Lecture Notes, Chapters 1-4,6-9,11-12,15 PDF

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what classrooms are like today what is a good teacher how does differentiated instruction help what are the concerns of being a teacher what is educational psychology what are descriptive studies, correlational, experimental and quasi- experimental studies? Chapter 1: Learning, Teaching and Educatio...

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what classrooms are like today what is a good teacher how does differentiated instruction help what are the concerns of being a teacher what is educational psychology what are descriptive studies, correlational, experimental and quasiexperimental studies?

Chapter 1: Learning, Teaching and Educational Psychology Teachers Sense of Efficacy: a teacher’s belief that he or she can reach even difficult students to help them learn. - Anita Woolfolk primarily researches this topic - Teachers with high sense of efficacy work harder and persist longer even when students are difficult to teach, in part because these teachers believe in themselves and in their students. They are also less likely to experience burnout and more likely to be satisfied with their jobs Teacher Student Relationships: - Bridget Hamre and Robert Pinata (2001) - Followed 179 kids in a small school district from kindergarten to grade 8 - Concluded that the quality of a teacher student relationship in kindergarten predicted a number of academic and behavioural outcomes through grade 8 Teacher Preparation & Quality: - Linda Darling Hammond (2000) - Teacher qualifications are related to student achievement - The quality of teachers – measured by whether the teachers were fully certified and earned a major in their teaching field, was related to student performance - Establishing a positive relationship with students appear to be a powerful force in those students life Inside 3 Classrooms: - Teachers all have very serious commitment to their students - Classrooms with a wide range of challenges: different languages, different home situations, and different abilities and disabilities - Teachers are reflective, they constantly think back over situations to analyze what they did and why, and to consider how they might improve learning for their students 1. A multilingual grade 1 class - 22 students, half are ESL learners - Have found that a useful technique is making information available through visual materials (pictures, diagrams, word, concept maps, etc.)

- Peer tutors 2. A suburban grade 6 class - Classroom has varying racial, ethnic, family income and language backgrounds - Social and emotional development of his students – he wants them to learn about responsibility and fairness as well as science and social studies 3. An advanced math class - Teacher led class through process of organizing the material - He listed only the key strategies on the board - Students transformed the disorganized material from the book into an ordered and useful outline to guide their learning So what is Good Teaching? - Teachers must be knowledgeable and inventive - Use a range of strategies, but also invent new strategies - Some basic research-based routines for managing classes, but they must also be willing and able to break from the routine when a situation calls for change Why do we Need Differentiated Instruction? - Students differ being taught, language, socioeconomic status (SES), culture, race, and ethnicity - They bring different strengths, abilities and challenges to the task of learning - Classes must include students of diverse needs and a good teacher takes advantage of the diversity, not ignores it - Differentiated instruction is one way of going above and beyond accommodation to build - Teachers must take into account not only the subject being taught but who they are teaching it to Elements of Differentiation: - Seeking purpose, challenge, affirmation, power, and the chance to contribute - A confident teacher responds to diversity with invitation, investment, persistence, opportunity and reflection - Carol Ann Tomlinson (2003) describes these characteristics as the cogs of differentiation - They are called cogs because they are interdependent and interlocking, like the inner workings of a clock - Enables learners to participate in the same activity, making planning manageable for the teacher What are the Concerns of Beginning Teachers?

