This chapter is an Introduction. Everybody knows you can always skip the Introduction. All the Introduction ever does is tell what the rest of the book is about - and if you're going to read the rest of the book anyway, why bother finding out what it's going to be about?

Actually, the final section of this particular Introduction tells you what the rest of the book is about. When you get to that final section, if you still feel that you should skip it, go ahead and skip it.

But read the first part of this chapter carefully. It offers useful advice on how to read this - or any - textbook. There are two good reasons for mastering the information discussed in the following section:

1. This information will help you to use your time most effectively while you read this book and to do well in the course for which it is assigned reading.
   
2. The principles discussed in this chapter are many of the basic principles of educational psychology. By applying them yourself and by being aware that you are applying them, you will be able to focus your attention on them more intensively and concretely. This will help you understand them more thoroughly when they are discussed in subsequent chapters of this book.

By using your time more effectively to arrive at a more concrete and comprehensive understanding of these principles, you are likely to be able to apply these same principles more effectively in your own attempts to help others learn successfully.

How to Read This Book

This section will introduce a series of twenty-nine guidelines based on sound principles of educational psychology. These guidelines will suggests strategies you can employ to study more effectively while using this book as a basis for understanding important concepts and principles of educational psychology. You should examine and try to understand the rationale for each guideline. Then you should select and employ those strategies that will be most helpful to you in your own study sessions. A few of the strategies should be applied by almost all readers. On the other hand, very few readers will find it helpful to apply all the guidelines to all their study sessions.

In some cases, you may discover that you already routinely apply a designated strategy. If this is the case, continue to apply it; but you may discover that reflecting on the strategy and focusing your efforts more clearly will enable you to apply that principle more effectively.

In other cases, you may discover that a strategy that works for other learners is unfruitful or even counterproductive for you. In such cases, you may wish to give the guideline serious thought to make sure it is truly inappropriate; but by all means be critical enough to ignore those guidelines that will not help you. 

In other cases, you may find that a strategy that was helpful for one chapter or unit of instruction is not helpful for another. That's fine. Be selective. Use the guidelines to help you solve problems and master the subject matter.

These guidelines should arm you with an arsenal of strategies to use as the need arises. These strategies should enable you to master the concepts and principles discussed in this book. In addition, by thoroughly understanding and practicing them, you will be able to help other learners apply these principles when it is your job to serve as an instructor or facilitator of learning. These principles will be discussed only briefly in this section; later chapters of this book will discuss these and other principles in much greater detail.

1. Use your study time effectively. This guideline is really too general to be very useful; but it needs to be stated. As Chapter 2 will show, this is really the underlying principle behind all the other guidelines discussed in this chapter. As Chapter 2 will show, the most basic guideline for learning and instruction is that learners should use their learning time as effectively as possible.

2. Arrange your study time so that you do not have to cram. It is certainly possible for good students to master concepts quickly and to retain the information for a long time. However, students who cram almost always allocate less time to a subject than they need. They don't take the time to follow the other guidelines listed in this chapter; and the result is superficial learning. If their goal is to use the information months or years later, when the need arises, cramming will almost always fail. Even if their goal is merely to pass an exam the next morning, cramming at the last minute is not nearly as likely to be successful as following the other guidelines listed in the rest of this chapter.

3. Study in several short periods rather than a single long session. Don't push this guideline to extremes. You need to spend at least the amount of time it takes to cover a unified segment. While studying French vocabulary for 30 two-minute sessions may make sense, that strategy will probably not work for studying this book. However, three one-hour sessions with this book may prove superior to a single three-hour session.

 

The chapters of this book are broken down into relatively short, unified segments of instruction, so that readers can stop and resume without serious distraction. A student resuming study in the middle of a chapter should briefly examine the outline of the chapter up to that point before continuing.

