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WOOLFOLK
SEVENTH
WINNE
CANADIAN

EDITION PERRY

EDUCATIONAL
PSYCHOLOG
vi PREFACE

Chapter 3 Self and Social and Moral Development

New sections on cultural differences in play, physical activity and students with

disabilities, eating disorders and the websites that promote them, self-conceptparticularly
elaborations of gender and sexual identityand Jonathan Haidts

model of moral psychology.

Chapter 4 Learner Differences and Learning Needs

New sections on nine possible multiple intelligences, autism spectrum disorders,

student drug use, and ways to identify students who are gifted and talented.

Chapter 5 Language Development, Language Diversity, and


Immigrant Education

New information on learning to read, emergent literacy and language diversity, shel-tered

instruction, and student-led conferences.

Chapter 6 Culture and Diversity

New coverage of homeless and highly mobile students, expanded coverage of pov-erty

and school achievement, opportunity gaps, and stereotype threat.

Chapter 7 Behavioural Views of Learning

Expanded coverage of teaching implications of behavioural learning.

Chapter 8 Cognitive Views of Learning

Updated coverage of working memory, developmental differences, and teaching

implications of cognitive learning theories.

Chapter 9 Complex Cognitive Processes

Updated sections on metacognition and learning strategies, creativity, and transfer,

and a new section on Paul and Elders model of critical thinking.

Chapter 10 The Learning Sciences and Constructivism

New material on inquiry learning and teaching in a digital world, including Bettys

Brainan example of a virtual learning environmentthe use of games in teaching,

and the initiative to teach computational thinking and coding.

Chapter 11 Social Cognitive Views of Learning and Motivation

Updated coverage of self-efficacy, self-regulated learning, and new material on emo-tional

self-regulation.

Chapter 12 Motivation in Learning and Teaching

Updated treatment of self-determination theory and goal theory, expanded coverage

of helping students cope with anxiety, and new material on flow and motivation
PREFACE vi

Chapter 13 Creating Learning Environments

New sections on understanding your beliefs about classroom management, creating

caring relationships, bullying, restorative justice, and Marvin Marshalls views on


consequences and penalties.

Chapter 14 Teaching Every Student

Updated discussion of research on teaching, as well as a new section on understand-ing


by design.

Chapter 15 Classroom Assessment, Grading, and Standardized Testing

Updated material on student testing.

A CRYSTAL-CLEAR PICTURE OF THE FIELD

AND WHERE IT IS HEADED

The seventh Canadian edition maintains the lucid writing style for which the book is

renowned. The text provides accurate, up-to-date coverage of the foundational areas

within educational psychology: learning, development, motivation, teaching, and assess-ment,

combined with intelligent examination of emerging trends in the field and society

that affect student learning, such as student diversity, inclusion of students with special

learning needs, education and neuroscience, and technology.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

During the years we have worked on this book, from initial draft to this most recent revi-sion,

many people have supported the project. Without their help, this text simply could

not have been written.

Many educators contributed to this and previous editions. For recent contributions,
we give thanks to

Lisa Dack, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education

Marian Jazvac-Martek, McGill University

Anoop Gupta, University of Windsor


Ashleigh Lerch, Western University

Elsa Lo, Concordia University

Chris Mattatall, University of Lethbridge


Julie Mueller, Wilfrid Laurier University

Nancy Norman, University of the Fraser Valley

Alexa Okrainec, Brandon University


Sheila Windle, University of Ottawa

Stephanie Yamniuk, University of Winnipeg

For reviews in connection with the sixth, fifth, and fourth Canadian editions, thanks to

Ajit Bedi, Memorial University of Newfoundland


Scott Conrod, McGill University

Connie Edwards, University of Toronto

Sonja Grover, Lakehead University


Michael Harrison, University of Ottawa

Linda Lysynchuck, Laurentian University

Anne MacGregor, Douglas College


viii PREFACE

Rob McTavish, Simon Fraser University


Marlene Maldonado-Esteban, University of Windsor

Carlin J. Miller, University of Windsor

John C. Nesbit, Simon Fraser University


Gene Ouellette, Mount Allison University

Krista Pierce, Red Deer College

Jeff St. Pierre, University of Western Ontario


Noella Piquette-Tomei, University of Lethbridge

Kenneth A. Pudlas, Trinity Western University

Jill Singleton-Jackson, University of Windsor

Irina Tzoneva, University of Fraser Valley

Jennifer A. Vadeboncoeur, University of British Columbia

David Young, University of Western Ontario

PHIL WINNE AND NANCY PERR


BRIEF CONTENTS

1 Learning, Teaching, and Educational Psychology 1

PART I STUDENTS

2 Cognitive Development 22

3 Self and Social and Moral Development 64

4 Learner Differences and Learning Needs 110

5 Language Development, Language Diversity,

and Immigrant Education 160

6 Culture and Diversity 195

PART II LEARNING AND MOTIVATION

7 Behavioural Views of Learning 232

8 Cognitive Views of Learning 266

9 Complex Cognitive Processes 302

10 The Learning Sciences and Constructivism 342

11 Social Cognitive Views of Learning and Motivation 382

12 Motivation in Learning and Teaching 414

PART III TEACHING AND ASSESSING

13 Creating Learning Environments 457

14 Teaching Every Student 497

15 Classroom Assessment, Grading, and Standardized Testing 53


CONTENTS

About the Authors iv The Brain and Cognitive Development 25

Preface v The Developing Brain: Neurons 26

The Developing Brain: Cerebral Cortex 28

Adolescent Development and the Brain 30

CHAPTER 1 Putting It All Together: How the Brain Works 30

Neuroscience, Learning, and Teaching 31

LEARNING, TEACHING, POINT/COUNTERPOINT: Brain-Based Education 34

AND EDUCATIONAL
Lessons for Teachers: General Principles 34

PSYCHOLOGY 1 Piagets Theory of Cognitive Development 36

Influences on Development 37

Teachers CasebookIncluding All Students: What Basic Tendencies in Thinking 37

Would You Do? 1 Four Stages of Cognitive Development 38

Overview and Objectives 2 FAMILY AND COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIPS GUIDELINES:

Learning and Teaching Today 2


Helping Families Care for Preoperational Children 41
Classrooms Today Are Dramatically Diverse 2
GUIDELINES: Teaching the Concrete-Operational Child 44
Confidence in Every Context 3

Do Teachers Make a Difference? 4 Information Processing and Neo-Piagetian Views of Cognitive

What Is Good Teaching? 5 Development 45

Inside Three Classrooms 5


GUIDELINES: Helping Students to Use Formal Operations 46

What Are the Concerns of Beginning Teachers? 7


Limitations of Piagets Theory 47
The Role of Educational Psychology 8
Vygotskys Sociocultural Perspective 50
In the Beginning: Linking Educational Psychology and
The Social Sources of Individual Thinking 50
Teaching 8
Cultural Tools and Cognitive Development 51
Educational Psychology Today 8
The Role of Language and Private Speech 52
Is It Just Common Sense? 9

The Zone of Proximal Development 54


Using Research to Understand and Improve
Limitations of Vygotskys Theory 55
Learning 10
Implications of Piagets and Vygotskys Theories for

POINT/COUNTERPOINT: What Kind of Research Should


Teachers 55

Guide Education? 13
Piaget: What Can We Learn? 55

Theories for Teaching 15 Vygotsky: What Can We Learn? 57

Supporting Student Learning 18 An Example Curriculum: Tools of the Mind 58

Summary 19 Reaching Every Student: Teaching in the Magic Middle 59

Teachers CasebookWhat Is an Effective Teacher? What


GUIDELINES: Applying Vygotskys Ideas to Teaching 60
Would They Do? 20
Cognitive Development: Lessons for Teachers 60

Summary 60

Teachers CasebookSymbols and Cymbals: What Would


CHAPTER 2
They Do? 62

COGNITIVE

DEVELOPMENT 22
CHAPTER 3

SELF AND SOCIAL AND MORAL

Teachers CasebookSymbols and Cymbals: DEVELOPMENT 64


What Would You Do? 22

Overview and Objectives 23

A Definition of Development 23
Teachers CasebookMean Girls: What Would You Do? 64

Three Questions Across the Theories 24


Overview and Objectives 6
General Principles of Development 25
CONTENTS x

Physical Development 65 Overview and Objectives 111

Physical and Motor Development 65 Language and Labelling 111

GUIDELINES: Dealing with Physical Differences in the Disabilities and Handicaps 112

Classroom 68 Person-First Language 113

Possible Biases in the Application of Labels 113


Play, Recess, and Physical Activity 68
Intelligence 114
Challenges in Physical Development 70
What Does Intelligence Mean? 114
GUIDELINES: Supporting Positive Body Images in
Multiple Intelligences 115
Adolescents 72

Multiple Intelligences: Lessons for Teachers 118


Bronfenbrenner: The Social Context for Development 72
Intelligence as a Process 118
Families 73
Measuring Intelligence 119
FAMILY AND COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIPS GUIDELINES:

GUIDELINES: Interpreting IQ Scores 121


Connecting with Families 76
Sex Differences in Intelligence 122
GUIDELINES: Helping Children of Divorce 77
Learning and Thinking Styles 124

Peers 78
Learning Styles and Preferences 124
Reaching Every Student: Teacher Support 80 Beyond Either/Or 126

Teachers and Child Abuse 81


Students Who are Gifted and Talented 126

Society and Media 83 Who Are These Students? 127

Identity and Self-Concept 84 Identifying and Teaching Students Who

Erikson: Stages of Individual Development 84 Are Gifted 129

GUIDELINES: Encouraging Initiative and Industry 86 Students with Learning Challenges 132

Neuroscience and Learning Challenges 132


GUIDELINES: Supporting Identity Formation 89
Students with Learning Disabilities 133
Ethnic and Racial Identity 90
Students with Hyperactivity and Attention
Self-Concept 91
Disorders 137

Sex Differences in Self-Concept of Academic Competence 93


Lessons for Teachers: Learning Disabilities
Self-Esteem 94
and ADHD 139

POINT/COUNTERPOINT: What Should Schools Do to


Students with Language and Communication
Encourage Students Self-Esteem? 95 Disorders 140

Understanding Others and Moral Development 96 Students with Emotional or Behavioural

Theory of Mind and Intention 96 Disorders 141

Moral Development 96 Students with Developmental Disabilities 144

Moral Judgments, Social Conventions, and Personal Choices 98 Students with Physical Disabilities and Chronic
Diversity in Moral Reasoning 100 Health Concerns 145

Beyond Reasoning: Haidts Social Intuitionist Model of Moral


GUIDELINES: Teaching Students with Developmental
Psychology 100
Disabilities 146

Moral Behaviour 101

Students with Sensory Impairments 148


GUIDELINES: Dealing with Aggression and Encouraging
Students with Autism Spectrum Disorders 150
Cooperation 104
Special Education and Inclusion 151

Personal/Social Development: Lessons for Teachers 106 Education Laws and Policies Pertaining to Exceptional

Summary 106 Students 151

Teachers CasebookMean Girls: What Would They Do? 108


POINT/COUNTERPOINT: Is Inclusion a Reasonable

Approach to Teaching Exceptional Students? 153

CHAPTER 4 FAMILY AND COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIPS GUIDELINES:

Productive Conferences 154

LEARNER DIFFERENCES AND


Response to Intervention (RTI) 154
LEARNING NEEDS 110
Universal Designs for Learning 156

Summary 156

Teachers CasebookIncluding Every Student: What Would

Teachers CasebookIncluding Every Student: What Would They Do? 158


You Do? 110
xii CONTENTS

CHAPTER 5 CHAPTER 6

LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT, CULTURE AND

LANGUAGE DIVERSITY, AND DIVERSITY 195

IMMIGRANT EDUCATION 160

Teachers CasebookSupporting Language Diversity in the Teachers CasebookWhite Girls Club: What Would

Classroom: What Would You Do? 160 You Do? 195

Overview and Objectives 161 Overview and Objectives 196

The Development of Language 161 Todays Diverse Classrooms 196

What Develops? Language and Cultural Differences 161 Culture and Group Membership 196

When and How Does Language Develop? 162 Meet Four Students 198

Emergent Literacy 165 Cautions about Interpreting

Emergent Literacy and Bilingual Children 167 Cultural Differences 200

Economic and Social Class Differences 201


GUIDELINES: Supporting Language and Promoting
Social Class and SES 201
Literacy 168

Extreme Poverty: Homeless and Highly


Diversity in Language Development 168
Mobile Students 202

Dual-Language Development 169


Poverty and School Achievement 202
Signed Languages 172
POINT/COUNTERPOINT: Is Tracking an Effective
What Is Involved in Being Bilingual? 172
Strategy? 205
Contextualized and Academic Language 173

GUIDELINES: Promoting Language Learning 175 GUIDELINES: Teaching Students Who Live in

Dialect Differences in the Classroom 175


Poverty 206

Dialects 176 Ethnicity and Race Differences in Teaching

Genderlects 177 and Learning 206

Teaching Students and English Language Learners 177 Terms: Ethnicity and Race 206

Immigrants and Refugees 178 Ethnic and Racial Differences

Classrooms Today 179 in School Achievement 207

Four Student Profiles 179 The Legacy of Discrimination 208

Generation 1.5: Students in Two Worlds 180 Stereotype Threat 212

Bilingual Education and English Learners 181 Gender in Teaching and Learning 214

Sex and Gender 214


POINT/COUNTERPOINT: What Is the Best Way to Teach
Gender Roles 216
English Language Learners? 182
Gender Bias in Curriculum 218

Sheltered Instruction 184

Gender Bias in Teaching 218


Affective and Emotional/Social Considerations 186

GUIDELINES: Avoiding Gender Bias in Teaching 219


GUIDELINES: Providing Emotional Support and Increasing

Multicultural Education: Creating Culturally


Self-Esteem for English Language Learners 187
Compatible Classrooms 220
Working with Families: Using the Tools
Culturally Relevant Pedagogy 221
of the Culture 188

Fostering Resilience 223


FAMILY AND COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIPS GUIDELINES:

FAMILY AND COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIPS GUIDELINES:

Welcoming All Families 189


Building Learning Communities 224
Challenges: English Language Learners with Disabilities and
Diversity in Learning 225
Special Gifts 190
Lessons for Teachers: Teaching Every Student 227
English Language Learners with Disabilities 190

Reaching Every Student: Recognizing Giftedness


GUIDELINES: Culturally Relevant Teaching 229

in Bilingual Students 191 Summary 229

Summary 192 Teachers CasebookWhite Girls Club: What

Teachers CasebookCultures Clash in the Classroom: What Would They Do? 23

Would They Do? 193


CONTENTS xii

CHAPTER 7 Ethical Issues 263

Behavioural Approaches: Lessons for Teachers 263

BEHAVIOURAL VIEWS OF Summary 264

Teachers CasebookSick of Class: What Would


LEARNING 232
They Do? 265

Teachers CasebookSick of Class: What Would


CHAPTER 8
You Do? 232

Overview and Objectives 233 COGNITIVE VIEWS OF


Understanding Learning 233
LEARNING 266
Neuroscience of Behavioural Learning 234

Learning Is Not Always What It Seems 234

Early Explanations of Learning: Contiguity


Teachers CasebookRemembering the Basics: What Would
and Classical Conditioning 236
You Do? 266

