Why study educational psychology?

1. Why study educational psychology?

2. Some questions we will address this semester: • What are some characteristics that make teachers more effective? Can they be taught/developed? • To what extent do learners’ beliefs influence their constructions of understanding? • Which should curriculum emphasize more: Teaching content (i.e. concepts) or processes (i.e. study skills)? • Is competition “good” or “bad” for classroom motivation? • Is assessment overemphasized, underemphasized, or appropriately emphasized in today’s schools?

3. Overview of Research (I) Research Experimental -ddd Quasi-Experimental Non-Experimental • Experimental: • Treatment v. Control • Randomization • Quasi-Experimental: • Treatment v. Control • NO Randomization • Non-Experimental: • Treatment • NO Control • NO Randomization

4. Overview of Research (II) Cause and Effect Yes Yes Cause and Effect* Yes No No No Relationship

5. Research (I) Descriptive Interviews, observations, surveys to describe events, etc Relationship (+ or -) between two or more variables Correlational Manipulates variables to examine cause & effect Experimental Applied research to answer school/classroom question Action Provide concrete examples of learning/teaching in classroom Case Studies

6. Research (II) Research has found negative relationships between achievement and the time teachers spend in non-instructional activities, such as taking roll, passing out papers, and explaining procedures (Good & Brophy, 1986; Shuell, 1996). CORRELATIONAL RESEARCH

7. Research (III) Teachers were randomly assigned to two groups. The first groups was trained to provide students with prompts and cues when students initially failed to answer a question; the second group taught as they normally did. Students taught by the trained teachers scored significantly higher on an achievement test than did students taught by the second group of teachers in the control group (Anderson, Evertson, & Brophy, 1979). EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH

8. Research (IV) A teacher conducts an experiment to determine if frequent homework increases achievement compared to infrequent homework. ACTION RESEARCH

9. Research (V) Researchers administered a personality test to 4,483 university students who considered majoring in education, and they later checked the students’ records to see who graduated and what majors they selected (Sears, Kennedy, & Kaye, 1997). The researchers found that elementary education majors tended to fit a profile described as “warm, sociable, responsible, and caring about people” (p. 201), whereas secondary majors tended to be “oriented to the theoretical, disposed to investigate possibilities and relationships, and drawn to complexity, innovation, and change” (p. 201). DESCRIPTIVE RESEARCH

10. Research (VI) • Principle: Statements that summarizes results consistently supported by large number of research studies Example: Thinking of young children tends to be dominated by perception • Theory: Set of related principles derived from observations and are used to make predictions & explain phenomena Example: Principle #1: Reinforced behaviors increase frequency of that behavior Principle #2: Intermittently reinforced behaviors persist longer than those that are continuously reinforced Theory: Behaviorism, which attempts to explain the effect of experiences on behavior

11. Ending Discussion • Of the different roles that teachers perform, which is most important to grade level or content level? Least? How does the context of your teaching situation influence your answer? • Manager • Motivator • Instructor • Evaluator • What are some personal characteristics that make teachers effective? Can these be taught or developed?