 

4. Get yourself in the right frame of mind to study. Motivate yourself. Convince yourself that what you are going to learn is worth learning, that the text will supply you with the information you need, and that you can actually master the information. One very useful step is to examine the objectives of the unit of instruction and relate them to your own needs. Reducing anxiety and getting yourself to an appropriate level of arousal are also appropriate strategies.

If you have studied successfully in the past, have mastered important units of instruction, and have been able to apply what you have learned to real life, then you will have some insights into what the right frame of mind is for you. By being in the right frame of mind, you will be more likely to want to apply the other guidelines described in this chapter.

The objectives at the beginning of each unit of instruction in this book should enable you to look forward to useful outcomes after studying the subsequent information. In addition, the accompanying introductory information is designed to help you focus on and internalize realistic goals.

 

5. Focus on important, higher-level as well as lower-level objectives. "Knowledge" and "comprehension" are lower-level objectives. "Application" and "synthesis" are examples of higher level objectives. Knowledge and comprehension are lower-level skills in the sense that application and other higher-level activities build upon knowledge and comprehension. Your goal in reading this book is to be able to apply the principles discussed in this book or to synthesize them with other information - not just to know about them. A very good strategy is to come to a solid initial understanding of a concept or principle, then try to apply it, and obtain feedback for your application. While engaging in the application, you are incidentally practicing (and overlearning) the knowledge that underlies that application.

Many of this book's review questions focus on the application or synthesis of concepts and principles. In addition, the suggested activities at the end of each chapter recommend high-level applications of the subject matter. Finally, the text itself and especially the anecdotes focus on concrete applications of the concepts and principles of educational psychology.

 

6. Master basic skills to the point of automaticity. Assume that the main ideas in each chapter are so important that they will come up repeatedly in future chapters and in your life outside the classroom. Therefore, master them so thoroughly that you will not have to stop and think about them every time they come up. Young readers cannot read effectively if they have to stop and think about even the very simple words in a passage; baseball players cannot bat effectively if they have to think about every little aspect of their swing while the pitch is on its way to the plate; and you will not be able to understand a discussion that involves an advanced application of a basic concept unless you have an automatic understanding of that basic concept.

 

The amount of practice readers will need to develop automaticity will vary with individual needs. This book will identify key concepts that will be essential to understanding subsequent material by marking them with underlining, boldface, and italics all at once the first time each is mentioned. {If you are using the electronic version, you will also have a link from subsequent usages to the place where the concept is originally discussed.} The number of these key concepts has deliberately been kept small. You should be certain to master these concepts completely, but you should by no means assume that these are the "only important things" in the book.

7. Be sure to master prerequisite concepts before going on to concepts or principles that build upon these basic notions. Research clearly shows that one of the most common reasons a person fails to understand information or to master a skill is because that person lacks the prerequisite information or skills needed to succeed in the new situation. Sometimes the prerequisite information may not even be included within the present unit of instruction - for example, the textbook or instructor may assume that "everyone knows" a certain piece of information needed to grasp a topic under consideration. In other cases, earlier units of instruction contain the prerequisite information needed for subsequent units. 

Sometimes it is impossible for information to be presented in a strictly hierarchical order &emdash; that is, prerequisite information cannot always be presented before the concepts for which it is needed. In such cases, information is sort of "co-requisite." That is, information A helps with information B and vice versa. This possibility is discussed in detail with Guideline 8, below. When there is a clear hierarchy of information, it is important that learners master the earlier levels before proceeding to the higher levels.

Whenever appropriate, this book has arranged topics in such a way that prerequisite information is presented in the proper order. However, in some cases it has been impossible to do this; and in those cases it will be useful to review earlier information after you have studied subsequent information, which is in some way a prerequisite that could not be presented before the previous information. This is discussed further in the example with Guideline 8.

8. Never make a deliberate effort simply to read a textbook from beginning to end. The front-to-back strategy may be useful for novels, but it will rarely work for a textbook. This is because some of the later information will help you understand and apply earlier information.