GUIDELINES: Applying Classical Conditioning 237


Overview and Objectives 267

Operant Conditioning: Trying New Responses 237


Elements of the Cognitive Perspective 267
Types of Consequences 238
Comparing Cognitive and Behavioural Views 267
Reinforcement Schedules 240
The Brain and Cognitive Learning 268

Antecedents and Behaviour Change 242


The Importance of Knowledge in Cognition 269
Putting It All Together to Apply Operant Conditioning: Cognitive Views of Memory 269

Applied Behaviour Analysis 243


Sensory Memory 270
Methods for Encouraging Behaviours 244
Attention and Teaching 274

GUIDELINES: Applying Operant Conditioning: Using Praise Working Memory 274

Appropriately 245
GUIDELINES: Gaining and Maintaining Attention 275

GUIDELINES: Applying Operant Conditioning: Encouraging Cognitive Load and Retaining Information 278

Positive Behaviours 247 Individual Differences in Working Memory 280

Long-Term Memory 282


Contingency Contracts, Token Reinforcement, and Group
Capacity, Duration, and Contents of
Consequences 248

Token Reinforcement Systems 249


Long-Term Memory 282

Explicit Memories: Semantic and Episodic 284


Handling Undesirable Behaviour 251
Implicit Memories 288
GUIDELINES: Applying Operant Conditioning: Using
Retrieving Information in Long-Term Memory 289
Punishment 253

Individual Differences in Long-Term Memory 290


Reaching Every Student: Severe Behaviour Problems 253
Teaching for Deep, Long-Lasting Knowledge: Basic Principles
Contemporary Applications: Functional Behavioural
and Applications 290
Assessment, Positive Behaviour Supports,
Constructing Declarative Knowledge: Making Meaningful
and Self-Management 254
Connections 290

Discovering the Why: Functional Behavioural


FAMILY AND COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIPS GUIDELINES:

Assessments 255

Organizing Learning 292


Positive Behaviour Supports 256
Reaching Every Student: Make It Meaningful 293
Self-Management 258
Development of Procedural Knowledge 296
FAMILY AND COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIPS GUIDELINES:

POINT/COUNTERPOINT: Whats Wrong


Applying Operant Conditioning: Student
with Memorizing? 297
Self-Management 259

Challenges, Cautions, and Criticisms 260 GUIDELINES: Helping Students Understand and

Beyond Behaviourism: Banduras Challenge Remember 298

and Observational Learning 260


Summary 299
Criticisms of Behavioural Methods 261
Teachers CasebookRemembering the Basics: What Would

POINT/COUNTERPOINT: Should Students Be Rewarded They Do? 300

for Learning? 262


xiv CONTENTS

CHAPTER 9 CHAPTER 10

COMPLEX COGNITIVE THE LEARNING SCIENCES AND

PROCESSES 302 CONSTRUCTIVISM 342

Teachers CasebookUncritical Thinking: What Would Teachers CasebookLearning to Cooperate: What Would

You Do? 302 You Do? 342

Overview and Objectives 303 Overview and Objectives 343

Metacognition 304 The Learning Sciences 343

Metacognitive Knowledge and Regulation 304 What Are the Learning Sciences? 343

Individual Differences in Metacognition 305 Basic Assumptions of the Learning Sciences 344

Lessons for Teachers: Developing Metacognition 305 Embodied Cognition 345

Learning Strategies 307 Cognitive and Social Constructivism 345

Being Strategic about Learning 307 Constructivist Views of Learning 346

Visual Tools for Organizing 310 How Is Knowledge Constructed? 349

Reading Strategies 312 Knowledge: Situated or General? 350

Applying Learning Strategies 313 Common Elements of Constructivist Student-Centred

Teaching 350
GUIDELINES: Becoming an Expert Student 314
Applying Constructivist Perspectives 352
Reaching Every Student: Learning Strategies for Struggling
Inquiry and Problem-Based Learning 353
Students 314

POINT/COUNTERPOINT: Are Inquiry


Problem Solving 315

Identifying: Problem Finding 316


and Problem-Based Learning Effective

Teaching Approaches? 356


Defining Goals and Representing the Problem 317
Cognitive Apprenticeships and Reciprocal
Searching for Possible Solution Strategies 321
Teaching 358
Anticipating, Acting, and Looking Back 322

Collaboration and Cooperation 359


Factors That Hinder Problem Solving 323

Expert Knowledge and Problem Solving 324


Tasks for Cooperative Learning 361

Preparing Students for Cooperative


GUIDELINES: Applying Problem Solving 325
Learning 362

Creativity: What It is and Why It Matters 326


Designs for Cooperation 365
Assessing Creativity 327
Reaching Every Student: Using Cooperative
OK, but So What: Why Does Creativity Matter? 327
Learning Wisely 367
What Are the Sources of Creativity? 327
GUIDELINES: Using Cooperative Learning 368
Creativity in the Classroom 329
Dilemmas of Constructivist Practice 369
The Big C: Revolutionary Innovation 329

Service Learning 370


GUIDELINES: Applying and Encouraging Creativity 330
FAMILY AND COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIPS GUIDELINES:

Critical Thinking and Argumentation 331


Service Learning 371
One Model of Critical Thinking: Paul and Elder 332

Applying Critical Thinking in Specific Subjects 333


Learning in a Digital World 372

Technology and Learning 372


Argumentation 333

Developmentally Appropriate Computer Activities


POINT/COUNTERPOINT: Should Schools Teach Critical

for Young Children 375


Thinking and Problem Solving? 334
Computers and Older Students 376
Teaching for Transfer 335
GUIDELINES: Using Computers 377
The Many Views of Transfer 336

Teaching for Positive Transfer 336 GUIDELINES: Supporting the Development

FAMILY AND COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIPS GUIDELINES:


of Media Literacy 379

Promoting Transfer 339 Summary 379

Teachers CasebookLearning to Cooperate: What Would


Summary 339
They Do? 38
Teachers CasebookUncritical Thinking: What Would

They Do? 341


CONTENTS
x

CHAPTER 11 CHAPTER 12

SOCIAL COGNITIVE MOTIVATION IN LEARNING

VIEWS OF LEARNING AND TEACHING 414

AND MOTIVATION 382

Teachers CasebookFailure to Self-Regulate: What Would Teachers CasebookMotivating Students When Resources

You Do? 382 Are Thin: What Would You Do? 414

Overview and Objectives 383 Overview and Objectives 415

Social Cognitive Theory 383 What Is Motivation? 415

A Self-Directed Life: Albert Bandura 383 Meeting Some Students 416

Beyond Behaviourism 384 Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation 416

Triarchic Reciprocal Causality 385 Five General Approaches to Motivation 418

Modelling: Learning by Observing Others 386 Needs 420

Elements of Observational Learning 387 Maslows Hierarchy of Needs 420

Observational Learning in Teaching 388 Self-Determination: Need for Competence, Autonomy,

and Relatedness 421


GUIDELINES: Using Observational Learning 390
Needs: Lessons for Teachers 423

Self-Efficacy and Agency 390

GUIDELINES: Supporting Self-Determination and


Self-Efficacy, Self-Concept, and Self-Esteem 391
Autonomy 424
Sources of Self-Efficacy 392

Self-Efficacy in Learning and Teaching 392 Goal Orientations 424

Types of Goals and Goal Orientations 425


GUIDELINES: Encouraging Self-Efficacy 394
Feedback, Goal Framing, and Goal Acceptance 428
Teachers Sense of Efficacy 394
Goals: Lessons for Teachers 429

Self-Regulated Learning 395


Beliefs and Self-Perceptions 429
POINT/COUNTERPOINT: Are High Levels of Teacher
Beliefs about Knowing: Epistemological Beliefs 429
Efficacy Beneficial? 396
Beliefs about Ability 430

What Influences Self-Regulation? 397 Beliefs about Causes and Control: Attribution Theory 431

Models of Self-Regulated Learning and Agency 399 Beliefs about Self-Worth 433

An Individual Example of Self-Regulated Learning 400


GUIDELINES: Encouraging Self-Worth 435
Two Classrooms 401

Beliefs and Attributions: Lessons for Teachers 435

Technology and Self-Regulation 402


Interests, Curiosity, Emotions, and Anxiety 435
Reaching Every Student: Families and Self-Regulation 403
Tapping Interests 436
Another Approach to Self-Regulation: Cognitive
Curiosity: Novelty and Complexity 437
Behaviour Modification 403

POINT/COUNTERPOINT: Does Making Learning Fun Make


FAMILY AND COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIPS GUIDELINES:

for Good Learning? 438


Supporting Self-Regulation at Home

and in School 403


GUIDELINES: Building on Students Interests and

Emotional Self-Regulation 406


Curiosity 439

Teaching Toward Self-Efficacy and Self-Regulated Flow 439

Learning 406 Emotions and Anxiety 440

Reaching Every Student: Coping with Anxiety 442


GUIDELINES: Encouraging Emotional Self-Regulation 407
Curiosity, Interests, and Emotions: Lessons
Complex Tasks 408
for Teachers 443

Control 408

Self-Evaluation 409
GUIDELINES: Coping with Anxiety 444

Collaboration 410 Motivation to Learn in School: On Target 444

Bringing It All Together: Theories of Learning 410 Tasks for Learning 445

Summary 412 Supporting Autonomy and Recognizing

Teachers CasebookFailure to Self-Regulate: What Would Accomplishment 447

They Do? 413 Grouping, Evaluation, and Time 448


xvi CONTENTS

Diversity in Motivation 449 Confrontation and Assertive Discipline 488

Lessons for Teachers: Strategies to Encourage Reaching Every Student: Peer Mediation and Negotiation 490

Motivation 451 Research on Management Approaches 491

FAMILY AND COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIPS GUIDELINES: FAMILY AND COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIPS GUIDELINES:

Motivation to Learn 453 Creating a Positive Classroom Environment 492

Summary 454 Diversity: Culturally Responsive Management 492

Teachers CasebookMotivating Students When Resources Summary 493

Are Thin: What Would They Do? 456 Teachers CasebookBullies and Victims: What Would

They Do? 49

CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CREATING LEARNING

TEACHING EVERY
ENVIRONMENTS 457

STUDENT 497

Teachers CasebookBullies and Victims: What Would

You Do? 457 Teachers CasebookReaching and Teaching Every Student:

Overview and Objectives 458 What Would You Do? 497

The What and Why of Classroom Management 458 Overview and Objectives 498

The Basic Task: Gain Their Cooperation 461 Research on Teaching 498

The Goals of Classroom Management 462 Characteristics of Effective Teachers 499

Creating a Positive Learning Environment 464 Teachers Knowledge 499

Some Research Results 464 Recent Research on Teaching 500

Routines and Rules Required 465 The First Step: Planning 501

Research on Planning 502


GUIDELINES: Establishing Class Routines 466
Objectives for Learning 503
Planning Spaces for Learning 469
Flexible and Creative PlansUsing Taxonomies 504
GUIDELINES: Designing Learning Spaces 470
Planning From a Constructivist Perspective 506

Getting Started: The First Weeks of Class 471


GUIDELINES: Using Instructional Objectives 506
Creating a Learning Community 472
Teaching Approaches 507
Maintaining a Good Environment for Learning 473
Direct Instruction 507

Encouraging Engagement 473


Seatwork and Homework 511

GUIDELINES: Keeping Students Engaged 474


GUIDELINES: Teaching Effectively 512
Prevention Is the Best Medicine 474

POINT/COUNTERPOINT: Is Homework a Valuable


Withitness 475

Use of Time? 513


Caring Relationships: Connections with School 476

Dealing with Discipline Problems 477 Questioning and Discussion 514

GUIDELINES: Creating Caring Relationships 478 FAMILY AND COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIPS GUIDELINES:

Homework 514
Stopping Problems Quickly 478

Fitting Teaching to Your Goals 518


GUIDELINES: Imposing Penalties 479
Putting It All Together: Understanding by Design 518
Bullying and Cyberbullying 480

GUIDELINES: Productive Group Discussions 519


Special Problems with Secondary Students 483

Differentiated Instruction 521


POINT/COUNTERPOINT: Is Zero Tolerance a Good

Idea? 484
Within-Class and Flexible Grouping 521

GUIDELINES: Using Flexible Grouping 522


GUIDELINES: Handling Potentially Explosive Situations 485

Adaptive Teaching 522


The Need for Communication 486

Reaching Every Student: Differentiated Instruction in Inclusive


Message SentMessage Received 486
Classrooms 524

Diagnosis: Whose Problem Is It? 486


Technology and Differentiation 524
Counselling: The Students Problem 487
Mentoring Students as a Way of Differentiating Teaching 526
CONTENTS xvi

GUIDELINES: Teachers as Mentors 526 GUIDELINES: Creating Portfolios 549

Teacher Expectations 527


GUIDELINES: Developing a Rubric 550
Two Kinds of Expectation Effects 527
Informal Assessments 551

Sources of Expectations 527


Grading 553
Do Teachers Expectations Really Affect Students
Norm-Referenced versus Criterion-Referenced

Achievement? 528

Grading 553
GUIDELINES: Avoiding the Negative Effects of
Effects of Grading on Students 554
Teacher Expectations 530
POINT/COUNTERPOINT: Should Children

Summary 530 Be Held Back? 556

Teachers CasebookReaching and Teaching Every Student:


Grades and Motivation 557

What Would They Do? 532


Beyond Grading: Communicating with Families 557

GUIDELINES: Using Any Grading System 558

CHAPTER 15 Standardized Testing 558

Types of Scores 558

CLASSROOM ASSESSMENT, Interpreting Standardized Test Reports 562

GRADING, AND STANDARDIZED Accountability and High-Stakes Testing 565

TESTING 534 FAMILY AND COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIPS GUIDELINES:

Conferences and Explaining Test Results 566

Teachers CasebookGiving Meaningful Grades: What Would Reaching Every Student: Helping Students with Disabilities
You Do? 534
Prepare for High-Stakes Tests 568
Overview and Objectives 535
GUIDELINES: Preparing Yourself and Your Students
Basics of Assessment 535
for Testing 569
Measurement and Assessment 536

Lessons for Teachers: Quality Assessment 570


Assessing the Assessments: Reliability and Validity 538
Summary 570
Classroom Assessment: Testing 541
Teachers CasebookGiving Meaningful Grades: What Would
Using the Tests from Textbooks 542
They Do? 572
Objective Testing 542

Essay Testing 543


Glossary G-1
GUIDELINES: Writing Objective Test Items 544
References R-1
Authentic Classroom Assessments 546

Name Index N-1


Portfolios and Exhibitions 546

Evaluating Portfolios and Performances 547 Subject Index S-1


SPECIAL FEATURES

GUIDELINES Teachers as Mentors 526

Avoiding the Negative Effects of Teacher Expectations 530


Teaching the Concrete-Operational Child 44
Writing Objective Test Items 544
Helping Students to Use Formal Operations 46
Creating Portfolios 549
Applying Vygotskys Ideas to Teaching 60
Developing a Rubric 550
Dealing with Physical Differences in the Classroom 68
Using Any Grading System 558
Supporting Positive Body Images in Adolescents 72
Preparing Yourself and Your Students for Testing 569
Helping Children of Divorce 77

