This is part of blog series on teaching aptitude In which we will cover learners’ characteristics of Paper 1 of the UGC NET Examination.
learners characteristics: Characteristics of adolescent and adult learners (Academic, Social, Emotional and Cognitive), Individual differences.
Since the last few years, there are many questions have been asked over learner ’s characteristic in the UGC-NET exam.
Teaching Aptitude Learner’s Characteristics
A Learner is someone who is consistently learning. We all are the learner at some or the other time in our daily life. To be precise, a learner at a particular time is that person who is learning about a particular subject.
For a decision maker, it is important to know the learner’s characteristics. It is essential to know what factors affect their learning. Learning can be described that the process of acquiring new or modifying existing knowledge, skill values, behaviour and preferences.
Learning is strongly based on the intellectual level, cognitive ability, perception, personality and attitude of a learner. As individual many factors affect the learning of a person. They are bound to get influenced by the social arena, cultural habits, and willingness of a person to adopt change.
No successful outcome strategy can be expected without analyzing learner characteristics. Learner characteristics can be identified by collecting the information based on their cognitive, physiological, affective and social characteristics. Different methods are used to collect information about learners such as surveys, interviews, observation, current knowledge/ skill levels and performance result.
Personal characteristics can be defined as demographic information about the learner such as age, gender, cultural background, maturation, language, social economic status and specific needs of a learner group such as particular skills and disabilities for and/or impairments to learning.
Academics characteristics of respondents including the education type, education level, and knowledge. The learner has social/emotional characteristics.
Cognitive characteristics of learner can be described such as memory, mental pressure, solve problems, intellectual skill, remembers, organizes and store information in the brain.
Definitions of Learning
Gardener Murphy: “The term learning covers every modification in behaviour to meet environmental requirements.”
Henry P. Smith: “Learning is the acquisition of new behaviour or the strengthening or weakening of old behaviour as the result of experience.”
Learning means a permanent change in the behaviour of the learner through experience, instructions, and study. It is very difficult to measure the learning but the result of learning can be measured.
