CHAPTER 1: LEARNING, TEACHING, AND EDUCATIONAL
PSYCHOLOGY
Educational Psychology
-study of development, learning, motivation, teaching,
and assessment (in and out of schools)
“New teachers who have course work in development
and learning are twice as likely to stay in teaching”
-National Commission on Teaching and America’s
Future (2003)
STUDENT’S TODAY: DRAMATIC DIVERSITY AND
REMARKABLE TECHNOLOGY
 25% of US children under 18 are living in
immigrant families
 Almost 15 million children (22% of all children)
live in poverty
 US has the 2nd highest rate of child poverty
among the 35 economically advantaged
countries of the world (above Romania, below
Bulgaria)
 Lowest rates of child poverty: Iceland,
Scandinavian countries, Cyprus, and
Netherlands
 Typical black household has 6% wealth of the
typical white
 One in six American children have mile-to-
severe developmental disability
o Speech
o Language impairments
o Intellectual abilities
o Cerebral palsy
o Autism
 Birth to 17 years old:
o 20% had parents with divorce
o 11% living with someone who had an
alcohol or drug problem
o 7% had a parent who had served time in
jail
o 9% lived with someone who was
mentally ill
“American society and schools are more diverse and
more unequal than ever.”
-Erica Turner (2015)
Because of the effects of mass media, these diverse
students share many similarities today
 Infants to 8 years old: spend average of almost
2 hours each day watching TV or videos
29 minutes listening to music
25 minutes working with computer games
 2015 Pew Research Survey:
o 92% of 13 to 17-year-olds: went online
daily
o 24% were online almost constantly
o 88% teenagers have access to mobile
phone and most, (73%) are
smartphones
o 71% use more than one social media
site
CONFIDENCE IN EVERY CONTEXT
Teacher’s Sense of Efficacy
-teacher’s belief that he/she can reach even difficult
students to help them learn
-appears to be one of the few characteristics of teachers
that predict student achievement
-Teachers with high sense of efficacy:
 Work harder
 Persist longer
 Believe in themselves and in their students
 Less likely to experience burnout
 More likely to be satisfied with their job
HIGH EXPECTATIONS FOR TEACHERS AND STUDENTS
President George W. Bush:
NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND (NCLB) ACT 2002
 All students in Gr. 3-8 and once more in
HS take annual standardized
achievement tests in reading and
mathematics
 They had to be tested in science once in
each grade span
NCLB Requirements: criticized as
 Blunt instruments
 Generating inaccurate performance
results
 Perverse incentives
 Unintended negative consequences
President Barack Obama:
EVERY STUDENT SUCCEEDS ACT (ESSA) 2015
 the requirement for proficiency for all students
by a certain date has been dropped
 returns most control to the states to set
standards and develop interventions
 penalties are no longer central to the law
DO TEACHERS MAKE A DIFFERENCE?
Teacher-Student Relationships
 Bridgett Hamre and Robert Pianta (2001)
o The quality of the teacher-student
relationship in kindergarten,
 Level of conflict with the child
 child’s dependency on the
teacher
 Teacher’s affection with the
child
predicted a number of academic and
behavioral outcomes
 Deborah Roorda and colleagues (2011)
o Positive teacher relationships predicted
positive student engagement
 Russel Bishop and colleagues (2014)
o When teachers established warm,
caring relationships with students,
similar to those of an extended family:
students were more engaged
o Without such relationships, no
engagement
The Cost of Poor Teaching
 Sanders and Rivers (1996)
o Best teachers encouraged good-to-
excellent gains in achievement for all
students
o Lower-achieving students were the first
to benefit from good teaching
 Robert Gordon and colleagues (2006)
o Having a top-quartile teacher four years
in a row would be enough to close the
black-white test score gap
Effective teachers who establish positive relationships
with their students appear to be a powerful force in the
student’s lives
WHAT IS GOOD TEACHING?
-not confined in classrooms
-occurs in homes and hospitals, museum and sales
meetings, therapists’ offices, and summer camps
Reflective
-thoughtful and inventive
-thinks back over situations to analyze what they did
and why
-and to consider how they might improve learning for
students
SO WHAT IS GOOD TEACHING?
 Must be both knowledgeable and inventive
 Must be able to use range of strategies
 Must be capable of inventing new strategies
 Must have some basic research-based routines
for managing classes, but
 Must also be willing and able to break from the
routine (when situation calls for change)
 Must know the research on student
development
 Must know their own particular students who
are unique combinations of culture, gender, and
geography
MODELS OF GOOD TEACHING: TEACHER OBSERVATION
AND EVALUATION
Danielson’s Framework for Teaching
-first published in 1996
