Exploring Historical Background

• William James (1st Psych textbooks, studying through observation in the classroom)

• John Dewey (active and experimental learning; real-world application)

• E.L. Thorndike (assessment-focused, reasoning skills are the most important)

• Teaching: both art (passion for the craft) and science (passion for the students and their learning)

Effective Teaching

• Professional Knowledge and skills...

  • Content Knowledge

  • Instructional Strategies

  • Critical Thinking Skills

  • Goal Setting

  • Developmentally Appropriate Practices

  • Classroom Management

  • Motivational and Communication Skills

  • Differentiated Instruction

  • Assessment Knowledge

  • Culturally Responsive

  • Technological Skills

  • Pedagogy!

• Above all, Commitment, Motivation, and Caring!

Research

• Experience is important, but don't forget to learn from others

• Some research methods

  • Observing and Recording (Qualitative)

  • Correlational Research (Quantitative)

  • Experimental Research (Usually qualitative)

  • Program Evaluation (make decisions about the effectiveness of a program, qualitative)

  • Action Research (solve a specific problem, qualitative)

  • Teacher Research (conduct own experiments with kids, qualitative)

What is Development

• biological, cognitive, and socio-emotional changes that begin and continue while someone is alive

Processes and Periods

• Processes: Biological (heigh and weight, puberty, motor skills), Cognitive (intelligence and language), and Socio-emotional (relationships, emotions, and personality)

• Periods: Infancy, Early Childhood, Middle and Late Childhood, Adolescence

Developmental Issues

• Nature vs Nurture: biological vs environmental factors

• Continuity vs Discontinuity: gradual change or distinct changes

• Early vs Later: which part of development is the most important

• Unwise to take an extreme one-sided take

Development and Education

• Splintered Development: uneven across domains. ie: can't do math but has lots of language knowledge

The Brain: Prefrontal Cortex

• Neurons and Brain regions: lots of them, some coated in myelin to increase speed of thought as time goes on

• In Middle and Late Childhood: total brain volume tapers off, but structures and regions are still becoming distinct from one another

• Adolescence: developing of corpus callosum (brain fiber for processing), limbic system (emotions), and amygdala (also emotion)

• Lateralization: special function for each hemisphere (right brain vs left brain)

• Plasticity: experiences (nurture) can effect how brains develop

• Education is VERY important in brain development and plasticity. Adolescent may be big risk takers because no prefrontal lobe; they will follow what their brain pathways tell them to do.

Piaget's Theory

• Cognitive Process: Schemas (organizing knowledge), assimilation and accommodation, organization, and shifting equilibrium through stages of development

• Piagetian stages

  • Sensorimotor stage: sensory experiences of the world

  • Pre-operational: imaginative, intuitive, but not necessarily logical thought)

  • Concrete Operational: attempt at thinking logically and making connections and relationships)

  • Formal Operational: logical, abstract, and idealistic thinking

• Constructivism and Technology: "students learn best when they are constructing information and knowledge,"

• Piaget's yays and nays: yay for object permanence (agreement on what general age skills are developed), nay over/under estimating children by holding them to these standards.

Vygotsky's Theory

• The Zone of Proximal Development: range of tasks that are too difficult for the child by themselves, but that they can achieve dependently

• Scaffolding: changing the level of support to improve competence

• Language and thought: speech/thoughts help socially and academically

• Social interaction while learning is incredibly important

What is Language

• Phonology: sound system, made up of phonemes (phonics?)

• Morphology: the system of units of meaning, made up of morphemes

• Syntax: how words are combined in sentences

• Semantics: meaning of words/ sentences

• Pragmatics: appropriate language in different circumstances

Biological/Environmental Influence

• Chomsky: humans "prewired" in order to learn language in a certain way

How Language Develops

• Infancy: babbling and two-word stage

• Early childhood: rule systems used more regularly, literacy encouraged with books at home and in the classroom

• Older Children: metalinguistic awareness

• Adolescence: ~sophisticated~ words

Bronfenbrenner's ecological theory

• Five environmental systems

  • Microsystem

  • Mesosystem

  • Exosystem

  • Macrosystem

  • Chronosystem (time and changes in family life)

• Not as biological as Piaget's theory

Erikson's Life-Span Development Theory

• Eight stages of human development

  • Trust vs mistrust (0-1 years)

  • Autonomy vs shame (1-3 years)

  • Initiative vs guilt (3-5 years)

  • Industry v inferiority (6-10 ish years)

  • Identity vs confusion (10-20 years)

  • Intamacy vs isolation (20-39 years)

  • Generativity vs stagnation (40-59 years)

  • Integrity vs despair (60s-death)

• Life-long, though a little rigid in age ranges

Families

• Parenting styles

  • Authoritarian

  • Authoritative (Assertive)

  • Neglectful

  • Indulgent

• Students do better when parents are involved/invested in students' education

• Coparenting: two individuals jointly raising a child

• Some varying families

  • Working parents (different professions will have different effects on children)

  • Divorced Parents (children will have poorer adjustment to school environment)

• Parents will have an effect on out of school activities as well, like sports or music

Peers

• Statuses

  • Popular

  • Average

  • Neglected

  • Rejected

  • Controversial

• Friendship will influence attitudes towards learning and can determine how successful students will be in the classroom

Schools

• Classrooms are social hubs for children

• Early Childhood Education

  • Developmentally Appropriate Education: takes into account developmental stage of a child as well as individual differences

  • Montessori Approach: freedom to choose activities

  • Low-Income Learners: may need extra support to combat disadvantage

• Elementary School

  • Technology that engages rather than separates

• Adolescents in school

  • Middle School: top dog syndrome (can be combatted with more support as students are transitioning), curriculum/relevancy needs to be updated in order to be more developmentally appropriate

  • High School: negative social experiences damage students' abilities to succeed

The Self and Identity

• Self-esteem: overall view of oneself

• Identity development

  • Statuses: Diffusion (no crisis or commitment), Foreclosure (commitment, no crisis), Moratorium (crisis but no commitment), Achievement (both crisis and commitment)

  • Ethnic Identity: membership to a certain group, also influences identity

Moral Development

• Kohlberg's Theory

  • Level 1: Pre-conventional, focus on the self

  • Level 2: Conventional, focus on small community relationships

  • Level 3: Post-conventional, focus on basic human rights for the whole world

  • (may be a little too much from the justice perspective, would like to see more from the care perspective)

• Domain Theory: moral and social reasoning comes from social interaction

• Cheating: best combatted by making sure students know what cheating is considered and what will happen if they do cheat.

