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teachers should ‘present students with a true picture or representation of another culture and language’ (Singhal, 1998). And this will be achieved only if cultural awareness is viewed as something more than merely a compartmentalised subject within the foreign language curriculum; that is, when culture “inhabits” the classroom and undergirds every language activity

Very aware of their environments.

Keen sense of body awareness.

They love music, but they are also sensitive to sounds in their environments

These students learn through interaction

These learners tend to shy away from others

reasoning, calculatin

At first, it may seem impossible to teach to all learning styles. However, as we move into using a mix of media or multimedia, it becomes easier

A teacher’s ethical caring means genuine caring, aspiring to understand and make an effort for pupils’ protection, support, and development. Because of this pedagogical caring, the teacher especially pursues pupils’ potential to develop and thus help them to find and use their own strengths.

Pedagogical love has been considered the core factor in the definition of good teacherhood for decades, though the characteristics of a good teacher have always included a variety of features. Features such as the ability to maintain discipline and order, set a demanding goal level, and the mastery of substance have been especially emphasized (e.g., Davis, 1993; Zombylas, 2007; Hansen, 2009)

Love influences the direction of people’s action as well as its intensity. Positive emotions, joy, strength, and the feeling of being capable lead mental energy toward the desired goal (Rantala & Määttä, 2011). Negative emotions, grief, fear, and anger cause entropy, an inner imbalance that burns off energy, brands the target with negative status, and pursues nullifying and undervaluing (e.g., Isen, 2001).

he educator’s task is to provide pupils with such stimuli and environment where students are guided to limit their instincts by controlling enjoyment and vital-based values, in order to be able to achieve higher values and skills (Solasaari, 2003).

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1990, 2000) has launched the concept that refers to an optimal or autotelic experience where people are riveted so comprehensively by a challenging performance that the awareness of time and place blurs. Flow is possible when the challenges in a task are balanced with an actor’s abilities. Flow is an enjoyable state of concentration and task orientation, leading to optimal performance, whether the case is wall creeping, chess playing, dancing, surgery, studying languages, painting, or composing music.

This sets challenges for skill development. If a task is too easy, it will bore. If it is too difficult, it will cause anxiety and fear. The exact experience of flow and the active sense of well-being resulting from the former, encourage people to develop and improve their skills. People are willing to strive for flow whether it was about love for math, art, programming, or orthopedics (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990).

In an interview, Gardner (as cited in Goleman, 1999) said flow is intrinsically rewarding without the hope for reward or threat of punishment. We should use learners’ positive moods (love) and through it get them to learn things about fields they can succeed in. People have to discover what they like, what things and doings they love and do these things. Even a child learns the best when he/she loves what he/she is doing and finds it enjoyable. (p. 126)

Pedagogical love might contribute to pupils’ learning and success by providing them with positive learning experiences, initial excitement, and perceived successes. These are the seeds of expertise as a positive feeling that can be considered the source of human strengths (Isen, 2001).

Pedagogical love springs from an individual learner’s presence persuading it to come forward more and more perfectly and diversely. A skillful educator does not just sit by and watch if a learner makes worthless choices or fails in his or her opportunities to grow and develop.

Haavio emphasized the meaning of pedagogical love in teachers’ work and considered that teachers’ work consists of the following two obligations: attachment to learners and dutiful perseverance of life values.

Pedagogical love speaks to interdependence—the recognition and acceptance that we need others.

Love appears in teaching as guidance toward disciplined work, but also as patience, trust, and forgiveness. The purpose is not to make learning fun, easy, or pleasing but to create a setting for learning where pupils can use and develop their own resources eventually proceeding at the maximum of their own abilities

A loving teacher reveals for a pupil the dimensions of his or her development in a manner of speaking. This is how a pupil’s self-esteem strengthens and he or she can develop toward higher activities from the lowest, pleasure-oriented ones. Achieving high-level skills is rewarding because it brings pleasure, and yet, it often demands—as mentioned previously—self-discipline and rejections

A teacher’s work is interpersonal and relational, with a teacher’s own personality fundamental to building relationships with students. A teacher’s work involves plenty of emotional strain. In addition, a teacher inevitably has to experience frustration in his or her work. There are many situations when a teacher will feel like she or he has failed regardless of the solution he or she creates.

Consequently, teachers are likely to experience guilt because they cannot sufficiently attend to all pupils in an appropriate way that is congruent with the notion of caring.

However, teachers have to realize that their own coping, motivation, and engagement require attention; they are not automatic.

