My Personal Experience And Behaviour Education Essay

As being the international student, I came to this country one week before my classes started. Everything thing was very different from my country culture, people and the way the live. I was not comfortable myself and the upcoming week was my first class. There were new faces in the class many of them were like me International students. It was bit unnatural and odd for me calling tutor by his name, because in my home country we denote teacher by “Sir” or “Ma’am”. The way of teaching was quiet different, teachers in my home country do not teaches us by PowerPoint slides and we do have specific text books for every module. Everything taught to us was from text books for the respective modules. It was my first day in class and I remember our lecturer had an introduction session with all the students, he pronounced the name of the student and we put our hand up in the air and also tell him the name of our country. We studied very little that day about the introduction of the module. In the later sessions we were taught about the perception of own attributes and personality, it was like what we are, what we do and how we deal in our life with different situations.

The thing I experienced in class was students were not easy to mix-up with. Once I thought maybe they are ignoring me, but it was due to human nature as every person have different attitude towards different things and situations. It depends on individual’s nature, as it is not important that everyone will have the same way of thinking. Nature of individual differs from each other; it is totally based on individual differences. There have been many approaches to understand and make the concept clear about the human individual difference. Gordon Allport’s Trait Theory is the only one approach which is widely influential in psychological research and practice, this approach is applied to both cognitive abilities and personality. Trait Theory of individual difference says that there are cross-situational generalities in behaviour of individual. In other words personality difference in nature explains why people behave in similar way in different circumstances (as cited in: Arnold, John. 1998). It attempts to explain personality as psychologists have learned to emphasise the role of either person (internal) or situational (external) factors.

It was important for me to understand the relative importance of students and situations in determining behaviour. Every day of our life we are not in the same mood or rather I would say in good mood, so it is not usual that we will behave the in the same way on encountering the same thing in different moods, this is cross-situational consistency as how we behave from one setting to another and other will behave different as per their personality and view of thinking. This was the gap which I felt between other students and me. They keep things to themselves and I was not quite comfortable with this, because in my home county usually new classmates introduce themselves to each other and share their past experiences about their social and study circles. The same way of behaviour was carried on in upcoming sessions of the module. No one gets involved in the social activities with other students and few students were coming to class with their old mates and the keep things to themselves, like no more friends or social networking. Sometimes it was difficult for me to cope with the studies, if I had missed my class and studying from the PowerPoint slides by my own was not helping me out. Being a new to this study system it was difficult for me to understand the PowerPoint slides, because in the PowerPoint slides only key information is provided in very short form. Though it was somehow good for all of us, as everyone minds their own business and no interference in others work.

The lecturer has helped me along with other students in digging deep this module. He has been teaching us by creating interest in the sessions throughout the year. He has been source of motivation in this module. Tutor was leader and I was follower same as leadership is process of mutual influence, which depends on the interaction of both parties and in response to each other. If teacher does not take interest in teaching then students they will not pay attention in module. So it was very important for me and other students to pay attention in class so the tutor can fulfil his task and so we can. Due to not being very familiar with the education system and techniques, sometimes I lose my concentration in the sessions and even in self studies. As per Contingency Theory there is no best way to organise, or to lead and to make decisions, everything is dependent on internal and external situations (Cited: lecture notes). So our tutor use to apply many different ideas to make us concentrate in the module such as making a group of 3-4 pupils and giving them certain tasks to complete in class. He always makes best of his decision so that we can concentrate in our studies and sessions without any further interruption or lack of interest. Being a leader he has played is role very well in every aspect, he was having the qualities like transactional leadership and transformational leadership. It mean it was able to communicate with me and able to understand what are my views about the certain topic and if was wrong with his leadership qualities he was able to change my view and guide me to put on right path with encouraging manner.

It is always assumed that leader must have certain attributes which are stable as well as transferable as per requirement of the situation and also be clearly distinctive especially measurable and can be predicted. He was having different style of his own. In class we were having mutual understanding, he was one of those peoples who first listen with patience and then react accordingly. He always takes all the students together and never let any one behind and was very concern about the whole group. He is the one who helped us in setting clear vision of our goals by his teaching confidence. He plans and assigns us with tasks; he let us know if we are not right and then explain the right way of doing it. Some time he makes it more interesting by give the task to complete and then rewarding us.

I remember one day in class he gave us numerical problem as asked every student to answer it together and if no one makes the mistake he will give us treat but if any one of us goes wrong no one gets anything. This was an example of group encouragement in task completion. He has always focused on individual and team work in task completion. Every time he brings us new tasks and discuss it in class with all the students. I would say he has performed very well as leader he was having all the attributes of leadership. He understood the value of group that he was teaching developed vision accordingly, make everyone including himself to strategically take part in achieving the goal, help us make the purpose clear for studying this module, like a true leader he inspired us, motivated us and helped us getting to the right direction towards our aim. (Cited: lecture notes).

