What Is Bullying

Bullying is unwanted, aggressive behavior among school aged children that involves a real or perceived power imbalance. The behavior is repeated, or has the potential to be repeated, over time. Both kids who are bullied and who bully others may have serious, lasting problems.

In order to be considered bullying, the behavior must be aggressive and include:

• An Imbalance of Power: Kids who bully use their power—such as physical strength, access to embarrassing information, or popularity—to control or harm others. Power imbalances can change over time and in different situations, even if they involve the same people.
• Repetition: Bullying behaviors happen more than once or have the potential to happen more than once.

Bullying includes actions such as making threats, spreading rumors, attacking someone physically or verbally, and excluding someone from a group on purpose.

Types of Bullying

There are three types of bullying:

• Verbal bullying is saying or writing mean things. Verbal bullying includes:
• Teasing
• Name-calling
• Inappropriate sexual comments
• Taunting
• Threatening to cause harm
• Social bullying, sometimes referred to as relational bullying, involves hurting someone’s reputation or relationships. Social bullying includes:
• Leaving someone out on purpose
• Telling other children not to be friends with someone
• Spreading rumors about someone
• Embarrassing someone in public
• Physical bullying involves hurting a person’s body or possessions. Physical bullying includes:
• Hitting/kicking/pinching
• Spitting
• Tripping/pushing
• Taking or breaking someone’s things
• Making mean or rude hand gestures

Where and When Bullying Happens

Bullying can occur during or after school hours. While most reported bullying happens in the school building, a significant percentage also happens in places like on the playground or the bus. It can also happen travelling to or from school, in the youth’s neighborhood, or on the internet.

Six simple solutions:

1. If you are being bullied: tell them to stop, get away from the situation, and tell a trusted adult.
2. If you see someone being bullied, be an up stander: Tell the person to stop, get a trusted adult, reach out and be friends.
3. With your children: Listen and support your children. Work with the school to be sure your child is safe.
4. In Your School: Learn and help train all adults and youth on how to recognize and respond to bullying.
5. With Others Who Care: Start a Not In Our School Anti-bullying Club where youth lead in finding solutions.
6. In Your School and the Entire Community: Create an identity-safe climate where all people are respected.

Developing Social And Emotional Skills through Positive Relationships

The webinar that I have watched was about how to develop Social and Emotional Skills through Positive Relationships. This webinar was presented by Venola Mason, she believes that every single student deserves to have a high quality education that give him\her opportunities to be successful in life.

During the presentation, she focused on how to practice social and emotional learning, Venola considered 3 main ideas:

First, she talked about the process which children and adults can understand and manage their emotions, set and achieve positive goals and show empathy for others.

 Second, she mentioned some tips to establish relationships with students, the tips that were interesting to me are:

·         Incorporate humor into lessons.

·         Always have a positive attitude.

·         Use students’ interests to your advantage.

Finally, she mentioned some strategies to cultivate a sense of belonging within your classroom and among students like always encouraging students and motivate them.

Helicopter Parenting

What is a Helicopter Parent?

Helicopter parenting most often applies to parents who help high school or college-aged students with tasks they’re capable of doing alone (for instance, calling a professor about poor grades, arranging a class schedule, managing exercising habits). But really, helicopter parenting can apply at any age.

"In toddlerhood, a helicopter parent might constantly shadow the child, always playing with and directing his behavior, allowing him zero alone time," Dr. Dunnewold says. In elementary school, helicopter parents may ensure a child gets a certain teacher or coach, select the child's friends and activities, or providing disproportionate help for Home Work and school projects.

The Effects of Helicopter Parents

Many helicopter parents start off with good intentions. "It is a tricky line to find, to be engaged with our children and their lives, but not so meshed that we lose perspective on what they need," Dr. Gilboa says. 

Engaged parenting has many benefits for a child, such as feelings of love and acceptance, better self-confidence, and opportunities to grow. However, "the problem is that, once parenting becomes governed by fear and decisions based on what might happen, it’s hard to keep in mind all the things kids learn when we are not guiding each step," Dr. Gilboa explains. "Failure and challenges teach kids new skills, and, most importantly, teach kids that they can handle failure and challenges."

The helicopter parenting effects are widespread, but may include these five factors.

Decreased confidence and self-esteem: "The main problem with helicopter parenting is that it backfires," Dr. Dunnewold says. "The underlying message [the parent's] over-involvement sends to kids is 'my parent doesn't trust me to do this on my own.'” This, in turn, leads to a lack of confidence.