Encouraging Initiative and Industry 86

Supporting Identity Formation 89 FAMILY AND COMMUNITY

Dealing with Aggression and Encouraging Cooperation 104 PARTNERSHIPS GUIDELINES


Interpreting IQ Scores 121
Helping Families Care for Preoperational Children 41
Teaching Students with Developmental Disabilities 146
Connecting with Families 76
Supporting Language and Promoting Literacy 168
Productive Conferences 154
Promoting Language Learning 175
Welcoming All Families 189
Providing Emotional Support and Increasing Self-Esteem for

English Language Learners 187


Building Learning Communities 224

Applying Operant Conditioning: Student Self-Management 259


Teaching Students Who Live in Poverty 206
Organizing Learning 292
Avoiding Gender Bias in Teaching 219
Promoting Transfer 339
Culturally Relevant Teaching 229

Service Learning 371


Applying Classical Conditioning 237
Supporting Self-Regulation at Home and in School 403
Applying Operant Conditioning: Using Praise Appropriately 245
Motivation to Learn 453

Applying Operant Conditioning: Encouraging Positive

Behaviours 247 Creating a Positive Classroom Environment 492

Applying Operant Conditioning: Using Punishment 253 Homework 514

Gaining and Maintaining Attention 275 Conferences and Explaining Test Results 566

Helping Students Understand and Remember 298

Becoming an Expert Student 314


POINT/COUNTERPOINT
Applying Problem Solving 325
What Kind of Research Should Guide Education? 13
Applying and Encouraging Creativity 330
Brain-Based Education 34
Using Cooperative Learning 368

Using Computers 377 What Should Schools Do to Encourage Students


Self-Esteem? 95
Supporting the Development of Media Literacy 379
Is Inclusion a Reasonable Approach to Teaching Exceptional
Using Observational Learning 390
Students? 153

Encouraging Self-Efficacy 394


What Is the Best Way to Teach English Language
Encouraging Emotional Self-Regulation 407
Learners? 182

Supporting Self-Determination and Autonomy 424


Is Tracking an Effective Strategy? 205
Encouraging Self-Worth 435
Should Students Be Rewarded for Learning? 262
Building on Students Interests and Curiosity 439
Whats Wrong with Memorizing? 297
Coping with Anxiety 444
Should Schools Teach Critical Thinking and Problem
Establishing Class Routines 466
Solving? 334
Designing Learning Spaces 470 Are Inquiry and Problem-Based Learning Effective Teaching
Keeping Students Engaged 474 Approaches? 356

Creating Caring Relationships 478 Are High Levels of Teacher Efficacy Beneficial? 396

Imposing Penalties 479 Does Making Learning Fun Make for Good Learning? 438

Handling Potentially Explosive Situations 485 Is Zero Tolerance a Good Idea? 484

Using Instructional Objectives 506 Is Homework a Valuable Use of Time? 513

Teaching Effectively 512 Should Children Be Held Back? 55

Productive Group Discussions 519

Using Flexible Grouping 522


CHAPTER

1
Clivewa/Shutterstock

LEARNING, TEACHING, and


EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY

TEACHERS CASEBOOK: Including All Students


m

It is your second year as a high school teacher in the Surrey school district in British
do?
Columbia. Over the last four years, the number of students from immigrant families

has increased dramatically in your school. You have students in your class who speak
you
a wide range of languages, including Mandarin, Filipino, Hindi, and Punjabi. Some of

them know a little English, but many have very few words other than OK. In

addition, you have several students with special needs; learning disabilities,

would
particularly problems in reading, are the most common. The district and provincial

policies are to educate all students in the general education classroom as much as

possible, so you need to find meaningful ways to support all students participation
what
in classroom tasks.

CRITICAL THINKING

What will you do to help all your students to make progress with learning

throughout the year?

How will you make use of resources in your school and classroom?

How can you work with the families of your nonEnglish-speaking students and

students with learning disabilities to support their childrens learning


OVERVIEW AND OBJECTIVES

If you are like many students, you begin this course with a mixture of anticipation and

wariness. Perhaps you are required to take educational psychology as part of a program in

teacher education, speech therapy, nursing, or counselling. Or you may have chosen this

class as an elective because you are interested in education or psychology. Whatever your

reason for enrolling, you probably have questions about teaching, schools, studentsor

even about yourselfthat you hope this course may answer. This seventh Canadian edition

of Educational Psychology has been written with questions such as these in mind.

In this first chapter, we begin by considering the state of education in todays worldmore

specifically, we ask: What it is like to be a teacher in Canadas diverse classrooms

today? Teachers have been both criticized as ineffective and lauded as the best hope for

young people. Do teachers make a difference in students learning? What characterizes

good teaching? Only when you are aware of the challenges and possibilities of teaching

and learning today can you appreciate the contributions of educational psychology.

After a brief introduction to the world of the teacher, we turn to a discussion of

educational psychology itself. How can principles identified by educational psychologists

benefit teachers, therapists, parents, and others who are interested in teaching and learning?

What exactly is the content associated with the field of educational psychology, and where

does this information come from? Finally, we consider an overview of a model that organizes

research in educational psychology to identify the key student and school factors related to

student learning (Lee & Shute, 2010).

After you read and study this chapter, you should be able to:

1.1 Explain how teaching matters.

1.2 Discuss the essential characteristics of effective teaching, including different

frameworks describing what good teachers do.

1.3 Describe the methods used to conduct research in the field of educational psychology

and the kinds of questions each method can address.

1.4 Recognize how theories and research in development and learning are related to

educational practice.

LEARNING AND TEACHING TODAY

Welcome to one of our favourite topicseducational psychologythe study of develop-ment,


learning, and motivation that takes place in and out of schools. We believe this is

the most important course you will take to prepare for your future as an educator, whether

your students are children or adults learning in classrooms or in environments that are
outside schools. In fact, there is evidence that new teachers who have completed course-work

in development and learning are twice as likely to stay in teaching (National Com-mission

on Teaching and Americas Future, 2003). This may be a required course for you,
so let us make the case for educational psychology by introducing you to classrooms today.

Classrooms Today Are Dramatically Diverse

Who are the students in Canadian classrooms today? Where do they come from? Here are
a few facts taken from 2011 and 2016 Census data (Statistics Canada, 2018a-c; Statistics

Canada, 2018):

According to the 2016 Census, 22% of Canadas population is foreign-born. Most immi-grants

(62%) come from Asian countries, but people come to Canada from all over the

world. More than 250 ethnic origins were reported.


CHAPTER 1 LEARNING, TEACHING, AND EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY
3

Approximately 22% of the population identify


as members of visible minority groups, and

approximately 21% report speaking a language

other than English or French at home.


Diversity is most concentrated in Toronto, Mon-treal,

and Vancouver. Students in the Vancouver

School Board speak more than 120 languages


and its not uncommon to have more English

learners than native speakers in classrooms in

some neighbourhoods.

Indigenous communities across Canada are

young and growing. Currently, they constitute

almost 5% of our total population.

Children come from a wide range of religious

communities. Participation in religions other than

Christianity is growing, particularly in the Mus-lim,

Hindu, Sikh, and Buddhist faiths.

Nearly 1.2 million (approximately 25%) children TEACHER EFFICACY Teachers personal sense of efficacy is related to a school

live in poverty in Canada and children represent atmosphere of high expectations for teachers and students, administrative
Professional/Shutterstoc

support, and real success with students.


36% of regular users of food banks (Canadian
ESB

Institute of Child Health, 2018). Particularly dis-turbing

is the fact that 4 in 10 of Canadas Indig-enous

children are poor.

Children in classrooms have diverse abilities and disabilities. Our inclusive policies

mean that children with disabilities spend the majority of their school day in general

education classrooms.

Children are surviving diseases as serious as cancer and returning to school, but some-times

with so-named late effects related to the treatment they underwent that have

implications for learning (Daly, Kral, & Brown, 2008).

Finally, childrens families are diverse. Some children live with a mom and dad, but

many live with a mom or dad, and some live with two moms or two dads (e.g., in the

case of gay and lesbian parents or blended families where parents are divorced and
remarried). Still others live with grandparents, or with aunts and uncles.

One thing these children have in common is that they are all digital nativesthey have

not lived without digital technologies and many are better equipped than their teachers to

deal with the changes to learning and living technology brings. Of course, there is also a
growing digital divide, which disproportionately advantages some groups over others.

These statistics are dramatic, but a bit impersonal. As a teacher, counsellor, recrea-tional

worker, speech therapist, or family member, you will encounter real children. You
will meet many individual children in this text, too. Even though students in classrooms

are increasingly diverse in terms of race, ethnicity, language, and economic and tech-nological

advantages, the teaching force remains very homogeneous. Clearly, it is impor-tant


for all teachers to understand and work effectively with all their students. Several

chapters in this text are devoted to understanding students. In addition, we will explore

the concepts of student diversity and inclusion through the research, cases, and practical
applications we present within each chapter.

Confidence in Every Context

Schools are about teaching and learning; all other activities are secondary to these basic
goals. But teaching and learning in the contexts described above can be challenging for

both teachers and students. This text is about understanding the complex processes of

development, learning, motivation, teaching, and assessment so that you can become a
capable and confident teacher.
Teachers sense of efficacy
Much of Anita Woolfolks research has focused on teachers sense of efficacy, defined A teachers belief that he or she

as a teachers belief that he or she can reach even difficult students to help them learn. can reach even difficult students

This confident belief appears to be one of the few personal characteristics of teachers to help them learn.
4 CHAPTER 1 LEARNING, TEACHING, AND EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY

that predict student achievement (akirog ?lu, Aydin, & Woolfolk Hoy, 2012; Tschannen-Moran
& Woolfolk Hoy, 2001; Tschannen-Moran, Woolfolk Hoy, & Hoy, 1998; Woolfolk &

Hoy, 1990; Woolfolk Hoy, Hoy, & Davis, 2009). Teachers with a 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. Also, teachers are less likely

to experience burnout and more likely to be satisfied with their jobs (Collie, Perry, &

Martin, 2017; Fernet, Guay, Sencal, & Austin, 2012; Fives, Hamman, & Olivarez, 2005;
Klassen & Chiu, 2010).

Anita Woolfolk (and other researchers) have found that prospective teachers tend to

increase their personal sense of efficacy as a consequence of completing student teaching,

but sense of efficacy may decline after the first year as a teacher, perhaps because the

support that was available during student teaching is gone (Woolfolk Hoy & Burke-Spero,

2005). Teachers sense of efficacy is higher in schools when the other teachers and admin-istrators

have high expectations for students and the teachers receive help from their

principals in solving instructional and management problems (Capa, 2005). Another

important conclusion from this research is that efficacy grows from real success with

students, not just from the moral support or cheerleading of professors and colleagues.

Any experience or training that helps you succeed in the day-to-day tasks of teaching will

provide a foundation for developing a sense of efficacy in your career. This text aims to

provide the knowledge and skills that form a solid foundation for an authentic sense of

efficacy in teaching.

Do Teachers Make a Difference?

For a while, some researchers reported findings suggesting that wealth and social status,

not teaching, were the major factors determining who learned in schools (e.g., Coleman,

1966). In fact, much of the early research on teaching was conducted by educational psy-chologists

who refused to accept these claims that teachers were powerless in the face of
poverty and other societal problems among students (Wittrock, 1986).

How could you decide if teaching makes a difference in the lives of students? You

could look to your own experience. Did you have teachers who had an impact on your

life? Perhaps one of your teachers influenced your decision to become an educator. Even

if you had such a teacher, and we hope you did, one of the purposes of educational psy-chology

is to go beyond individual experiences and testimonies, powerful as they are, to


systematically examine the impact of teaching on the lives of students by using carefully

designed research studies. Several such studies are described below.

TeacherStudent Relationships. Bridget Hamre and Robert

Pianta (2001) followed 179 children in a small school district from

the time they entered kindergarten through to the end of grade 8.

The researchers concluded that the quality of the teacherstudent

relationship in kindergarten (defined in terms of level of conflict

with the child, the childs dependency on the teacher, and the

teachers affection for the child) predicted a number of academic

and behavioural outcomes through grade 8, particularly for stu-dents

with high levels of behavioural problems. Even when the

gender, ethnicity, cognitive ability, and behaviour ratings of the

student were accounted for, the relationship with the teacher still

predicted aspects of school success. So students with significant

behaviour problems in the early years are less likely to have prob-lems
RELATIONSHIPS MATTER Research has shown that the

later in school if their first teachers are sensitive to their needs

quality of the teacherstudent relationship in kindergarten

Images/Shutterstoc
and provide frequent, consistent feedback. In another study that
predicts a number of academic and behavioural outcomes,
followed children from grades 3 through 5, Pianta and his col-leagues
particularly for students with behavioural problems, who

found that two factors helped children with lower skills in


are less likely to have problems later in school if their
Business

teachers are sensitive to their needs and provide frequent, mathematics begin to close the achievement gap. The factors were
consistent feedback. higher-level (not just basic skills) instruction and positive relation-ships
Monkey

with teachers (Crosnoe, et al., 2010).


CHAPTER 1 LEARNING, TEACHING, AND EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY

The Cost of Poor Teaching. In a widely publicized study, researchers examined how

students are affected by having several effective or ineffective teachers in a row (Sanders &

Rivers, 1996). They looked at fifth graders in two large metropolitan school systems in

Tennessee. Students who had highly effective teachers for grades 3, 4, and 5, scored at

the 83rd percentile on average on a standardized mathematics achievement test in one

district and at the 96th percentile in the other (99th percentile is the highest possible

score). In contrast, students who had the least effective teachers 3 years in a row averaged
at the 29th percentile in math achievement in one district and 44th percentile in the

othera difference of over 50 percentile points in both cases! Students who had average

teachers or a mixture of teachers with low, average, and high effectiveness for the 3 years
had math scores between these extremes. Sanders and Rivers concluded that the best

teachers encouraged good-to-excellent gains in achievement for all students, but lower-achieving

students were the first to benefit from good teaching. The effects of teaching

were cumulative and residual; that is, better teaching in a later grade could partially make

up for less effective teaching in earlier grades, but could not erase all the deficits. In fact,

one study found that at least 7% of the differences in test score gains for students could
be traced to their teachers (Hanushek, Rivkin, & Kain, 2005; Rivkin, Hanushek, &

Kain, 2001).

Another study about test score gains from the Los Angeles public schools may be
especially interesting to you. Robert Gordon and his colleagues (2006) measured the test

performance of elementary school students in beginning teachers classes. Teachers were

ranked into quartiles based on how well their students performed during the teachers

first 2 years. Then the researchers looked at the test performance of students in classes

with the top 25% of the teachers and the bottom 25% during their third year of teaching.

After controlling for the effects of students prior test scores, their family income, and
other factors, the students working with the top 25% of the teachers gained an average

of 5 percentile points more compared to students with similar beginning-of-the-year test

scores, while students in the bottom 25% lost an average of 5 percentile points. So students
working with a less effective teacher could be an average of 10 percentile points behind

the students working with an effective teacher. If these losses accumulate, then students

working with poorer teachers would fall farther and farther behind. In fact, the research-ers
speculated that . . . having a top-quartile teacher four years in a row would be enough
to close the black-white test score gap of about 34 percentile points (Gordon, Kane, &

Staiger, 2006, p. 8).