Information is often interrelated, but it has to be presented in some order. Assume the following instruction takes place:

 

You read about widgets, which comes first in the textbook.

But to understand widgets completely, you need information about whatsits, which comes later.

So when you read about widgets, you'll have an imperfect understanding of them.

But if you come back and read about widgets after you've read about whatsits, you'll have a more thorough understanding of widgets. 

 

This sort of non-linear learning occurs more often than you might think it does.

In this book, I describe the overall process of learning in chapter 3. One component of this process is motivation, which is not discussed in detail until chapter 5. Three other components of learning are retrieval to working memory, selective perception, and encoding, which include aspects of information processing, which is not discussed until chapter 6. When you read chapter 3, you will be able to understand it, because I try to use commonsense as well as technical explanations. However, if you return to review the process of learning in chapter 3 after reading chapters 5 and 6, you will have a better understanding of the technical information, and this will enable you to understand the process of learning more completely than was possible the first time you read it.

  

To assist you, I have inserted in the margins and in the text both forward and backward cross-references. These annoy some readers. They say, "If you're going to refer to encoding in chapter 3, you should tell us what it is at that time!" My advice to these people is, "Get a grip!" You will be able to understand from the context what encoding means, albeit imperfectly &emdash; just as you probably could determine the meaning of albeit from it's context in the main clause of this sentence, even if you were not initially familiar with that word. The point is, I expect you to rethink the learning process after you understand some more about encoding in chapter 6. It has to be this way. All textbook authors have to do this: I'm just being a little more obvious about it and trying to help you make the connections. 

Some of the summary tables that have chapter references are full of these forward references. If these build anticipation the first time through the chapter, then read them. On the other hand, if they bother you, skip them the first time, but be sure to come back to them after you have read the subsequent chapters. They help solve the problem stated in this guideline.

  

9. Focus clearly on the topic being covered. While it is occasionally useful to explore sidetracks and extraneous ideas suggested by topics and examples in the book, it is usually best to focus on the topic that the author claims to be covering. Likewise, it is OK to disagree with the author; but is usually best to come to a complete understanding of the author's point before you try to develop your refutations. If you don't know what the author's point is, then you had better reread or ask questions to identify the theme being developed.

The titles and headings throughout this book describe the topics accurately. In addition, each paragraph begins with a topic sentence that describes the main idea of that paragraph. These aids should enable you to understand what the topic is and to focus your attention on that topic.

 

10. Focus your attention on the essential components of the topic being discussed, not on peripheral information. The additional information may be valuable, but there are times when you need to focus your attention on the exact point the author is trying to make. Sometimes you may waste time by focusing your attention on something other than what is essential to mastering the topic under consideration.

Most readers have had the experience of spending hours trying in vain to understand a topic, and then have understood the topic perfectly when a different teacher (or peer) approached it from a different perspective. I was once studying karate, and the instructor spent nearly an hour trying to show me how to execute a certain kick. When he left, another student (who was much less skilled than the instructor but who saw what my problem was) said, "Just concentrate on turning your front foot, and you'll have it." I immediately mastered the skill and quickly realized what the other instructor had been trying to say to me - I had simply been directing my attention at the wrong aspect of what he had been saying.

The problem with selectively focusing attention is that the learner often doesn't know where to focus attention until after the material is mastered. The point here is that if you can direct your attention exactly where it is supposed to go, you can use your time much more efficiently.

By carefully structuring the material, the textbook tries to focus your attention where you need to focus it. The graphic strategies (such as color print, boldface, italics, and margin notes) will also help focus attention. The tables and diagrams may also be helpful.

 

11. Ask yourself questions while you read; and if you don't know the answers, reread the sections where the answers should be. If your questions are related to the topic covered in the text, then you should be able to find the answers. If the questions are unrelated to or expand upon the text, then you may not be able to answer them by rereading the text. In this case, you should check the answers in a different context, as by saying to the instructor or to a peer, "Am I correct in understanding that…?"

