Module 1

I could honestly feel my brain making connections while I was reading the first three chapters of Woolfolk. The readings appeared as more of a review of prior topics that I have learned rather than introducing new concepts. I have noticed that learning new topics can take longer to process than learning a prior lesson. This reading served as a review because I studied psychology during my undergrad. Some of these words are not words you see in everyday life such as “Piaget” or “Hippocampus” and while reading, my brain brought up memories of earlier instances. For example, in my AP Psych class in high school, we had to sketch and label the human brain. While reading Chapter 2’s context of axon, synapse, and dendrite, I had a flashback of me sketching out a neurotransmitter lesson for homework. The ability for my brain to perform a flashback is evidence that the brain works in mysterious ways. This phenomenon is important to analyze in the field of education and I am glad we are learning Educational Psychology. I have noticed that every psych book loves to start chapter 1 going through the concept of correlation because it may be a way to connect with its readers. Each of us as human beings have analyzed correlations in our environments so it is very easy to connect with the learning. 

The section that stood out the most to me was Chapter 2’s look at The Role of Language and Private Speech. Through my prior studies I always strayed away from Vygotsky’s principles (maybe due to his complicated last name), but I am regretting this decision. His implications that children use language as a way to express ideas and ask questions is something I have never looked at deeper. Seeing it as more “common sense” and not a researchable study may have been my reasoning, but Woolfolk’s text offers a solution. Vygotsky proposes that children use private speech while working in an environment and it should not be seen as a cognitive immaturity. The children are literally thinking out loud and their brains will sooner or later develop to process these thoughts as silent inner speech to just “thinking”. These findings are very important in the classroom because teachers may have a zero-noise policy. This may serve as an obstacle to a child’s learning because he or she needs to make sound or communicate in order to process a complex problem. 

Reading Chapter 3’s lesson on The Self encourages that learning does not only grow with cognitive development in the classroom. It is important to look at ourselves and how we mature physically and socially in our environments. With these changes will promote our moral and social beliefs on the world we live in. The section that I took the most out of was the reading on Sex Difference in Self-Concept of Academic Competence. It goes on to say that boys and girls have difference competence beliefs as a whole and that these beliefs change as the boys and girls grow older. I remember in grade school seeing small differences based on my classmate’s sexual makeup. The girls seemed to excel in arts and language as the boys took more of a liking to math and science. This could have been because the girls in my classroom viewed reading as a hobby outside of school, so arts and language came section nature to them, while boys viewed math and science as a competition. Looking at a math assignment as a sport and seeing who could be the best at the concept may have been a reason to this.

All in all, this book offers a magnifying glass to the concept of Educational Psychology. It is important for our class to understand these readings because its offerings can help us become great teachers. There will be problems that arise in our classrooms and it is important that we have an understanding about other factors that could be coming to play. This book offers those resources and it will be an advantage to explore them.