Learning, Teaching and Assessment in Practice

This essay discusses the qualities of an effective mentor and the characteristics of underachieving students. It also explores the role of mentors in clinical training and the importance of different learning styles.

Running head: LEARNING, TEACHING AND ASSESSMENT IN PRACTICE
Learning, Teaching and Assessment in Practice
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note:

1Learning, Teaching and Assessment in Practice
Introduction:
Effective mentorship can be considered as one of the most important tool in shaping the future of
the students. It is the responsibility of the mentor to develop strength and confidence in them so they can
reach their goals and can make any decision any themselves without being dependent on other
(Broughton et al., 2019). This essay includes the qualities of an effective leader such as motivating
others, providing professional feedback and other qualities. This qualities are must in a mentor as it
assist is developing self-esteem and confidence in others (Foster et al., 2015). In this essay, certain traits
and attribute of the underachievers are states, these attributes are, seeing self as inadequate, excepting
failure very easily, do not feel good or free to make their own choices, behave defensively towards the
higher authority, feels isolated an rejected, avoid involving in any competition for the fear of failure,
blame others or luck for their failure, shows ineffective behavior towards the problems and set
unrealistic goals. The behavior of the achievers and underachievers students are contrasting from each
other. Usually a non-achiever students or underachiever students have low self-confidence and self-
esteem as compared to the other students. The underachiever students have the habit of blaming others
for their failure and never take responsibility for their own mistakes. There are multiple reason such as
emotional, genetic or family issue behind such behavior. Hence, it is the responsibility of the mentor to
develop confidence and self-esteem in such learners enabling them to achieve their goal. Mentors
usually applies different strategies such as, different learning theories and other strategies (Burgess, van
Diggele & Mellis, 2018). In the essay, role and responsibilities of the mentor in the clinical training and
its influence on the learning process of the student has been described. The characteristics if the several
types of learners such as auditory, kinesthetic and visual learners has also been mentioned along with the
learning theories which includes, social behavior theory, cognitive learning theory, behavior learning

2Learning, Teaching and Assessment in Practice
theory, andragogy and pedagogy learning theory. In addition, the importance of clinical learning
environment is also mentioned.
Discussion:
A good mentor is the one who help others to achieve the goals and targets of the mentees. It is
the responsibility of the mentor to show path to the mentees so that they can achieve success in their life
(Terrell, 2017). With the help of an effective mentor, even the underachieving students can reach their
goal by developing strength, personal attributes and believes. There are certain qualities which should be
present within a good mentor such as, willingness to share knowledge, expertise and skill with the
mentees, they possess a positive impact on the mentees and should try to be the role model (de Abreu &
Interpeler, 2015). Apart from that they should try to maintain a professional mentoring relationship by
taking personal interest in such and by exhibiting enthusiasm in the respective field. Effective mentor
should value ongoing and learning and growth in the field. They should provide guidance to the
mentees, especially to the underachieving students and also provide constructive feedback so that the
student can rectify their mistakes (Nowell et al., 2017). Mentor are usually there to provide guidance to
the students, but is does not mean that they should force their opinion to the mentees, instead they
should value the opinions of the mentees and initiative taken by them. If required, they should provide
feedback to the mentees. Mentor should set goals in order to develop the mentees personally and
professionally and provide strategies to meet those goals in limited time. One of the most important
quality of an effective mentor is the motivating skill (Fernandez et al., 2018). They should motivate their
mentees continuously in order to achieve success. A mentor should look each and every student equally
without being biased and gives special attention to the underachieving students (Van Ginkel, Verloop &
Denessen, 2016).

