is attempted with the aim of identifying biopsychological situational elements in children's preschool life-conditions that could be simulated at school in their first years thereby enabling them to draw upon already acquired knowledge and skills. Two principal ways of acquiring experience --one instructive, the other selective --are described and discussed in relation to learning, exploration and play. It is argued that, while selection procedures are found in exploration, play and the like, instruction procedures are most often used in teaching situations despite growing evidence that instruction learning is less motivating than learning by action and selection, as various experiences with situational teaching indicate.

An Empirical Study of Situational Teaching: Agricultural Location in High School Geography

“…Modern brain science research showed that children in rich environments have a higher IQ [33], and situational teaching can meet the needs of students' development from novice learners to autonomous learners. Situational learning helps students maintain interest in class [34][35][36][37][38], feel happy, and increases their motivation [31,39,40]. Real situations create knowledge that is rooted and connected, promoting learners to actively construct it through interaction with the environment [41,42], and improves students' problem-solving ability [27,43].…”