Outline of Todays Lecture: What Is Educational Psychology

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Outline of Todays Lecture What Is Educational
Psychology?

• What is Good Teaching?
• Teaching Artistry, Technique and a Lot of Work
• The Ultimate Goal of Teaching Lifelong Expert
  Learning
• The Role of Educational Psychology

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Questionnaire

• The thinking of children in elementary schools
  tends to be limited to the concrete and tangible,
  whereas the thinking of middle and high school
  students tends to be abstract.
• Students generally understand how much they know
  on a topic.
• Experts in the area of intelligence view
  knowledge as facts (such as the answer to On
  what continent is Brazil?) as one indicator of
  intelligence.
• Effective teaching is essentially a process of
  presenting information to students in succinct
  and organized ways.

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Questionnaire

• Students doing individual work at their seats may
  react negatively when a teacher comes by and
  offers help.
• To increase students motivation to learn,
  teachers should praise as much as possible.
• Teachers primarily learn by teaching in general,
  experience is all that is necessary in learning
  to teach.
• Testing detracts from learning, because students
  who are tested frequently develop negative
  attitudes and usually learn less than those who
  are tested less often.

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Small Groups Exercise

• Get into groups of 3-4 students and discuss what
  you think the necessary components of a good
  teacher are. Think back to previous teachers
  that you had. What made the good ones good and
  the bad ones bad?

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What is Good Teaching?

• Recipe for Being a Good Teacher
• Commitment to students
• Ability to deal with a wide range of student
  abilities
• In-depth knowledge of material
• Ability to make abstract concepts concrete
• Appropriate use of technology and techniques
• Sensitive to emotional needs of students

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What is Good Teaching?

• Expert Teachers Experienced, effective teachers
  who have developed solutions for common classroom
  problems. Their knowledge of teaching processes
  and content is extensive and well organized.

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Expert Teachers Know

• The academic subjects they teach
• General teaching strategies that apply in all
  subjects
• The curriculum materials and programs appropriate
  for their subject and grade level
• Subject-specific knowledge for teaching special
  ways of teaching certain students and particular
  concepts.
• The characteristics and cultural backgrounds of
  learners
• The settings in which students learn pairs,
  small groups, teams, classes, schools and the
  community
• The goals and purposes of teaching

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Teaching Artistry, Technique and a Lot of Work

• Reflective
• Thoughtful and inventive reflective teachers
  think back over situations to analyze what they
  did and why, and to consider how they might
  improve learning for their students.

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Teaching Artistry, Technique and a Lot of Work

• Concerns of Beginning Teachers
• Maintaining classroom discipline
• Motivating students
• Accommodating differences among students
• Evaluating student work
• Dealing with parents

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The Role of Educational Psychology

• Educational Psychology The discipline concerned
  with teaching and learning processes applies the
  methods and theories of psychology and has its
  own as well

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The Role of Educational Psychology

• Is it Just Common Sense?
• Example What method should a teacher use in
  selecting students to participate in a
  primary-grade reading class?

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The Role of Educational Psychology

• Is it Just Common Sense?
• Example Students are engaged in appropriate and
  educationally meaningful tasks, but still, some
  students are repeatedly out of their seats
  without permission, wandering around the room.
  What should the teacher do?

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The Role of Educational Psychology

• Is it Just Common Sense?
• Example Should a school encourage exceptionally
  bright students to skip grades or to enter
  university early?

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Using Research to Understand and Improve Teaching

• Descriptive Studies
• Studies that collect detailed information about
  specific situations, often using observation,
  surveys, interviews, recordings or a combination
  of these methods
• Ethnography A descriptive approach to research
  that focuses on life within a group and tries to
  understand the meaning of events to the people
  involved

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Using Research to Understand and Improve Teaching

• Descriptive Studies
• Participant Observation A method for conducting
  descriptive research in which the researcher
  becomes a participant in the situation in order
  to better understand life in that group
• Case Study Intensive study of one person or one
  situation

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Using Research to Understand and Improve Teaching

• Descriptive Studies
• Participant Observation A method for conducting
  descriptive research in which the researcher
  becomes a participant in the situation in order
  to better understand life in that group
• Case Study Intensive study of one person or one
  situation

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Using Research to Understand and Improve Teaching

• Correlational Studies
• A descriptive study that looks for a consistent
  relationship between two phenomena
• Correlation Statistical description of how
  closely two variables are related

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Correlational Studies

• Research Question Does playing a rough game at
• recess make children more distracted in class?
• Method
• Divide children into those who play rough games
  at recess and those who do no
• Measure level of distraction in class
• Is there a relationship between playing rough
  games at recess and being distracted in class?

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Correlational Design

• Coefficient of Correlation
• Range in value from -1.00 to 1.00
• The size of the number signifies the strength of
  the relationship (i.e., a higher number a
  stronger relationship)
• The sign of the number signifies the direction of
  the relationship
• A positive sign means that as one variable
  increases, the other increases.
• A negative sign means that as one variable
  increases, the other decreases

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Made-up Examples of Relations Between Two
Variables

• The correlation coefficient between years of
  education and annual income .60
• The correlation coefficient between time spent
  watching TV and IQ -.65
• The correlation coefficient between attending
  lectures and receiving high grades .80
• The correlation coefficient between playing rough
  games and distraction .50
• The correlation between height and aggression
  .02

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Correlational Design

• Major Limitation
• Cannot infer cause and effect relationship
• Correlation does not show causation

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Using Research to Understand and Improve Teaching

• Experimentation A controlled test of a
  hypothesis in which the researcher manipulates
  one variable to discover its effect on another

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Experimental Design

• Research Question Does playing rough games at
  recess make children more distracted?
• Method
• Randomly assign half the children to play a rough
  game at recess
• The other half plays a neutral game
• Measure level of distraction

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Experimental Design

• Random assignment A procedure for assigning
  people to experimental and control groups in
  which each individual has the same probability as
  any other of being assigned to a given group

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Example of Random Assignment

• Research Question Is the new method I have
  developed to coach basketball superior to the
  traditional method I had used before?
• Randomly assign females to
• Experimental Condition coached with new method
• Control Condition coached with traditional
  method
• Have teams play each other who wins?

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Theories for Teaching

• Theory An integrated statement of principles
  that attempts to explain a phenomenon and make
  predictions