Foundations of education courses aim to develop in
teachers and other school professionals such as
administrators, counselors, and psychologists the
ability to interpret knowledge within its historical,
philosophical, cultural, and social contexts. The aim of
interpretation is to produce clear normative and
critical perspectives on education both within, and
outside of, schools.
Describe the improving status of teaching as a
profession.
- US senate proclaimed 1985 as the year of teacher
- Increasing salaries to teacher
2. Summarize the reports of several nation task forces that
have recently studied education in the United States.
- In 1980, US began to reassess the educational system
at a national level to determine how well it was
preparing students to contribute to society.
1.
3. The United States has a large and widely diverse
school population. This diversity, which contributes
to our strength as a nation, presents multifaceted
problems to educators seeking complex solutions,
such as Japan, cultural value are shared by the
majority and conflicts rarely arise about how and
what students should be taught in schools. Explore
this important issue as you read on and identify the
effects of language, culture, and curriculum on
student learning.
4. Criticisms of Teaching
- Russian successes in the space race in the 1950s led
the United States to reevaluate science education.
- US nation has blamed its school for failing to
prepared students to meet the demands of modern
life.
5. Education and the Economy
- Identify factors that have contributed to criticism
of educations that affect student achievement.
Today’s Students are tomorrow’s work force
6. The Relationship Between School Conditions
and Student learning
- The failure to examine the possible effects may
lead people to conclude that students fail either
because:
They can’t learn or teachers can’t teach
- The conditions under which learning take place,
however, may hinder student learning.
- US teachers focus primarily on improving
students’ cognitive skills, where as Japanese teachers
focus on a broader array of student outcomes.
Core standards of effective teachers Identified by
the National Board for Professional Teaching
Standards.
Effective Teacher:
1. Are committed to students and their learning
2. Know the subjects they teach and how to teach
them
3. Take responsibility for managing and monitoring
student learning
4. Think systematically about their practice and learn
from experience
5. Are members of learning communities
The Current Educational Reform Movement
- Teachers are being asked to collaborate with their
critics in making decisions about how to improve the
schools.
- Professional teachers are needed
- Some knowledge comes from their experience and
much comes from scientific research as well.
- Combine scientific knowledge with clinical
knowledge
Teachers as Professionals
- Professionals are distinguished from others workers
- Professional generally need support and time to plan,
reflect on, and examine the problems that are unique
to the field.
Becoming a Professional
- Notice, when you begin teaching, how “old habits,”
derived from your experience as a student, emerge in
your own teaching. One day you may hear the words of
your third-grade teacher issuing from your own
mouth.
Teaching: Art or Science?
- Teaching involves intuition, spontaneity, artistry, and
characteristics not usually regarded as scientific
Good Teaching Skills
- Good teachers probably use the same skills used by
artists and scientists alike.
Teachers as Decision Makers and Problem Solvers
- You can acquire many of the skills needed for good
teaching only be aware of the findings of new research
and being open to new ideas and thoughtful
reflection.
- Good teaching is multifaceted; you will be a decision
maker and a mediator, as well as a problem solver, a
communicator, and a learner.
Cognition is the Scientific term for "the process of
Thoughts". Usage of the term varies in different
disciplines; for example in psychology and cognitive
science, it usually refers to an information processing
view of an individual's psychological function. Other
interpretations of the meaning of cognition link it to
the development of concepts; individual minds,
groups, and organizations.
The Cognitive Revolution
- Cognitive processes refers to mental activity such as
attending, perceiving, thinking, remembering,
problem solving, decision making, and creativity.
- Jean Piaget, a Swiss psychologist, showed that
children actively use their cognitive processes to
construct their understanding of the word, their initial
cognitive processes differ from those of adults.
- Many psychologists saw parallels between how
information is processed by computers and how it is
processed by human mind.
The Explosion of Cognitive Research
- Cognitive research addresses many topics of critical
importance to teachers, including thinking, concept
formation, comprehension, and problem solving.
- Cognitive research will help teachers to teach more
competently and students to learn more effectively.
Curriculum Changes in U.S. School
- A curriculum represents the body of knowledge that
a society deems valuable.
- The curriculum of schools in United States has
centered on traditional Western ideas.
- Curriculum content has important ramifications
because what students learn often determines how
well they learn.
Fantini (1986) has suggested the following principle for
the U.S education to govern:
A) all students can learn under the right conditions
B) students must have choice among educationally
sound option
C) students possess various kinds of intelligences and
talents
D) students’ motivation is increased if they have some
control over their own fate
Chapter 2: Learning: The Major
Focus of Educational Psychology
The Study of Learning
- How changes in behavior occur
Changes in Behavior as a Function of Learning
Some changes occur as a result of maturation, or
normal growth
Learning refer to changes in an individual due to
experience
- No single theory adequately explains how all
learning takes place yet.