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Underachieving students is one of the most commonly observed in the schools and universities.
This students are either not interested in learning or face complication while learning skills. Hence, in
such condition it is the concern of the mentor to develop personal and practised skill in the students who
are underachieving known as underachievers (Freda, González-Monteagudo & Esposito, 2016). Student
who are underachievers possess various characteristics such as, poor self-efficacy, low self-esteem
avoidance behaviours, poor performance in competition and rebellion. Underachievers usually have low
self-esteem. They feel demotivated when compared with the gifted students and in such a way their self-
esteem lowers down (Castejón et al., 2016). If the underperforming students fail at something, the
students usually blame their luck and when succeed at they give credit to their ability which shows their
mind-set. They do not want to take responsibility of the failure. Such mind set of the student is known as
book mind-set. In book-mind-set people do want to take responsibility of their failure and assume that
their ability is permanent and cannot be improved (Mofield, Parker Peters & Chakraborti-Ghosh, 2016).
However to deal with failures students must have growth mind-set, where an individual understands that
the failure is part of the life and it can be avoided by improving the ability of the person. They usually
have avoidance behaviour, they avoid involving in different things by the fear of failure (Wu, 2016). If
such students are forced to do something they shoes rebel behaviour. They shows rebellion against the
higher authority and tries to protect themselves. Underachiever usually blames others for their failure
sometimes their luck and sometime the system. By blaming the system they void their own
responsibility against failure. Perfectionism is unachievable for each and every students, but it does not
mean that they will stop trying. However in case of students who are underachiever, they mention this as
an excuse (Hurd, Tan & Loeb, 2016). They states that, it is no possible for them to achieve perfection
and hence they cannot do that. Not only in the purpose of learning or gathering knowledge, they also

4Learning, Teaching and Assessment in Practice
avoid participating in any competition and gives excuse that it is nit their cup of tea and is impossible for
them to win such competition.
All the characteristics or traits observed in under achievers either genetic or develops from time
to time based in their personal and professional experience. It may be because of their emotional
problem or sometimes family problem (Teo, 2018). They usually behave conformist and behaves like
that no one notices them or their smartness.
There is a big gap identified between the underachievers and the achieving students. The
achievers students usually have a different approach towards the life. They set realistic goals and focus
on such goals, whereas in case if underachieving students they usually set unrealistic goal and after
setting up the goal do not focus much on that. They get distracted from their goal very often and face
failure, underachievers students have a lack of confidence as compared to the other students who are
achieves (Taylor, 2016). The achiever students except their failure and try to rectify them to avoid such
mistake in future but in case of underachievers they either blame the system or other individual fir their
failure and do not even try to improve their abilities, instead they stop getting involved in such activities
by the fear of facing failure. The underachiever students have the incapability to preserve. They have an
inferiority feelings and are socially or emotionally immature than that of the other students (Ecker-
Lyster & Niileksela, 2017). They usually shows antisocial or rebel behaviour which is not commonly
observed in case of achievers students. In many cases it is observed that, the family condition of the
achievers students is more stable than that of the achievers students which can be considered as one of
the reason for their behaviour (North, Kennedy & Wray, 2019).
It is the accountability of the mentor to use different strategies which can help in developing
different skills among the students (underachieving students) to gain success in future. The mentor
should use their professional knowledge in the decision making process. Before making any judgement

5Learning, Teaching and Assessment in Practice
or decision related to the students they should observe the student carefully, their behaviour, interests
and problems (Baier, Markman & Pernice-Duca, 2016).
To implement education development in the nursing students, it is significant for the mentor to
enable self-awareness and emotional intelligence. Self-awareness and emotional intelligence is a
significant concept that empower the knowledge process of the students.
Mentor’s role in clinical practice:
In the medical practice teacher shows an effective part in empowering knowledge into students.
In the essay, a second year student that has been arrived for the five week placement. The student has
undertaken and training before and it has been educated that the student had continued under achieving
in his earlier clinical settlement. In such cases, mentors play an effective role. It is their duty to
encourage the student so that he can achieve their best in this placement. The mentor should be involved
in different activities such as, supervision, encouragement and explanation (Saunders & Vehviläinen‐
Julkunen, 2017). The mentor should believe in their students, their goal and should provide support to
them. Thus it can be considered that, mentorship is an extremely responsible role and the mentor should
be learner-oriented. There should be a mutual relationship between the mentor and the mentees to
provide satisfaction and practised and personal development of the both mentor and the mentees. For the
growth of the mutual connection between mentor and students, the rapport should contain respect,
connection, precise anticipation and shared values among each other. Hence, if such factors are missing
among the mentor and the mentees, relationship cannot be established. Therefore effective
communication is important between the mentor and the mentees (Johnson, 2015).
Apart from these, they also play a vital duty in the medical practice is the registering. However,
many nurses do not provide importance to such activities or feels hesitant to do so. Registering is chief
to assess the actions of student, especially the student who are underachievers or have intolerable and

