Agostine Owanga Abira Abira

From my educational experiences 18 years as a student, 2 years as a public school teacher, and currently as a secondary teaching assistant, I am convinced that relevance is one of the most important aspects of teaching and learning.”

“Based on my experiences, I define relevance as the perception that something is interesting and worth knowing. When a teacher provides relevance for a student, the teacher helps the student perceive these two things.”
In the study, students pointed to four methods for establishing relevance:

Discussing how theory can be applied in practice
Making a link to local cases
Relating subject matter to everyday applications
Discussing and finding applications in current newsworthy issues and events
As instructors, one of the most important things we do is provide relevance for students. It gives them a context within which they can develop into engaged, motivated and self-regulated learners. Relatedness is important to students of all ages, while utility value tends to gain importance as students become older and choose courses that will help them choose or achieve their career goals. Relevance is exceptionally important to students who are required to take lessons they did not choose, such as general education courses.

Relevance can help students realise how useful all knowledge can be. Fulfilling students’ need for relatedness, showing them how seemingly unrelated content fits together and then into their own scheme of things, and giving students real reasons why today’s content will be useful to them later on are all good ways to provide relevance for students.

You can help them discover that what you teach is actually interesting and worth knowing.