• Prosocial Behavior

  • Altruism: unselfish interest in helping someone else

  • Gratitude: thankfulness

• Moral Education

  • Hidden curriculum: moral atmosphere of school

  • Character Education: SEL programs, preventing immoral behavior

  • Values Clarification: helping people clarify what's worth working for

  • Cognitive Moral Education: the belief that students should value justice and democracy

  • Service Learning: social responsibility through service to community.

Emotional Development

• Early Childhood: new experiences, all very quick

• Middle-Late Childhood: suppressing emotions begins, empathy begins to develop as well

• Adolescence: "emotional turmoil"

• SEL teams improve attention, communication, and the emotional well-being of students

• Coping w/ stress: make sure to reassure students of their safety

What is intelligence?

• "the ability to solve problems, to adapt, and to learn from experiences"

Intelligence Tests

• Individual

  • Binet Test: IQ=MA/CA

  • Wechsler: like an IQ test but hi lights specific skills like verbal or nonverbal processing

• Group

  • Less individualized, more outliers, but easier to manage.

  • Sometimes anxiety in students and/or other distractions can get in the way of accuracies of these tests

Theories of Multiple Intelligences

• Sternberg's Triarchic Theory: intelligence can be either analytical, creative, or practical

• Gardner's Eight Frames of Mind:

  • Verbal

  • Mathmatical

  • Spatial

  • Bodily-Kinesthetic

  • Musical

  • Intrapersonal (understanding of self)

  • Interpersonal

  • Naturalist

• Emotional Intelligence

  • Perceiving and expressing emotions accurately

  • understanding emotions

  • monitor others and one's own emotions

  • knowledge about the differences between emotions

  • Can manage emotions to guide action

• One intelligence vs many: Gardner says yes, others say no

Neuroscience of Intelligence

• Moderate correlation of bigger brain and more intelligence

• Prefrontal cortex influences intelligence

• Parietal lobe also influences intelligence

• Higher networking between/inside these two regions makes for more intelligence

• "Gifted children" show faster processing

• Nature and nurture influence intelligence

Controversy

• Widespread schooling nowadays means a higher average IQ

• Ethnicity and Culture

  • African-Americans and other oppressed groups systematically minoritized due to expectations, stereotypes then create anxiety and self-fulfilling prophecies.

  • Culture-fair tests are hard to create

• Ability Grouping

  • Between Class: grouping students based on abilities to work on specific skills (reading, learning, thinking skills) regardless of age, like the Joplin Plan

  • Within class: same as before, but limited to a certain age group.

Some Thinking Styles

• Impulsive/reflective: acting quickly or take more time to think and respond

• Deep/surface: deals with how to engage with material; only knowing the basics or enough to get by, or diving deep to understand meaning and "why" we learn.

• Optimistic/Pessimistic: Positive or Negative expectations for the future

Criticisms of Learning and Thinking Styles

• low reliability and consistency between styles; students change all the time

• no accurate means of testing

• variability in definitions of the styles

Personality

• Big 5

  • Oppenness: independent or conforming

  • Conscientiousness: careful v careless

  • Extraversion: introvert vs extrovert

  • Agreeableness: outgoing v suspicious

  • Neuroticism: self-image

• Person-situation interaction: personality is more than personal traits; it also deals with the situation involved. Culture basically.

Temperament

• behavioral style and ways of responding to situations

  • Easy child classification: positive, adaptive, resilient

  • Difficult child classification: slow to change, negative, irregular behavior

  • Slow-to-wake child classification: low activity, somewhat negative

• Goodness of fit: match between child's temperament and the environmental demands

What is Learning?

• A permanent influence on behavior, knowledge, and thinking skills (happens through experience)

Approaches to Learning

• Behavioral

  • Behaviorism: behavior explained by observable practices

  • Mental processes: thoughts and feelings, non-observable

  • Associative Learning: connecting two or more events to one another

• Cognitive: thought-focused

Classical Conditioning

• connecting stimuli

• Generalization: new similar stimuli producing similar results

• Discrimination: response to certain stimuli, but not others

• Extinction: weakening of response due to lack of enforcement

• Systematic Desensitization: lowering anxiety by having the individual associate relaxation with certain stimuli

• explains involuntary responses, but not voluntary ones

Operant Conditioning

• behavior frequency affected by consequence

• Reinforcement: reward or lack of consequence, increases probability of behavior occurring

• Punishment: decreases probability of behavior occurring

• Generalization: same response to similar stimuli, for a different purpose, like a different school subject

• Discrimination: differentiating between stimuli

• Extinction: stimuli decrease, response decrease

Applied Behavior Analysis

• Application of operant conditioning to change behavior

Increasing Desirable Behaviors:

• Effective Reinforcers:

  • Premack Principle: a highly desired reward/reinforcer will work to reinforce an activity with low desire

• Contingent and Timely Reinforcers: only after a child does a certain behavior, and in a relevant time period

• Scheduling Reinforcement: when a reward or consequence will be given (variable vs fixed, time vs ratio)

• Contracting: reinforcements are in writing, makes it more obvious and easier to understand

• Effecting Negative Reinforcement: removing an unpleasant outcome

• Prompts: cue given before response to increase the frequency of the correct behavior, like a hint

• Shaping: teaching behavior by reinforcing approximations or intervals of the target behavior (50% accuracy to 60% accuracy)

Decreasing Undesirable Behaviors

• Differential Reinforcement: reinforcing desired behavior after undesired behavior has occurred (do this instead of what you just did)

• Terminate Reinforcement: ignoring negative behavior, only reinforcing desired behavior going forward

• Remove Desirable Stimuli:

  • Time-out: removing from any positive reinforcement (person out of the situation)

  • Response cost: taking positive reinforcers away (situation away from the person)

• Present Punishments:

  • DO NOT yell or scream

  • Punishing too often will create a strong dislike

  • Punishment can create anxiety and agitation

  • ALWAYS accompany with a corrective behavior to encourage positive/desirable growth.