6Learning, Teaching and Assessment in Practice
acceptable behaviours. The assessing of the student is necessary and can be achieved by different tools.
Absence of such assessing tool might be considered as one of the barrier in in mentorship. However, it is
significant for the guide to assess the learner carefully (Ravanipour, Bahreini & Ravanipour, 2015).
In the clinical placement, the mentors are sometimes pressurized to pass the student even if they
do not deserve. In such cases, mentors have to pass inadequate learners, which can lead to further
complication such as medical errors in future and poor performance. Due to the pressure from the
university, the student who are not achievers or have less performance gain the degree, which prevents
the admission of only achievers for the future practice placement.
Different learning styles:
Learning is the continuous process which aims to develop the personality of the individual. It
leads to change in the thinking perspective, feeling and understanding of the mentee. There are 3 types
of learners identified which include, kinesthetic learners, auditory learners and visual learners.
According to Billings & Halstead, (2015), there are different types of learners such as, 34 % of the
students are auditory, 29% are visual and 37% are haptic. According to the Fleming VAK/VARK model
of learning there are three types of learners which are, auditory learner, visual learner and the kinesthesis
learner (Lambert, 2018). Al the 3 apprentices are briefly described below:
Visual learning is the type of learning in which the students gets knowledge with the help of
visual representation such as, diagrams, charts, maps and graphs. According to the (), students who are
fast visual learner have specific attribute such as, they kind of scans everything thy see, they adores
visual stimulation, they get engages in such stimulation and wants more visual representation. Certain
benefits which are specifically observed in case of visual learners are they can store an information for a
longer period of time. Visual learning makes the communication between the mentor and the mentee
quicker and simpler (Wang & Gupta 2015). Visual learning aids as better comprehension as compared to

7Learning, Teaching and Assessment in Practice
the auditory learning and also drive motivation in to the mentee. It stimulate the emotions due to which
they stay longer in to the memories. Students who are visual learner becomes unhappy or did not
function appropriately when comes to learning with the help of unsuitable visuals or no visuals.
Another kind of learner according to the Flemings model is the auditory learning. Auditory
learning is defined as the kind of learning in which the students from the voice they listen. The auditory
learner mainly depends on the listening and speaking for the purpose of learning. The students who are
an active auditory learner, learns best by actively participating in active listening. They like to gain
knowledge from different audio sources such as, audio clips or visual clips. According to Billings &
Halstead (2015), 34 % of the students are auditory learners. The students who are active auditory learner
have certain specific attributes such as, they like to engage themselves in active listening but cannot
even skip a single chance to involve in speaking (atsushita, Andoh & Zatorre, 2017). While
communicating with other individuals, they provide special attention to the tone, pitch and the emotion
and the volume of the voices.
Third kind of learning is the kinesthetic learning. Kinesthetic learning is the type of learning in
which students gather knowledge with the help of physical activities. In this type of learning students
involve more in physical activities rather than participating in listening and watching. This technique is
used by the combination of auditory and visual representation, which produce multisensory learning.
Kinesthetic learning is more efficient form of learning process as compared to the other two types of
learning process. According to Billings & Halstead (2015), 37% of the students are kinesthetic learners.
They gather more of their knowledge from the experience and practical knowledge. Students who are
kinesthetic learning have certain specific personal attributes such as, they have multi-cultural education,
they tend to develop more social skills, and they tend to support the cognitive skill’s development. They

8Learning, Teaching and Assessment in Practice
have increased comprehension as compared to the other type of learner (Zhu et al., 2017). It help to
create connection between the concepts of the different language among the students.
It is the concern of the guide to observe the learners before starting the mentoring session. By
observing the personal attributes and characteristics of the mentee, the mentoring session should be
developed accordingly by the mentor.
Application of the learning theories:
Learning theories assists mentors to develop the personality of the students based on their
attributes. They help the mentor to recognize the individual and then react accordingly. Learning
theories not only assist the mentor in observing the current situation, but also helps in evaluating the
present learning situation of the mentee. Each student have contrasting perspective of knowledge and
readiness. With the help of learning theories, the mentor gets knowledge of the needs and feelings of the
mentor. It assist in avoiding the same teaching approach for each and every student. It might lead to
confusion and lack of knowledge among the student. Hence, in order to avoid such complication among
the students, it is the responsibility of the mentor to design the session accordingly so that each and
every student gets equal opportunities to learn. Different learning approach are used by the mentor to
teach the students.
Apart from the teaching gained from the learning theory, it also helps in assessment of the
students. Different theories have been proposed to gather learning from the mentors (Anderson, 2016).
These theories include social behavior theory, behavior learning theory, cognitive learning concept,
andragogy and pedagogy learning concept.
According to social behavior education theory, the behavior of the individual is cultured by
observing other people and their characteristics. Learning process which can be gathered by noticing the
behaviors of the individuals and the consequences of the behaviors. In order to gather learning, the

