Month: March 2017

Today I am going to answer a few important questions about different perspectives of learning, the limitations and importance of these, and my own personal belief. First I will go over the differences between behaviorist and cognitive perspectives of learning. “The behaviorist perspective of learning focuses on the new behaviors themselves that are learned” (pg. 312). These are things like controlling your classroom so you can create the best possible learning environment for your students. So in this philosophy we learned a lot about how to motivate students to behave appropriately and do their work. Whereas “cognitive perspective discusses more about the knowledge and strategies are learned, then changes in knowledge and strategies make changes in behavior possible” (pg. 312). We are taught the different levels of cognitive development and how to teach at these different stages. Even more importantly we learned about how students actually process information and what their memory capacity is and how we can get our students to effectively retain the most amount of information possible. Both of these concepts are very important to apply to your class room instruction because it allows us as teachers to create the best possible learning environment in our classroom. It also allows for us to understand different laws of learning. This understanding will give us knowledge on how our students’ brains work and develop, which allows for us to structure our teaching in a way that our students will be able to retain the most possible amount of information during our lesson. For cognitive learning some of the limitations we have as teachers is that you have to teach in a way that coincides with the level of cognitive development you class falls under. An even harder aspect is appealing to all students. This is really hard because all students develop at different times. This means that some of your students may not be developmentally ready to retain some of the material you are teaching them. As a result teachers must carefully think through how they present their material. As for behavioral development, we have some of the same issues as cognitive development but some new challenges as well. For example, in order to create the best learning environment possible for your class you may have to kick students out of the room or have them sit away from the rest of the class. The challenge with this is you need to find a balance where that student isn’t taking away the ability for students around him to learn while at the same time your punishment shouldn’t be taking away from their ability to learn. After looking at the table on page 468 I felt the rolls of the teacher and student were very good. However, I disagree with the idea that peers have no role in behavioral and cognitive development. I disagree with this because I feel like peers have a huge roll in both of these. For behavioral, I feel that if students watch their peers behave in the correct manner they are much more likely to copy their behavior so they can conform. In addition, cognitive learning from peers is one of the most effective tools a student can have. Through all your years in school you are going to have the same classmates basically until college so it’s crucial that students learn how to use one another as a resource to gain new information. Kids seem to learn the best from kids and I know for a fact the best way for someone to learn is by teaching someone else. When I become a teacher I know I will apply these different strategies in my classroom in the hope of creating the best learning environment possible.

Eddie Petrak

 

 

There are many different ways people develop and construct knowledge. Different kids go through different developmental changes at different times so as a result it’s our jobs as teachers to appeal to all students. Piaget does a great job of outlining these different stages of development. Piaget figured out that students develop cognitively as they grow just like how they grow psychically. So he created four stages of development. The first stage is from the years 0-2 and during this stage he said children develop sensorimotor skills. This means during this age gap children gather information about the world trough sight, smell, taste, hearing, and touch. The next stage is the preoperational stage which happens between the ages 2-7. During this stage children start to engage in pretend play and they start to understand symbols. Next we have the concrete operational stage, this occurs between the ages of 7-11. During this stage kids begin to understand mathematics and form the ability to understand sizes and portions “water in glass experiment”. Last from the ages 12 and up children enter the formal operational stage. During this stage kids are able to reason about different concepts and moral reasoning is believed to be developed during this stage. However I feel that one of the biggest impacts on a student’s learning is the classroom environment. Luckily this is something we can control as teachers. However it can be a challenging to find what forms of discipline your students respond best. As they go through different stages of development teachers must also adapt and use different types of reinforces. One of the most effective ways to influence all aged student’s behavior according to (Alper and Heward 1997, p. 277; Alber and Heward, 2000) “the systematic application of praise and attention may be the most powerful motivational and classroom management tool available to teachers”. By carefully selecting when to give attention and praise to students we influence them to behave properly. By being selective once praise is given it has an even stronger impact on your students. This concept is the same way inflation works with currency. If you just constantly print out and give people hundred dollar bills eventually it won’t be worth anything. This is because if everyone has hundreds of dollars available to them it won’t carry the same value it once had. So as a teacher you have to be extremely selective when you give out both negative and positive reinforcement so it will have significance when you use it. Although teacher reinforcement can be very effective in your classroom you must find other meaningful reinforces in order to further impact students behavior. This is where the response cost theory comes into play. As described by Walker, Shea, and Bauer (2004) “For certain infractions of the rules, people must lose some reinforcer-money, time, privileges”. Teacher reinforcement is great but if a student is behaving badly you need to have fair and meaningful punishments prepared to combat this behavior. The best way to find meaningful punishments is to observe what your students enjoy to do in their free time. However there are some cautions you should be aware of before you give out a punishment however. Students must be fully aware of the classroom rules and the repercussions of breaking one of these rules. Another important thing we must understand as teachers is that just giving out a punishment ineffective. This is because “It tells students what to stop doing (often they knew that already), but it does not teach them what to do instead (Kazdin, 2008). This is a crucial aspect in changing a student’s behavior because it teaches them what they can do to avoid getting in trouble again. Hopefully by reading this post you will be able to grasp a better knowledge on how to effectively impact your student’s behavior inside your classroom. If you are able to use some of the methods listed above you should be able to maintain the best possible learning environment for your class.