Undeveloped coping skills: If the parent is always there to clean up a child's mess—or prevent the problem in the first place—how does the child ever learn to cope with loss, disappointment, or failure? Studies have found that helicopter parenting can make children feel less competent in dealing with the stresses of life on their own.

How to Avoid Helicopter Parenting

So how can a parent care for their children without inhibiting their ability to learn important life skills? Dr. Gilboa offers this advice: "As parents, we have a very difficult job. We need to keep one eye on our children now—their stresses, strengths, emotions—and one eye on the adults we are trying to raise. Getting them from here to there involves some suffering, for our kids as well as for us." 

In practical terms, this means letting children struggle, allowing them to be disappointed, helping them to work through failure. It means letting your children do the tasks that they’re physically and mentally capable of doing. As Dr. Gilboa says, "Remembering to look for opportunities to take one step back from solving our child's problems will help us build the resilient, self-confident kids we need."

 

traditional Education vs. online education

Online education has grown significantly over the past few years. That's because it tends to offer cheaper and flexible study options compared to the traditional education system. You can actually study online and get a viable degree certificate upon completing your course. Online education is simply the perfect way to strike a balance between work, family and studies.

However, we cannot completely discredit traditional education. Attending a physical class not only allows students to have a one-on-one experience with the teacher but also exposes them to practical skills that can be beneficial to their future career. In essence, each of these learning options comes with its fair share of challenges. It's all about finding an option that works best for your education needs.

Realism

Realism is any philosophical theory that emphasizes the existence of some kind of things or objects, in contrast to theories that dispense with the things in question in favour of words, ideas, or logical constructions. In particular, the term stands for the theory that there is a reality quite independent of the mind. In this sense, realism is opposed to Idealism, the theory that only minds and their contents exist.

Aims of Education

According to Realists, the aims of education are viewed from two perspectives: religious and secular realism. The religious realist believed that matter was not important unless it led to something else. For example, not only looking at a rock's physical characteristics, but also using that information to lead to more philosophical questions such as its beginnings and purpose. Religious realists believe that God created the universe out of nothing, giving it order, and people could get to know God by studying the universe. Secular realists believed in understanding the material world through methods of rigorous inquiry. They promoted the study of science and scientific inquiry with the beliefs that people needed to know about the world in order to promote their survival. Self-preservation was the aim of education. Students needed to be equipped with basics in a no-nonsense approach. The basics also included a moral education. They felt that learned information should be useful and practical, developing rational abilities to their fullest for the achievement of a good life.

Methods of Teaching

Secular realists believe that schools should teach fundamental facts about the universe in ways that make learning interesting and enjoyable. They place much emphasis on critical reasoning which is assisted by observation and experimentation. Realists believe that self-realization is valuable and that it occurs best when students are able to obtain knowledge of the external world by the didactic method and other methods of learning. Regardless of the method, however, realists felt it should be organized and systemic. Locke believed that play was very important in learning and stressed the importance of age important in learning and stressed the importance of age appropriate readiness to receive certain concepts of learning.

Curriculum

Realists agree that the educational curriculum should be practical and useful.

Role of Teacher

They believe that the role of the teacher is that of a person who provides the basics in a fun and interesting way. The basics should include practical studies like reading, writing, drawing, geography, astronomy, and math, with additional physical activities. Many experiences should be provided since children are blank slates coming to school ready to receive information. Most realists believe that children should have a positive learning climate and be provided with rewards as a motivation for learning. The realist's curriculum tends to be one that emphasizes mental and physical development in a very organized and systematic approach.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the realist view of the total world involved both physical and mental possibilities. Negatively, they rejected naturalism because it did not have a place for ideas and concepts and idealism was equally offensive because it led to the "abolition of nature as an independent system."

Ibn Sina

Ibn Sina is one of the brightest intellects of the world. Though influenced both by Al-kindi and Al-farabi he tried to reconcile religion and philosophy through allegorical interpretation. Ibn Sina however, is a great systematic thinker of the highest order. Al-Dahbi describes him as 'the leader of Islamic philosophy'. According to George Sarton, he is the most famous scientist and philosopher of Islam and one of the greatest of all areas, places and times. He is known in the west as Avicenna. He started studying philosophy by reading various Greek, Muslim and other books on this subject and learnt logic and metaphysics from Abu Abdallah Natili, Aristotelian philosopher.

Concerning his philosophy of education, Ibn Sina did not clearly defines education and training but according to his views, we can say that the essence of the education and training from his viewpoint is: “social and personal planning and activities for family health, child growth and making decision about social affairs so that human attains felicity in this world and after death”. The definitions, which are derived from Avicenna’s works, correspond with the definition of Islamic education and both insist on the concept of growth.