9Learning, Teaching and Assessment in Practice
mentee have to observe the mentors attentively and with high competence (Smith-Lovin & Heise, 2016).
In this learning theory, it is not necessary to gain the knowledge by direct experience or by direct
observation. Social learning theory helps the student to gather learning by the direct observation of the
role model and then imitating that in the regular life. In order to demonstrate what an individual has
learned from the mentor, motivation is required, which is to be provided by the mentor either directly or
indirectly such as in the form of the feedback.
Another theory is cognitive learning theory, which is active, long lasting and constructive form
of learning. In this form of learning, the mentee are encouraged by the mentor to use their brain
effectively in order to connect new learnings gathered. The cognitive learning theory mainly focusses on
the learning gathered rather than focusing on the event or from where does the information gathered
(Salthouse, 2016). It aims to focus on the plans, profitability and the several approaches.
The pedagogy learning concept is one of the customary system of learning theory used in case
teaching the children. It deals with the growth of the person both personally and professionally. In case
of Pedagogy learning theory, mentor is classified as the facilitator and the student is defined as the
agent. It influences the learning process of the individual. The mentor who is an effective teacher uses
different learning and the teaching tools that can be used to develop the skills of the individual. In case
of an effective teaching, it is not require that the teacher have only the good knowledge of the subject
but also have effective skills of teaching such as, pedagogy skills (Ozuah, 2016).
Another learning theory is the andragogy learning theory which can also be considered as the
self-directed learning, especially in case of adults. It can be defined as the learner experience-based,
collaborative approach, problem oriented and the learner’s directed. In this learning theory, before
actually learning the whole process, the importance of the learning is conducted (Merriam, 2018). The

10Learning, Teaching and Assessment in Practice
Pedagogy learning theory acknowledges the necessities of the learning in the each and every day of the
individual.
Importance of the clinical learning environment:
Clinical learning setting enhances the knowledge perspective of the learners. Scientific learning
environment enhances the education process of the individual by the experience they gained during their
learning. In the Clinical knowledge environment, mentor enhances the knowledge of the students by
providing them exposure. In the Clinical learning setting, they gets practical knowledge (Jamshidi et al.,
2016).
In the clinical knowledge environment, the mentor should assess the students by the way they
handle the patient by using the learning gained by the help of different learning language and the
mentoring session.
Conclusion:
From the above essay, it can be concluded that mentorships is important in implementing the
learning in the underachiever students. From the above essay, it can be stated that it is significant for the
guide to fully observe mentee before assessing the learning style in order to deal with the
underachievers. Application of learning theories also helps in the process and the team involved in the
clinical environment is also responsible in the development of the underachievers. In the above essay,
the importance of the mentor in the clinical setting is mentioned. The effectiveness of the mentor in the
development of the student has been explained in detail. Underachiever student can be identified by
observing certain characteristics which is mentioned on the essay. From the above essay, it can be stated
that, there is a large difference identified among the achievers and the non-achievers students and it is
the responsibility of the mentor to minimize that difference. Three different types of learners observed
are, auditory learners, visual learners and kinesthetic learners. Hence before suggesting any strategy to

11Learning, Teaching and Assessment in Practice
the students, it is vital for the mentor to observe mentee carefully. To teach the student, different
learning tools are used by the teacher which includes, social behavior theory, behavior learning theory,
cognitive learning theory, andragogy and pedagogy learning theory. In the essay the significance of the
clinical setting in enhancing knowledge of student and it is also explained that to promote the kiering of
the student assessment is important.
Recommendation:
From the above essay, I get to learn the characteristics of the mentor and its role in developing
the students or the under achievers students. By acknowledging the characteristics of the underachievers
and achievers students, I learned the difference between the two. From the essay I understand the
difference between the two and also learned the ways such as by using learning theories; social behavior
theory, behavior learning theory, cognitive learning theory, andragogy and pedagogy learning theory to
minimize the barrier. I also learned that every student is different and hence needs different attention
which I would implement in future to increase the knowledge of the students.

12Learning, Teaching and Assessment in Practice
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