Create and maintain a safe environment

It is utmost significance for learners to feel physically and emotionally safe in order for discovering to happen. Safe in regards to physical safety however emotional safety too in order for them to feel mentally safe adequate to engage in the class. It is very important to understand that the learning establishing a safe knowing environment provides the crucial to the success of the teaching/training process. This environment ought to be a location that puts students at ease from stress and anxiety, bias, and worry of criticism.

The function of the instructor is to produce an environment where everybody is accepted and learning can happen freely with mistakes happening as well.

Although the trainer/teacher has the lead role it is accepted that there are no specialists and excellent legitimate contributions can be made by participants. This develops an excellent knowing environment where learning can happen. Laying down ground guidelines at the start of each session helps to develop anticipated behaviour from the participants and helps the m feel safe.

DESCRIBE 3 types of learner behaviour that might impede knowing and recommend ways of overcoming these.

Student Behaviour
How I might conquer this

A learner may have a strong opinion about a subject and this might start to impact others who might not agree with him/her

I would thank the student for requiring time to bring this up. Confirm their point by saying it was an issue that was extremely arguable and I would invite them on a 1 to one session to talk about the issue even more in order for the rest of work we need to cover on the session to progress.

A student may end up being very chatty with others. This distracts other learners and they miss vital parts of the session.

A learner may use inappropriate language. Other learners may find this offensive.

I would use an activity that would engage the leaner as it may be possible that they may start getting bored. In the process I may mix groups and shuffle people about so people get to share different ideas and try and see things from different points of view.

It would be important to address this by saying “We agreed not to use inappropriate language in this session, let’s all be respectful of each other” If the behaviour persisted I would request to have a word with the offender in private and explain that his behaviour was disruptive and how it was affecting others. If this failed I may have to follow policy and procedure and ask them to leave the course to avoid further disruption.

A learner has disrupted my lesson when we were doing a needs assessment where all the participants say what they would like to gain/learn on the day. He said he wasn’t here to learn anything and didn’t want to be on the course. He said he was only here because his manager had told him to. His tone was harsh and quite aggressive. I arrived on to the next person and called a quick coffee break for 10 minutes. During the break I spoke to Tony who became very tearful and explained to me that he was agro phobic and did not like to be in large groups of people.

He also explained that he suffered from depression and although it was currently under control with his medication he had relapsed. He also explained to me that he had been threatened with a disciplinary and had come on to the course under duress. I then explained that he was free to go home and I was going to have a meeting with his manager to try and rectify the situation. When I spoke to the manager we arranged to facilitate the same training for this individual in a smaller session where he felt more comfortable and at a time when he felt his mental state was better. I carried on with the rest of the learners and apologised for the disruption earlier in the session.

Reference list

Gravells, A (2013) The Award in Education and Training Exeter: Learning Matters