Ibn Sina divides knowledge into two major categories; the first category is called as theoretical knowledge while the second category is named practical knowledge.

The theoretical philosophy comprises of three kinds of sciences which are similar to Aristotle's ideas; these are natural sciences, mathematical sciences and theological or metaphysical sciences. In this category, he adds absolute science. On the other hand, practical knowledge covers three branches of knowledge as proposed by Aristotle; those are ethics, the house hold management, the public management. He adds prophetic science in this category. On this matter, we can see Ibn Sina did not imitate the whole ideas of Greek philosophy but as a true Islamic philosopher, he successfully Islamized alien philosophy and made it compatible to Islamic teaching and world-view.

Aims of Education

According to Rosnani, Ibn Sina's view of the aims of education is similar to other Muslim philosophers', such as Al-Farabi. These two aims of education identified in his view, firstly the ultimate aim of education that is "the cultivation of intellect." Secondly, another important aim of education that is "to prepare children for their calling in life." The first aim reflects obviously his belief of the uniqueness and distinctive intellect of man from other creatures whereas the second aim is more vocational and practical in the sense that preparing the students for appropriate jobs and life-earning.

Role of Teacher

About the teacher’s manner, Ibn Sina said: “Teacher should keep the child away from bad deeds and make him choose good friends, sometimes encourage and sometimes threaten him and if the threatening did not work then punish him. Be a moderate teacher, means not being so strict that the child does not dare to pose a question or ask for an explanation and not being so mild that the child becomes so bold and ignorant to the teacher’s statements and orders or to degrade them. The teacher must know the child and evaluate his nature and talents and examine his intelligence so he can choose an art and a career which is appropriate for the child’s talent and intelligence, consider the child’s enthusiasm in choosing an art and make him get accustomed to earn a livelihood through an art or a career that he has learnt.”

Ibn Sina believed that, since the essence of the child is impressible, and forming the habits and manners begins from infancy and even prepartum period (embryonic period), so we have to do our best regarding his health, hygiene, education, and teaching from very early stages of his life. In addition, the nurturing is a slow and gradual process, and paying attention to the cares and lessons given to the child from the early stages of life is essential in the process of education. These lessons can augment his mental and physical growth, which have a mutual correlation with each other.

Behaviorism

Behaviorism is a branch of psychology that when applied to a classroom setting, focuses on conditioning student behavior with various types of behavior reinforcements and effects called operant conditioning. In another words, behaviorism, is a theory of learning based on the idea that all behaviors are acquired through conditioning. This conditioning occurs through interaction with the environment.  Behaviorists believe that our responses to environmental stimuli shape our actions.

The principles and techniques of behavioral engineering go back to Pavlov, Watson, and Skinner.

Although many people refuse the concept of behavioral engineering, it has increasingly become part of the educational process.

 Watson believed that psychology could become a science when it became possible to predict responses from stimuli, psychology should be objective and experimental.

Methods

According to Behaviorist, teachers have many rewards or reinforcement at their disposal, including praise, a smile, a touch, stars, or candies. Many people have questioned the use of intrinsic rewards but behaviorist claim that they are only to be in place of intrinsic one that should be encouraged later. Studies indicate that rewards need to be given every time. Many outcomes are observed such as:

1.      Specify the desire outcome, what needs to be changed, and how it will be evaluated.

2.      Establish a favorable environment by removing unfavorable stimuli that might complicate learning.

3.      Choose the proper enforcers for desired behavioral manifestation.

4.      Begin shaping desired behavior by using immediate reinforces for desired behavior.

5.      Once a pattern of desired behaviors has begun, slacken the numbers of times reinforces are given.

6.      Evaluate results and reassess for future development.

Role of Teacher

Concerning the role of teacher in behaviorism, all teachers use behavioral techniques of one of another in their classrooms. Teacher condition students through grades, their attitudes toward them, gestures, and in many other ways.

Also, teacher may fail to reward an appropriate behavior in a timely manner. This often happens in a school were one teacher might reward a particular behavior but another teacher might mot.

Skinner and other behaviorist would like to see some consensus among educators as to the kinds of behavior they would like to see reinforced and then use proven methods of conditioning to achieve such behaviors.

One of the most important things a teacher can do is to learn the theory and the techniques of conditioning process. Teachers must not learn the techniques of conditioning but also use them effectively.

Conclusion

As a conclusion, according to Pavlov, Watson and Skimmer, the Behavioral Approach is based on the learning theory, excluding feelings and thoughts. People behave on some way as a learned response that has previously been reinforced from stimulus.