I continue to attend my class as it was getting my interest in it. Then I was given a task to complete and score which will help me in passing this module or I can say it was the first task of the two to pass this module. I started my preparation for it; tutor gave us lecturer notes as usual he use to give in class. I find it difficult to complete the assessment as it was again different way of scoring as compare to my home country. This was not the only reason the question was troubling me. If I look for the books, I can’t find any book in the library which had the material which was needed for the assessment, however I got the book with partial study material, but the material for main approach of the assessment was not available. There were very limited books with that specific relevant material and we were lot of students to get them, so some of us may have got those books and some of us including me did not. This put more pressure on my mind to complete the task which was getting higher as the date of submission was coming near and the pressure ended up as stress on my mind for the assignment. I complete my assessment with the help of journal articles, books and other issued reading materials. It is usual work done under stress is not very good. Although it is essential to have certain amount of stress for meeting the challenges of life, stress can provide energy needed to resist aggression, maintain life and ability to adapt the constantly changing external influences (as Cited in: Johnson, David W. 1972). I got my feedback sheet in which it was clear that I have not score good marks. This has hit me psychologically, as my parents have spent lot of money for my education and I am not scoring good marks. I was thinking that I let them down with the bad performance. I started missing some of the sessions, losing my interest in studies. As per Lazarus & Folkman (1984), stress is the relationship between person and the environment they are dealing with at the movement and tries to overcome the capacity of working by putting oneself in the heath compromising situation (as Cited in: Haslam, S. Alexander. 2004). This was somehow related to my condition because till that time I already had taken lot of stress and workload on me which lead me to continuous headache and sleepless for few days. My module tutor discussed the performance of every individual personally with every student in the class and he let me know my shortcomings in the assessment which I have submitted earlier. And also said you still have a chance to clear this module by performing better in second assessment for the module.

To help us understand the module’s needs and perform better in future our tutor some time put us in small groups so that we can discuss the given topic and answer it as and when needed. Group work or team work is also one of the important attribute of success. It is clear from the studies that group is always more productive than an individual but it needs to take proper decisions after determining the need of the situation. In management of any organisation team work is very important as the employees are also having the responsibility of taking decisions on their part. It is important for managing and organising the organisation effectively (Cited in: lecture notes). In the same manner to get effective relevant discussion output we were asked by the tutor to discuss on certain topic with our group member and then he also participate in the discussion to checkout if we are doing it right. According to Janis (1982; 35) “members of any small combined group tend to maintain spirit de coprs by unconsciously developing a number of shared illusion and related norms that interfere with critical thinking and reality”(as cited in: Haslam, S. Alexander. 2004: p. 99) Working in group has certain reasons behind it like the final decision of all the students will be outcome by the agreement of all group members which have potential of being the correct solution as teams are more accurate than individuals. Everyone has different view so we had wider range of ideas and thought which can be used to get the more possible answers for the asked questions. Working in groups made us more efficient and creative, now we all were engaged in social network by exchanging ideas and thought about the particular topics. However if we wrong in our discussion as an individual no one is held responsible for it, responsibility goes to the group. It was getting easy for us to decide on the particular given topic as we were sharing our views with each other and getting variety of possible answers.

Group influence made things easy for me to cope with the studies. We the students were now socially connected to each other by getting into group sessions. We were getting lot of help from each other and started spending time in library discussing on the topics. If someone was absent in class, group study help that person to cover up the things in which the person was left behind. We develop new ideas of dealing with the problems regarding assessments and discussion topics. Sharing ideas and thoughts helped me in engaging myself back with the studies and it raised my interest in it.

In group work motivation has played very major role and also help me to come out of stress I was under. Motivation has changed the results of the organisations. There are few of the related motivational theories which were applied on our work pattern. As per Dawson “Motivation refers to the mainspring of behaviour, it explains why individual chose to expend a degree of efforts towards achieving particular goal” (as Cited in: Thompson, Paul. 2002, p. 294). It means motivation is directly related to the human behaviour towards their work. This explains the reason why peoples put their efforts in completing the task assign to them. When I came from my country I was having goal ahead of completing my degree to get good job. Knowledge of motivation is always used to achieve organisational goal. I was motivated by thinking of achieving my goal and I always tried to do well in my assessment so that I can earn a degree if I can’t do that it will be waste of resources like time and money. This justifies the Dawson’s view of motivation; if I am having a target of completing my post-graduation degree, so I will put efforts to complete it, because I don’t have any other option to complete the course. We were helped by our tutor also to achieve the set target, as being a leader he motivated us to complete the task required for completion of our degree.

Throughout this session, I have able to understand different aspects of human nature at different stages and their reactions with psychology involve in it. I have learned about individual differences and understood its concept by practically being in the situation and dealing with it. I determined why everyone does things and react to the situation in their own ways. I have noticed the nature of stress and when it comes to you, how it effects mentally and physically, I realised that it is not good for anyone but stress is needed time to time so that one can energise and boost work speed. It is very important to have a leader in an organisation or in group who can manage and guide member of the organisation to understand their task to be complete. The importance of group influence is also very important part of success, because sometimes work are influenced by their colleagues and potentially improve the productivity of their own capacity of doing work and organisation. Last but not least, motivation is one of the most important key players in success of any organisation. This may lead the organisation to the top of its productivity. To get the Group of people do their work with full efficiency they need a goal to be set ahead of them to complete and sometime rewards is given to them so that they can work with enthusiasm. By this essay it is justified that psychology of human behaviour is always involved in the personal or organisation work done by humans and they also react in different manners in various situations.