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Maintaining classroom discipline, motivating students, accommodating differences, evaluating work, deal with parents, getting along with other teachers Many teachers experience “reality shock” with their first jobs because they cannot ease into their responsibilities

The Role of Educational Psychology: - Simply knowledge gained from psychology and applied to the activities of a classroom - Others believe it involves applying methods of psychology to study classroom and school life In the Beginning: Linking Educational Psychology and Teaching: - 1890 William James officially founded the field of psychology and developed a lecture series foe teachers - G. Stanley Hall (James student) founded the American Psychological Association and encouraged others to make more detailed observations to study their students development - Thorndike (James student) wrote the first educational psychology text in 1903 - More recently, educational psychology has looked at how culture and social factors affect learning and development Educational Psychology Today: - Distinct discipline with its own therapies, research methods, problems and techniques - Examine what happens when someone (a teacher or parent) or something (a computer) teaches something (math, weaving) to someone else (a student, co-worker) in some setting (a classroom, theatre, gym) - Study child and adolescent development; learning and motivation, including how people learn different academic subjects such as reading or mathematics; social and cultural influences on learning; teaching and teachers; assessment including testing Not Common Sense: Taking Turns: - What method should a teacher use? - Common sense is selecting students randomly, research says there are better alternatives than going around the circle, but if they choose an alternative they should ensure they include everyone Helping Students: - When should teachers help slower students? - Common sense says help often, research says not to provide help before students ask because the helped student then feels they don’t have the ability to succeed Skipping Grades:

- Should teachers encourage bright students to skip grades? - Common sense is no, research says maybe - Lily Wong (1987) says seeing research results in writing can make them seem obvious. She presented a series of findings to a group of people and over half of them said that the incorrect findings were correct and seemed obvious Using Research to Understand and Improve Learning: - “Descriptive” meaning their purpose is simply to describe events in a particular class or several classes Descriptive: - Descriptive studies often include survey results, interview responses, samples of actual classroom dialogue, observations of class activities - Ethnographic methods involve studying naturally occurring events in the life of a group and trying to understand the meaning of these events to the people involved - Participant observation and works within the classes or school to understand the actions from the perspectives of the teacher and students - Case study investigates in depth how a teacher plans courses Correlational Studies: - Correlation is a number that indicates both the strength and the direction of a relationship between two events or measurements - Correlations range from 1.00 to -1.00 - Closer the correlation is to either 1.00 or -1.00, the stronger the relationship - Positive correlation indicates the factors increase or decrease together - Negative correlation means that increases in one factor are related to decreases in the other factor - Correlations do not show causation Experimental Studies: - Experimentation allows educational psychologists to go beyond predictions and actually study cause and effect - Participants (also called subjects) generally refers to the people being studied - Random means that each subject has an equal chance to be in any group - Quasi-experimental Studies meet most of the criteria for true experiments, with the important exception that the participants are not assigned to groups at random - Statistically significant means they probably didn’t happen just by chance - Field experiment happens in a real classroom rather than a lab, etc. Single Subject Experimental Studies: systematic interventions to study effects with one person, often by helping and then withdrawing a treatment

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The goal is to determine the effects of a therapy, teaching method, or other intervention ABAB experiment: A) and assess the behaviour of interest; then try an intervention B) and note the results; then remove the intervention and go back to baseline conditions A) and finally reinstate the intervention B).

Micro genetic Studies: - Goal is to intensively study cognitive processes in the midst of change – as the change is actually happening - a) Observe for the entire period of change – from when it starts to the time it is relatively stable b) make many observations, often using videotape recordings, interviews, and transcriptions of the exact words of the individuals being studied c) put the observed behaviour under the microscope - Goal is to explain underlying mechanisms of change The Role of Time in Research: - A distinction based on time - Longitudinal studies: studies that document changes that occur in subjects over time, often many years. They are informative, but time consuming, expensive and not always practical - Instead, a popular form of research is cross-sectional studies, which focus on groups of children at different ages Teachers as Researchers: - Action research: systematic observations or tests of methods that teachers or schools conduct to improve teaching and learning for their students - By focusing on a specific problem and making careful observations, teachers can learn a great deal about their teaching and their students Theories for Teaching: - Major goal of educational psychology is to understand what happens when someone teaches something to someone else in some setting (Berliner, 2006; Schwab, 1973) - Reaching this goal is a slow process - Research in educational psych examines limited aspects of a situation – a few variables at a time or life in one or two classrooms - Principal: established relationship between factors after much research - Theory: integrated statement of principals that attempts to explain a phenomenon and make predictions - Theories are based on systematic research and they are beginning and ending points of the research cycle - Hypothesis: a prediction of what will happen in a research study based on theory and previous research

