How Can We Enhance Learning

Through Relationship?

In this chapter the author mostly discussed about the relationship and also
communication. Relationship means here not only the interaction between teacher and
learners or among learners themselves but also relationship amongs teachers and with other
staff, including educational institution and the learner’s home and wider community.
The chapter begins with a discussion of what the author means by nurturing
relationships. The reason why we believe good relationships are fundamental to learning and
discuss how relationships are established and maintained, and the paedagogic consequences
for a range of educational settings.

Defining Nurturing Relationship

In this term stated that the most effective time to learn is when the learners feel valued
and secure, included social context and emotional climate. Wade and Moore’s (1993)
research emphsizes the importance of relationships (between learners, teachers and parents)
for learning. It also emphasizes the frustation and anger experinces by learners with special
educational needs when their specific needs are over-emphasized or ingored. Every learners
need to be noticed by the teacher. It can encourage their confidence to learn dan teachers to
teach.
Drawing on the work of Rogers (1983) and others, we identify the key qualities and
facilitated learning as being related to relationships that are:
 Reciprocal
 Encouraging
 Loving and warm
 Authentic and accepting
 Trusting
 Emphatetic

a. Reciprocity
It means here every learners and the teacher has the same apportunity to state
their comment relating the teaching learning process. Both of them bring
important contributions to the relationship.
 b. Encouragement
It’s quite different than reciprocal term. Here, the teacher should create many
steps to encourage the student both cognitive and emotional. The teachers should
make delicate decisions about how to face the publict test, including encourage
their cobfident and motivation.
c. Love and Warm
In this section, the teacher should create an atmosphere till the learners feel
warmth, for example: by knowing the learner’s name, having time together, being
patient when they do not understand. This warmth is professional love.
d. Authentic and Accepting
Authentic and accepting relationships are about accepting the learners for who
they are rather than dwelling on who the teacher might wish the are.this takes
away the element of blame for being uncommunicative, working-class, attention-
seeing, and place the emphasis on moving forward together.
e. Trust
When the learners are believed that they were teached by the right person, this
such of trust will be created. This includes not just knowledge but a commitment
to use this knowledge consistently in the best interest of learners.
f. Empathy
It’s focused on students’ respect toward the teacher. All those explanation above
were proved here.

Relationships are Fundamental to Learning

Relationships which mean here focused on the interaction between teacher and
learners. Many experts said that as a fasilitator, a teacher should be trained how to become
“as people” in teaching learning process. So, they not only expert in academic but also
understand what the learners feel in their real life situation.

Co-constuction of meaning
Communication and learning are immeasurably interwined. Communication is
essential in the constuction of knowledge and meaning. Actually, language isn’t bring the
same meaning to the listener. He/she could interprate the meaning based on their own mind.
As a consequences, within a group of learners, each will hold a different version of what the
teacher says.
To understand another’s speech, it is not sufficient to understand his words – we must
understand his thought. But even that is not enough – we must also know its motivation
(Vygotsky, 1962).

Co-operation and negotiation

It is a commonplace to state that everylearnershas their own intersted in learning, and
the teacher should prepare the tricky to fullfil it appropriately. Furthermore, the teacher will
never know what the learners want until they had a conversation. There must be room for
negotiation of learning goals and there must be room for negotiation of the relationship.
The use of language is not only between teacher and learner, but also in another social
life contact. Between individual and social may be placed the communitarian, in which
individuals, with others to whom they relate in a socio-emotional sense, collaborate to learn,
to solve problems, to understand their circumstances, as well as to understand aspects of
codified knowledge that we call “subject”. An important feature of communitarian views of
education is that power is shared between teachen and learners.

Learning the language of formal education

Communication is understanding what each other means. The use of language in
teaching learning process should be understand by the learners, it based on the ability of the
learners in accepting the meaning of the language. Sometimes, the teacher follow the rules
that are commonplace and nature in an adult educator’s world but it seem unfamiliar to the
beginners. Here, we cannot avoid misunderstanding between teacher and learners. A simply
way to guide the learners to understand what the teacher means is by giving them the chance
to ask what the teacher think or what is in teacher’s mind.
Unfortunately, as learners quickly learn what is expected of them, it is possible for
them to respond to the teacher’s questions in a way that covers rather than reveals a mismatch
in understanding.