Effective teachers who establish positive relationships with their students appear to

be a powerful force in those students lives. Students who have problems seem to benefit

the most from good teaching. What makes a teacher effective? What is good teaching? We
consider those points next.

WHAT IS GOOD TEACHING?

Educators, psychologists, philosophers, novelists, journalists, filmmakers, mathematicians,

scientists, historians, policy-makers, and parents, to name only a few groups, have exam-ined

this question; there are hundreds of answers. And good teaching is not confined to

classroomsit occurs in homes and hospitals, in museums and sales meetings, and in

therapists offices and summer camps. In this text we are primarily concerned with teach-ing

in classrooms, but much of what you will learn applies to teaching in other settings

as well.

Inside Three Classrooms

To begin our examination of good teaching, lets step inside the classrooms of several out-standing

teachers. All the situations that follow reflect the conditions in real classrooms today.

A Multilingual Grade 1 Class. Anne Lee-Hawman teaches grade 1 in Mississauga,


Ontario. Of the 22 children in her classroom, half are English (or additional) language

learners. As is true for most linguistically diverse students in Canada, they spend 100% of
6 CHAPTER 1 LEARNING, TEACHING, AND EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY

their school day using English instead of their native language. This immersion, or sub-mersion,
approach to second-language learning contrasts with the bilingual approaches

to language learning used in many American states.

An English language teacher helps Anne to integrate these students by working in


Annes classroom each day. Together Anne and the English language teacher support

students in small groups and make modifications to the curriculum to enable students

who are English language learners to participate in all the activities of the classroom.
One strategy the two teachers have found useful is to make information available

through visual materials (e.g., pictures, diagrams, word or concept maps). Anne also

makes use of peer tutors and, whenever possible, offers one-on-one instruction to stu-dents

who need it.

In addition to supporting students acquisition of English, Anne encourages students

and their parents to continue talking, reading, and writing in their first language at home.

As well, she fosters an appreciation for diverse languages and cultures in her classroom

by designing tasks and activities that invite students to draw on their cultural knowledge

and by having students compare and contrast their home or community experiences and

practices during classroom discussions and sharing times.

Anne makes a point of learning as much as she can about her students linguistic

and cultural heritages. She recognizes how important it is for teachers to understand how

issues of language and culture influence childrens learning, so that they do not misinter-pret

childrens motivation and behaviour. This year, five languages are represented in

Annes classroom: English, Hindi, Punjabi, Mandarin, and Malay. She has a lot of learning

to do.

A Suburban Grade 6 Class. Ken teaches grade 6 in a suburban elementary school in

Richmond, BC. Students in the class have varying racial, ethnic, family income, and

language backgrounds. Ken emphasizes process writing. His students complete first

drafts, discuss them with others in the class, revise, edit, and publish their work. The

students also keep daily journals and often use these to share personal concerns with

Ken. They tell him of problems at home, fights, and fears; he always takes the time to

respond in writing. The study of science is also placed in the context of the real world.

The students use a National Geographic Society computer network to link with other
schools in order to identify acid rain patterns around the world. For social studies, the

class plays simulation games; for example, in two games that focused on the first half

of the 1800s, the students lived as trappers collecting animal skins and as pioneers
heading west.

Throughout the year, Ken is very interested in the social and emotional development

of his studentshe wants them to learn about responsibility and fairness as well as sci-ence
and social studies. This concern is evident in the way he develops his class rules at

the beginning of the year. Rather than specifying dos and donts, Ken and his students

generate a list of rights and responsibilities for their class. This list covers most of the situ-ations
that might need a rule.

An Inclusive Class. Eliot was bright and articulate. He easily memorized stories as a

child, but he could not read by himself. His problems stemmed from severe learning dif-ficulties

with auditory and visual integration and long-term visual memory. When he tried

to write, everything got jumbled. His teacher, Mia, and a special education teacher worked
together to tailor tasks to take advantage of Eliots strengths as well as to provide explicit

and intensive instruction to address his learning patterns and errors. With his teachers

help, over the next years, Eliot became an expert on his own learning and was trans-formed
into an independent learner; he knew which strategies he had to use and when

to use them. According to Eliot, Learning that stuff is not fun, but it works! (Hallahan &

Kauffman, 2006, pp. 184185).


What do you see in these three classrooms? The teachers are confident and commit-ted

to their students. They must deal with a wide range of student abilities and challenges:

different languages, different home situations, and different abilities and disabilities. They

must adapt instruction and assessment to students needs. They must make the mos
CHAPTER 1 LEARNING, TEACHING, AND EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY

abstract concepts, such as integrals, real and understandable for their particular students.
Then there is the challenge of how to use new technologies and techniques. The teachers

must use them appropriately to accomplish important goals, not just to entertain the stu-dents.

And the whole time these experts are navigating through the academic material,
they are also taking care of the emotional needs of their students, propping up sagging

self-esteem and encouraging responsibility. If we followed these individuals from the first

day of class, we would see that they carefully plan and teach the basic procedures for
living and learning in their classes. These teachers can efficiently collect and correct

homework, regroup students, give directions, distribute materials, collect lunch money,

and deal with disruptionsand they can do all this while also making a mental note to

find out why one of their students is so tired. Finally, these teachers are also reflectivethey

constantly think back over situations to analyze what they did and why, and to consider

how they might improve learning for their students.

So, What Is Good Teaching? Is good teaching science or art, the application of research-based

theories or the creative invention of specific practices? Is a good teacher an expert

explainera sage on the stageor a great coacha guide by the side? These debates

have raged for years. In your other education classes, you probably will encounter criti-cisms

of the scientific, teacher-centred sages. You will be encouraged to be inventive,

student-centred guides. But beware of either/or choices. Teachers must be both knowl-edgeable

and inventive. They must be able to use a range of strategies, and they must also

be able to invent new strategies. They must have some basic research-based routines for

managing classes, but they must also be willing and able to break from the routine when

the situation calls for change. They must know the research on student development, and

they also need to know their own particular students with their unique characteristics of

culture, gender, and geography. Personally, we hope you all become teachers who are

both sages and guides, wherever you stand.

Anne, Ken, and Mia are examples of expert teachers, but they have been teaching

for a long time. What about you? Lets look at what it is like to be a new teacher.

What Are the Concerns of Beginning Teachers?

STOP & THINK Imagine walking into class on your first day of teaching. List the concerns,

fears, and worries you have. What assets do you bring to the job?

Beginning teachers everywhere share many concerns, including how to maintain class-room

discipline, motivate students, accommodate differences among students, evaluate


students work, deal with parents, and get along with other teachers (Conway & Clark,

2003; Melnick & Meister, 2008; Veenman, 1984). Many teachers also experience what has

been called reality shock when they take their first job because they really cannot ease
into their responsibilities. On the first day of their first job, beginning teachers face the

same tasks as teachers with years of experience. Student teaching, while a critical element

of becoming a good teacher, does not really prepare prospective teachers for starting off
a school year with a new class. If you listed any of these concerns in your response to the

Stop & Think question, you should not be troubled. They come with the job of being a

beginning teacher (Borko & Putnam, 1996; Cooke & Pang, 1991).

With experience, hard work, and good support, seasoned teachers can focus on stu-dents

needs and judge their teaching success by the accomplishments of their students

(Fuller, 1969; Pigge & Marso, 1997). One experienced teacher described the shift from

concerns about yourself to concerns about your students: The difference between a begin-ning
Reflective Thoughtful and
teacher and an experienced one is that the beginning teacher asks, How am I doing?
inventive. Reflective teachers

and the experienced teacher asks, How are the children doing? (Codell, 2001, p. 191).
think back over situations to

Our goal in writing this text is to give you the foundation to become an expert as
analyze what they did and why,
you gain experience. One thing experts do is listen to their students. Table 1.1 shows and to consider how they might
some advice students in a grade 1 class gave to their student teacher: It looks like the improve learning for their
students know about good teaching, too. students.
8 CHAPTER 1 LEARNING, TEACHING, AND EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY

TABLE 1.1 Advice for Student Teachers from Their Students

The students in Ms. Amatos elementary school class gave this advice as a gift to their student teacher

on her last day.

1. Teach us as much as you can.

2. Give us homework.

3. Help us when we have problems with our work.

4. Help us to do the right thing.

5. Help us make a family in school.

6. Read books to us.

7. Teach us to read.

8. Help us write about faraway places.


9. Give us lots of compliments, like Oh, thats so beautiful.
10. Smile at us.

11. Take us for walks and on trips.

12. Respect us.

13. Help us get our education.

Source: From Nieto, S. Affirming Diversity: The Sociopolitical Context of Multicultural Education, 4e. Published by

Allyn and Bacon, Boston, MA. Copyright 2004 by Pearson Education. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.

THE ROLE OF EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY

For as long as the formal study of educational psychology has existedabout 100 yearsthere

have been debates about what it really is. Some people believe educational psychol-ogy

is simply knowledge gained from psychology and applied to the activities of the

classroom. Others believe it involves applying the methods of psychology to study class-room
and school life (Brophy, 2003; Wittrock, 1992). A look at history shows the close

connections between educational psychology and teaching.

In the Beginning: Linking Educational Psychology and Teaching


In one sense, educational psychology is very old. Topics that Plato and Aristotle discussedthe

role of the teacher, the relationship between teacher and student, methods of teaching,

the nature and order of learning, the role of affect in learningare still studied by edu-cational
psychologists today. From its beginning, psychology in North America was linked

to teaching. In 1890, William James officially founded the field of psychology and devel-oped

a lecture series for teachers entitled Talks to Teachers on Psychology. These lectures
were given in summer schools for teachers and then published in 1899. Jamess student,

G. Stanley Hall, founded the American Psychological Association. His dissertation was

about childrens understandings of the world; teachers helped him collect data. Hall
encouraged teachers to make detailed observations to study their students developmentas

his mother had done when she was a teacher. Halls student, John Dewey, founded the

Laboratory School at the University of Chicago and is considered the father of the progres-sive
education movement (Berliner, 2006; Hilgard, 1996; Pajares, 2003). Another of William

Jamess students, E. L. Thorndike, wrote the first educational psychology text in 1903, and

founded the Journal of Educational Psychology in 1910.


In the 1940s and 1950s, the study of educational psychology concentrated on indi-vidual

differences, assessment, and learning behaviours. In the 1960s and 1970s, the focus

of research shifted to the study of cognitive development and learning, with attention to
how students learn concepts and remember. More recently, educational psychologists have

investigated how culture and social factors affect learning and development (Anderman,

2011; Pressley & Roehrig, 2003).

Educational psychology The


Educational Psychology Today
discipline concerned with teaching

and learning processes; it applies What is educational psychology today? The view generally accepted is that educational

the methods and theories of psychology is a distinct discipline with its own theories, research methods, problems, and

psychology and has its own as well. techniques. Educational psychologists study learning and teaching and, at the same time
CHAPTER 1 LEARNING, TEACHING, AND EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY
9

strive to improve educational policy and practice (Anderman, 2011; Pintrich, 2000). In
order to understand as much as possible about learning and teaching, educational psy-chologists

examine what happens when someone (a teacher or parent) or something (a

computer) teaches something (math or weaving or dancing) to someone else (a student or


co-worker or team) in some setting (a classroom or theatre or gym) (Berliner, 2006;

Schwab, 1973). So educational psychologists 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;

and assessment including testing (Alexander & Winne, 2006).

But even with this long history of interest in teaching and learning, are the find-ings

of educational psychologists really that helpful for teachers? After all, most

teaching is just common sense, is it not? Lets take a few minutes to examine these

questions.

Is It Just Common Sense?

In many cases, the principles set forth by educational psychologistsafter spending much

thought, research, and moneysound pathetically obvious. People are tempted to say,

and usually do say, Everyone knows that! Consider these examples:

Helping Students. When should teachers provide help for lower-achieving students as

they do class work?

Common Sense Answer. Teachers should offer help often. After all, these lower-achieving

students may not know when they need help or they may be too embarrassed to ask

for help.

Answer Based on Research. Sandra Graham (1996) found that when teachers provide

help before a student asks, the student and others watching are more likely to conclude
that the helped student does not have the ability to succeed. The student is more likely

to attribute failures to lack of ability instead of lack of effort, so motivation suffers.

Skipping Grades. Should a school encourage exceptionally bright students to skip

grades or to enter university or college early?

Common Sense Answer. No! Very intelligent stu-dents

who are a year or two younger than their

classmates are likely to be social misfits. They are

neither physically nor emotionally ready for dealing

with older students and would be miserable in the

social situations that are so important in school,

especially in the later grades.

Answer Based on Research. Maybe. In A Nation

Deceived: How Schools Hold Back Americas Brightest

Children (2004), Nicholas Colangelo, Susan Assouline,


and Miraca Gross list the 20 most important points

from their report. The first two are: (1) Acceleration

is the most effective curriculum intervention for gifted


children, and (2) for bright students, acceleration has

long-term beneficial effects, both academically and

socially. Whether acceleration is the best solution for


a student depends on many specific individual char-acteristics,
Inc

including the intelligence and maturity of

the student as well as the other available options. For


RESEARCH MATTERS These students are participating in true hands-on

some students, moving quickly through the material cooperative learning. Will their knowledge of science improve using this

and working in advanced courses with older students approach? Are there better ways to learn this subject? Educational research
West/PhotoEdit,

is a very good idea. See Chapter 4 for more on adapt-ing should shed light on questions like these.

teaching to students abilities. Jim


10 CHAPTER 1 LEARNING, TEACHING, AND EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY

Obvious Answers? Many years ago, Lily Wong (1987) demonstrated that just seeing

research results in writing can make them seem obvious. She selected 12 findings from

research on teaching. She presented six of the findings in their correct form and six in

exactly the opposite form to university students and to experienced teachers. Both the

college students and teachers rated about half of the wrong findings as obviously cor-rect.

In a follow-up study, other participants were shown the 12 findings and their oppo-sites

and were asked to pick which ones were correct. For 8 of the 12 findings, the

participants chose the wrong result more often than the right one.

More recently, Paul Kirschner and Joren van Merrinboer (2013) made a similar point

when they challenged several urban legends in education about the assertion that learn-ers

know best how to learn. Today society has strongly held beliefs about students being

self-educating digital natives who can multitask, having unique learning styles, and always

making good choices about how to learn; these beliefs have no strong basis in research,

but they are embraced nonetheless.

You may have thought that educational psychologists spend their time discovering

the obvious, but the preceding examples point out the danger of this kind of thinking.

When a principle is stated in simple terms, it can sound simplistic. A similar phenomenon

takes place when we see a gifted dancer or athlete perform; the well-trained performer

makes it look easy. But we see only the results of the training, not all the work that went

into mastering the individual movements. And bear in mind that any research findingor

its oppositemay sound like common sense. The issue is not what sounds sensible, but

what is demonstrated when the principle is put to the test (Gage, 1991).

Using Research to Understand and Improve Learning

STOP & THINK Quickly, list all the different research methods you can name.

Educational psychologists design and conduct many different kinds of research studies.

