Factors that Contribute to Learning

1. Intellectual factor:
`The term refers to the individual mental level. Success in school is generally closely related to
level of the intellect. Pupils with low intelligence often encounter serious difficulty in mastering
schoolwork. Sometimes pupils do not learn because of special intellectual disabilities.

2. Learning factors:
Factors owing to lack of mastery of what has been taught, faulty methods of work or study, and
narrowness of experimental background may affect the learning process of any pupil.
If the school proceeds too rapidly and does not constantly check up on the extent to which the
pupil is mastering what is being taught, the pupil accumulates a number of deficiencies that interfere
with successful progress.
In arithmetic, for instance, knowledge of basic addition is essential to successful work in
multiplication. Weakness in addition will contribute directly to the deficiency in multiplication. Likewise,
failure in history may be due to low reading ability or weakness in English.
Similarly, because of faulty instruction, the pupil may have learned inefficient methods of study.
Many other kinds of difficulty which are directly related to learning factors may interfere with progress.

3. Physical factors:
Under this group are included such factors as health, physical development, nutrition, visual and
physical defects, and glandular abnormality. It is generally recognized that ill health retards physical and
motor development, and malnutrition interferes with learning and physical growth.
Children suffering from visual, auditory, and other physical defects are seriously handicapped in
developing skills such as reading and spelling. It has been demonstrated that various glands of internal
secretion, such as the thyroid and pituitary glands, affect behavior. The health of the learner will likely
affect his ability to learn and his power to concentrate.

4. Mental factors:
Attitude falls under mental factors attitudes are made up of organic and kinaesthetic elements.
They are not to be confused with emotions that are characterized by internal visceral disturbances.
Attitudes are more or less of definite sort. They play a large part in the mental organization and general
behavior of the individual.
Attitudes are also important in the development of personality. Among these attitudes aw
interest, cheerfulness, affection, prejudice, -open mindedness, and loyalty. Attitudes exercise a
stimulating effect upon the rate of learning and teaching and upon the progress in school.
The efficiency of the work from day to day and the rapidity with which it is achieved are
influenced by the attitude of the learner. A favourable mental attitude facilitates learning. The factor of
interest is very closely related in nature to that of symbolic drive and reward.

5. Emotional and social factors:

Personal factors, such as instincts and emotions, and social factors, such as cooperation and
rivalry, are directly related to a complex psychology of motivation. It is a recognized fact that the various
responses of the individual to various kinds of stimuli are determined by a wide variety of tendencies.
 Some of these innate tendencies are constructive and others are harmful. For some reason a
pupil may have developed a dislike for some subject because he may fail to see its value, or may lack
foundation. This dislike results in a bad emotional state.
Some pupils are in a continuing state of unhappiness because of their fear of being victims of
the disapproval of their teachers and classmates. This is an unwholesome attitude and affects the
learning process to a considerable degree. This is oftentimes the result of bad training.
Social discontent springs from the knowledge or delusion that one is below others in welfare.

6. Teachers Personality:
The teacher as an individual personality is an important element in the learning environment or
in the failures and success of the learner. The way in which his personality interacts with the
personalities of the pupils being taught helps to determine the kind of behavior which emerges from the
learning situation.
The supreme value of a teacher is not in the regular performance of routine duties, but in his
power to lead and to inspire his pupils through the influence of his moral personality and example.
Strictly speaking, personality is made up of all the factors that make the individual what he is, the
complex pattern of characteristics that distinguishes him from the others of his kind. Personality is the
product of many integrating forces.
In other words, an individuals personality is a composite of his physical appearance, his mental
capacity, his emotional behavior, and his attitudes towards others. Effective teaching and learning are
the results of an integrated personality of the teacher.
Generally speaking, pupils do- not like a grouchy teacher who cannot control his temper before
the class. It is impossible for a teacher with a temper to create enthusiasm and to radiate light and
sunshine to those about him.
Pupils love a happy, sympathetic, enthusiastic, and cheerful teacher. Effective teaching and
learning are the results of love for the pupils, sympathy for their interests, tolerance, and a definite
capacity for understanding.
The teacher must therefore recognize that in all his activities in the classroom he is directly
affecting the behavior of the growing and learning organism.

7. Environmental factor:
Physical conditions needed for learning is under environmental factor. One of the factors that
affect the efficiency of learning is the condition in which learning takes place. This includes the
classrooms, textbooks, equipment, school supplies, and other instructional materials.
In the school and at the home, the conditions for learning must be favourable and adequate if
teaching is to produce the desired results. It cannot be denied that the type and quality of instructional
materials and equipment play an important part in the instructional efficiency of the school.
It is difficult to do a good job of teaching in a poor type of building and without adequate
equipment and instructional materials. A school building or a classroom has no merit when built without
due regard to its educational objectives and functions.
Factors that Contribute to Thinking

1. Exercise
Exercise and other physical activity can make a difference in your memory because its good for
your heart and helps get oxygenated blood into the brain. Exercise is good for your hard-working lungs
studies show clearly that people with good lung function retain strong mental acuity and memory
function well into in old age. Exercising regularly also reduces your risk for conditions linked to memory
loss, like diabetes, high blood pressure and stroke.