Changing some of the language of formal education

Understanding how another person think not only based on classroom instuction and
situation, but also related to learner’s background, it could be culture, language and dialect,
family, friends, and environment. Here, they can freely bring it into learning situation. The
diversity of the student’s background can give us something new and precious. Building
relationship and effective communication into teaching and learning must be the
responsibility of the teacher.

Formation of self – identity

As we know teacher and learner play an important role in teaching learning process. It
is a need to keep the interaction and relationship between them by creating a good
communication. A good communication can influence to the improvement of students` skill
and behavior since the teacher goes wider than only transferring the knowledge or skill, they
also need to be aware about the development of the learners` affective (self-concept of the
learners). As Lawrence said:

Self-concept is the sum total of an individual`s mental and physical characteristic and
his/her evaluation of them. As such it has three aspects: the cognitive (thinking); the
affective (feeling) and the behavioral (actions).
(Lawrence, 1998, p.1)
The term self-concept is a general term used to refer to how someone thinks or
perceives about themselves. Based on the book, there are three component of self-concept;
self-image, ideal self and self esteem. Self- image can be said that how we see in ourselves or
our personal judgment towards ourselves. Then ideal-self refers to what we would like to be.
It means that we should always develop ourselves to be ideal self which are valued to the
society. Self esteem refers to the extent to which we like accept or approve of ourselves or
how much we value ourselves. Self esteem always involves a degree of evaluation of
ourselves. We may have positive self-esteem and negative self esteem. Franken (1994: 439)
suggests that self-concept is related to self-esteem in that "People who have good self-esteem
have a clearly differentiated self-concept.... When people know themselves they can
maximize outcomes because they know what they can and cannot do".

Self-concept is learned, organized and dynamic. It means that self-concept is not

innate, no one is born with a self-concept. Self-concept is developed by the individual
through interaction and relationship with the environment. Then People develop their self-
concepts through the process of reflecting on what they have done and what others said about
it. Lawrence (1988: 3) argues that “an individual`s self image changes over time and in the
light of new experiences. The more experiences one has, the richer is the self image”. It
means that our perceptions towards our selves can be shaped and can be changed, and it is
also affected by our experience and relationship in the society.

Related to the teaching learning process, it is important to keep a good relationship by

having a good communication between teacher and learners in order to develop the learners`
self concept to be valued to the society. A good communication can help improving the
learners` quality; skill and mental.

Appropriate Levels of Security and Challenge

Each learner has a different self-concept and builds the relationship with the teacher
also in different way. Each of them also has their own experience and knowledge. However,
in the learning process, a learn needs to be aware about series of the risks that might be
found, they might fail or success. Here, the appropriate level of security and challenge take
places. It means the way how they learn to accept such the situations.

For example, one who wants to be a doctor, he tries his best to proof it. However, in
the process of achieving this he also need to be aware with the possible risks whether bad risk
or good risk. Here, the relationship between teacher and learners is an important part to help
students` confidence. Moreover social background of the learners also function to the
students self confidence.

Establishing and Maintaining Relationship

As a facilitator, teacher should be creative who are responsible to control the learning
process. As a teacher we need to build relationships with the learners if we want them to
become involved in our teaching process. We need relationships in order to win toward our
students. It is important to share the joys and the struggles of organizing the class. We also
need to know our students (learner self-esteem).

The relationship between teacher and learner is very important since that determine
the successful of teaching process. The teachers have to give their efforts to create a good
relationship. There are many ways that teacher can do, for examples; pay attention to the
learners, have a good communication, appreciate and motivate them to be better, and make
them feel being loved and acceptance. It will help to build a good relationship between
teacher and learners. By having good relationship, it hopes the learners can realize their
potential to be explored. Besides, these are also the way to foster the learner self concept. As
explained above that learner self-concept is developed through relationship and interaction in
the environment. It begins since at home with our family and continues when we are involved
in our surrounding (school and society).