Some of these are descriptive studiesthat is, their purpose is simply to describe events
in a particular class or several classes.

Correlational Studies. Often the results of descriptive studies include reports of cor-relations.
Descriptive studies Studies that
We will take a minute to examine this concept, because you will encounter many
collect detailed information about

correlations in the coming chapters. A correlation is a number that indicates both the
specific situations, often using
strength and the direction of a relationship between two events or measurements. Cor-relations
observation, surveys, interviews,

recordings, or a combination of range from 1.00 to 1.00. The closer the correlation is to either 1.00 or 1.00,

these methods. the stronger the relationship. For example, the correlation between height and weight is

about .70 (a strong relationship); the correlation between height and number of languages
Correlation Statistical description
spoken is about .00 (no relationship at all).
of how closely two variables are
The sign of the correlation tells the direction of the relationship. A positive
related.

correlation indicates that the two factors increase or decrease together. As one gets

Positive correlation A relationship larger, so does the other. Height and weight are positively correlated because greater
between two variables in which
height tends to be associated with greater weight. A negative correlation means that
the two increase or decrease
increases in one factor are related to decreases in the other. For example, the less you
together. Example: calorie intake
pay for a theatre or concert ticket, the greater your distance from the stage. It is impor-tant
and weight gain.
to note that correlations do not prove cause and effect (see Figure 1.1). Height

Negative correlation A relationship and weight are correlatedtaller people tend to weigh more than shorter people. But

between two variables in which a gaining weight obviously does not cause you to grow taller. Knowing a persons height

high value on one is associated with simply allows you to make a general prediction about that persons weight. Educa-tional
a low value on the other. Example: psychologists identify correlations so that they can make predictions about
height and distance from top of important events in the classroom.
head to the ceiling.

Experimental Studies. A second type of researchexperimentationallows educational


Experimentation Research
method in which variables are psychologists to go beyond predictions and actually study cause and effect. Instead of just

manipulated and the effects observing and describing an existing situation, the investigators introduce changes and note

recorded. the results. First, a number of comparable groups of subjects are created. In psychologica
CHAPTER 1 LEARNING, TEACHING, AND EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY 11

FIGURE 1.1

CORRELATIONS DO NOT SHOW CAUSATION

When research shows that broken homes and crime are correlated, it does not show causation. Poverty,

a third variable, may be the cause of both crime and broken homes.

Poverty
n
o

t
C
a

o
l

C or r el a ti e r

o r
r
to
leads
r

e
l
o

C
t
i
leads
to o

Broken Broken

Crime Crime
lead to

homes homes

Faulty Assumption More Likely Assumption

research, the term participants (also called subjects) generally refers to the people being

studiedsuch as teachers or grade 8 studentsnot to subjects such as math or science. One


common way to make sure that groups of subjects are essentially the same is to assign each

subject to a group using a random procedure. 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. Instead, existing groups such as classes or schools participate in the experiments.

In experiments or quasi-experiments, for one or more of the groups studied, the


experimenters change some aspect of the situation to see if this change or treatment has

an expected effect. The results in each group are then compared. Usually, statistical tests

are conducted. When differences are described as statistically significant, it means that they

probably did not happen simply by chance. For example, if you see p < .05 in a study,

this indicates that the result reported could happen by chance less than 5 times out of

100, and p < .01 means less than 1 time in 100.

A number of the studies we will examine attempt to identify cause-and-effect rela-tionships

by asking questions such as this: If some teachers receive training in how to Participants/subjects People or

teach spelling using morphology, the study of the smallest parts of words that contain animals being studied.

meaningsuch as s or ies for making words plural(cause), will the trained teachers
Random Without any definite
students become better spellers than students whose teachers did not receive training in
pattern; following no rule.
morphology (effect)? This was a field experiment because it took place in real classrooms

and not a simulated laboratory situation. In addition, it was a quasi-experiment because Quasi-experimental studies

Studies that fit most of the


the students were in existing classes and had not been randomly assigned to teachers, so
criteria for true experiments, with
we cannot be certain the experimental and control groups were the same before the teach-ers
the important exception that the
received their training. The researchers handled this by looking at improvement in
participants are not assigned to
spelling, not just final achievement level (Hurry et al., 2005).
groups at random. Instead,

existing groups such as classes


Single-Subject Experimental Studies. The goal of single-subject experimental studies is to
or schools participate in the
determine the effects of a therapy, teaching method, or other intervention. One common
experiments.
approach is to observe an individual for a baseline period (A) and assess the behaviour of
interest; then try an intervention (B) and note the results; then remove the intervention and Statistically significant Not likely
to be a chance occurrence.
go back to baseline conditions (A); and, finally, reinstate the intervention (B). This form of

single-subject design is called an ABAB experiment. For example, a teacher might record
Single-subject experimental
how much time students are out of their seats without permission during a week-long base-line
studies Systematic interventions
period (A), and then try ignoring those who are out of their seats but praising those who to study effects with one person,
are seated, and record how many are wandering out of their seats for the week (B). Next, often by applying and then
the teacher returns to baseline conditions (A) and records results, and then reinstates the withdrawing a treatment.
12 CHAPTER 1 LEARNING, TEACHING, AND EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY

praise-and-ignore strategy (B) (Landrum & Kauffman, 2006). When this intervention was first
tested, the praise-and-ignore strategy proved effective in increasing the time students spent

in their seats (Madsen, Becker, Thomas, Koser, & Plager, 1968).

Clinical Interviews and Case Studies. Jean Piaget pioneered an approach called the clin-ical

interview to understand childrens thinking. The clinical interview uses open-ended

questioning to probe responses and to follow up on answers. Questions go wherever the

childs responses lead. Here is an example of a clinical interview with a 7-year-old. Piaget
is trying to understand the childs thinking about lies and truth, so he asks, What is a lie?

What is a lie?What isnt true. What they say that they havent done. Guess how old

I am.Twenty. No, Im thirty.Was that a lie you told me?I didnt do it on purpose.I

know. But is it a lie all the same, or not?Yes, it is the same, because I didnt say how

old you were.Is it a lie?Yes, because I didnt speak the truth.Ought you be

punished?No. Was it naughty or not naughty?Not so naughty.Why?Because I

spoke the truth afterwards! (Piaget, 1965, p. 144).

Researchers also may employ case studies. A case study investigates one person or situation

in depth. For example, Benjamin Bloom and his colleagues conducted in-depth studies of

highly accomplished concert pianists, sculptors, Olympic swimmers, tennis players, mathema-ticians,

and neurologists to try to understand what factors supported the development of

outstanding talent. The researchers interviewed family members, teachers, friends, and

coaches to build an extensive case study of each of these highly accomplished individuals

(Bloom et al., 1985). Some educators recommend case study methods to identify students

for gifted programs because the information gathered is richer than just test scores.
Ethnography A descriptive
approach to research that focuses
Ethnography. Ethnographic methods, borrowed from anthropology, involve studying the
on life within a group and tries to
naturally occurring events in the life of a group to understand the meaning of these events
understand the meaning of
events to the people involved. to the people involved. In educational psychology research, ethnographies might study

how students in different cultural groups are viewed by their peers or how teachers
Participant observation A beliefs about students abilities affect classroom interactions. In some studies the researcher

method for conducting


uses participant observation, actually participating in the group, to understand the actions
descriptive research in which the
from the perspectives of the people in the situation. Teachers can do their own informal
researcher becomes a participant
in the situation in order to better
ethnographies to understand life in their classrooms.

understand life in that group.


The Role of Time in Research. Many things that psychologists want to study, such as cog-nitive
Longitudinal studies Studies that development (Chapter 2), happen over several months or years. Ideally, researchers
document changes that occur in would study the development by observing their subjects over many years as changes occur.
subjects over time, often many
These are called longitudinal studies. They are informative, but time-consuming, expensive,
years.
and not always practical: Keeping up with participants over a number of years as they grow

Cross-sectional studies Studies


up and move can be impossible. As a consequence, more researchers conduct cross-sectional

that focus on groups of subjects studies, focusing on groups of students at different ages. For example, to study how childrens

at different ages rather than conceptions of numbers change from ages 3 to 16, researchers can interview children of

following the same group for several different ages, rather than following the same children for 14 years.

many years. Longitudinal and cross-sectional research examines change over long periods of time.

The goal of microgenetic studies is to intensively study cognitive processes in the midst of
Microgenetic studies Detailed
changewhile the change is actually occurring. For example, researchers might analyze how
observation and analysis of

changes in a cognitive process as children learn a particular strategy for adding two-digit numbers over the course of several

the process unfolds over several weeks. The microgenetic approach has three basic characteristics: the researchers (a) observe

days or weeks. the entire period of the changefrom when it starts to the time it is relatively stable;

(b) make many observations, often using videotape recordings, interviews, and transcriptions
Qualitative research Exploratory
of the exact words of the individuals being studied; (c) put the observed behaviour under
research that attempts to
a microscope, that is, they examine it moment by moment or trial by trial. The goal is to
understand the meaning of events
explain the underlying mechanisms of changefor example, what new knowledge or skills
to the participants involved using
such methods as case studies, are developing to allow change to take place (Siegler & Crowley, 1991). This kind of research

interviews, ethnography, is expensive and time-consuming, so often only one or two children are studied.

participant observation, and other


approaches that focus on a few Quantitative versus Qualitative Research. There is a distinction that you will encoun-ter

people in depth. in your journey through educational psychologythe contrast between qualitative an
CHAPTER 1 LEARNING, TEACHING, AND EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY
13

quantitative research. These are large categories and, like many categories, a bit fuzzy at
the edges, but here are some simplified differences.

Qualitative Research. Case studies and ethnographies are examples of qualitative research.
This type of research uses words, dialogue, events, themes, and images as data. Interviews

and observations are key procedures. The goal is not to discover general principles, but, rather,
Quantitative research Research

to explore specific situations or people in depth and to understand the meaning of the events
that studies many participants in
to the people involved in order to tell their story. Qualitative researchers assume that no
a more formal and controlled way
process of understanding meaning can be completely objective. They are more interested in
using objective measures such as
interpreting subjective, personal, or socially constructed meanings.
experimentation, statistical

analyses, tests, and structured

Quantitative Research. Both correlational and experimental types of research generally observations.

are quantitative because measurements are taken and computations are made. Quantita-tive
Evidence-based practice in
research uses numbers, measurement, and statistics to assess levels or sizes of rela-tionships
psychology (EBPP) Practices that
among variables or differences between groups. Quantitative researchers try to
integrate the best available
be as objective as possible and remove their own biases from their results. One advantage
research with the insights of

of good quantitative research is that results from one study can be generalized or applied
expert practitioners and
to other similar situations or people. knowledge of the characteristics,

There has been considerable debate about the relative merits of qualitative and quan-titative culture, and preferences of the
approaches to research in education, as you will see in the Point/Counterpoint. client.

POINT/COUNTERPOINT What Kind of Research Should

Guide Education?

In the past decade, policies in both health care and in the treatment of psychological problems have empha-sized

evidence-based practices (McHugh & Barlow, 2010). The American Psychological Association defines

evidence-based practice in psychology (EBPP) as the integration of the best available research with

clinical expertise in the context of patient characteristics, culture, and preferences (American Psychological

Association Task Force, 2008, p. 5). What does this mean in education?

Research should be scientific; educational reforms What happened to education? If research produces useful
should be based on solid evidence. According to knowledge for most of the industries and businesses of the
Robert Slavin (2002), tremendous progress has occurred in world, then should not it be serving the same function for
fields such as medicine, agriculture, transportation, and education? Somehow education has been mostly exempt
technology because: from this grounding in research. Dewey (1896) proposed
POINT
the establishment of laboratory schools to ground educa-tion
In each of these fields, processes of development, rigor-ous
in research through combining research with practice
evaluation, and dissemination have produced a pace
in schools, ensuring both formative evaluation and demo-cratic
ofinnovation and improvement that is unprecedented in
feedback. Unfortunately, his vision has never been
history. . . . These innovations have transformed the
realized. There is no infrastructure in education that rou-tinely

world. Yet education has failed to embrace this dynamic,


studies learning and teaching to assess effectiveness.
and as a result, education moves from fad to fad. Educa-tional
If Revlon and Toyota can spend millions on research to cre-ate
practice does change over time, but the change
better products, how can schools continue to use
process more resembles the pendulum swings of taste
alleged best practices without collecting evidence about
characteristic of art or fashion (think hemlines) rather than
what really works? (Fischer, 2009)
the progressive improvements characteristic of science

and technology. (Slavin, 2002, p. 16) Writing in the New York Times, Gina Kolata (2013)

claimed that most educational programs found to be effective


The major reason for extraordinary advances in medicine
in small unscientific studies have not increased student learn-ing
and agriculture, according to Slavin, is that these fields base their
when tested in large scientific studies. For example, a
practices on scientific evidence. Randomized clinical trials and
summer institute for math teachers improved the teachers
replicated experiments are the sources of the evidence.
understanding of the math content they taught, but this gain
In his Presidential Address to the First Conference of the

in teacher knowledge did not lead to increased student


International Mind, Brain, and Education Society, Kurt Fischer
achievement.

(2009, pp. 34) said:


14 CHAPTER 1 LEARNING, TEACHING, AND EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY

a recess outside the school building) all affect doing sci-ence


Experiments are not the only or even the best
in school settings by limiting the generalizability of
source of evidence for education. David Olson (2004)
educational research findings. Compared to designing
disagrees strongly with Slavins position. He claims that we
bridges and circuits or splitting either atoms or genes, the
cannot use medicine as an analogy to education. Treat-ments
science to help change schools and classrooms is harder to
in education are much more complex and unpre-dictable
do because context cannot be controlled (p. 19).
than administering one drug or another in

medicine. And every educational program is changed by Berliner concludes that a single method is not what the govern-ment
classroom conditions and the way it is implemented. Patti should be promoting for educational researchers (Berliner,
Lather, a colleague of Anitas at Ohio State, says, In 2002, p. 20).
improving the quality of practice, complexity and the

messiness of practice-in-context cannot be fantasized BEWARE OF EITHER/OR: WHAT CAN YOU LEARN?

away. To try to do so yields impoverishment rather than


Complex problems in education need a whole range of meth-ods
COUNTERPOINT
improvement. That loss is being borne by the children, for study. Qualitative research tells us specifically what hap-pened
teachers, and administrators in our schools (Lather, 2004,
in one or a few situations. Conclusions can be applied
p. 30). David Berliner (2002) makes a similar point: deeply, but only to what was studied. Quantitative research can

Doing science and implementing scientific findings are


tell us what generally happens under certain conditions. Con-clusions

so difficult in education because humans in schools are


can be applied more broadly. Today many researchers

embedded in complex and changing networks of social


are using mixed methods or complementary methodsboth

interaction. The participants in those networks have


qualitative and quantitativeto study questions both broadly
and deeply. In the final analysis, the methods usedquantita-tive,
variable power to affect each other from day to day, and
qualitative, or a mixture of bothshould fit the questions
the ordinary events of life (a sick child, a messy divorce,
asked. Different approaches to research can ask different ques-tions
a passionate love affair, migraine headaches, hot flashes,
and provide different kinds of answers, as you can see in
a birthday party, alcohol abuse, a new principal, a new
Table 1.2.
child in the classroom, rain that keeps the children from

TABLE 1.2 What Can We Learn?