This textbook contains questions interspersed after important ideas have been developed. If you answer incorrectly, you should reread to make sure you understand before proceeding. The Student Workbook contains parallel presentations of much of the material in a different format as well as numerous review questions.

 

12. Outline the main ideas of the text. Your brain stores information in an organized manner. By outlining, you force yourself to identify the structure of information, and your brain will be able to store it more efficiently.

 Every topic in this book already follows an outline, and you can discern this outline by examining the headings, subheadings, and topic sentences of each chapter. In addition, many of the diagrams are really graphic presentations of outlines. A good idea is to try to understand the logic of the text, then draw your outline or diagram, and then check to see if it corresponds to the book's version.

 

13. Diagram the main ideas of the text. The rationale is similar to that for outlining. In order to diagram information, you must necessarily see the relationships among ideas. This structuring will make it easier for your brain to store and retrieve information. In addition, diagrams often have a visual framework that makes them easier to recall than a purely factual outline.

 This book already contains several diagrams of significant ideas. Do not ignore them. Examine them and see if you can identify the logic behind them. Try to draw the diagrams and without looking at them see if your versions match those in the text. While drawing them, recite their logic to yourself.

 

14. Respond actively while studying. Passive learning is not effective at all. The best mode of instruction is the one-to-one tutorial, with a competent and interesting teacher instructing a motivated learner in an applied setting. Individual tutorials work because the learner is able to be an active participant. Since individualized tutorials are usually impractical, the student and teacher need to find other ways to elicit the student's active involvement. It is OK to "just read" a novel. It is not OK to "just read" a textbook - it is essential to involve your mind actively in the learning process.

 This book and the accompanying Workbook contain numerous review questions. Answer them. When you get one wrong, reread to see what happened.

15. Have high standards, but set realistic goals. If you set your standards low, you'll tend to quit once you reach those minimal standards. You should set your goals high, but not so high that failure to reach them will lead to frequent frustration. Goals will vary for different individuals. In many cases, a reasonable goal on tests is to shoot for somewhere between your previous performance and a perfect score. Your goals should focus primarily on your own performance - not on comparisons to other students in your class.

The specifically stated objectives and frequent opportunities for testing in this book and in the Workbook should help you set standards and goals. In addition, the introductory information at the beginning of each chapter may influence you in determining what your personal goals should be for a specific unit of instruction.

 

16. Try out what you are learning and obtain feedback for your performance. You should know when you are succeeding at understanding the information presented in a text or lecture and - more importantly - when you are failing to meet your goals. Sometimes you can get this information from an answer key, sometimes from a peer, and sometimes from an instructor. If you don't get it, your learning efficiency will be greatly reduced. It's as simple as that.

There is little point in finishing a chapter unless you can assure yourself that you have understood and can apply what that chapter was trying to tell you. You need feedback for both small units (sections of chapters) and large units (the entire textbook) of instruction. Many students find it useful to record feedback systematically, as by keeping a progress chart of some kind.

This book contains numerous review questions. Use them to find out how you are doing. The Student Workbook also contains review questions for each chapter. Use these after each chapter to ascertain your level of mastery. A good strategy is to read a chapter as thoroughly as possible, then use the Workbook, and then review as necessary. Finally, your instructor will test you periodically.

 

17. Obtain corrective feedback. When you fail to understand a concept, find out what it is that you don't understand. Resist the urge to feel insulted and become defensive when you get a question wrong on a quiz or exam. Instead, find out the nature of your error and come to a clear understanding of the concept or principle under consideration. You can become an expert on educational psychology by making a large number of mistakes and learning from each of your mistakes.

This book contains review questions. When you miss an item, you should review the information in the section immediately preceding that question. In addition, the Student Workbook includes review questions with cross-references to the pages in the textbook where accurate information can be found to answer each question. The Workbook also includes detailed explanations of test items, plus discussions of topics that previous readers have found to be confusing.