2. Mental activities
Every time you do a word puzzle or take a class youre improving your memory, and this is
especially true as you get older. While people with higher levels of education tend to have better
memory, its far more important to enjoy learning new things and to make an effort to keep doing it.
You can hone your memory by reading regularly, keeping up with current affairs, trying out a new
hobby, and playing all kinds of challenging games.

3. Social interactions
Keep your memory sharper by seeking out regular social experiences especially new ones.
Healthy love relationships, marriages and partnerships encourage good brain function too.

4. Eating healthy
A good diet helps you keep your memory strong its as simple as that. The Mediterranean-
style diet, in particular, provides your body with key raw materials to feed healthy brain function. Try to
avoid saturated fats in meat and dairy products, eat fish three times a week (but not fried), and
consume more vegetables and fruit. Among vegetables, leafy greens have the tightest link to reducing
declines in cognition and memory function.

5. Sleep
Sleep is so important to memory, especially the consolidation of information, that after just one
night of sleep, people perform better no matter what theyre doing school, work, sports or playing a
musical instrument. Even a nap makes a difference. In general, its the quality of the sleep that matters
most, not the amount.

6. Making lists
If you skip the step of writing down what you want to remember, you increase your risk of
forgetting at least part of what you want to recall. If you can get in the habit of being a list maker, it can
help you remember multiple things. Of course you have to remember to take the list and use it.

Factors that Contribute to Remembering

1. Attend to information
How often are your students checking text messages while listening to your lecture, arguing that
they are really good at multitasking? Remind your students that most failures of memory are not
problems with retrieval but with encoding. Most of the time we do not have difficulty pulling
information out; the problem is that we never got it in to begin with. To make this point, I use the classic
Nickerson and Adams (1979) penny task and ask students to draw the head of a penny from memory.
They quickly realize that they have forgotten which direction Lincoln is facing or are unsure which
phrases are on the heads or tails side. Explain to your students that they didnt forget what a penny
looks like. The truth is that they never bothered to encode the information. To remember something,
they need to engage in controlled processing. They have to block out other distractions and focus on the
task at hand.

2. Engage in deep processing and self-reference.

Deep processing involves thinking about the meaning of the information and connecting it to
personal experiences. To make this point, I use a modified version of Craik and Tulvings (1975) study
and present students with a list of adjectives, such as creative, methodical, or serious. For some of
the words they are asked a question about how it is spelled; for example, Does the word contain the
letter T? For other words, they are asked, Does the word describe you? Later, students are asked to
recall as many of the words as possible. Students are significantly more likely to recall words from the
describe list because they had to think about the meanings and apply the words to themselves. Simply
reading over a paragraph of text or listening to a lecture does not guarantee encoding it into memory.
What one thinks about while listening or reading is what matters.

3. Generate cues
Students often request that I provide more examples of the concepts we are discussing.
Although instructor-provided examples and explanations are important, I teach my students that it is
more important that they come up with their own examples and cues. Research by Mntyl (1986)
reveals that participants recalled 36 percent more concepts when using self-generated cues than when
using cues developed by someone else.

4. Create context
Instructors know that students often come to class unprepared. Students argue that they prefer
to hear the lecture before reading the chapter. To explain why skimming the chapter before class is
important, I read my students an oddly worded passage from a study by Bransford and Johnson (1972).
First, I show half of the class a picture that creates context for what they are about to hear. For this half
of the group, the strangely worded passage is clear, and they find they are able to recall large portions
of it after hearing it just once. The group not shown the picture fails to make sense of what they have
heard and have difficulty recalling details. Without looking at material before class to create context, it is
difficult for new material to make much sense.

5. Test frequently
This is the easiest strategy and can have the most impact on students. Contrary to expectation,
Roediger and Karpicke (2006) found that seeing a passage only once and then forcing you to recall it
from memory leads to better retention than repeatedly reading the passage. Incorporate brief tests or
quizzes into your course, and encourage your students to self-test as they study. Reading a passage and
then stopping to ask yourself what you just read is going to be more effective than reading it twice.

Factors that Contribute to Thoughts

Factors that Contribute to Consciousness

Factors that Contribute to Memory

Memory as stated already, is a process which includes learning, retention and remembering.
As such all the three processes are important for good memory.

1. Ability to retain
This depends upon good memory traces left in the brain by past experiences.
2. Good health
A person with good health can retain the learnt material better than a person with poor health.
3. Age of the learner
Youngsters can remember better than the aged.
4. Maturity
Very young children cannot retain and remember complex material.
5. Will to remember
Willingness to remember helps for better retention.
6. Intelligence
More intelligent person will have better memory than a dull person.
7. Interest
If a person has more interest, he will learn and retain better.
8. Over learning
Experiments have proved that over learning will lead to better memory.
9. Speed of learning
Quicker learning leads to better retention,
10. Meaningfulness of the material
Meaningful materials remain in our memory for longer period than for nonsense material,
11. Sleep or rest
Sleep or rest immediately after learning strengthens connections in the brain and helps for clear
memory.