Different approaches to research can ask and answer different questions.

RESEARCH METHOD PURPOSES/QUESTIONS ADDRESSED EXAMPLE

Correlational To assess the strength and direction of the Is average amount of homework completed weekly
relation between two variables; to make related to student performance on unit tests? If
predictions. so, is the relation positive or negative?

Experimental To identify cause-and-effect relations; to test Will giving more homework cause students to learn

possible explanations for effects. more in science class?

Single-Subject To identify the effects of a treatment or When Emily records the number of pages she
Experiment intervention for one individual.
reads each night, will she read more pages? If
she stops recording, will her amount of reading

return to the previous levels?

Case Studies To understand one or a few individuals or How does one boy make the transition from a
situations in depth. small rural elementary school to a large middle

school? What are his main problems, concerns,


issues, accomplishments, fears, supports, etc.?

Ethnography To understand experiences from the How do new teachers make sense of the norms,

participants point of view: What is their expectations, and culture of their new school,

meaning? and how do they respond?

Mixed Methods
To ask complex questions involving causes, Based on an in-depth study of 10 classrooms, select
meanings, and relations among variables; to the classes with the fewest behavioural

pursue both depth and breadth in research problems, then explore how teachers in those

questions. classes established a positive learning climate by

interviewing teachers and students and analyzing

videotapes made at the beginning of school.


CHAPTER 1 LEARNING, TEACHING, AND EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY 1

Teachers as Researchers. Finally, research can also be a way to improve teaching in one

classroom or one school. The same kind of careful observation, intervention, data gathering,

and analysis that occurs in large research projects can be applied in any classroom to answer

questions such as Which writing prompts seem to encourage the best descriptive writing in

my class? When does Kenyon seem to have the greatest difficulty concentrating on academic

tasks? Would assigning task roles in science groups lead to more equitable participation of

girls and boys in the work? This kind of problem-solving investigation is called action research

(or teacher research, or teacher inquiry). By focusing on a specific problem and making care-ful

observations, teachers can learn a great deal about both their teaching and their students.

You can find reports of the findings from all types of studies in journals that are

referenced in this text. Table 1.3 provides a list of some of the major journals that publish

work in educational and developmental psychology. As authors, we have published arti-cles

in many of these journals and also have reviewed manuscripts to decide what will be

published. For many years, Anita was the editor of the Theory Into Practice journal, and

Nancy sat on the editorial board. The goal of that journal is just what the title saysto

bring the most useful theories into educational practice and also to bring the wisdom of

practice back to researchers who study education. Theory Into Practice is a great journal

to inspire and guide action research in classrooms.

Theories for Teaching


As we saw earlier, the 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. There are very few landmark studies that answer

a question once and for all. There are so many different kinds of students, teachers, tasks,

and settings; and besides, human beings are pretty complicated. To deal with this complex-ity,

research in educational psychology examines limited aspects of a situationperhaps a

few variables at a time or life in one or two classrooms. If enough studies are completed in

a certain area and findings repeatedly point to the same conclusions, we eventually arrive

at a principle. This is the term for an established relationship between two or more factorsbetween

a certain teaching strategy, for example, and student achievement.

Another tool for building a better understanding of the teaching and learning pro-cesses

is theory. The commonsense notion of theory (as in Oh well, it was only a theory)

is a guess or hunch. But the scientific meaning of theory is quite different. A theory in
science is an interrelated set of concepts that is used to explain a body of data and to

make predictions about the results of future experiments (Stanovich, 1992, p. 21). Given

a number of established principles, educational psychologists have developed explana-tions


for the relationships among many variables and even whole systems of relationships.

There are theories to explain how language develops, how differences in intelligence

occur, and, as noted earlier, how people learn.


You will encounter many theories of development, learning, and motivation in this text.

Theories are based on systematic research and they are the beginning and ending points of

the research cycle. In the beginning, theories provide the research hypotheses to be tested or Action research Systematic

the questions examined. A hypothesis is a prediction of what will happen in a research study observations or tests of methods

that teachers or schools conduct


based on theory and previous research. For example, two different theories might suggest
to improve teaching and learning
two competing predictions that could be tested. Piagets theory might suggest that instruction
for their students.

cannot teach young children to think more abstractly, whereas Vygotskys theory might sug-gest

that this is possible. Of course, at times, psychologists do not know enough to make Principle Established relationship
predictions, so they just ask research questions. An example question might be, Is there a between factors.

difference in internet usage by male and female adolescents from different ethnic groups?
Theory Integrated statement of
Research is a continuing cycle that involves:
principles that attempts to

clear specification of hypotheses, problems, or questions based on current understand-ings explain a phenomenon and make

predictions.
or theories;
systematic gathering and analyzing of all kinds of information (data) about the ques-tions
Hypothesis A prediction of what
from well-chosen research participants in carefully selected settings/situations; will happen in a research study
interpreting and analyzing the data gathered using appropriate methods to answer the based on theory and previous

questions or solve the problems; research.


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DANCE ON STILTS AT THE GIRLS’ UNYAGO, NIUCHI

Newala, too, suffers from the distance of its water-supply—at least


the Newala of to-day does; there was once another Newala in a lovely
valley at the foot of the plateau. I visited it and found scarcely a trace
of houses, only a Christian cemetery, with the graves of several
missionaries and their converts, remaining as a monument of its
former glories. But the surroundings are wonderfully beautiful. A
thick grove of splendid mango-trees closes in the weather-worn
crosses and headstones; behind them, combining the useful and the
agreeable, is a whole plantation of lemon-trees covered with ripe
fruit; not the small African kind, but a much larger and also juicier
imported variety, which drops into the hands of the passing traveller,
without calling for any exertion on his part. Old Newala is now under
the jurisdiction of the native pastor, Daudi, at Chingulungulu, who,
as I am on very friendly terms with him, allows me, as a matter of
course, the use of this lemon-grove during my stay at Newala.
FEET MUTILATED BY THE RAVAGES OF THE “JIGGER”
(Sarcopsylla penetrans)

The water-supply of New Newala is in the bottom of the valley,


some 1,600 feet lower down. The way is not only long and fatiguing,
but the water, when we get it, is thoroughly bad. We are suffering not
only from this, but from the fact that the arrangements at Newala are
nothing short of luxurious. We have a separate kitchen—a hut built
against the boma palisade on the right of the baraza, the interior of
which is not visible from our usual position. Our two cooks were not
long in finding this out, and they consequently do—or rather neglect
to do—what they please. In any case they do not seem to be very
particular about the boiling of our drinking-water—at least I can
attribute to no other cause certain attacks of a dysenteric nature,
from which both Knudsen and I have suffered for some time. If a
man like Omari has to be left unwatched for a moment, he is capable
of anything. Besides this complaint, we are inconvenienced by the
state of our nails, which have become as hard as glass, and crack on
the slightest provocation, and I have the additional infliction of
pimples all over me. As if all this were not enough, we have also, for
the last week been waging war against the jigger, who has found his
Eldorado in the hot sand of the Makonde plateau. Our men are seen
all day long—whenever their chronic colds and the dysentery likewise
raging among them permit—occupied in removing this scourge of
Africa from their feet and trying to prevent the disastrous
consequences of its presence. It is quite common to see natives of
this place with one or two toes missing; many have lost all their toes,
or even the whole front part of the foot, so that a well-formed leg
ends in a shapeless stump. These ravages are caused by the female of
Sarcopsylla penetrans, which bores its way under the skin and there
develops an egg-sac the size of a pea. In all books on the subject, it is
stated that one’s attention is called to the presence of this parasite by
an intolerable itching. This agrees very well with my experience, so
far as the softer parts of the sole, the spaces between and under the
toes, and the side of the foot are concerned, but if the creature
penetrates through the harder parts of the heel or ball of the foot, it
may escape even the most careful search till it has reached maturity.
Then there is no time to be lost, if the horrible ulceration, of which
we see cases by the dozen every day, is to be prevented. It is much
easier, by the way, to discover the insect on the white skin of a
European than on that of a native, on which the dark speck scarcely
shows. The four or five jiggers which, in spite of the fact that I
constantly wore high laced boots, chose my feet to settle in, were
taken out for me by the all-accomplished Knudsen, after which I
thought it advisable to wash out the cavities with corrosive
sublimate. The natives have a different sort of disinfectant—they fill
the hole with scraped roots. In a tiny Makua village on the slope of
the plateau south of Newala, we saw an old woman who had filled all
the spaces under her toe-nails with powdered roots by way of
prophylactic treatment. What will be the result, if any, who can say?
The rest of the many trifling ills which trouble our existence are
really more comic than serious. In the absence of anything else to
smoke, Knudsen and I at last opened a box of cigars procured from
the Indian store-keeper at Lindi, and tried them, with the most
distressing results. Whether they contain opium or some other
narcotic, neither of us can say, but after the tenth puff we were both
“off,” three-quarters stupefied and unspeakably wretched. Slowly we
recovered—and what happened next? Half-an-hour later we were
once more smoking these poisonous concoctions—so insatiable is the
craving for tobacco in the tropics.
Even my present attacks of fever scarcely deserve to be taken
seriously. I have had no less than three here at Newala, all of which
have run their course in an incredibly short time. In the early
afternoon, I am busy with my old natives, asking questions and
making notes. The strong midday coffee has stimulated my spirits to
an extraordinary degree, the brain is active and vigorous, and work
progresses rapidly, while a pleasant warmth pervades the whole
body. Suddenly this gives place to a violent chill, forcing me to put on
my overcoat, though it is only half-past three and the afternoon sun
is at its hottest. Now the brain no longer works with such acuteness
and logical precision; more especially does it fail me in trying to
establish the syntax of the difficult Makua language on which I have
ventured, as if I had not enough to do without it. Under the
circumstances it seems advisable to take my temperature, and I do
so, to save trouble, without leaving my seat, and while going on with
my work. On examination, I find it to be 101·48°. My tutors are
abruptly dismissed and my bed set up in the baraza; a few minutes
later I am in it and treating myself internally with hot water and
lemon-juice.
Three hours later, the thermometer marks nearly 104°, and I make
them carry me back into the tent, bed and all, as I am now perspiring
heavily, and exposure to the cold wind just beginning to blow might
mean a fatal chill. I lie still for a little while, and then find, to my
great relief, that the temperature is not rising, but rather falling. This
is about 7.30 p.m. At 8 p.m. I find, to my unbounded astonishment,
that it has fallen below 98·6°, and I feel perfectly well. I read for an
hour or two, and could very well enjoy a smoke, if I had the
wherewithal—Indian cigars being out of the question.
Having no medical training, I am at a loss to account for this state
of things. It is impossible that these transitory attacks of high fever
should be malarial; it seems more probable that they are due to a
kind of sunstroke. On consulting my note-book, I become more and
more inclined to think this is the case, for these attacks regularly
follow extreme fatigue and long exposure to strong sunshine. They at
least have the advantage of being only short interruptions to my
work, as on the following morning I am always quite fresh and fit.
My treasure of a cook is suffering from an enormous hydrocele which
makes it difficult for him to get up, and Moritz is obliged to keep in
the dark on account of his inflamed eyes. Knudsen’s cook, a raw boy
from somewhere in the bush, knows still less of cooking than Omari;
consequently Nils Knudsen himself has been promoted to the vacant
post. Finding that we had come to the end of our supplies, he began
by sending to Chingulungulu for the four sucking-pigs which we had
bought from Matola and temporarily left in his charge; and when
they came up, neatly packed in a large crate, he callously slaughtered
the biggest of them. The first joint we were thoughtless enough to
entrust for roasting to Knudsen’s mshenzi cook, and it was
consequently uneatable; but we made the rest of the animal into a
jelly which we ate with great relish after weeks of underfeeding,
consuming incredible helpings of it at both midday and evening
meals. The only drawback is a certain want of variety in the tinned
vegetables. Dr. Jäger, to whom the Geographical Commission
entrusted the provisioning of the expeditions—mine as well as his
own—because he had more time on his hands than the rest of us,
seems to have laid in a huge stock of Teltow turnips,[46] an article of
food which is all very well for occasional use, but which quickly palls
when set before one every day; and we seem to have no other tins
left. There is no help for it—we must put up with the turnips; but I
am certain that, once I am home again, I shall not touch them for ten
years to come.
Amid all these minor evils, which, after all, go to make up the
genuine flavour of Africa, there is at least one cheering touch:
Knudsen has, with the dexterity of a skilled mechanic, repaired my 9
× 12 cm. camera, at least so far that I can use it with a little care.
How, in the absence of finger-nails, he was able to accomplish such a
ticklish piece of work, having no tool but a clumsy screw-driver for
taking to pieces and putting together again the complicated
mechanism of the instantaneous shutter, is still a mystery to me; but
he did it successfully. The loss of his finger-nails shows him in a light
contrasting curiously enough with the intelligence evinced by the
above operation; though, after all, it is scarcely surprising after his
ten years’ residence in the bush. One day, at Lindi, he had occasion
to wash a dog, which must have been in need of very thorough
cleansing, for the bottle handed to our friend for the purpose had an
extremely strong smell. Having performed his task in the most
conscientious manner, he perceived with some surprise that the dog
did not appear much the better for it, and was further surprised by
finding his own nails ulcerating away in the course of the next few
days. “How was I to know that carbolic acid has to be diluted?” he
mutters indignantly, from time to time, with a troubled gaze at his
mutilated finger-tips.
Since we came to Newala we have been making excursions in all
directions through the surrounding country, in accordance with old
habit, and also because the akida Sefu did not get together the tribal
elders from whom I wanted information so speedily as he had
promised. There is, however, no harm done, as, even if seen only
from the outside, the country and people are interesting enough.
The Makonde plateau is like a large rectangular table rounded off
at the corners. Measured from the Indian Ocean to Newala, it is
about seventy-five miles long, and between the Rovuma and the
Lukuledi it averages fifty miles in breadth, so that its superficial area
is about two-thirds of that of the kingdom of Saxony. The surface,
however, is not level, but uniformly inclined from its south-western
edge to the ocean. From the upper edge, on which Newala lies, the
eye ranges for many miles east and north-east, without encountering
any obstacle, over the Makonde bush. It is a green sea, from which
here and there thick clouds of smoke rise, to show that it, too, is
inhabited by men who carry on their tillage like so many other
primitive peoples, by cutting down and burning the bush, and
manuring with the ashes. Even in the radiant light of a tropical day
such a fire is a grand sight.
Much less effective is the impression produced just now by the
great western plain as seen from the edge of the plateau. As often as
time permits, I stroll along this edge, sometimes in one direction,
sometimes in another, in the hope of finding the air clear enough to
let me enjoy the view; but I have always been disappointed.
Wherever one looks, clouds of smoke rise from the burning bush,
and the air is full of smoke and vapour. It is a pity, for under more
favourable circumstances the panorama of the whole country up to
the distant Majeje hills must be truly magnificent. It is of little use
taking photographs now, and an outline sketch gives a very poor idea
of the scenery. In one of these excursions I went out of my way to
make a personal attempt on the Makonde bush. The present edge of
the plateau is the result of a far-reaching process of destruction
through erosion and denudation. The Makonde strata are
everywhere cut into by ravines, which, though short, are hundreds of
yards in depth. In consequence of the loose stratification of these
beds, not only are the walls of these ravines nearly vertical, but their
upper end is closed by an equally steep escarpment, so that the
western edge of the Makonde plateau is hemmed in by a series of
deep, basin-like valleys. In order to get from one side of such a ravine
to the other, I cut my way through the bush with a dozen of my men.
It was a very open part, with more grass than scrub, but even so the
short stretch of less than two hundred yards was very hard work; at
the end of it the men’s calicoes were in rags and they themselves
bleeding from hundreds of scratches, while even our strong khaki
suits had not escaped scatheless.