Research is a continuing cycle that involves: - Clear specification of hypothesis or questions based on current understandings or theories - Systematic gathering and analyzing of all kinds of information (data) about the questions from well chosen research participants - Modification and improvement of explanatory theories based on the results of those analyses - Formulation of new and better questions based on the improved theories - Empirical: means based on data

Chapter 2: Cognitive Development Cognitive Development: Development: in its most general psychological sense refers to certain changes that occur in human beings (or animals) between contraception and death Physical Development: deals with changes in the body Personal Development: generally used term for changes in an individuals personality Social Development: changes in the way an individual relates to others Cognitive Development: changes in thinking, reasoning and decision-making Maturation: changes that occur naturally and spontaneously, and are largely genetically programmed Nature vs. Nurture: today the environment is seen as critical, but so are biological factors and individual differences What is the Shape of Development? Continuity vs. Discontinuity: - a continuous process would be like gradual improvement in your running endurance through systematic exercise - a discontinuous change (also called qualitative) would be like many of the changes that occur in humans during puberty, such as the ability to reproduce – an entirely different ability - qualitative changes are contrasted with purely quantitative change, such as an adolescent growing older - Piaget’s theory described below is an example of qualitative, discontinuous change in children’s thinking abilities Sensitive Periods: times when a person is especially ready for or responsive to certain experiences General Principles of Development: 1. people develop at different rates 2. development is relatively orderly 3. development takes place gradually The Brain and Cognitive Development: Cerebellum: coordinates and orchestrates balance and smooth skilled movements, plays a role in higher cognitive functions such as learning Hippocampus: critical in recalling new information and recent experiences Amygdala: directs emotional responses

Functional MRI: shows how blood flows within the brain when children or adults do different cognitive tasks Event Related Potential (ERP): measurements assess electrical activity of the brain through the skull or scalp as people perform activities such as reading or learning vocabulary words Positron Emission Tomography (PET): scans can track brain activity under different conditions

Piaget -

Cognitive developmental stage theory Believe that children need to interact with environment in order to learn and construct knowledge about the world – he says they do this through schemes He believed that it was action based schemes “physical” schemes that turned to mental schemes as children developed/got older Psychological structures Organized ways of making sense of experience Change with age o Action based (motor patterns) at first o Later move to a mental (thinking) level

2 Key Processes Schemes Develop Through: Assimilation & Accommodation:

Assimilation: use current schemes to interpret the external world (equilibrium) Accommodation: adjust old schemes to better-fit environment (disequilibrium) Stages:

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Universal: everyone around the world experiences this Invariant: go through the stages in the same order Discontinuous: like stairs rather than a hill

1) Sensorimotor Stage: - Building schemas through sensory and motor exploration - 0 to 2 years of age o 0: empty mind (reflexes) o 2: basic mental representations - Building schemes through sensory and motor exploration o Circular reaction

Intentional Behaviour: - object permanence: understanding that objects continue to exist when out of sight, objects are permanent entities - failing object permanence video Object Permanence in Infants? Predictive Looking in Infancy - Adapted from Bertenthal, Longo, & Kenny 2007

A-Not-B Error: - with increasing age, infants first look correctly before they reach correctly - trouble with inhibition, especially as the reach is reinforced over and over again - object permanence is a gradual achievement Mental Representation: - internal, mental depictions of information - basis of role-play, pretend play, building blocks of memory o images: objects, people, places o concepts: categories o can manipulate with mind o allow: make belief play 2) Preoperational Thought Limitations of Preoperational Thought: - cannot perform mental operations - egocentrism and animalistic thinking - cannot observe - lack hierarchical classification Egocentrism: failure to distinguish other’s views from one’s own - the photo in class to show how the doll sees the scene and the child should pick a different answer than the doll, so children are unable to understand that children cannot see the world from a way that is not their own

Conservation Tasks: - Conservation: physical characteristics of objects remain the same, even when their outward appearance changes - Preoperational stage children say there is different amounts in the beakers

How might this be adaptive?

