Introduction to Educational Psychology: Developing a Professional Knowledge Base

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Introduction to Educational Psychology
Developing a Professional Knowledge Base

• EDU 330 Educational Psychology
• Daniel Moos

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Characteristics of Professionalism
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What types of knowledge do teachers need? (I)
Geography teacher uses questions to guide
students understanding has orderly classroom
General pedagogical knowledge (How should I
teach?)
Understanding principles of instruction and
management
Knowledge of learners and learning (How do my
students learn?)
Understanding how learning occurs and
understanding the factors that influence learning
Students learn with concrete examples, especially
with abstract concepts
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What types of knowledge do teachers need? (II)
Knowledge of content (What domain-specific
knowledge do I need to have?)
Geography teacher understands concepts longitude
and latitude
Understanding content you are teaching
Pedagogical content knowledge (How can I most
effectively teach this domain?)
Understanding how to represent content so it is
understandable to your learners
Draws lines on a beach ball to represent these
concepts. Then, relates ball to globe
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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
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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

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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

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Research (IV)

• A teacher conducts an experiment to determine if
  frequent homework increases achievement compared
  to infrequent homework.
• ACTION RESEARCH

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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

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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

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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?

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Ending Discussion, continued

• What is the role of research in teacher decision
  making? How does knowledge of the classroom help
  in this process?
• How can research make teachers more reflective?
  Besides a thorough knowledge of the research
  base, what else can teachers do to make
  themselves more reflective?