Pedagogical love emerges through teachers’ emotions, learned models, moral attitude, and actions

Good teachers are examples to learners even in the most difficult life situations. Teachers have to believe in their work and endeavour to build a nurturing environment and a more humane world.

To be happy about life, to guide students to see the wonder and joy in the mundane is a teacher’s most important skill. Being able to help students find and negotiate the joy, wonder, happiness, and pain in the everydayness of life is an increasingly important quality in today’s insecurities, with the mounting pressure of increased demands for efficiency

control

From oracle and lecturer to consultant, guide, and resource provider From passive receptacles for hand-me-down knowledge to constructors of their own knowledge Teachers become expert questioners, rather than providers of answers

Students become complex problem-solvers rather than just memorizers of facts

Teachers become designers of learning student experiences rather than just providers of content Students see topics from multiple perspectives

Teachers provide only the initial structure to student work, encouraging increasing self- direction Students refine their own questions and search for their own answers

Teacher presents multiple perspectives on topics, emphasizing the salient points Students work as group members on more collaborative/cooperative assignments ; group interaction significantly increased

From a solitary teacher to a member of a learning team (reduces isolation sometimes experienced by teachers) Increased multi-cultural awareness

From teacher having total autonomy to activities that can be broadly assessed Students work toward fluency with the same tools as professionals in their field

From total control of the teaching environment to sharing with the student as fellow learner More emphasis on students as autonomous, independent, self-motivated managers of their own time and learning process

More emphasis on sensitivity to student learning styles Discussion of students’ own work in the classroom

Teacher-learner power structures erode Emphasis on knowledge use rather than only observation of the teacher’s expert performance or just learning to "pass the test" Emphasis on acquiring learning strategies (both individually and collaboratively) Access to resources is significantly expanded

benefit from changes in daily routines

hese adaptations include: (a) the use of dramatic role-playing activities (including the videotaping of such activities), (b) the incorporation of videos and music into traditional lessons, (c) the inclusion of outside speakers with real-world experiences, and (d) the opportunity for students to facilitate conversations and activities in the classrooms

Third, educators need to be aware that students with high sensation needs may also experience problems with behavior in the classroom. These students are more likely to get out of their seats, to talk to their neighbors, and to seek attention from the teacher. Thus targeting students with high needs for sensation early on and setting up classroom contexts to provide for these students' needs may alleviate some potential behavioral problems in the classroom.

Sensation-seeking is characterized by researchers as a basic human need and as a component of human personality. The need for sensation runs along a continuum, wherein some individuals have a high need for sensation, whereas others have a low need for sensation.

The concept of sensation-seeking primarily has been studied in the domains of clinical psychology, personality psychology, health psychology, and communications. From an evolutionary perspective, attention to novel stimuli in the environment was necessary for human survival

Individuals who have high sensation needs typically engage in certain predictable behaviors. Most notably, the research indicates that individuals who exhibit a high need for sensation often are more likely to engage in risky or dangerous behaviors, such as abusing substances and having unprotected sexual intercours

Research indicates that sensation-seeking rises markedly during early adolescence (Donohew et al., 1994). For many adolescents, this increase coincides with the transition from elementary school into middle school. Thus although students with high needs for sensation are present in elementary, middle, and high schools, these students may be particularly prevalent in middle school settings.

Critical thinking is self-guided, self-disciplined thinking which attempts to reason at the highest level of quality in a fair-minded way.  People who think critically consistently attempt to live rationally, reasonably, empathically.   They are keenly aware of the inherently flawed nature of human thinking when left unchecked.  They strive to diminish the power of their egocentric and sociocentric tendencies.  They use the intellectual tools that critical thinking offers – concepts and principles that enable them to analyze, assess, and improve thinking.  They work diligently to develop the intellectual virtues of intellectual integrity, intellectual humility, intellectual civility, intellectual empathy, intellectual sense of justice and confidence in reason.  They realize that no matter how skilled they are as thinkers, they can always improve their reasoning abilities and they will at times fall prey to mistakes in reasoning, human irrationality, prejudices, biases, distortions, uncritically accepted social rules and taboos, self-interest, and vested interest.  They strive to improve the world in whatever ways they can and contribute to a more rational, civilized society.   At the same time, they recognize the complexities often inherent in doing so.  They avoid thinking simplistically about complicated issues and strive to appropriately consider the rights and needs of relevant others.  They recognize the complexities in developing as thinkers, and commit themselves to life-long practice toward self-improvement.  They embody the Socratic principle:  The unexamined life is not worth living, because they realize that many unexamined lives together result in an uncritical, unjust, dangerous world. ~ Linda Elder, September, 2007