NATIVE PATH THROUGH THE MAKONDE BUSH, NEAR


MAHUTA

I see increasing reason to believe that the view formed some time
back as to the origin of the Makonde bush is the correct one. I have
no doubt that it is not a natural product, but the result of human
occupation. Those parts of the high country where man—as a very
slight amount of practice enables the eye to perceive at once—has not
yet penetrated with axe and hoe, are still occupied by a splendid
timber forest quite able to sustain a comparison with our mixed
forests in Germany. But wherever man has once built his hut or tilled
his field, this horrible bush springs up. Every phase of this process
may be seen in the course of a couple of hours’ walk along the main
road. From the bush to right or left, one hears the sound of the axe—
not from one spot only, but from several directions at once. A few
steps further on, we can see what is taking place. The brush has been
cut down and piled up in heaps to the height of a yard or more,
between which the trunks of the large trees stand up like the last
pillars of a magnificent ruined building. These, too, present a
melancholy spectacle: the destructive Makonde have ringed them—
cut a broad strip of bark all round to ensure their dying off—and also
piled up pyramids of brush round them. Father and son, mother and
son-in-law, are chopping away perseveringly in the background—too
busy, almost, to look round at the white stranger, who usually excites
so much interest. If you pass by the same place a week later, the piles
of brushwood have disappeared and a thick layer of ashes has taken
the place of the green forest. The large trees stretch their
smouldering trunks and branches in dumb accusation to heaven—if
they have not already fallen and been more or less reduced to ashes,
perhaps only showing as a white stripe on the dark ground.
This work of destruction is carried out by the Makonde alike on the
virgin forest and on the bush which has sprung up on sites already
cultivated and deserted. In the second case they are saved the trouble
of burning the large trees, these being entirely absent in the
secondary bush.
After burning this piece of forest ground and loosening it with the
hoe, the native sows his corn and plants his vegetables. All over the
country, he goes in for bed-culture, which requires, and, in fact,
receives, the most careful attention. Weeds are nowhere tolerated in
the south of German East Africa. The crops may fail on the plains,
where droughts are frequent, but never on the plateau with its
abundant rains and heavy dews. Its fortunate inhabitants even have
the satisfaction of seeing the proud Wayao and Wamakua working
for them as labourers, driven by hunger to serve where they were
accustomed to rule.
But the light, sandy soil is soon exhausted, and would yield no
harvest the second year if cultivated twice running. This fact has
been familiar to the native for ages; consequently he provides in
time, and, while his crop is growing, prepares the next plot with axe
and firebrand. Next year he plants this with his various crops and
lets the first piece lie fallow. For a short time it remains waste and
desolate; then nature steps in to repair the destruction wrought by
man; a thousand new growths spring out of the exhausted soil, and
even the old stumps put forth fresh shoots. Next year the new growth
is up to one’s knees, and in a few years more it is that terrible,
impenetrable bush, which maintains its position till the black
occupier of the land has made the round of all the available sites and
come back to his starting point.
The Makonde are, body and soul, so to speak, one with this bush.
According to my Yao informants, indeed, their name means nothing
else but “bush people.” Their own tradition says that they have been
settled up here for a very long time, but to my surprise they laid great
stress on an original immigration. Their old homes were in the
south-east, near Mikindani and the mouth of the Rovuma, whence
their peaceful forefathers were driven by the continual raids of the
Sakalavas from Madagascar and the warlike Shirazis[47] of the coast,
to take refuge on the almost inaccessible plateau. I have studied
African ethnology for twenty years, but the fact that changes of
population in this apparently quiet and peaceable corner of the earth
could have been occasioned by outside enterprises taking place on
the high seas, was completely new to me. It is, no doubt, however,
correct.
The charming tribal legend of the Makonde—besides informing us
of other interesting matters—explains why they have to live in the
thickest of the bush and a long way from the edge of the plateau,
instead of making their permanent homes beside the purling brooks
and springs of the low country.
“The place where the tribe originated is Mahuta, on the southern
side of the plateau towards the Rovuma, where of old time there was
nothing but thick bush. Out of this bush came a man who never
washed himself or shaved his head, and who ate and drank but little.
He went out and made a human figure from the wood of a tree
growing in the open country, which he took home to his abode in the
bush and there set it upright. In the night this image came to life and
was a woman. The man and woman went down together to the
Rovuma to wash themselves. Here the woman gave birth to a still-
born child. They left that place and passed over the high land into the
valley of the Mbemkuru, where the woman had another child, which
was also born dead. Then they returned to the high bush country of
Mahuta, where the third child was born, which lived and grew up. In
course of time, the couple had many more children, and called
themselves Wamatanda. These were the ancestral stock of the
Makonde, also called Wamakonde,[48] i.e., aborigines. Their
forefather, the man from the bush, gave his children the command to
bury their dead upright, in memory of the mother of their race who
was cut out of wood and awoke to life when standing upright. He also
warned them against settling in the valleys and near large streams,
for sickness and death dwelt there. They were to make it a rule to
have their huts at least an hour’s walk from the nearest watering-
place; then their children would thrive and escape illness.”
The explanation of the name Makonde given by my informants is
somewhat different from that contained in the above legend, which I
extract from a little book (small, but packed with information), by
Pater Adams, entitled Lindi und sein Hinterland. Otherwise, my
results agree exactly with the statements of the legend. Washing?
Hapana—there is no such thing. Why should they do so? As it is, the
supply of water scarcely suffices for cooking and drinking; other
people do not wash, so why should the Makonde distinguish himself
by such needless eccentricity? As for shaving the head, the short,
woolly crop scarcely needs it,[49] so the second ancestral precept is
likewise easy enough to follow. Beyond this, however, there is
nothing ridiculous in the ancestor’s advice. I have obtained from
various local artists a fairly large number of figures carved in wood,
ranging from fifteen to twenty-three inches in height, and
representing women belonging to the great group of the Mavia,
Makonde, and Matambwe tribes. The carving is remarkably well
done and renders the female type with great accuracy, especially the
keloid ornamentation, to be described later on. As to the object and
meaning of their works the sculptors either could or (more probably)
would tell me nothing, and I was forced to content myself with the
scanty information vouchsafed by one man, who said that the figures
were merely intended to represent the nembo—the artificial
deformations of pelele, ear-discs, and keloids. The legend recorded
by Pater Adams places these figures in a new light. They must surely
be more than mere dolls; and we may even venture to assume that
they are—though the majority of present-day Makonde are probably
unaware of the fact—representations of the tribal ancestress.
The references in the legend to the descent from Mahuta to the
Rovuma, and to a journey across the highlands into the Mbekuru
valley, undoubtedly indicate the previous history of the tribe, the
travels of the ancestral pair typifying the migrations of their
descendants. The descent to the neighbouring Rovuma valley, with
its extraordinary fertility and great abundance of game, is intelligible
at a glance—but the crossing of the Lukuledi depression, the ascent
to the Rondo Plateau and the descent to the Mbemkuru, also lie
within the bounds of probability, for all these districts have exactly
the same character as the extreme south. Now, however, comes a
point of especial interest for our bacteriological age. The primitive
Makonde did not enjoy their lives in the marshy river-valleys.
Disease raged among them, and many died. It was only after they
had returned to their original home near Mahuta, that the health
conditions of these people improved. We are very apt to think of the
African as a stupid person whose ignorance of nature is only equalled
by his fear of it, and who looks on all mishaps as caused by evil
spirits and malignant natural powers. It is much more correct to
assume in this case that the people very early learnt to distinguish
districts infested with malaria from those where it is absent.
This knowledge is crystallized in the
ancestral warning against settling in the
valleys and near the great waters, the
dwelling-places of disease and death. At the
same time, for security against the hostile
Mavia south of the Rovuma, it was enacted
that every settlement must be not less than a
certain distance from the southern edge of the
plateau. Such in fact is their mode of life at the
present day. It is not such a bad one, and
certainly they are both safer and more
comfortable than the Makua, the recent
intruders from the south, who have made USUAL METHOD OF
good their footing on the western edge of the CLOSING HUT-DOOR
plateau, extending over a fairly wide belt of
country. Neither Makua nor Makonde show in their dwellings
anything of the size and comeliness of the Yao houses in the plain,
especially at Masasi, Chingulungulu and Zuza’s. Jumbe Chauro, a
Makonde hamlet not far from Newala, on the road to Mahuta, is the
most important settlement of the tribe I have yet seen, and has fairly
spacious huts. But how slovenly is their construction compared with
the palatial residences of the elephant-hunters living in the plain.
The roofs are still more untidy than in the general run of huts during
the dry season, the walls show here and there the scanty beginnings
or the lamentable remains of the mud plastering, and the interior is a
veritable dog-kennel; dirt, dust and disorder everywhere. A few huts
only show any attempt at division into rooms, and this consists
merely of very roughly-made bamboo partitions. In one point alone
have I noticed any indication of progress—in the method of fastening
the door. Houses all over the south are secured in a simple but
ingenious manner. The door consists of a set of stout pieces of wood
or bamboo, tied with bark-string to two cross-pieces, and moving in
two grooves round one of the door-posts, so as to open inwards. If
the owner wishes to leave home, he takes two logs as thick as a man’s
upper arm and about a yard long. One of these is placed obliquely
against the middle of the door from the inside, so as to form an angle
of from 60° to 75° with the ground. He then places the second piece
horizontally across the first, pressing it downward with all his might.
It is kept in place by two strong posts planted in the ground a few
inches inside the door. This fastening is absolutely safe, but of course
cannot be applied to both doors at once, otherwise how could the
owner leave or enter his house? I have not yet succeeded in finding
out how the back door is fastened.

MAKONDE LOCK AND KEY AT JUMBE CHAURO


This is the general way of closing a house. The Makonde at Jumbe
Chauro, however, have a much more complicated, solid and original
one. Here, too, the door is as already described, except that there is
only one post on the inside, standing by itself about six inches from
one side of the doorway. Opposite this post is a hole in the wall just
large enough to admit a man’s arm. The door is closed inside by a
large wooden bolt passing through a hole in this post and pressing
with its free end against the door. The other end has three holes into
which fit three pegs running in vertical grooves inside the post. The
door is opened with a wooden key about a foot long, somewhat
curved and sloped off at the butt; the other end has three pegs
corresponding to the holes, in the bolt, so that, when it is thrust
through the hole in the wall and inserted into the rectangular
opening in the post, the pegs can be lifted and the bolt drawn out.[50]

MODE OF INSERTING THE KEY

With no small pride first one householder and then a second


showed me on the spot the action of this greatest invention of the
Makonde Highlands. To both with an admiring exclamation of
“Vizuri sana!” (“Very fine!”). I expressed the wish to take back these
marvels with me to Ulaya, to show the Wazungu what clever fellows
the Makonde are. Scarcely five minutes after my return to camp at
Newala, the two men came up sweating under the weight of two
heavy logs which they laid down at my feet, handing over at the same
time the keys of the fallen fortress. Arguing, logically enough, that if
the key was wanted, the lock would be wanted with it, they had taken
their axes and chopped down the posts—as it never occurred to them
to dig them out of the ground and so bring them intact. Thus I have
two badly damaged specimens, and the owners, instead of praise,
come in for a blowing-up.
The Makua huts in the environs of Newala are especially
miserable; their more than slovenly construction reminds one of the
temporary erections of the Makua at Hatia’s, though the people here
have not been concerned in a war. It must therefore be due to
congenital idleness, or else to the absence of a powerful chief. Even
the baraza at Mlipa’s, a short hour’s walk south-east of Newala,
shares in this general neglect. While public buildings in this country
are usually looked after more or less carefully, this is in evident
danger of being blown over by the first strong easterly gale. The only
attractive object in this whole district is the grave of the late chief
Mlipa. I visited it in the morning, while the sun was still trying with
partial success to break through the rolling mists, and the circular
grove of tall euphorbias, which, with a broken pot, is all that marks
the old king’s resting-place, impressed one with a touch of pathos.
Even my very materially-minded carriers seemed to feel something
of the sort, for instead of their usual ribald songs, they chanted
solemnly, as we marched on through the dense green of the Makonde
bush:—
“We shall arrive with the great master; we stand in a row and have
no fear about getting our food and our money from the Serkali (the
Government). We are not afraid; we are going along with the great
master, the lion; we are going down to the coast and back.”
With regard to the characteristic features of the various tribes here
on the western edge of the plateau, I can arrive at no other
conclusion than the one already come to in the plain, viz., that it is
impossible for anyone but a trained anthropologist to assign any
given individual at once to his proper tribe. In fact, I think that even
an anthropological specialist, after the most careful examination,
might find it a difficult task to decide. The whole congeries of peoples
collected in the region bounded on the west by the great Central
African rift, Tanganyika and Nyasa, and on the east by the Indian
Ocean, are closely related to each other—some of their languages are
only distinguished from one another as dialects of the same speech,
and no doubt all the tribes present the same shape of skull and
structure of skeleton. Thus, surely, there can be no very striking
differences in outward appearance.
Even did such exist, I should have no time
to concern myself with them, for day after day,
I have to see or hear, as the case may be—in
any case to grasp and record—an
extraordinary number of ethnographic
phenomena. I am almost disposed to think it
fortunate that some departments of inquiry, at
least, are barred by external circumstances.
Chief among these is the subject of iron-
working. We are apt to think of Africa as a
country where iron ore is everywhere, so to
speak, to be picked up by the roadside, and
where it would be quite surprising if the
inhabitants had not learnt to smelt the
material ready to their hand. In fact, the
knowledge of this art ranges all over the
continent, from the Kabyles in the north to the
Kafirs in the south. Here between the Rovuma
and the Lukuledi the conditions are not so
favourable. According to the statements of the
Makonde, neither ironstone nor any other
form of iron ore is known to them. They have
not therefore advanced to the art of smelting
the metal, but have hitherto bought all their
THE ANCESTRESS OF
THE MAKONDE
iron implements from neighbouring tribes.
Even in the plain the inhabitants are not much
better off. Only one man now living is said to
understand the art of smelting iron. This old fundi lives close to
Huwe, that isolated, steep-sided block of granite which rises out of
the green solitude between Masasi and Chingulungulu, and whose
jagged and splintered top meets the traveller’s eye everywhere. While
still at Masasi I wished to see this man at work, but was told that,
frightened by the rising, he had retired across the Rovuma, though
he would soon return. All subsequent inquiries as to whether the
fundi had come back met with the genuine African answer, “Bado”
(“Not yet”).
BRAZIER