Approaches to the Study of Learning
- Not all learning occurs in school
- Children know how to understand and use
language, they can perform many motor skills, and
they often understand a wide variety of concepts.
Behavioral and Cognitive Approaches : Contrasting
Views
- Behaviorists attempt to explain learning in terms of
how events in the environment affect behavior.
Ex: Behaviorists would claim that Jamal learned to give
the correct answer because he had been positively
reinforced for doing so.
- Cognitivists attempt to explain learning in terms of
how people think.
Ex: Cognitivists would claim that Jamal learned
because he had actively placed the correct response in
his memory.
Philosophical Differences Between Behaviorism
and Cognitivism
- Empiricists believe that a person can acquire
knowledge only about thing that can be experienced
by means of the senses of sight, touch, hearing, smell,
and taste.
- Rationalists believe that we learn because of our
ability to interpret events occurring in the
environment.
I. The behavior Approach to learning
Behaviorism is the most ambitious approach to
learning in that it tries to account for how all learning
occurs.
- Behaviorists refuse to consider intervening mental
processes, such as paying attention, that are not
directly observable.
-Introspection: is a method in which persons
participating in a psychological experiment attempt to
analyze their own thought process while they complete
various experimental tasks.
Behaviorists use the concept of conditioning to explain
how learning occurs.
Behaviorists rely on two kinds of conditioning to account
for learning :
Classical conditioning and Operant conditioning
- Classical conditioning: The process by one learns to
make a familiar response to a new stimulus
+ Responses are controlled by stimuli that occur
before the response is made
- Operant conditioning: Learning occurred and
behavior changed
+ Responses are controlled by stimuli that occur
after the response is made
Reinforcers
- Stimuli occurring after a response are called
reinforcers. A reinforcers may be received as pleasant
or unpleasant by the learner.
+ Do not assume that what is pleasant or desirable
to one student will be desirable to another.
Positive Reinforcement
- Positive reinforcement is the presentation of a
“pleasant” stimulus following the occurrence of a
response.
Punishment
- Punishment is the presentation of an “unpleasant”
stimulus following a response.
Extinction
- Involves removing a pleasant stimulus that previously
followed a response.
Negative Reinforcement
- Negative reinforcement refers to a method of
increasing behavior through the removal of an
unpleasant stimulus following a response.
Extinction and negative reinforcement involve
removing stimuli to change behavior.
Positive reinforcement and punishment involve
introducing stimuli to change behavior.
Figure 2.1
Outcomes resulting from presenting or removing
pleasant and unpleasant stimuli
Action
Type of stimuli
presented
removed
Pleasant
Positive
Reinforcement
Extinction
Unpleasant
Punishment
Negative
Reinforcement
Stimulus Discrimination and Stimulus Generalization
- Stimulus Discrimination is the process by which
individuals learn that a particular response is appropriate
in the presence of some stimuli, but not in the presence of
others.
- Stimulus Generalization is the process by which people
learn to make the same response in the presence of more
than one stimulus
Shaping
- Shaping is the process of teaching a new behavior by
reinforcing behaviors that become closer and closer
approximations of the desired behavior.
Computer-Assisted Instruction(CAI)
- Sometimes CAI can be solitary and discourages
students from working together
- CAI is better suited for drill and practice than for
building concepts and promoting comprehension
Controversial Issues Concerning Behaviorism
Cognitive psychologists argue that behaviorism does
not fully address a number of critical issues concerning
human learning.
Qualitative Changes in learning
- Psychological studies of human growth and
development have produced convincing evidence that
certain qualitative changes occur in the way
individuals learn as they age.
Differences Between Animal and Human Learning
- Human beings have the ability to use language and
exhibit a far greater degree of judgment and reasoning
than pigeons and rats.
Extrinsic and Intrinsic Motivation
- Teachers need to strike a balance regarding use of
Extrinsic and intrinsic forms of motivation.
The use of rewards to motivate students is called
Extrinsic Motivation.
The use of self-motivation to teach students what is
the right thing to do is called Intrinsic Motivation.
Individual Differences
- Teachers are well aware that what students learn may
vary from student to student, even when students have
exposed to the same environment.
Behaviorists claim that students who are placed in the
same learning situation may respond differently
because each student has a different set of previous
experiences.
Cognitivists argue that previous experiences are stored
in memory and that even the same event is remember
differently by different people.
II. The Cognitive Approach to Learning
- Cognition is a term used to describe all of our mental
processes, such as perception, memory, and judgment.
There are two major approaches to the study of
thinking : The cognitive-developmental model and
the information-processing model.
The Cognitive-Developmental Modal
- The Cognitive-Developmental Modal focuses on
changes that occur in how people think as they
progress from infancy though childhood and
adolescence and ultimately into adulthood.