  • Don't give too much attention (aka call-in instead of call-out)

Criticisms

• Operant Conditioning focuses too much on external factors still

• Students should learn how to control their own behavior instead of us managing it all the time

  • Word. Better than Carrots or Sticks

Bandura's social cognitive theory

• Cognition, Behavior, and Environment all influence each other in a triangle

Observational Learning

• skills, strategies, and beliefs, gained by watching others

• Processes

  • Attention: model commands attention

  • Retention: verbal cues of how to replicate

  • Production: actual replication, sometimes limited by motor skills

  • Motivation: often by a reinforcement

  • Models in the classroom: YOU, always.

  • Models in media: numerous, important that they are positive. Children will repeat what they see.

Cognitive-Behavioral Approaches and Self-Regulation

• putting it back in the student's hands

• Cognitive-behavioral approaches: letting students monitor/regulate their own behavior

• Self-regulatory learning: self-monitoring of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors in order to reach a goal

• This is so Better than Carrots or Sticks

Conclusion

• Pros: learning in the student's own hands

• Cons: no age-related/developmental practices.

• Underestimate what disadvantaged students are capable of

• postpone challenging work until they have mastered "the basics"

• deprive students of motivation

Mutual Trust and respect are very important. Students must feel as though they belong in order for any true learning to take place.

1. Awareness

2. Learning Partnerships

3. Information Processing

4. Community Building

• not meant to stereotype cultures, but rather to gain knowledge of general "cultural orientation." These two exist on a continuum and aren't mutually exclusive

• Individualism: yourself before others

• Collectivism: emphasis on positive relationships in all directions, in business and in personal lives.

Redlining/gerrymandering is a great example of systematic oppression: reducing the political power of already oppressed groups. Oppression is so normalized sometimes it's hard to see.

Time to move beyond "one dimensional" definitions of equity and equality and examine how racism has become a structure rather than a belief.

"Culture of poverty" is not real. People born into poverty do not chose to be there; it does not acknowledge such systems like racism.

• Cognitive approach; children will manipulate, monitor, and strategize with information. Involves attention, memory, and thinking.

Cognitive Resources

• Capacity and speed of processing information

• Gets easier with time

• Nature and nurture have ground here (myelination, exposure to concepts)

• More dimensions of problems are analyzed as we get older

• How fast we process affects what we can do with this information

• Reaction time gets faster with age

Mechanisms of Change

• Encoding: the process by which information goes to memory

• Automaticity: the ability to process information with little to no effort

• Strategy Construction: creation of a new procedure to process information

• Metacognition: knowing about knowing, like how one can best study

Attention

• focusing of mental resources

• Selective Attention: focusing on a specific aspect while ignoring what is irrelevant

• Divided Attention: concentrating on more than one activity at a time

• Executive Action: planning, giving attention to goals, detecting errors, monitoring progress, rolling with the punches

  • Relevant for big tasks like writing papers

Developmental Changes

• length of time we can pay attention increases as we get older

• more attention=more school readiness

• what is obvious grabs out attention

• attention to what is relevant increases as we age, while attention to what is irrelevant decreases with age

• Abilities to select and divide attention also increase with age

• ADHD: affects information processing as well

• Make information relevant in the classroom and your students will learn a lot more easily

Memory

• retention of information over time; involves encoding, storage, and retrieval

Encoding

• Rehearsal: conscious repetition of information over time to increase the amount of time information stays in memory

• Levels of Processing Theory:

  • Deep processing will result in longer retention

  • Shallow processing will result in shorter retention

• Elaboration: extensiveness of information while encoding

  • coming up with examples; correlation helps memory

• Constructing Images: an example of elaborating

• Organization

  • Chunking: grouping information together to give context to meaning; helps to create easier retrieval

Storage

• Sensory memory: holds information in its original form, but only for a second

• Short-term memory: a limited capacity system, only holds memory for 30 seconds

• Long-term memory: holds lots of information for long periods of time

  • Declarative Memory: conscious facts and events

  • Procedural Memory: conscious skills and cognitive operations

  • Episodic Memory: where and when of life happenings

  • Semantic Memory: general knowledge of the world

• Network Theory: concrete subjects connected under abstract ones, but atypical connections are harder to remember

• Schema Theory: constructing information into categories that already exist in our minds

• Fuzzy trace theory: memory understood by both verbatim and the gist

Retrieval and Forgetting:

• Serial Position effect: recall is better for items at the beginning and at the end

• Cue-dependent forgetting: lack of effective retrieval cues

• Interference theory: we don't ever lose memories, other information just gets in the way

• Decay theory: time is responsible for forgetting since emotions become less attached to the past

Expertise and Learning

• Detecting Features, Noticing Meaningful Patterns, Organization, Depth of Knowledge, and Fluency of Retrieval all get easier with expertise

  • Innovation and efficiency are developed

• Strategies

  • Spreading Out and Consolidating: studying over long periods of time rather than cramming

  • Asking Questions: asking self-developed concentration question to check own understanding

  • Taking Notes: summarizing, outlining, and using concept maps are all valuable skills

  • Using a Study System

Acquiring Expertise

• Practice and Motivation

• Talent

Expertise and Teaching

• Pedagogical Content Knowledge: knowledge about common difficulties students will encounter while learning

Developmental Changes

• Meta-memory: verbatim vs gist skills

• Theory of Mind: awareness of one's own mental processes as well as the processes of others

The Good Information-Processing Model

• Children are taught to use a particular strategy

• Children start to notice shared features/ outcomes of different strategies

• Children start to see general benefits of using strategies

Strategies and Metacognitive Regulation

• Helping students develop multiple strategies that are effective is key in education

• giving instructions increases the abilities of students to apply stratgies

• monitoring effectiveness from both an internal and external standpoint

• Takes time to develop these memory skills

• most children already use multiple strategies, but they could always use more guidance

• The more background knowledge, the better.

