LETTERS: Since schools have reopened and universities are resuming face-to-face sessions, it is time teachers and course instructors revisited their pedagogical knowledge and brushed up teaching skills to cater to the needs of students post-pandemic.
One model of teaching that can be used in the classroom is the personal model, which promotes self-actualisation among students to increase their learning capabilities.
When a learner has attained self-actualisation, he can be successful in learning. The question is, how can teachers help their learners achieve self-actualisation?
First, students must be coached on self-efficacy, that is, making them believe in their abilities.
Next, personal understanding must be developed.
In order to do this, their emotions must be recognised to understand how these affect behaviour.
Subsequently, teachers must plan and execute new learning activities to boost the learners' creativity.
Research has shown that people grow positively from good human relationships. Students should be allowed to make decisions and justify their opinions to achieve self-actualisation.
Teachers' feedback to assignments must address students' strengths and suggestions to improve their weaknesses.
Students must be given opportunities to express ideas and listen to others in an effort to appreciate abilities and talent, while increasing their confidence.
It is a shared role to ensure students and teachers foster good relationship with each other. When they are not stressed, both parties will feel motivated to enter class and proceed with the teaching and learning activities.
At Universiti Utara Malaysia, lecturers strive to ensure the potential of undergraduate and postgraduate students is augmented by activities and tasks such as group projects, service-learning and mobility programmes.
These platforms enable students to develop their abilities, skills, values and knowledge in line with the university's motto of "Ilmu, Budi, Bakti" (knowledge, virtue and service).
DR MUHAMMAD NOOR ABDUL AZIZ,
PROFESSOR DR NURAHIMAH MOHD YUSOFF
School of Education, Universiti Utara Malaysia
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of the New Straits Times