Some consolation was afforded me by a brassfounder, whom I


came across in the bush near Akundonde’s. This man is the favourite
of women, and therefore no doubt of the gods; he welds the glittering
brass rods purchased at the coast into those massive, heavy rings
which, on the wrists and ankles of the local fair ones, continually give
me fresh food for admiration. Like every decent master-craftsman he
had all his tools with him, consisting of a pair of bellows, three
crucibles and a hammer—nothing more, apparently. He was quite
willing to show his skill, and in a twinkling had fixed his bellows on
the ground. They are simply two goat-skins, taken off whole, the four
legs being closed by knots, while the upper opening, intended to
admit the air, is kept stretched by two pieces of wood. At the lower
end of the skin a smaller opening is left into which a wooden tube is
stuck. The fundi has quickly borrowed a heap of wood-embers from
the nearest hut; he then fixes the free ends of the two tubes into an
earthen pipe, and clamps them to the ground by means of a bent
piece of wood. Now he fills one of his small clay crucibles, the dross
on which shows that they have been long in use, with the yellow
material, places it in the midst of the embers, which, at present are
only faintly glimmering, and begins his work. In quick alternation
the smith’s two hands move up and down with the open ends of the
bellows; as he raises his hand he holds the slit wide open, so as to let
the air enter the skin bag unhindered. In pressing it down he closes
the bag, and the air puffs through the bamboo tube and clay pipe into
the fire, which quickly burns up. The smith, however, does not keep
on with this work, but beckons to another man, who relieves him at
the bellows, while he takes some more tools out of a large skin pouch
carried on his back. I look on in wonder as, with a smooth round
stick about the thickness of a finger, he bores a few vertical holes into
the clean sand of the soil. This should not be difficult, yet the man
seems to be taking great pains over it. Then he fastens down to the
ground, with a couple of wooden clamps, a neat little trough made by
splitting a joint of bamboo in half, so that the ends are closed by the
two knots. At last the yellow metal has attained the right consistency,
and the fundi lifts the crucible from the fire by means of two sticks
split at the end to serve as tongs. A short swift turn to the left—a
tilting of the crucible—and the molten brass, hissing and giving forth
clouds of smoke, flows first into the bamboo mould and then into the
holes in the ground.
The technique of this backwoods craftsman may not be very far
advanced, but it cannot be denied that he knows how to obtain an
adequate result by the simplest means. The ladies of highest rank in
this country—that is to say, those who can afford it, wear two kinds
of these massive brass rings, one cylindrical, the other semicircular
in section. The latter are cast in the most ingenious way in the
bamboo mould, the former in the circular hole in the sand. It is quite
a simple matter for the fundi to fit these bars to the limbs of his fair
customers; with a few light strokes of his hammer he bends the
pliable brass round arm or ankle without further inconvenience to
the wearer.
SHAPING THE POT

SMOOTHING WITH MAIZE-COB

CUTTING THE EDGE


FINISHING THE BOTTOM

LAST SMOOTHING BEFORE


BURNING

FIRING THE BRUSH-PILE


LIGHTING THE FARTHER SIDE OF
THE PILE

TURNING THE RED-HOT VESSEL

NYASA WOMAN MAKING POTS AT MASASI


Pottery is an art which must always and everywhere excite the
interest of the student, just because it is so intimately connected with
the development of human culture, and because its relics are one of
the principal factors in the reconstruction of our own condition in
prehistoric times. I shall always remember with pleasure the two or
three afternoons at Masasi when Salim Matola’s mother, a slightly-
built, graceful, pleasant-looking woman, explained to me with
touching patience, by means of concrete illustrations, the ceramic art
of her people. The only implements for this primitive process were a
lump of clay in her left hand, and in the right a calabash containing
the following valuables: the fragment of a maize-cob stripped of all
its grains, a smooth, oval pebble, about the size of a pigeon’s egg, a
few chips of gourd-shell, a bamboo splinter about the length of one’s
hand, a small shell, and a bunch of some herb resembling spinach.
Nothing more. The woman scraped with the
shell a round, shallow hole in the soft, fine
sand of the soil, and, when an active young
girl had filled the calabash with water for her,
she began to knead the clay. As if by magic it
gradually assumed the shape of a rough but
already well-shaped vessel, which only wanted
a little touching up with the instruments
before mentioned. I looked out with the
MAKUA WOMAN closest attention for any indication of the use
MAKING A POT. of the potter’s wheel, in however rudimentary
SHOWS THE a form, but no—hapana (there is none). The
BEGINNINGS OF THE embryo pot stood firmly in its little
POTTER’S WHEEL
depression, and the woman walked round it in
a stooping posture, whether she was removing
small stones or similar foreign bodies with the maize-cob, smoothing
the inner or outer surface with the splinter of bamboo, or later, after
letting it dry for a day, pricking in the ornamentation with a pointed
bit of gourd-shell, or working out the bottom, or cutting the edge
with a sharp bamboo knife, or giving the last touches to the finished
vessel. This occupation of the women is infinitely toilsome, but it is
without doubt an accurate reproduction of the process in use among
our ancestors of the Neolithic and Bronze ages.
There is no doubt that the invention of pottery, an item in human
progress whose importance cannot be over-estimated, is due to
women. Rough, coarse and unfeeling, the men of the horde range
over the countryside. When the united cunning of the hunters has
succeeded in killing the game; not one of them thinks of carrying
home the spoil. A bright fire, kindled by a vigorous wielding of the
drill, is crackling beside them; the animal has been cleaned and cut
up secundum artem, and, after a slight singeing, will soon disappear
under their sharp teeth; no one all this time giving a single thought
to wife or child.
To what shifts, on the other hand, the primitive wife, and still more
the primitive mother, was put! Not even prehistoric stomachs could
endure an unvarying diet of raw food. Something or other suggested
the beneficial effect of hot water on the majority of approved but
indigestible dishes. Perhaps a neighbour had tried holding the hard
roots or tubers over the fire in a calabash filled with water—or maybe
an ostrich-egg-shell, or a hastily improvised vessel of bark. They
became much softer and more palatable than they had previously
been; but, unfortunately, the vessel could not stand the fire and got
charred on the outside. That can be remedied, thought our
ancestress, and plastered a layer of wet clay round a similar vessel.
This is an improvement; the cooking utensil remains uninjured, but
the heat of the fire has shrunk it, so that it is loose in its shell. The
next step is to detach it, so, with a firm grip and a jerk, shell and
kernel are separated, and pottery is invented. Perhaps, however, the
discovery which led to an intelligent use of the burnt-clay shell, was
made in a slightly different way. Ostrich-eggs and calabashes are not
to be found in every part of the world, but everywhere mankind has
arrived at the art of making baskets out of pliant materials, such as
bark, bast, strips of palm-leaf, supple twigs, etc. Our inventor has no
water-tight vessel provided by nature. “Never mind, let us line the
basket with clay.” This answers the purpose, but alas! the basket gets
burnt over the blazing fire, the woman watches the process of
cooking with increasing uneasiness, fearing a leak, but no leak
appears. The food, done to a turn, is eaten with peculiar relish; and
the cooking-vessel is examined, half in curiosity, half in satisfaction
at the result. The plastic clay is now hard as stone, and at the same
time looks exceedingly well, for the neat plaiting of the burnt basket
is traced all over it in a pretty pattern. Thus, simultaneously with
pottery, its ornamentation was invented.
Primitive woman has another claim to respect. It was the man,
roving abroad, who invented the art of producing fire at will, but the
woman, unable to imitate him in this, has been a Vestal from the
earliest times. Nothing gives so much trouble as the keeping alight of
the smouldering brand, and, above all, when all the men are absent
from the camp. Heavy rain-clouds gather, already the first large
drops are falling, the first gusts of the storm rage over the plain. The
little flame, a greater anxiety to the woman than her own children,
flickers unsteadily in the blast. What is to be done? A sudden thought
occurs to her, and in an instant she has constructed a primitive hut
out of strips of bark, to protect the flame against rain and wind.
This, or something very like it, was the way in which the principle
of the house was discovered; and even the most hardened misogynist
cannot fairly refuse a woman the credit of it. The protection of the
hearth-fire from the weather is the germ from which the human
dwelling was evolved. Men had little, if any share, in this forward
step, and that only at a late stage. Even at the present day, the
plastering of the housewall with clay and the manufacture of pottery
are exclusively the women’s business. These are two very significant
survivals. Our European kitchen-garden, too, is originally a woman’s
invention, and the hoe, the primitive instrument of agriculture, is,
characteristically enough, still used in this department. But the
noblest achievement which we owe to the other sex is unquestionably
the art of cookery. Roasting alone—the oldest process—is one for
which men took the hint (a very obvious one) from nature. It must
have been suggested by the scorched carcase of some animal
overtaken by the destructive forest-fires. But boiling—the process of
improving organic substances by the help of water heated to boiling-
point—is a much later discovery. It is so recent that it has not even
yet penetrated to all parts of the world. The Polynesians understand
how to steam food, that is, to cook it, neatly wrapped in leaves, in a
hole in the earth between hot stones, the air being excluded, and
(sometimes) a few drops of water sprinkled on the stones; but they
do not understand boiling.
To come back from this digression, we find that the slender Nyasa
woman has, after once more carefully examining the finished pot,
put it aside in the shade to dry. On the following day she sends me
word by her son, Salim Matola, who is always on hand, that she is
going to do the burning, and, on coming out of my house, I find her
already hard at work. She has spread on the ground a layer of very
dry sticks, about as thick as one’s thumb, has laid the pot (now of a
yellowish-grey colour) on them, and is piling brushwood round it.
My faithful Pesa mbili, the mnyampara, who has been standing by,
most obligingly, with a lighted stick, now hands it to her. Both of
them, blowing steadily, light the pile on the lee side, and, when the
flame begins to catch, on the weather side also. Soon the whole is in a
blaze, but the dry fuel is quickly consumed and the fire dies down, so
that we see the red-hot vessel rising from the ashes. The woman
turns it continually with a long stick, sometimes one way and
sometimes another, so that it may be evenly heated all over. In
twenty minutes she rolls it out of the ash-heap, takes up the bundle
of spinach, which has been lying for two days in a jar of water, and
sprinkles the red-hot clay with it. The places where the drops fall are
marked by black spots on the uniform reddish-brown surface. With a
sigh of relief, and with visible satisfaction, the woman rises to an
erect position; she is standing just in a line between me and the fire,
from which a cloud of smoke is just rising: I press the ball of my
camera, the shutter clicks—the apotheosis is achieved! Like a
priestess, representative of her inventive sex, the graceful woman
stands: at her feet the hearth-fire she has given us beside her the
invention she has devised for us, in the background the home she has
built for us.
At Newala, also, I have had the manufacture of pottery carried on
in my presence. Technically the process is better than that already
described, for here we find the beginnings of the potter’s wheel,
which does not seem to exist in the plains; at least I have seen
nothing of the sort. The artist, a frightfully stupid Makua woman, did
not make a depression in the ground to receive the pot she was about
to shape, but used instead a large potsherd. Otherwise, she went to
work in much the same way as Salim’s mother, except that she saved
herself the trouble of walking round and round her work by squatting
at her ease and letting the pot and potsherd rotate round her; this is
surely the first step towards a machine. But it does not follow that
the pot was improved by the process. It is true that it was beautifully
rounded and presented a very creditable appearance when finished,
but the numerous large and small vessels which I have seen, and, in
part, collected, in the “less advanced” districts, are no less so. We
moderns imagine that instruments of precision are necessary to
produce excellent results. Go to the prehistoric collections of our
museums and look at the pots, urns and bowls of our ancestors in the
dim ages of the past, and you will at once perceive your error.
MAKING LONGITUDINAL CUT IN
BARK

DRAWING THE BARK OFF THE LOG

REMOVING THE OUTER BARK


BEATING THE BARK

WORKING THE BARK-CLOTH AFTER BEATING, TO MAKE IT


SOFT

MANUFACTURE OF BARK-CLOTH AT NEWALA


To-day, nearly the whole population of German East Africa is
clothed in imported calico. This was not always the case; even now in
some parts of the north dressed skins are still the prevailing wear,
and in the north-western districts—east and north of Lake
Tanganyika—lies a zone where bark-cloth has not yet been
superseded. Probably not many generations have passed since such
bark fabrics and kilts of skins were the only clothing even in the
south. Even to-day, large quantities of this bright-red or drab
material are still to be found; but if we wish to see it, we must look in
the granaries and on the drying stages inside the native huts, where
it serves less ambitious uses as wrappings for those seeds and fruits
which require to be packed with special care. The salt produced at
Masasi, too, is packed for transport to a distance in large sheets of
bark-cloth. Wherever I found it in any degree possible, I studied the
process of making this cloth. The native requisitioned for the
purpose arrived, carrying a log between two and three yards long and
as thick as his thigh, and nothing else except a curiously-shaped
mallet and the usual long, sharp and pointed knife which all men and
boys wear in a belt at their backs without a sheath—horribile dictu!
[51]
Silently he squats down before me, and with two rapid cuts has
drawn a couple of circles round the log some two yards apart, and
slits the bark lengthwise between them with the point of his knife.
With evident care, he then scrapes off the outer rind all round the
log, so that in a quarter of an hour the inner red layer of the bark
shows up brightly-coloured between the two untouched ends. With
some trouble and much caution, he now loosens the bark at one end,
and opens the cylinder. He then stands up, takes hold of the free
edge with both hands, and turning it inside out, slowly but steadily
pulls it off in one piece. Now comes the troublesome work of
scraping all superfluous particles of outer bark from the outside of
the long, narrow piece of material, while the inner side is carefully
scrutinised for defective spots. At last it is ready for beating. Having
signalled to a friend, who immediately places a bowl of water beside
him, the artificer damps his sheet of bark all over, seizes his mallet,
lays one end of the stuff on the smoothest spot of the log, and
hammers away slowly but continuously. “Very simple!” I think to
myself. “Why, I could do that, too!”—but I am forced to change my
opinions a little later on; for the beating is quite an art, if the fabric is
not to be beaten to pieces. To prevent the breaking of the fibres, the
stuff is several times folded across, so as to interpose several
thicknesses between the mallet and the block. At last the required
state is reached, and the fundi seizes the sheet, still folded, by both
ends, and wrings it out, or calls an assistant to take one end while he
holds the other. The cloth produced in this way is not nearly so fine
and uniform in texture as the famous Uganda bark-cloth, but it is
quite soft, and, above all, cheap.
Now, too, I examine the mallet. My craftsman has been using the
simpler but better form of this implement, a conical block of some
hard wood, its base—the striking surface—being scored across and
across with more or less deeply-cut grooves, and the handle stuck
into a hole in the middle. The other and earlier form of mallet is
shaped in the same way, but the head is fastened by an ingenious
network of bark strips into the split bamboo serving as a handle. The
observation so often made, that ancient customs persist longest in
connection with religious ceremonies and in the life of children, here
finds confirmation. As we shall soon see, bark-cloth is still worn
during the unyago,[52] having been prepared with special solemn
ceremonies; and many a mother, if she has no other garment handy,
will still put her little one into a kilt of bark-cloth, which, after all,
looks better, besides being more in keeping with its African
surroundings, than the ridiculous bit of print from Ulaya.
MAKUA WOMEN

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