Cellular Structure, Myelination: brain pathways are much like footpaths; the more they are walked upon and exercised, the easier it is to travel. More practice in an activity makes it easier. However, if the pathway isn't regularly used, it becomes overgrown and covered up. It becomes harder to access the knowledge and skills that aren't regularly exercised.

The Nervous System:

• "the brain is a social organ" and works best when it is in community with others

• If the amygdala senses danger in the form of unwelcomeness, it will experience anxiety, which only increases the perceptions of danger the amygdala will pick up. It's a vicious cycle.

Culturally Responsive Brain Rules:

• The brain will always seek out opportunities to connect with others in community, and minimize anxiety

• Micro-aggression: what one party sees as an innocent gesture, but the other party perceives as threatening

• The brain needs to be part of a supportive and caring community in order to "maximize well-being" and learning.

• Communities of color are drawn to art, music, movement, and story because historically, they were not deprived of these things in the academic classroom.

• Dependent learners turn into independent learners when they are pushed outside of their comfort zones with the proper strategies

Supporting Dependent Learners: dependent learners will experience a lot of anxiety and fear in the classroom because they are frequently pushed outside of their comfort zones; this becomes amplified if they are not part of a welcoming classroom community. Therefore, creating a community that will minimize anxiety in students is crucial to them being able to learn.

Identifying Cultural Frame of Reference: must be done before encountering cultural conflict; now is the perfect time to acknowledge where you will have unconscious or conscious biases so you can prepare for management in the future

Cultural Reference Points: what does your culture say about intelligence? who is allowed to be smart, and is it right to place restrictions or expectations on who deserves to hold intelligence?

Interpretation Aperture: allow for critical thinking and alternative explanations to hold ground in processing after conflict instead of acting on feeling. Misinterpretations are common in the classroom.

Using pop culture movies/ shows to let you feel empathy for those from different background than your own: African-American and Latino cultures are both communal, but they are different across other domains

Identifying Triggers: Miscommunication across cultures is so common; be aware of this

Supporting Dependent/ Disadvantaged Learners: devote time towards improving cultural awareness, just as you would do for lesson planning.

Rapport and Affirmation:

• Helping students rethink their own behavior will always work better than reprimanding or rewarding them.

• Rapport will allow dependent learners to share their learning preferences and processes better than any test score will.

• Trust is the opposite of fear, or cortisol. Trust will stop the production of excessive cortisol in the classroom, freeing up mental energy for students to learn instead of live in fear. Trust calms the brain enough to learn.

• Micro-aggressions committed by not considering another's culture undermine trust and undo the work made to make the classroom a learning environment.

Selective Vulnerability: sharing with students a new skill you are learning is important; the more you can model a "less-than-perfect beginning" the better. It is crucial they understand that the first draft shouldn't be the finishes product so they don't become paralyzed by perfection or unrealistic expectations.

Rapport in the classroom: just because you are using a "nice" tone of voice does not mean the interaction was pleasant for the student

Finding time to have fun as a class is crucial in building classroom community, and therefore trust.

Practicing Affirmation:

• Seeing students goes so much deeper than giving surface level compliments or questions. Students can tell if you're genuinely invested in their lives or not

• Some ideas: using words from a native language to call the class to attention or give directions; put up student-inspired inspirational quotes on the wall

Concepts: groups of objects, events, and characteristics on the basis of common properties

Promoting Concept Formation

• Learn about concept features

  • Definition of Concept (superordinate, key terms in definition)

  • Give examples and non examples

• Concept Maps: visual presentation of a concept's connections and organization

• Hypothesis Testing: what is true of a concept?

• Prototype Matching: deciding whether an item fits the category by comparing it with the most typical examples of the category

Thinking: Manipulating and transforming information into memory, forming connections and reason; allows for critical thinking, decision making, creativity, and problem solving

Executive Function: Managing one's thoughts to behave in a goal-directed manner and showcase self-control

Reasoning

• Inductive Reasoning: assuming from specific to general

  • Analogy: correspondence between otherwise dissimilar things

• Deductive Reasoning: assuming from general to specific

Critical Thinking: thinking reflectively and productively, evaluating evidence

• Mindfulness: being present and flexible while going through life

• Critical thinking in schools

  • Asking why

  • Arguing with reason

  • More than one right answer

  • Thinking creatively outside the box

• Adolescence: Increase of speed, knowledge, and spontaneity in the brain

• Technology and Critical Thinking: concept mapping digitally, access to more information

Decision Making: evaluating alternatives to make choices

• Biases and Flaws in Decision Making:

  • Confirmation Bias: tendencies to search for information that supports you

  • Belief Perseverance: holding on to a belief despite contradictory evidence

  • Overconfidence Bias: self explanatory, basing off of past experiences

  • Hindsight bias: falsely reporting after the fact

• Decision Making in Adolescence:

  • Dual-Processing Model: one experiential, one analytical

Creative Thinking

• Steps:

1) Preparations

2) Incubation

3) Insight

4) Evaluation (is the idea new or not new?)

