Peter McDermott - contributing blogger
In this course meeting we reviewed the required course assignments which include four written essays (essays about one’s personal
experiences with learning, analyses of two books and the self-selected movie),
one collaborative presentation, five weekly postings to the course’s Wallwisher sites, and three
quizzes. In my opinion The Wallwisher and
blog postings will be easy to do and should not take too much of your time. I
think the most interesting course assignment is the one pertaining to the movie
about education – remember to analyze the movie according to the theories of
teaching and learning that are represented in it.
The first discussion topic for this evening pertained to how children learn.
After brainstorming in small groups we discussed general theories about how
children learn, and we spent some time spent on the tension between environmental and
innate factors influencing children’s cognitive development. I think most of us agree that
children’s learning is influenced by both the environment and their own natural
talents and dispositions, and it would be difficult to say one has greater
influence than the other. The issue, of course, is a complex one. One topic
that emerged in this discussion was the role of creativity in children’s
learning and to the extent to which the environmental issues influence it.
The second discussion topic was that of the “PygmalionEffect” (Rosenthal & Jacobson, 1968). Robert Rosenthal’s work is quite
famous and although published 45 years ago, his findings still inform
contemporary educational policies and practices. The No Child Left Behind and
the Common Core State Standards propose that all children must be expected to
learn the same curriculum regardless of their life and family backgrounds. Such legislation illustrates the importance of
teacher expectations on children’s learning and is clearly informed by Rosenthal’s
research.
We began our third topic, educational research, but did not have enough time to complete it. Psychological research has been dominated by experimental methods of studying thinking and learning, and a characteristic of experimentation is the quantification of human behaviors (Ormrod, 2010). Two other methods used in psychological research are correlational and descriptive studies. Correlational studies examine the extent to which two or more items are associated with one another. A classic correlation is that of wealthy schools and children's performance - the wealthier the district, the more likely students score well on standardized tests. Of course, correlations do not mean causation. Correlations only represent associations. The third common research method used in psychology is descriptive research. An example of descriptive research would be that which presents statistical comparisons of children's performance from different school districts on statewide examinations; such studies might include a variety of data about school size, income, number of teachers, length of school day, etc. In our next class meeting we will examine what teachers should know when reading educational research.
References
Ormrod,
J. (2010). Educational Psychology: Developing Learners (7th Ed). NY:
Pearson.
Rosenthal, R., & Jacobson, L.
(1968). Pygmalion in the classroom.
New York: Holt,
Rinehart
& Winston.
