Educational Psychology in Learning and Teaching

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Table of Contents

Course Summary
Knowledge of Research Methodologies and Data-Driven Decision-Making
Description of Theories Learned From This Course Experience
Questions Still Lingering on the Subjects and Topics in This Course
Reference List

Course Summary

A course in educational psychology has helped me as a teacher in learning how to completely comprehend and tackle daily challenges in a typical class setting. Fundamentally, this course focuses on tenets of learning and teaching in a classroom. From my experience in this course, I have realized that education psychology entails more than just the use of psychological techniques in learning and teaching.

As such, it is a course that immensely impacts on both learning of instructors and students. Contrary to the olden perspectives, the study book Learning Theories: An Educational Perspective by Dale H. Schunk points out that both teachers and learners should fittingly be seen as thinkers.

Knowledge of Research Methodologies and Data-Driven Decision-Making

Prior to this course, my knowledge of research methodologies and data-driven decision-making was not satisfactory, especially in dealing with modern classroom characterized by students from multiracial and multicultural backgrounds.

Thus, this course has significantly helped me as a teacher in studying and applying modern research methodologies and suppositions, practices and plans which emphasize on the use of both quantitative and qualitative methods in improving learning outcomes.

As a student, I have developed knowledge of a number of procedures necessary for conducting study in teaching and analyzing the resultant data. Besides improving the efficiency of instructional methods, this knowledge will also help me in promoting cohesion among students and staff.

My understanding of data-driven decision making from this course has also been of considerable help. The topic on data-driven decision making has aided me in planning and implementing student-centered instructional techniques, tracking supplies, identifying viable instructional techniques, and improving interaction among parties entailed in the learning procedure.

Thus, a course in educational psychology has provided me with a chance of collecting and analyzing data that are linked to learning challenges in various settings.

Description of Theories Learned From This Course Experience

The course has instilled in me appreciable knowledge of children’s various levels of development, including, language, cognitive, moral, and psychosocial developments as postulated by theorists such as Jean Piaget and Rudolf Steiner. Throughout the course, I have learned how individuals’ learning process can be explained by four major learning theories.

These include constructivism, cognitivism, behaviorism, and social cognitive theory. As shown by Schunk (2012), constructivism postulates that a learner creates learning. This theory has three important concepts: dialectical, endogenous, and exogenous. Dialectical concept indicates that students learn by interacting with individuals in their surrounding.

Endogenous concept, on the other hand, holds that learning is influenced by experience and not by individuals’ surrounding. This is contrary to exogenous concept which argues that learning is fully influenced by one’s surrounding.

However as shown by Schunk (2004) “learning in a constructivist setting is not allowing students to do whatever they want. Rather, constructivist environments should create rich experiences that encourage students to learn” (p. 316).

Cognitivism holds that the structure of memory determines the manner in which an individual perceives, processes, stores, retrieves, and forgets information. Thus, according to this theory, students actively participate in the learning process. Also, learning is not largely unaffected by environmental factors. Further, this theory emphasizes that storage of information occurs inform of short-term or long-term memories.

Other theories include behaviorism and social cognitive theory. Experiments by Skinner, Thondike, Watson, and Pavlov indicate how learning is influenced by recognizable behavior as postulated by behaviorism. This theory explains how stimulus and response influence learning process.

Social cognitive theory, on the other hand, posits that effective learning occurs when individuals are in a group, since humans are social beings hence like copying from each other (Schunk, 2012).

The Choice of Social Cognitive Theory

Of the four learning theories, I tend to concur mainly with social cognitive theory. This theory proves that learning occur best when students are working in teams since understanding is both a cultural and social process. This will help me identify social environments that can facilitate learning in a multicultural classroom.

Questions Still Lingering on the Subjects and Topics in This Course

Educational psychology is a very informative course, however, some questions still linger. For instance, as a teacher, I have realized that the course does not cater for means transferring psychological knowledge to real life situation.

Also, in this modern day, besides the theories, the educational psychologists should consider the understanding and ideas of soon-to-be tutors. Without finding a redress to these challenges, educational psychology course will not sufficiently cater for the needs of modern teaching staff and students in a multicultural environments.

Reference List

Schunk, D.H. (2012). Learning Theories: An Educational Perspective (6^th Ed.). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

Schunk, D.H. (2004). Learning theories: An educational perspective (4th Ed.). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

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