 

All information was taken out of our Educational Psychology book citation is below.

Anita Woolfolk, Alber, Heward, Walker, Shea, Bauer, and Kazdin. (2014). Educational Psychology 12 Edition.

There are many different ways people develop and construct knowledge. Different kids go through different developmental changes at different times so as a result it’s our jobs as teachers to appeal to all students. One of the biggest impacts on a student’s learning is the classroom environment. Luckily this is something we can control as teachers. However it can be a challenging to find what forms of discipline your students respond best. As they go through different stages of development teachers must also adapt and use different types of reinforces. One of the most effective ways to influence all aged student’s behavior according to (Alper and Heward 1997, p. 277; Alber and Heward, 2000) “the systematic application of praise and attention may be the most powerful motivational and classroom management tool available to teachers”. By carefully selecting when to give attention and praise to students we influence them to behave properly. By being selective once praise is given it has an even stronger impact on your students. This concept is the same way inflation works with currency. If you just constantly print out and give people hundred dollar bills eventually it won’t be worth anything. This is because if everyone has hundreds of dollars available to them it won’t carry the same value it once had. So as a teacher you have to be extremely selective when you give out both negative and positive reinforcement so it will have significance when you use it. Although teacher reinforcement can be very effective in your classroom you must find other meaningful reinforces in order to further impact students behavior. This is where the response cost theory comes into play. As described by Walker, Shea, and Bauer (2004) “For certain infractions of the rules, people must lose some reinforcer-money, time, privileges”. Teacher reinforcement is great but if a student is behaving badly you need to have fair and meaningful punishments prepared to combat this behavior. The best way to find meaningful punishments is to observe what your students enjoy to do in their free time. However there are some cautions you should be aware of before you give out a punishment however. Students must be fully aware of the classroom rules and the repercussions of breaking one of these rules. Another important thing we must understand as teachers is that just giving out a punishment ineffective. This is because “It tells students what to stop doing (often they knew that already), but it does not teach them what to do instead (Kazdin, 2008). This is a crucial aspect in changing a student’s behavior because it teaches them what they can do to avoid getting in trouble again. Hopefully by reading this post you will be able to grasp a better knowledge on how to effectively impact your student’s behavior inside your classroom. If you are able to use some of the methods listed above you should be able to maintain the best possible learning environment for your class.

All information was taken out of our Educational Psychology book citation is below.
Anita Woolfolk, Alber, Heward, Walker, Shea, Bauer, and Kazdin. (2014). Educational Psychology 12 Edition.