 

18. Reinforce yourself for successful completion of units of instruction. If you feel glad that you did some work, you are likely to work that way again and profit from doing so. The best kind of reinforcement is natural or intrinsic - that is, you should read a chapter of this book and say to yourself, "That will really help me with Johnny tomorrow!" Another kind of reinforcement is artificial or extrinsic: "That explanation will help me pass the exam next week!" It is by far best to rely on natural reinforcement; but for many reasons natural reinforcement may be difficult to obtain for a specific unit of instruction. Artificial reinforcement of some kind is often helpful.

Sometimes feedback serves as reinforcement - especially if you see yourself improving on a progress chart or getting higher scores on weekly tests. One very useful strategy is to use an enjoyable activity to reinforce a study session. For example, a student might obtain and watch a favorite movie video only after reading, understanding, and passing a test on a chapter in the textbook.

The feedback from the tests and review questions in this book should supply reinforcement - especially if the text has motivated you to believe that the information is worth mastering. In addition, the frequent anecdotes and specific examples should help you see ways in which the use of the information will be reinforcing to you when you use it in your actual teaching. 

19. Keep your anxiety relatively low. People differ in their reactions to anxiety. Some people "perform best under pressure." Others panic and become ineffective as soon as they become slightly anxious. You can be a better student if you know how you personally handle anxiety.

In general, most students can benefit from reducing the anxiety they derive from studying. Fear of failure is a major source of anxiety; and so reducing the fear of failure will often reduce anxiety. For example, a student who is taking a course with clearly stated objectives, who has met these objectives, and has privately demonstrated mastery of these objectives on test items similar to those that will comprise the final examination is not likely to be debilitated by anxiety on the exam.

This text tries to take an informal approach and to avoid modes of presentation that are known to arouse anxiety in students. The anecdotes are designed to personalize the information and to make you feel comfortable with the concepts and principles being discussed. Finally, the Student Workbook contains items that are directly parallel to those in the Instructor's Manual; and so if the instructor uses those items, you can minimize anxiety by becoming familiar with the Student items.

20. Study with other students. There are many advantages to studying with other students. Group study leads to the easy application of many of the other guidelines discussed in this section. For example, it is usually possible to respond actively and to receive immediate feedback and reinforcement from others in the group. Group members can help one another identify and clarify misconceptions. In many cases, a "support group" can help alleviate anxiety. However, an important caveat is in order: group members need to retain their individual responsibility for their own learning and performance. A person who merely sits in a group and does not respond is not likely to benefit from or contribute to the group's learning.

Students can share responsibilities while performing activities described elsewhere in this section. For example, one student can look at a diagram and prompt another to reconstruct it. In addition, it is useful for individuals to try to answer questions in the textbook or Student Workbook and then to score the items themselves (by looking up the information in the text) before looking at the answer supplied in the text.

 

21. Review frequently. Sometimes information is structured in such a way that by reading subsequent chapters the reader naturally reuses and reviews information learned in previous chapters. In other cases, learners can benefit from occasionally asking themselves questions about topics covered previously and verifying that they still understand this information. Reviewing prevents fading and encourages automaticity.

The frequent review questions in the text should make periodic review possible. It is also a good idea to re-examine outlines and diagrams from chapters in the weeks after they have been studied. Finally, it is a good idea for the instructor to include questions from previous units on tests covering the current unit. For example, a 20-item test at the end of Chapter 5 might include 15 items based on Chapter 5, plus five items based on the first four chapters.

22. Look for the relationships among ideas. Isolated information is very difficult to remember. Research shows that information is retained to the extent that it is "meaningful." By tying ideas in with what we already know - whether it be with what we have just read or with our own personal experience - we increase the meaningfulness of the information and make it more likely that we will be able to remember and apply it later. However, a caution is in order: make sure that the relationships you see are valid, accurate relationships. As another guideline states, meaningful misconceptions can actually detract from learning. A good idea is to identify a relationship and then find a way to verify its validity.