5) Elaboration (the hard work)

• Teaching and Creativity:

  • Be surprised by something everyday

  • Try and surprise someone else everyday

  • Follow those sparks of interest

  • Wake up in the morning with a specific goal

  • Spend time in settings that spark your creativity

Steps in Problem Solving

1) Find and Frame Problems

2) Develop Strategies

• Subgoaling: intermediate goals

• Algorithms: guaranteed solutions like formulas

• Heuristics: strategies that aren't the most reliable

• Means-end analysis: identify end and current position, and assess from there

3) Evaluate solutions

4) Rethink and Reframe as more information surfaces

Obstacles to Solving Problems

• Fixation: using a prior strategy instead of exploring new ways

• Lack of Motivation and Persistence

• Inadequate Emotional Control, like anxiety attacks

Developmental Changes

• Problem-Solving is harder for younger children

• Older children have more knowledge and strategies

Problem/Project

• Problem Based Learning: solving authentic problems

• Project-Based Learning: solving authentic problems while keeping the product in mind

Transfer: applying previous learning to a new situation

Types of Transfer

• Near Transfer: transfer of learning to a similar situation

• Far transfer: transfer of learning to a very different situation

• Low-road transfer: automatic and low-energy requirement transfer

• High-road transfer: applying in a way that takes lots of effort

• Forward-reaching: transferring to a future situation

• Backward-reaching: transferring from an old experience to a new one

• Cultural Practices and Transfer: minimal transfer between home learning and school learning

Situated Cognition: thinking is done in social settings

Scaffolding: challenging the level of support provided throughout a lesson

Cognitive Apprenticeship: a relationship where an expert aides a novice to expertise using scaffolding

Tutoring

• Classroom aids: like reading programs or other resources meant to help students in their education

• Peer tutoring: PALS in person or online

Cooperative Learning: Occurs in groups, where individuals help each other learn

• Research: group rewards, individuals are held accountable

• Motivation: goes way up in group learning

• Interdependence: connections with others

• Creating Cooperative Learning Environments: class cooperation, interclass cooperation, school-wide cooperation, school-parent cooperation, school-neighborhood cooperation

• Evaluating Cooperative Learning: increased independence

  • Drawbacks: abilities differ, natural lone-wolfs may dislike it

Composing the Gap

• Heterogeneous Ability: different experiences, benefits the "low-achieving" students

• Heterogeneity across ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and gender

Team building skills: contributes to better listening and leadership skills

Structuring Small-Group Interaction

• Encourager

• Gatekeeper: equalized participation

• Coach

• Checker

• Taskmaster

• Recorder

• Quiet Captain

• Materials Monitor

Instructional Planning: systematic and organized strategy to plan lessons

Time Frames and Planning

• "Task and time:" what needs to be done and when

• Planning all sorts of time spans; yearly monthly, daily

• Leave room for improvisation

• Not as much time in this country to lesson plan, collaborate, and correct homework

• So get to school early and stay late!!! :)

Teacher-Centered Lesson Planning

• Behavioral objectives: statements focusing on student behavior and the desired levels of performance

• Task analysis: breaking down a task into more manageable pieces

• Instructional Taxonomies: classification systems for education

  • Cognitive Domain: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation

  • Affective Domain: Receiving, Responding, Valuing, Organizing, Value Characterizing

  • Psychomotor Domain: Reflexes, Basic Fundamentals, Perceptual abilities, Physical abilities

Direct Instruction

• teacher control, high expectations, students spend most of their time on academic tasks

Teacher-Centered Instructional Strategies

• Orienting

  • Advance Organizers: learning activities and techniques that establish background skills before a new topic is presented. Can be expository (looking ahead) or comparative (connecting to previous material)

• Lecturing/Explaining/Demonstrating

  • Motivating Student Interest

  • Introducing a Topic Before independent study

  • summarizing information after discussion

  • providing alternative points of view

  • explaining materials that are difficult in more detail

• Questioning within discussion to involve students

• Mastery Learning: teaching one topic thoroughly before moving on to the next

• Seatwork: students work independently at their seats

• Homework

  • Better when spread out

  • homework better for English and math, not the sciences

  • 1-2 hours for middle school, more for high school, but don't over work them!

Last Thoughts on Teacher-Centered Instruction

• Organized planning and objectives, make your lesson relevant to students

• Set high standards

• Use of lecture/explanation/demonstration

• Engage students by asking questions

• Seatwork/homework

Learner-Centered Principles

• YES

• 4 principles of great importance

  • Cognitive and Metacognitive thought processes

  • Motivational and Instructional

  • Developmental and Social

  • Individual Differences

Learner-Centered Instructional Strategies

• Problem-Based Learning: real world thinking like mentioned before

• Essential Questions: reflect the heart of the curriculum, or what students should prioritize as the most important lesson

• Discovery Learning: students constructing their own understanding. Sometimes can be guided.

Last Thoughts on Learner-Centered

• More focus on learning aspects than the actual material

• Not either/or with teacher-centered; elements of both can exist simultaneously

• Interactive technology as a way to reach students

Technology and Internet Shaping Learning

• The Cloud, graphics, and presentations make a lot of things easier for organization and learning in the education world

Standards for Technology Literacy

• Empowered Learner: reaching goals through technology

• Digital Citizen

• Knowledge Construction: Creative Tools and Assistive Technology

• Innovative Designer and Problem Solver

• Computational Thinker: testing hypothesis with computer programs

• Creative and Communitive

• Global Collaborator and Connector

Teaching, Learning, and Technology

• Using tech to improve

  • explore about your domain!

