The Importance of Understanding Student Development for Teachers and Prospective Primary School Teachers

Abstract

This article aims to find out how important it is for teachers and prospective teachers to understand student development, especially in elementary schools. Education is an important factor in developing students' potential, and the success of education programs in formal schools is influenced by students, curriculum teaching staff, infrastructure and the environment. This is the reason why a teacher or prospective teacher needs to think about the development phase and students in elementary school. The benefit of this research is that teachers throughout the world increase their understanding of their role in achieving student development tasks. Teaching and learning activities not only aim to make students master knowledge academically, but also to shape students' character, so, in this case, character education is considered very important to be carried out in formal schools from the results of this research, namely: 1) A form of low learning motivation, namely a lack of student involvement during learning and a lack of student activity,(2) Factors causing low student learning motivation come from the condition of the students and environmental factors, 3) Efforts that can be made by teachers to increase students' learning motivation are providing rewards, creating a comfortable learning atmosphere for students, such as varied learning methods, using interesting learning media, providing individual and group activities, and collaboration. with parents. If the teacher in delivering lesson material does not pay attention to student characteristics and students' personality traits are not used as a basis for learning, students will have difficulty understanding the lesson material. This research aims to find out about the application and importance of pedagogical competence in the learning process so that in the future it can be applied well by students. Prospective teachers used data collection techniques using library studies/literature reviews, namely by collecting books and prospective teacher students. Results The literature review shows that good pedagogical competence, apart from that, pedagogical competence is very important in understanding characteristics