People go through a sequence of four qualitatively
different stages of thinking
1. Infants acquire knowledge based on the sensory
experiences of sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell.
2. Preschoolers progress to the stage of acquiring
knowledge of the world though their perception of
their own experiences in the world.
3. Old children begin to apply the rules of logic to
understand how the world work.
4. Adolescents and adults progress to the stage where
they can apply logic to hypothetical as well as the real
situation.
The Information-Processing Model
- Uses the way a computer works as a way of
understanding how the human mind works.
A Computer takes in input, processes it, and produces
out put.
The human mind takes in information (sensory
experience), processes it(think), and produces out put
( behavior).
According to the Information-Processing theory,
students learn most effectively when they can relate
new knowledge to what they already know.
III. The Social Learning Approach
- Social learning theory, which is called observational
learning, focuses on how we learn by observing the
behavior of others.
To understand the linkage, however, it is first
necessary to distinguish the concepts of learning and
performance.
Learning and Performance
- People can learn to do many things without actually
doing them.
According to the social learning approach, people
learn by observing and modeling the behavior of
others.
The Role of Reinforcement in Social Learning
Theory
- Reinforcement severs a motivational role.
Vicarious learning occurs when people learn as a result
of observing someone else being reinforced.
Effective Models
A model’s effectiveness depends on the degree to
which the learner is motivated to learn.
1. Retention Phase
During the retention phase, learners encode the
observed behavior in memory using verbal cues,
mental images, or a combination of both.
2. Reproduction Phase
During the reproduction Phase, learners actually
attempt to perform the behavior.
3. Attention Phase
The attention phase consists of two parts: getting
learners’ attention and maintaining it.
- To get students’ attention, provide a stimulus that is
more noticeable than the other stimuli in the
classroom.
- To maintain students’ attention, you need to provide
them with sufficient incentive to attend.
4. Motivation Phase
During this phase learners decide whether or not to
perform the behavior they have learnt.
IV. The Humanist Approach to Learning
It focuses on the affective or emotional components of
learning; its goals is to help students develop as
independent learners and emotionally healthy
individuals.
- Humanist educators attempt to build students’ self
esteem by using values clarification and teaching
without grading.
Chapter 3: The cognitive
Developmental Model
Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget
became internationally known
for his pioneering studies of
the mental development of
children. Piaget defined four
discrete stages of cognitive
development through which a
child passes. Sensorimotor,
Preoperations,
Concrete
Operation,
and
Formal
Operations.
Stage
Sensorimotors
Approximate
age rang
Major
Characteristics
Birth to 11/2
Increasing goal directed
behavior
Object permanence
Egocentrism
Collective monologues
Preoperations
11/2 or 2 to 6 or 7
Magical thinking
Parallel play
Dramatic play
Stage
Approximate
age range
Major
Characteristics
Classification
Concrete Operations
6 or 7 to 11 or 12
Conservation
Seriation
Transitivity
Abstract thinking
Scientific reasoning
Hypothesis testing
Formal operations
11 or 12 and older
Adolescent egocentrism
(belief in the personal
fable and the imaginary
audience)
Adolescent
disenchantment
Sensorimotor Stage
During the sensorimotor stage, infants explore their
environments, seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, and
smelling the objects around them.
Infants at this stage develop the concept of Object
Permanence or the understand that Object continue to
exist even though they may not be visible at the
moment.
Newborn Baby
Newborns can see, hear,
taste, smell, and feel
pain; vision is the least
developed sense at birth
but improves rapidly in
the first months. Crying
communicates
their
need for food, comfort,
or
stimulation.
Newborns also have
reflexes for sucking,
swallowing,
grasping,
and turning their head in
search of their mother’s
nipple.
Developmental Milestones in Infancy
Infants develop motor skills in a highly predictable sequence, but they differ in
the age at which they achieve these skills. The bars in this chart show the age
span at which most children reach a particular developmental milestone. Some
children will attain these milestones earlier or later than the ranges shown.
Physical Growth, Birth to 2
Human beings grow faster in
infancy than at any other
time of life. On average,
infant boys are slightly taller
and heavier than infant girls.
Growth charts like these help
health-care providers assess
whether physical growth is
proceeding normally.
Percentiles indicate the
percentage of the population
a specific individual would
equal or exceed. For example,
a one-year-old girl whose
weight is at the 10th
percentile weighs the same or
more than only 10 percent of
girls the same age.
Preoperations Stage
During this stage, children become better and better at
using language to represent objects and events
symbolically.
- The egocentric thinking of preoperational children
affects the way they interact socially.
- The egocentric thinking also affect the way in which
children play.
- The egocentric thinking is consistent with a pattern
of magical thinking common in preoperations.
Because of egocentrism, preoperational children have
difficulty differentiating between their dreams and
reality.
