CREATING ENABLING LEARNING ENVIRONMENT IN FOUNDATION STUDIES IN OMAN (Pages 141-151) by Dr. Ashok Kumar G Nair in THE INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH SPECIALIST / ISSN: 2350-1499 (Online); 2350-0751 (Print)

The 21st century is developing as a time of turbulence. The purpose of education is to provide children with the knowledge and skills—in other words, the power—to live healthy, successful lives, power should be the need that schools most effectively address. Ironically, power is the need that many students find most difficult to meet in school. This has led to the belief that the system is not encompassing the developing need of the young generation. Most of the behavioural and academic problems is understood to be based on the need to show power. The objective is to create an enabling atmosphere in the foundation programme classrooms so as satisfy the need to have power among the young generation. The foundation programme has students who come straight from discipline-centric schools. This environment of learning has ingrained a sense of dependency on the teacher for fulfilling learning needs which creates impediments to learning when the student enters the foundation programme at a tertiary institution. The suggestion is employment of a variety strategies to students be active controllers of their learning process. These are based on actual practice done at foundation programmes at different colleges in the Sultanate of Oman, especially at the College of Banking and Financial Studies. An important concept considered is that by helping to empower students. Mostly when power in mentioned, it is connected with power over, the inclination to control others for personal gratification and is often explained off as good for others. This is contrasted with power as power within and power with. The former is empowerment of of the self and the latter is achievement as a team. The development of empowerment in the classes in the foundation programme, makes the students meet their need for power if they are provided the environment to gain the power within and the power with. Not having the environment to exhibit these two powers, can make the student seek the power over. The powers within and with helps to achieve power in a responsible and productive way while the desire to gain power over can lead to disruptive classroom behaviour, vandalism, cheating and even violence. The discussion centres on creating an enabling atmosphere in the foundation programme classrooms which is conducive to the students' meeting their need for power by having a say in the classrooms, striving to achieve recognition and personal empowermenttertiary institution. The suggestion is employment of a variety strategies to students be active controllers of their learning process. These are based on actual practice done at foundation programmes at different colleges in the Sultanate of Oman, especially at the College of Banking and Financial Studies. An important concept considered is that by helping to empower students. Mostly when power in mentioned, it is connected with power over, the inclination to control others for personal gratification and is often explained off as good for others. This is contrasted with power as power within and power with. The former is empowerment of of the self and the latter is achievement as a team. The development of empowerment in the classes in the foundation programme, makes the students meet their need for power if they are provided the environment to gain the power within and the power with. Not having the environment to exhibit these two powers, can make the student seek the power over. The powers within and with helps to achieve power in a responsible and productive way while the desire to gain power over can lead to disruptive classroom behaviour, vandalism, cheating and even violence. The discussion centres on creating an enabling atmosphere in the foundation programme classrooms which is conducive to the students' meeting their need for power by having a say in the classrooms, striving to achieve recognition and personal empowermentKeywords: Tertiary education, enabling environment, power struggle, learning autonomy, disruptiveness