  • think about the limits of understanding

  • more ways to demonstrate understanding (assistive technology, etc)

  • Assessing learning, should always be double checked by human eyes

  • Teacher and Students as learners

• Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge: linking between technology and content knowledge

• Stages:

  • Avoidance

  • Learning

  • Developing specific uses

  • Comfortability

  • Confidence in relevance and reliability

  • Actual usage

Motivation: the processes that energize, direct, and sustain behavior

Perspectives on Motivation: (elements of truth to all)

• Behavioral: Incentives, similar to conditioning

• Humanistic: capacity for personal growth and freedom to choose

• Cognitive Perspective: thoughts guide motivation

  • Competence Motivation: motivated to master their worlds

• Social Perspective: Motivated based on people

  • Need for affiliation or relatedness

Extrinsic (doing something to get something else) and Intrinsic (doing something simply to do something) Motivation

• Self- Determination and Personal Choice: intrinsic

• Optimal Experiences and Flow: intrinsic

• Interest: intrinsic

  • Individual interest: longstanding and stable skills and attention

  • Situational interest: specific to a time and place

• Cognitive Engagement and Self-Responsibility: intrinsic because independent learning

• Extrinsic: Rewards; Intrinsic: Motivation

• Developmental Shifts in Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation:

  • Person-Environment fit: is the environment meeting the students' needs? or worsening their self-image?

Attribution Theory: Individuals are motivated to discover the underlying causes of their behavior

Mastery Motivation and Mindset

• Mastery Motivation

  • Mastery Orientation: process over product

  • Helpless Orientation: trapped by experiences of difficulty or anxiety

  • Performance Orientation: product over process

  • (Performance and Mastery are not polar opposites; can have elements of both)

• Mindset: an individual's cognitive view, fixed or growth (jungle tiger)

Self-Efficacy: the belief that one can master a situation and produce a positive outcome

Goal-setting, Planning, and Self-Monitoring

• Long term and short term goals

• Challenging goals

• Developmental Changes and Goal Setting

  • Middle School: social pressures lower self-efficacy and foster performance orientation

• Planning and Self-Monitoring: Plan how to reach your goal otherwise it will not get done

Expectations (and their influence on motivation)

• From Students: how hard they work influenced by how much they expect to accomplish

• From Teachers: bias towards "high-ability" makes the gap worse

Delay of Gratification: postponing immediate rewards in favor of later and larger rewards

Some questions for reflection on Values and Purpose

• What's most important to you?

• Why do you care?

• Do you have long-term goals?

• Why are these goals important?

• What does it mean to have a good life?

• What does it mean to be a good person?

• How would you like to be remembered?

Social Motives: needs and desires that are learned through experiences with the social world

Social Relationships <3

• Demographic Characteristics: education is generational. A lack of involvement from any party can undercut a child's improvement

• Some practices:

  • Knowing the child, their challenges, and their supports

  • Positive emotional climate, influencing intrinsic motivation

  • Modeling motivation and growth mindset

• Provision of Specific Experiences at home: having reading materials readily available

• Peers, teachers, and social goals: students perform better if their relationships are positive

• Teachers and Parents: a necessary partnership

Sociocultural Contexts:

• Systematic prejudice still affects students. Schools do not do a good enough job of motivating students who are lower on the socioeconomic ladder

• Mentoring and Tutoring within the school and community really helps

Students Who are "Low Achieving" and Have Low Expectations for Success

• Failure System: low expectations for success, giving up at difficulty, not intrinsically motivated

Students Who Protect Their Self-Worth by Avoiding Failure

• Non-performance

• Procrastination

• Setting unreachable goals

• "Fail before you start"

Students Who Procrastinate:

• Ignoring the Task

• Underestimating work, overestimating abilities

• Avoidance

• Substituting a lower-priority activity

• Focusing only on part of a larger task

• Becoming paralyzed at the thought of choice

Students Who Are Perfectionists

• Another reason to procrastinate

• Setting goals/ expectations out of reach or reason

Students with High Anxiety:

• Sensation of fear and apprehension associated with everyday tasks

Students who are Uninterested or Alienated:

• Re-socialization is the answer

Management Issues: usually more complicated at the Secondary Level

The Crowded, Complex, and Chaotic Classroom:

• Classrooms are multidimensional and are used for a variety of activities

• Activities occur simultaneously

• Things happen quickly

• Events are unpredictable

• There is little privacy

• Classrooms hold memories

Getting Off to the Right Start:

• Make good use of setting precedents

• aka, set classroom rules, routines, and expectations, and moods early on

Emphasizing Instruction and a Positive Classroom Climate:

• Positive Classroom Environments better support learning than disciplined ones

• Students are more encouraged to be active learners and listeners this way as well (overlapping speech, Hammond text)

Management Goals and Strategies:

• Help students spend the majority of their time on learning

• Keep students from developing problems

• Managing Instructing (asking questions, giving practice time, assessment)

Principles of Classroom Arrangement:

• Reduce Congestion

• Make so you can easily see al students

• Make often-used materials easily accessible

• Make sure all students can see you

Arrangement Style:

• Some standard classroom arrangements:

  • Auditorium

  • Face-to-face

  • Offset

  • Seminar

  • Cluster

• Personalizing the Classroom: don't make it a motel room

General Strategies:

• Authoritative: encourages students to be independent thinkers but still utilizes monitoring

• Authoritarian: restrictive and punitive, focus on keeping order rather than learning

• Permissive: allows considerable autonomy, but provides little support for developing learning skills or behavior management

Creating, teaching, and maintaining rules and procedures:

• Withitness: teachers are aware of what is happening; stopping inappropriate behaviors before they get out of hand

Keeping Students Engaged and Cooperative:

• Develop a positive relationship with students

• Get students to be intrinsically motivated

Classroom Management and Diversity:

• Restorative Justice!! <3

  • Improves School Climate

  • Disproportionate referrals are due to a miscommunication between students and teachers, due to a lack of cultural sensitivity on the teacher's end

Speaking Skills

• Select Appropriate vocabulary, pace, specificity, and planning

• Barriers: criticizing, name-calling/labelling, advising/downplaying, ordering, threatening, moralizing (you should know how to do this by now)

• Use effective public speaking skills (connect with the audience, be specific, use visual/auditory/kinesthetic aids)

Listening Skills

• Active Listening: gives full attention to the speaker, notes both the intrinsic and emotional takeaways

Nonverbal Communication (an EnVOY principle)