Preoperational Thinking: (2-7 years) - see conservation tasks video Centration: - Only able to focus on one aspect at a time Irreversibility: - Cannot mentally reverse a set of steps 3) Concrete Operational Stage (7-11 years): Conservation:

- Decentration - Reversibility Classification Seriation - Transitive inference Spatial Reasoning - Cognitive maps - Map skills Inductive Reasoning: from examining concrete evidence in the real world, able to come up with the same rules and how the world works Limitations of Concrete Operational Thought: - Operations work best with concrete objects o Problems with abstract ideas, unable to think abstractly Follow-up Research on Concrete Operational Thought: - culture and teaching practices affect performance on tasks o conservation often delayed in tribal societies o going to school gives experience on Piagetian tasks 4) Formal Operational Stage (11 years or older): Hypothetico-deductive reasoning - Deducing hypotheses from general theory - Theory  make predictions about what would happen in the physical world Propositional Thought - Evaluating logic of verbal propositions Follow-Up Research on Formal Operational Thought: - School age children start developing abstract thinking skills - Nature vs. nurture - Formal operations may not be universal o Training, context contribute o Often fall back on easier thinking Educational Principles Derived from Piaget’s Theory: - Discovery learning - Sensitivity to children’s readiness to learn - Acceptance of individual differences - Very important that children are active learners in order to develop - Readiness of the child Overall: - Cognition not as broadly stagelike as Piaget believed (catastrophe theory) - Children are more sophisticated than Piaget thought. But adults are probably less advanced than Piaget thought

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Baldwin (1920-1930) says that nature and nurture work together, its not one or the other – he got shut down by either side This theory still inspires research

Limitations - Experiments are difficult to understand, they don’t make sense to children - Other researchers have found that with child friendly experiments, as young as 4-5 year olds can identify others perspectives

Vygotsky -

socio-cultural theory died at age 37, so he couldn’t develop theories as much as Piaget agreed that infants constructed knowledge through the world but thought that cognitive development was socially mediated/social interaction with peers

At Birth: - basic perceptual, attention, and memory capacities that we share with other animals Sociocultural Theory: - Cognition based on: - Social interactions - Language - Rapid language growth leads to change in thinking Zone of Proximal Development: - Tasks child cannot do alone, but can learn with help - Range of tasks possible only with the help of others (can’t do it on their own, and are challenged but not frustrated) - Social interaction, which promotes cognitive development o Scaffolding: the help that adults provide to the child in order to understand, can be a lot or a little Children’s Private Speech: Why do kids talk to themselves? - Piaget called this “egocentric speech” and viewed it as a sign of immaturity - Vygotsky viewed as foundation for all higher cognitive processes and viewed it as a sign of maturing cognitive processes Private speech helps guide behaviour - Children who feely use private speech do better Relationship of Private Speech to Task Difficulty:

Children’s Private Speech: - Gradually becomes more silent o Initially talk out loud, with age becomes the voice in our heads ‘inner speech’ o Children with learning and behaviour problems use longer as a compensatory mechanism o Just keep swimming video Vygotsky and Make-Believe Play: - Provides zone of proximal development in which children advance themselves o Imaginary substitutions help children separate thinking from objects (symbol) o Rules strengthen capacity to think before acting (inhibition develops) o Helps children understand social norms and expectations Social Origins of Make-Believe Play: - Piaget thought play emerged spontaneously in second year of life - Vygotsky thought that play requires scaffolding to emerge - Mothers and si...