A Teaching and Learning Model: A World Sociology Evidenced by Linking Common Social and Societal Realities through the Reciprocity of Thinking and Feelings

Marjorie S. Schiering

This paper is designed to assist in the comprehension of learners’ being multi-faceted persons who are unique. Discovering the whole individual is incumbent upon realizing the teaching/learning environments. This is respective of academic and socio-societal factors, which establish who one is as a learner and teacher. The author proposes and explains the concept of each individual being one who thinks and feels simultaneously with reciprocity existing within and between these two skills—so strongly that it is often difficult to separate one from the other. It’s proposed that each of us experiences an interconnectedness and, in many cases, an interdependency with respect to the commonality of social and societal realities within academic and other environments. These interconnections form a world sociology, which is realized by our thinking and feelings. Cross culturally, each one of us being exposed to a mutuality of needs is based in part upon belief and value systems. As one’s education evolves, each becomes his/her experiential past with respect to thinking, feeling, actions taken or inactivity’s that result in behaviors which define one as an individual learner and teacher. The overall purpose of this paper is to empower the thinker, the learner and the teacher by presenting “Teaching and Learning: A Model for Academic and Social Cognition” (Schiering, Bogner, Buli-Holmberg, 2011). This presents a comprehensive theoretical framework of academic and social cognition, as a basis for effective learning and teaching with implications for practice, as the author maintains that the purpose of theory is to guide practice.

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