• Facial Expressions, personal space, and silence all play a role here

• Allow thinking/processing time after questions are asked

Management Strategies:

• Minor interventions: non-verbal cues, redirecting

• Moderate Interventions: withholding privilege, isolating, giving punishment, using conditioning

• Using others as resources (peers, PTCs)

• Enlist the help of principals/counselors

Dealing with Hostility:

• School Violence may manifest as fighting and bullying

• Don't give unnecessary attention: "I'll address that in a second"

Standardized Tests: tests with uniform procedures for administration and scoring. Allegedly are supposed to assess performance in different domains and compare performances to each other

Criteria for Evaluating Standardized Tests:

• Norm-referenced

  • Norm group: group of individuals previously tested that provides a basis for interpreting scores

  • Norm-referenced tests: students' scores are interpreted by comparing it to the norm group

• Criterion-referenced: a students' score is determined by comparing it to a criteria

• Validity: the extent to which a test is able to measure what it is intended to measure

• Reliability: the extent to which a test produces a consistent and reproducible score

• Fairness: a test should not be influences by any discriminatory factors

Comparing Aptitude and Achievement Tests:

• Aptitude Test: predicts a students' ability to learn a skill with further education

• Achievement test: measures what a student has already mastered

Types of Standardized Achievement Tests:

• Multiple subject-matter tests, meant for a particular level of students

• Tests for a specific subject-matter

• Diagnostic Tests: in-depth evaluation of a specific area of learning

High-stakes State Standards-based Tests

• The format is usually multiple choice (aka, no independent or creative thought whatsoever)

• Criticisms:

  • Teaching to the test

  • Categorizing schools as "deserving" and "undeserving" of funds based on alleged "achievement" measured by these flawed performance exams

  • emphasis on memorization rather than actual learning

  • Inherently discriminatory

  • Narrows curriculum

• No Child Left Behind

  • Adequate Yearly Progress: labels schools and students as "underperforming"

• Every Student Succeeds Act:

  • Reversed some of NCLB

• World Class Standards: reading, math, and science.

Standardized tests of Teacher Candidates:

• PRAXIS

  • Not super effective

  • screens for "low-level understanding" of content knowledge, educational skills, and pedagogy

• No national test required

Preparing Students to Take Standardized Tests:

• There is more information and learning than just what is on this test. You have and will learn so much more beyond this systematic ranking system.

Understanding and Interpreting Test Results:

• Descriptive Statistics

  • Frequency Distribution

  • Average

  • Measures of Variability

  • Normal Distribution

• Interpreting

  • Percentile rank

  • 9 point score: "low performing to high"

  • Grade-equivalent: indicates a students performance in relation to grade level and month, based on a 10 month school year

  • Standard Score: a score expressed as a deviation from the mean

  • Don't over-interpret ok

Standardized Tests, Alternative Assessments, and high-stakes testing:

• Alternative Assessments: 100% better in every aspect

• Comparison is doing nothing for students. I don't care that some administrators like to play with their silly little numbers in their office down the hall. Have they every really talked to a child. What part of ranking children and deciding which child is worthy of receiving help and resources is ok

Diversity and Standardized Testing:

• These tests are not culturally responsive or relevant in any way

• I didn't like how this section was only one paragraph tacked on at the end, almost as if it was an afterthought.

Assessment as an integral part of Teaching:

• Pre-instruction Assessment: to student possess prerequisite knowledge in order to be successful?

• Formative Assessment: assessment during the course of instruction

• Summative Assessment: assessment after instruction to document performance

Making assessment Compatible with Contemporary views of Learning and Motivation:

• Assessment can be a motivator and engager if used effectively

• Alternative assessment is the most useful

Creating Clear and Appropriate Learning Targets:

• Think to yourself: what should students know/ be able to do?

Establishing High-Quality Assessments:

• Validity: the extent to which the assessment is a reasonable sample of what went on in the classroom

• Fairness: culturally responsive assessments during and after instruction

Current Trends in Classroom Assessment:

• Objective tests: tests that have clear and unambiguous answers (dependent learning)

• Performance assessment: required creating answers that demonstrate knowledge (independent learning)

Selected-Response items (objective and scored quickly by the answer key)

• Multiple-Choice: a stem plus possible responses

• True/False

• Matching: connecting stimuli

Constructed-Response (written or created; performance rather than memorization)

• Short-answer: writing a word, sentence, or phrase as a response to a prompt

• Essays: more writing and freedom

Trends in Alternative Assessment:

• Authentic assessment: evaluating a student's knowledge in a context that resembles the real world

Performance Assessment:

• Rubric: lists specific criteria for grading and scoring

• Performance criteria: specific behaviors that students need to perform effectively for assessment

• Objective tests do not measure all that there is to learn

Portfolio Assessment (demonstrates skills/accomplishments)

• Effective use of portfolios

  • Purpose: either growth or best work

  • Involve students in selecting portfolio stuff

  • Review portfolios with students

  • Grading: checklists/ rating scales are commonly used

  • Set clear evaluation standards

• The role of portfolios as assessment: captures complexity

The Effects of Grading

• Administrative: credits for graduation

• Information: how "well" students are doing

• Motivational: stimuli for high grades, fear of low ones

• Guidance: help to select multiple future courses of action

• grading is not effective but these are some effects.