 Charlotte Danielson (2013)
-identifies those aspects of teacher’s
responsibilities that have been
documented through empirical studies
and theoretical research (as promoting
improved student learning)
Four domains (areas of responsibility):
 Planning and preparation
 Classroom environment
 Instruction
 Professional Responsibilities
TeachingWorks
-national project based at the University of Michigan
-dedicated to improving teaching practice
-practices are based on research evidence, wisdom of
practice, and logic
Measures of Teacher Effectiveness
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation:
MEASURES OF TEACHING EFFECTIVENESS
(MET) Project 2009
 Goal: to build and test measures of effective
teaching
BEGINNING TEACHERS
-share many concerns:
 Maintaining classroom discipline
 Motivating students
 Accommodating differences among students
 Evaluating student’s work with parents
 Getting along with other teachers
THE ROLE OF EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY
-knowledge gained from psychology and applied to the
activities of the classroom
-involves applying the methods of psychology to study
classroom and school life
IN THE BEGINNING: LINKING EDUCATIONAL
PSYCHOLOGY AND TEACHING
William James (Harvard in 1890)
-founded the field of psychology
-developed lecture series for teachers,
Talks to Teachers about Psychology
G. Stanley Hall
-James’ student
-founded the American Psychological Association
-encouraged teachers to make detailed observations to
study their student’s development
John Dewey
-Hall’s student
-founded the Laboratory School (University of Chicago)
-considered the father of the progressive education
movement
E.L Thorndike
-James’ student
-wrote the first educational psychology text (1903)
-founded the Journal of Educational Psychology (1910)
EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY TODAY
Educational Psychology
-discipline concerned with teaching and learning
processes
-applies the methods and theories of psychology and
has its own as well
-distinct discipline with its own theories, research
methods, problems, and techniques
Educational Psychologists
 Study child and adolescent development
 Learning and motivation (how people learn
different academic subjects such as reading or
mathematics
 Social and cultural influences on learning
 Teaching and teachers
 Assessment (including testing)
IS IT JUST COMMON SENSE?
Helping students
Common sense:
Teachers should offer help often
Research-based:
Sandra Graham (1996)
 When teacher provide help before
students ask, the students and others
watching are more likely to conclude
that the student who was given
assistance does not have the ability to
succeed
 Student is more likely to attribute
failures to lack of ability instead of lack
of effort = motivation suffers
Skipping grades
Common sense:
No! Very intelligent students who are several
years younger than their classmates are likely to
be social misfits.
Research-based:
A Nation Deceived: How Schools Hold Back
America’s Brightest Children
 Acceleration: most effective curriculum
intervention for children who are gifted
 For students who are bright,
acceleration has long-term beneficial
effects: both academically and socially
Students in Control
Common sense:
Students who choose their own learning
materials and tasks will be more engaged and
thus learn more
Research-based:
Not all the time. For ex:
Giving lower-ability students choice in
learning tasks sometimes means the
students just keep practicing what they
already do well instead of tackling
toucher assignments
Guided choice and some teacher control may be
useful in some situations
USING RESEARCH TO UNDERSTAND AND IMPROVE
LEARNING
Descriptive Studies
-collect detailed information about specific situations
(often using observation, surveys, interviews,
recordings, or combination of these methods)
CORRELATIONAL STUDIES
Correlation
-number that indicates both the strength and the
direction of a relationship between two events or
measurements
-statistical descriptions of how closely two variables are
related
Random
-each participant has an equal chance of being in any
group
-without any definite pattern; following no rule
Quasi-experimental studies
-meet most of the criteria for true experiment
-with important exception that the participants are not
assigned to groups at random
-existing groups such as classes or schools participate in
the experiment
Statistically significant
-not likely to be a chance occurrence
-probably did not happen simply by chance
Field experiment
-took place in a real classroom and not in laboratory
situation
ABAB EXPERIMENTAL DESIGNS
Goal: determine the effects of a therapy, teaching
method, or other intervention
A observing participants for a baseline period and
assess the behavior of interest
B trying an intervention and noting the results
A removing the intervention and go back to the
baseline conditions
B reinstating the intervention

