Empowering Learning Culture as Student Identity Construction in Higher Education

Introduction

There are a number of efforts that students could make in improving their knowledge and skill development in Higher Education (HE), one of which relates to their learning styles. Learning plays a key role as a driving force of acquiring new knowledge or modifying and reinforcing the existing knowledge, behaviours, skills and values (Huda, 2013). It may also involve synthesizing different types of information. The ability to learn can be employed by humans and even animals, where its progress can be integrated with time management (Huda et al., 2016). Through time management, which is considered to be one of the core elements in the learning process, it serves as a support to effective teaching and learning. Organising teaching style and maintaining the instruction in the classroom would foster the self-regulation amongst the students. This is regarded as an effective way to make them get well prepared in meeting the challenges by understanding the classroom dynamics which potentially become a conflict situation. This may become a mean for one to create conducive classroom atmosphere as an effort to restore and maintain effective learning. As a result, how to deal with this extend is necessary to point out actual time on settling tasks in the learning activities.

In addition to attempting on strengthening the learning activities, paying particular attention on the way to create the learning culture would enable students to reflect on what they have learnt so that they may reflect on the ideas and take advantage of their learning development (Haggis, 2004). Learning culture in HE would become significant in strengthening the students’ learning skills performance and understanding the rules occurred within the process. This can be viewed as the foundation, which allows them to be better involved in their relations with other individuals (Lairio et al., 2013). The way in which the learning culture is employed to develop better performance of building students’ identity in HE is a particularly important stage to ensure that learning process occurs in an appropriate manner. This refers to the underlying aim of constructing identity among the students, which involves academic, professional and ethical aspects integrated with skills.

In addition, stakeholders should promote healthy social environment amongst the students, by paying specific attention to individual qualities through their engagement, which may be adapted to a different life sphere in HE. The cultural dimension may be employed to strengthen their identity of learning culture. Engagement to the cultural dimension aspect would require these learners to contemplate on and re-evaluate their personal identity and the manifestation through their actions (Daniels & Brooker, 2014). Additionally, the chance of sustaining the learning culture in HE would require the stakeholders to take into account certain competencies as the core set of congruent behaviours, attitudes, and policies within the university context. It also refers to the individuals’ perceptions, which may allow them to improve their interactions while completing their tasks and duties (Jääskelä & Nissilä, 2015). Developing scientific thinking skills can also be constructed since this is viewed as being able to create better future for the students, may it be at the individual or social levels, including when it relates to their family, education, workplace, hobbies, and community. This would enable individuals to interact appropriately with others (Daniels & Brooker, 2014).