Self-Awareness
Children become interested in mirror images around 6
months of age. Beginning at 15 to 18 months, toddlers
understand they are looking at a reflection of themselves.
The girl in this photograph is 21 months old.
Concrete Operations Stage
Children remain at the concrete operational stage of
cognitive development during most of elementary
school
- Children can classify objects according to various
abstract characteristics.
- Children can engage in seriation arranging objects in
a logical order.
- Children also understand transitivity and
conservation.
Friends Reading Together
During middle
childhood, from about
ages 6 to 12, friendships
become closer and more
exclusive. Children
develop a small circle of
friends and begin to rely
on them for
companionship, advice,
and understanding of
social relationships.
Acceptance by peers
becomes important to
children and to their selfesteem.
Formal Operations Stage
People can apply logical to abstract and hypothetical
situation.
At this stage, students can answer questions such as,
“what might have happened if the Germans and
Japanese had won World War II?”
Piaget’s Influence on Educational Thinking in the
United State
 Piaget’s work did not fit into the behaviorist approach
that dominated at that time.
 Piaget’s work began to attract attention in the United
State because of an accident of history.
Criticisms and Controversies
 Psychologists began to lose interest in Piaget’s theory
because of some valid criticisms.


No Explanation of how people move from state to stage.
 Transition
People seem to be in transition longer than the stages.


Piaget’s theory does not account for individual differences.
 Retarded and nonretarded children ,both groups, performed
similarly
Piaget’s theory failed to provide guidelines for accelerating
children cognitive development.
 He believed children would move to higher stages when they
were develop mentally ready.
 Piaget has contributed to educational practice by
demonstrating that learners:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Construct their own knowledge
Must be active
Go through a process of equilibration and
Go through distinct stages of cognitive development
Vygotsky’s Approach to Cognitive Development
Development and Learning
- Piaget believed that development precede learning.
- Vygotsky believed that development and learning
influence each other.
The Role of Society in Cognitive Development
-Both Piaget and Vygotsky believed that children construct
their own knowledge: maturation, experience and social
interaction.
- Bruner(1987) notes that Piaget minimizes the role of the
teacher. Therefore, children have the job of trying to
understand the world by themselves.
- Vygotsky believe that humans are biological beings living
in a society.
Elementary Processes and Higher Mental Functions
-Vygotsky believe that biological maturation accounts
for elementary processes in cognitive development.
- Children develop higher mental functions by
internalizing the values and knowledge of their
culture.
- Children self-talk, or inner speech, is part of the
process of building higher mental functions.
- Vygotsky believed that teachers and school, along
with the family, play a pivotal role in children’s
cognitive development.
Vygotsky’s Theory and Education
Zone of Proximal Development
- Vygotsky claimed this phenomenon occurs because
people’s cognitive processes function differently at the
individual and group levels.
- Ask questions or give suggestion that move students
toward their potential levels of development.
- Create collaborate learning situations in which
students guide each other.
Scaffolding
- Scaffolding refers to support and guidance adults give
as a child attempts to solve problems beyond his or her
current knowledge.
-Engage students in active learning by presenting in an
implicit rather than explicit way.
Language
- Vygotsky believed that people with highly developed
language skills can perform complex tasks that
nonliterate people can’t because literate people use
language as a tool to mediate between a task and the
performer of a task.
Vygotsky’s Contribution to Educational Thinking in
the United States
- Vygotsky’s theory stresses the active role that adults
play in guiding children
- In both Piaget’s and Vygotsky’s approaches, the role
of the teacher is to facilitate learning, not to transmit
information.
- Vygotsky tells us that learners internalize knowledge
most efficiently when other, such as teachers, parents,
or peers guide and assist them.
Gallimore and Tharp (1990) have identified six ways you
can help students learn.
1. Modal a behavior so that students can imitate it.
2. Reward students for behaving in desired ways.
3. Give students feedback about their performance and
allow them to revise or improve it.
4. Provide students with information they need to
learn.
5. Ask questions that require students to actively
formulate a response.
6. Provide students with a cognitive structure for
organizing and understanding new knowledge.
Bruner’s Approach to Cognitive Development
Stages of Development
- Bruner believes that people go through three stages
of cognitive development: Enactive stage, Iconic stage,
and Symbolic stage.
Discovery Learning
- To foster the discovery of structures, encourage
students to make intelligent guess based on available
evidence.
- Use the technique of guided discovery, in which you
create situations that help students induce ideas and
uncover relationships.
The Spiral Curriculum
- To study a topic or lesson within the context of
information they have learned in the meantime.
Motivation
- Like Piaget, Bruner emphasizes active learning.
Students learn best by doing.
The Constructivist Approach
- The term constructivism takes the position that
learners actively construct their own knowledge.
Making School Learning Relevant
-To demonstrate the relevance of the material to
students, teacher must know the relevance of itself