Positive correlation -can help establish a cause-and-effect relationship

-indicates that the two factors increase or decrease
together
-e.g: Calorie intake and weight gain
Negative correlation
-increases in one factor are related to decreases in the
other
-high value on one is associated with low value on the
other
-e.g: height and distance from top of head to the ceiling
CLINICAL INTERVIEWS AND CASE STUDIES
Jean Piaget: Clinical Interview (to understand
children’s thinking)
-uses open-ended questioning to probe responses and
to follow up on answers
-questions go wherever the child’s responses lead
Case study
-investigates one person or situation in depth
-intensive study

EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES ETHNOGRAPHY

Experimentation Ethnographic methods
-allows to go beyond predictions and actually study -descriptive approach to research
cause and effect -focuses on life within a group and tries to understand
-variables are manipulated and the effects are recorded the meaning of events to the people involved

Participants / Subjects
-people or animals being studied

Participant observation
-actually participating in a group to understand the
actions from the perspective of the people in the
situation
THE ROLE OF TIME IN RESEARCH
Longitudinal studies
-study of development by observing subjects over many
years as changes occur
-informative, time-consuming, expensive, and not
always practical
Cross-sectional
-focusing on groups of students at different ages
Microgenetic studies
-detailed observation and analysis of changes in a
cognitive process as the process unfolds over a several-
day or several-week period of time
QUALITATIVE RESEARCH
-exploratory research that attempts to understand the
meaning of events to the participants involved
-use methods such as case studies, interviews,
ethnography, participant observation, and other
approaches (focus on a few people in depth)
QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH
-studies many participants in a more formal and
controlled way using objective measures
-experimentation, statistical analyses, tests, and
structured observations
Scientifically-based Research
-rigorous systematic research that gathers valid and
reliable data and analyzes those data with appropriate
statistical methods
Evidence-based research
-strategies grounded in rigorous scientifically-based
research
Action research
-systematic observations or tests of methods conducted
by teachers or schools to improve teaching and learning
for their students
-problem-solving investigation
WHAT KIND OF RESEARCH SHOULD GUIDE
EDUCATION?
 POINT
 Research should be scientific; educational
reforms should be based on solid evidence
 COUNTERPOINT
 Experiments and controlled studies are not the
only or even best source of evidence for
education
 Design-based research: we benefit from the
knowledge and wisdom of both practitioners
and researchers.
o Practitioners identify research
questions based on problems of
practice
o Researchers then bring their time and
talent to gather and analyze the data to
address those problems
 Beware of Either/Or.
THEORIES FOR TEACHING
Principle
-established relationship between two factors
Theory
-interrelated set of concepts used to explain a body of
data and to make predictions about the results of future
experiments
-integrated principles that attempts to explain a
phenomenon and make predictions
Hypothesis
-prediction of what will happen in a research study
based on theory and previous research
Empirical
-based on systematically collected data
KEY FACTORS THAT SUPPORT STUDENT LEARNING
 Student personal factors
 School and social-contextual factors
Educational Psychology provides a base for developing
knowledge and skills in virtually every area except
principal leadership
-jaiyanweiya-