Educational Psychology: An Applied Approach

If you ask most good teachers where they learned to teach, very few of them would cite their undergraduate educational psychology textbook. They would tell you that they learned to teach by teaching. Memorized definitions of pedagogical nomenclature certainly does not guarantee skillful teaching. Effective teachers are the ones who understand their subject matter and the needs of their real, live students and who can communicate this subject matter to these students in a way that will enable them to solve real problems. This kind of teaching ability comes from concrete, practical experience.

This book agrees with the insight that applied experience is the best way to learn how to be a good teacher. If you are forced to make a choice between either reading this book or practicing your teaching skills under the guidance of an expert teacher, set this book aside and pursue the applied experience. On the other hand, if you can both read this book and analyze your own practical experience, that would be your best course of action. This book attempts to provide a framework - or a series of frameworks - to help teachers and prospective teachers benefit from experience, organize their ideas, analyze problems, and teach more effectively.

Teaching has undergone "reform" over the past decades and centuries. Just within my own lifetime, I have seen the changes reflected in Table 1.

It is difficult to distinnguish between conventional and reformed teaching - it's not as if some teachers decide to be conventional and some reformed. But there has been a trend toward incorporating better ideas into education, and almost invariably the ideas listed in the reformed column of Table 1arise from principles like those discussed in this book.

It is not possible to memorize ten easy steps or to master any one system that will make you an outstanding teacher. Duffy (1991) has put it this way:

I think we do better by teaching teachers multiple alternatives, by teaching them how to network those so they can be accessed appropriately when needed, and by helping them understand that teaching demands fluid, multiple-dimensional responses.

I want teachers... to select among theories and procedures according to their judgment about what the situation calls for. (p. xxx)

An understanding of the principles of educational psychology discussed in this book will enable you to develop a knowledge base of theoretical information that you can combine with your own experiences and with practical considerations in order to make sound judgments about what to do to help learners learn more effectively.

Teaching consists of higher order thinking skills, which are discussed in Chapter 7. A teacher cannot go to a workshop on, say, "Motivating Students" or read the "Motivation" chapter in this book and expect to suddenly become an excellent motivator of students. It takes longer than that; knowledge about motivation and isolated skills must be integrated with the teacher's overall approach to teaching and even with the teacher's personality (Goldenberg & Gallimore, 1991). The value of the workshop or of this book is that they can give you some of the cognitive information that you can eventually combine with other information, with your attitudes, with your previous experiences, with practical demands, and with the support of your students and colleagues to develop new styles of teaching that will be more effective.

Here are some brief examples of ways in which the principles discussed in this book can be applied to practical educational problems:

Reading the Professional Literature. The concepts of educational psychology are often directly relevant to the discussion of reform movements in education. By understanding the concepts in this book, you can cobtribute to this discussion more competently.

Common Misconceptions. Some of the "common sense" beliefs about what works best in the classroom are just plain wrong. Click here to see some examples.

The Value of Practical Experience. What's more important to a classroom teacher - theoretical knowledge or practical experience? Actually, they're both important; and they are not necessarily contradictory.

 

There are numerous principles that are fairly well established in educational psychology. When teachers teach well, they almost always apply these principles - even though they may not be consciously aware that they are doing so and even though they may be unable to state the names of these principles. When teachers teach badly, they are almost always defying or violating one or more of these principles. This book will present these principles and will offer guidelines for teachers, students, and parents to apply them to education.

It is possible to be a good teacher without reading this book or understanding the principles discussed in it. However, by understanding these principles, you will have a framework within which to think about and solve instructional problems.

Finally, the acceptability of materials and procedures is a critical factor in determining their impact on instructional effectiveness (Rich & Pressley, 1990; Elliott, 19xx). While teachers tend to select materials and procedures that think will be effective, it is possible that their criteria may be inappropriate or that the materials and procedures are introduced to them in such a way as to make a valid decision unlikely. Some methods and materials known to be effective are rejected by teachers because they initially seem not to be worth the effort to implement them. If teachers understood the principles behind these methods or sampled them more thoroughly or if these methods could be altered to make them more palatable, they would perhaps be more widely adapted and effectively implemented. A major purpose of this textbook is to help educators develop a thorough grasp of instructional principles and to sample a wide range of methods, so that they can implement and adapt more effective teaching strategies.

This book takes a very practical approach. While it is theoretically accurate, it tries to avoid unnecessary references that are of purely historical or theoretical value. The field of modern educational psychology encompasses an encyclopedic amount of information. I have attempted to sift this information and to include in this book a systematic presentation of concepts and principles most likely to be of interest to applied practitioners. This approach necessarily relegates some important ideas to citations and to footnotes. It is not necessary to read these references, unless you wish to pursue a topic in greater theoretical depth. In addition, the annotated bibliographies at the end of each chapter will suggest sources where students can find an expanded treatment of a topic. Readers interested in a more complete treatment can refer to these citations and footnotes and to the references cited throughout the chapters.

Since the largest single group of readers of this book will be teachers and prospective teachers, examples will most often be drawn from the perspective of classroom teachers. However, it is important for both teachers and others to keep in mind that the principles of educational psychology influence all learning situations at all levels. For example, although they engage in "educational administration" rather than classroom teaching, principals and superintendents should consider these principles while making decisions that influence education. The principles discussed in this book are as crucial at the building or system level as they are at the level of the classroom teacher. No school restructuring program should ever be undertaken without considering the major principles of educational psychology. (See Maehr & Midgley, 1991.)

 

An Educators' Guide to Schoolwide Reform by American Institutes for Research
http://www.aasa.org/reform/approach.htm

This web site describes the major characteristics of 24 major strategies for school reform. The principles of educational psychology described in this book are important components of nearly all these strategies. One of the advantages of reading and understanding this book is that you will be able to discuss and evaluate these and other strategies more effectively.

 

Research-Based Strategies to Achieve High Standards
http://www.mcrel.org/toolkit/res/reform.asp

This is another research-based statement of "what it takes to improve education." If you read this information and follow the links, you'll discover that a huge chunk of improving education involves the practical application of principles discussed in this book.