Each chapter of this book contains introductory comments that explain the purpose of the chapter and its relationship to what has been covered previously. Similar attempts at integration appear at the end of each chapter. In addition, the numerous anecdotes relate the subject matter to real life applications. Finally, the suggested activities at the end of each chapter recommend ideas for applying the concepts and principles to concrete situations.

23. Be aware of and confront your own misconceptions. The term "misconception" may be misleading, since it assumes that your insights are "wrong." Especially in cases where you are reading someone else's opinions (as in literary criticism or in the analysis of historical events), your insights may be "different" rather than "wrong." But to the extent that your insights lock out the information you are trying to understand, your prior understanding could make it difficult for you to understand the other person correctly.

The point is that you rarely approach a textbook or unit of instruction with an empty brain. You have previous experience and ideas related to almost any topic. You may approach a topic with an "alternate conception" of what the author is trying to say. When you try to filter the author's information through your framework, the result may be a mishmash of ideas that is not at all like what the author is trying to say.

Again, it is not necessary that you slavishly accept whatever ideas the author is trying to sell you; but it is important that you initially set aside ideas that are likely to interfere with your comprehension of what the other person is trying to say. Once you have understood the author's information correctly, then it is appropriate to evaluate it and then reject it or integrate it with your own ideas.

Based on the previous experience of the author, this book tries to identify misconceptions that readers are likely to hold and to help them differentiate between these misconceptions and the information presented in the text. For example, I know what misconceptions readers are likely to have with regard to selective perception (chapter 3), and so I have tried to present the information in such a way as to minimize or overcome your misconceptions.

 

24. Use mnemonic strategies when appropriate. A mnemonic strategy is a gimmick that helps you remember things. For example, as a child you might have learned "I before E except after C" as a spelling rule or "HOMES" as a way to remember the first letter in the names of the Great Lakes (Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, and Superior)." These strategies are especially useful for memorizing vocabulary terms or lists of items. Certainly you should want to do more than merely memorize information, but basic memorization may help you recall information for more important purposes.

Specific mnemonic strategies are sometimes suggested in the text. However, you may prefer to invent your own.

 

25. Monitor your thought processes. By being aware of what you are doing mentally, you can focus your attention more effectively on what you are trying to do. A word of caution: this can be overdone. Your main goal is to learn and apply information, not to analyze how you obtained it. An excessive focus on your thought processes may actually interfere with the acquisition of important information. As an analogy, you may have noticed that if you have focused too heavily on what you were doing while performing an athletic activity, you might have completely fouled up the activity &emdash; because you were distracted by the analysis. You should focus on your thought processes long enough to make plans and to make sure you are engaging in appropriate activities, but then concentrate on the actual task at hand.

The section that you are now reading is an attempt to provide you with the ability to monitor your own thought processes more effectively. As you read the expanded discussion of each of these principles throughout the book, you will understand these processes more completely.

 

26. Try to attribute both your successes and your failures to your good use of your study time, rather than to your ability, to luck, or to the difficulty of the subject matter. If you do this, you will be much more likely to continue working hard in the future. If you do badly because you were unlucky, because the subject is too difficult, or because you just aren't smart enough to handle it, then there's little reason to work hard in the future. When you perform poorly, the best attitude is that "I haven't succeeded yet. I have to figure out a better way to approach this."

In my classes, when students make mistakes, they often go to great extents to demonstrate that the question was "ambiguous." Objectively, I think these are often good items, but the students want to say that they were unlucky. It would be better for them to decide that they misunderstand a concept and that they had better do what they can to come to a correct grasp of it. Discussion of mistakes is fine; but if the leaner has in the back of his mind that there's really no need to learn anything (because the mistake was the teacher's fault), then learning is not likely to take place. This sort of attitude is very difficult to change; but if you can do it, you'll become a much better learner.