Components of Grading:

• Comparison

  • Norm-referenced: comparing a student's performance with others

  • Criterion-reference: comparing a student's performance with a standard

• Some teachers only uses tests, while others may give points for effort (both are ineffective)

• Weighting evidence of performance

Reporting Progress/grades to parents:

• Report card: standard method

• Written progress reports

• PTC

Some Issues (and how to resolve them)

• Don't put in 0s for missed assignments; use "60s"

• Don't go off the numbers. Go off of understanding

• Grading discourages students

• Don't "cushion" hard grades

"Every child deserves a champion: an adult who will never give up on them, who understands the power of connection and insists they become the best they can possibly be" -Rita Peterson

Why Marginalized Dependent Learners Need an Ally

• When academic hurdles seem insurmountable, students become discouraged and disengaged

• "When a teacher expresses sympathy over failure, lavishes praise for completing a simple task, or offers unsolicited help, you send unintended messages of low expectations

• Internalized Oppression: when a student internalizes the negative social messages about his racial group, begins to believe them, and loses confidence

Validating Students' Experiences: "being hopeful can be hard if as social justice educators, we continually beat the drum of oppression and social inequity"

The Pact: a student and a teacher working together towards a learning goal in a professional relationship

Creating the Pact:

• Talk with students, not at them

• Ask the student(s) what they think is getting in the way of learning

• Let students know in advance that you will ask them to stretch themselves

• Make sure to document what was talked about

Giving Dependent Learners The Basic Tools for Independent Learning:

• give regular time for processing

• Effective feedback helps build trust in a teacher/student relationship; the student recognizes the teacher's want to help them better themselves

• Four distinct characteristics of quality feedback

  • Instructive rather than evaluative

  • Specific and in the right dose

  • Timely

  • Delivered in a low stress and supportive environment

Giving "Wise" Feedback

• "Cushioning" feedback to students of color because of unfamiliarity or discomfort only hurts them in the long run

• Specific elements of wise feedback

  • Assurance of capability

  • Explicit stating of standards

  • Specific action steps

  • Having the student paraphrase what was just said is a good comprehension checker while feedback is being given

"If you can show me how I can cling to that which is real to me, while teaching me a way into the larger society, then and only then will I drop my defenses and hostility, and I will sing your praises and help you to make the desert bear fruit," -Ralph Ellison

In order to make the shift from dependent to independent learner, a student must believe in themselves first.

When students have negative mindsets, they give up a lot more quickly in the face of hard tasks that they haven't received the resources to complete.

"Our focus has to be on shifting mindset rather than on trying to force engagement or cajole students' motivation. Students have to become self-motivated. That's one of the hallmarks of an independent learner," -Hammond

Sociopolitical Impact on Academic Mindset

• A student's academic mindset is often not a person choice, but rather more directly influenced by schools. Learners still tend to blame themselves for failures because they are not aware of how the system may have failed them.

• Negativity bias: present in all students to a certain degree

• Negativity bias combined with the amygdala hijack can really influence students to believe that school is an unwelcoming place based off of micro-aggressions

• Micro-insults: "being insensitive to culturally and linguistically diverse students and trivializing their racial and culturally identity such as not learning to pronounce a student's name or giving the student an anglicized name to make it easier on the teacher.

Helping Students to Create a Counter Narrative:

• Story Structure: the brain's natural way of thinking through concepts

• As an ice breaker: have students come up with negative mindsets or beliefs they may have about themselves, and then prompt them to come up with 2-3 logical counterpoints that have disproved that claim

Notice and acknowledge when students are showing the elements of academic mindset: point out when you see students who have in the passed demonstrated learned helplessness show aspects of independent scholarship, ask thoughtful questions, put in effort, and learn from their errors

Helping Students connect with their already present expertise and competence: have students write down or share with others their area of expertise in order to remind them of self-efficacy

"Disguising" a lesson with cultural references is not effective, especially when we are still presenting the lesson in traditional and non-culturally-responsive ways

The Power of Active Processing: just because you heard something does not mean you've processed it

Elaboration: the brain can only process for about 12-20 minutes, then cycles down for 10 minutes; basically your brain gives itself its own breaks

Chewing, or processing content:

• "Too often, we continue lecturing without providing time and space for students to do active processing... learners need the cognitive space to process"

• Letting students have breaks to quietly reflect on notes, draw a picture of what was discussed, journal about questions they might have, or turn and talk is extremely valuable

• Though this may seem chaotic at first, this method improves students' understanding and retention

Cognitive Routines

• some questions for reflection while processing:

  • How is this new material related to what I already know?

  • What are the natural relationships and patterns in the material?

  • How does it fit together? What larger systems are at play?

  • Whose point of view does this represent?

• These questions may be challenging, which may present struggle; to help students avoid an amygdala hijack through this struggle, remember how to be an ally. Stay calm and focused as they are learning these new habits.

Story-ify the Content

• Provide key words, ideas, and concepts, and then ask students to combine them intro a coherent narrative

  • Helps them identify similarities and differences, relationships, and point of view.

Graphic Organizers

• Nonlinguistic representations of material contribute leaps and bounds to understanding and comprehension.

Reviewing: the learner must apply their new learning in 24 hours in order for the neural pathways to form effectively.

Culturally Responsive Information Processing:

• "Oh, we are learning. You are just hiding it in the fun." (that's the goal)

"Every person needs a place that is furnished with hope," -Maya Angelou

"Children grow into the intellectual life around them," -Leo Vygotsky

Routines, aesthetics, talk structures, and task variety are the brick and mortar of a positive classroom environment.

Only when our brains can perceive that we are physically, socially, and intellectually safe can we learn effectively.

Some questions for classroom community building:

• What values do we want to communicate through our environment?

• How do we want children to experience their time in our classroom?

• What do the artifacts on the wall say about this classroom?

• What do we want the environment to teach?

Classroom Aesthetics and Symbols

• The brain in constantly scanning surroundings subconsciously in order to ensure the environment is contributing to a sense of well-being, which will often connect to ones home environment

• Artifacts: bring in art from local community organizations

Routines:

• Open the day with a centering activity

• Use music call and response in order to transition from activity to activity

• Reinstate after lunch re-centering as well to get minds focused on learning

Student Agency and Voice: talking helps us process; Vygotsky believed that we learn more when in conversation with others.

Implications for supporting dependent learners and building intellective capacity: the classroom community is one of the most important aspects in a dependent learner's journey to independent learner ship. A welcoming classroom makes the amygdala relax so effective learning can take place.