Module 1

Education is a science and I think what stuck out to me while reading this week was just that. There is a science to teaching and a science to understanding the human’s ability to learn and self efficacy. This may seem like an obvious post because yes, duh, Educational Psychology is a science, but in terms of teaching not many make that connection that this has been in practice for more than 100 years. Good teachers use data, theories and reasoning to help them to not only understand their students, but to understand themselves in how they teach. Like scientists teacher theories started as hypotheses and were researched, analysed in order to predict best outcomes or best practices. Woolfork writes on page 22 “A major goal of this book is to provide you with the best and most useful theories of development, learning, motivation and teaching - those that have solid evidence behind them.” The key words being solid evidence, meaning that the research to prove that these methods have worked and can work for you as well.

A section that I made a professional connection to is Piaget’s stages of cognitive development I work with the preoperational stage of students currently and they often don’t understand the concept of time like past and present. I would see my student in the morning and then just a few hours later I would see him in the lunchroom and he would state “Hey I saw you yesterday!” Obviously, it wasn’t yesterday, but just a few short hours ago. The cognitive development stage he is in makes this statement understandable. I corrected him that we just met today and that he could state that we saw each other ‘this morning’ instead. It may take some time before this concept sticks and makes sense to him, but until then he will repeat the correction. Not to repeat the same concept for my second connection, but I also thought about this stage of development and their inability to understand the point of view of another person. The reward system we have in the classroom connects students together as a group. One of the points of earning is if you are “heart caring” which is when you are being a good friend or good groupmate to a peer. Often we discuss what heart caring looks like and feels like. There is a lot of apologies made and discussions of emotions when students are offended or hurt by a peer, but it’s all part of the process of growing up and being on that preoperational stage of development where egocentrism is natural. (Woolfork, 48)

One last concept that I have seen first hand is the use of assisted learning or guided participation. The teacher gives prompts and reminders while working through new concepts in order to slowly teach students how to do it independently. Students are able to take risks under the watchful eye of their teacher while building their confidence in a new subject area. I've seen a teacher start a lesson that was new to a group of 4th graders. It was difficult for them to understand figurative language and literal concepts. They were working on how heart can be used in two different ways. Their teacher drew pictures of each concept and broke down the lanuage of the text by rewording it in a lower vocabulary so that students could understand the deeper meanings. Then, she brought back the original vocabulary along side her pictures and her revisions. The students were then asked to write about what they thought the difference was and most were able to not only make the connection, but were able to add an addition detail sentence about one of the concepts. Without that break down I don't think the students would have understood what they were reading.

Teachers have many things to consider when it comes to how students learn, as Woolfork states “physical development, personal development, social development, and cognitive development.” Each student maybe on a different developmental stage and teachers need to find a way to reach each student where they are so that they can get them to where they need to go with the short time period they are with them.