 

27. If the teacher doesn't do something for you, do it for yourself. Teachers get big bucks for conveying information to students; so why should students have to work. The answer is because learners learn only if they are actively involved in all the phases of the learning process. For example, in order to learn, you need a clear presentation of information. But what is really important is not that somebody present this information to you, but that you perceive it correctly. And even if the instructor doesn't present it to you clearly at all, you can still perceive that information correctly by getting it somewhere else &emdash; perhaps from the textbook or from a peer. Likewise, you won't learn unless you respond and get feedback. But if the teacher gives you no tests or feedback whatsoever except for the final exam, you can get this feedback from another source. If you don't, you won't learn very effectively.

This textbook comes with a Student Workbook and with an online version that has links to numerous web sites. In my class, I have a message board on which students can communicate with one another about topics covered in the course. If I as the instructor fail to teach something to a particular student, that student should use these other sources to make up for that deficiency.

28. Try to work at a moderate level of arousal. The research shows that most people work best when they are neither over-aroused nor under-aroused, but at a medium level of arousal. Level of arousal is influenced by both psychological and physiological factors. Such factors as familiarity, repetition, weariness, and the operation of the digestive system lower levels of arousal. Such factors as novelty, surprise, humor, anxiety, insight, anticipation of success, and a burst of cold air increase the level of arousal. If you are learning ineffectively because your level of arousal is too high, you should do things to lower it - such as going to a quiet room, reducing anxiety, or studying something with which you are already familiar. If your problem is that you are under-aroused, you should do things to increase your level of arousal - such as looking for the humor in an anecdote, focusing on how a piece of information will lead to an important insight, or moving to a less soporific environment.

The book tries to lower level of arousal primarily by trying to minimize anxiety. On the other hand, it tries to increase level of arousal by stating interesting and challenging objectives; by using an interesting style of presentation; by using anecdotes, personal experiences, and occasional humor; and by various graphic and printing strategies, such as colored text, photographs, indenting, and boldface.

One chapter in this book that was exceedingly long was broken down into three smaller chapters primarily because the longer version would have lowered the readers' level of arousal too much. In addition, the paragraph that you are now reading is indented and printed in a different type of style in order to minimize the monotony that could occur with page after page of identical-looking text. Finally, the title of this first chapter was chosen to increase your level of arousal, since experience suggests that introductory chapters often reduce level of arousal.

 

29. Do not try to study too many similar things at the same time. I once tried to learn French and Spanish simultaneously. This was very confusing, and I dropped the Spanish course. Years later, after I already knew some French, I tried Spanish again and found it much easier. Likewise, if you've ever tried to watch two major league baseball games on two channels at the same time, you were probably confused. On the other hand, it is actually fairly easy to watch a baseball game on television while reading a romantic novel. If you are trying to study educational psychology and industrial psychology during the same semester - and if one of your goals is to keep them separate in your mind - then it would probably be best to let some time pass before you switch from one to the other. Likewise, if you find two concepts in educational psychology to be so similar that they are confusing, a good idea is to study them one at a time. Once you have understood the two separately, then it may be desirable to make specific comparisons and benefit from these comparisons.

 Topics that are likely to be confused are deliberately separated in this book. After both topics have been introduced, they are brought together and compared to help readers identify the significant characteristics of each.

  

The guidelines introduced in the previous paragraphs are summarized in Table 1.1, which also states the specific principles on which each guideline is based. The same guidelines are applicable to the use of a textbook in conjunction with any unit of instruction. Note that these guidelines and principles will be more meaningful if you review this table after reading the chapters specified in the third column. As Table 1.1 indicates, each of these guidelines will be discussed elsewhere in this textbook. Effective instruction occurs when the teacher, textbook, supplementary materials, and students cooperate to orchestrate the implementation of these guidelines in a particular environment to stimulate effective instruction.