Micro Teaching #2 Teaching Educational Psychology using Children’s Literature Copyright July 2014 – Narmada Paul and Susan Strayer This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.

THERE ARE SOME THEMES, SOME SUBJECTS, TOO LARGE FOR ADULT FICTION; THEY CAN ONLY BE DEALT ADEQUATELY IN A CHILDREN’S BOOK. - Philip Pullman

Goals  To introduce theory  To build background knowledge  To make theory more understandable  To create images of concepts  To help students make connections between theory and their work with children

The Rainbow Fish

Activity  What are the underlying themes of the story?  What are your thoughts on how the story ended?

Self-concept  Individuals’ knowledge and beliefs about themselves – their ideas, feelings, attitudes and expectations.  Self-concept evolves through constant self-evaluation.  Reactions of significant people are used in making judgments about Self.  As children grow up self-concept is tied to physical appearance and social acceptance.  Different from self-esteem (though there may be connections).

Questions…  As a teacher, how do you ensure that your students value their own qualities? (group 1)  How do you react to individual differences among students in your class? (group 2)

The Dark

Activity  What was the theme of the story?

Self-efficacy  Albert Bandura (1986, 1994, 1997)  A person’s sense of being able to deal effectively with a particular task.  It influences human agency or the capacity to coordinate learning skills, motivation, and emotions to reach one’s goals.  Self efficacy is different from self-concept.

Activity  Think of a task which you initially felt was beyond your capacity to accomplish successfully but with time mastered it.  What do you think led you to change your beliefs about your ability to do the task?

Sources of self-efficacy expectations  Mastery experiences (most powerful source of efficacy information)  Level of arousal  Vicarious experiences  Social persuasion

Question…  What influenced Laszlo to overcome his fear of the dark?

Final questions…  Can you think of using content from a different discipline to aid your teaching?  How would you do it?  What are the pros/cons of integrating different disciplines in teaching?

Bibliography  Pfister, M. (1999). The Rainbow Fish. North-South Books.  Snicket, L. (2013). The Dark. Little, Brown Books for Young Readers.  Woolfolk, A. (2013). The self, social, and moral development. In Educational Psychology (pp ). Prentice Hall.  Woolfolk, A. (2013). Social cognitive views of learning and motivation. In Educational Psychology (pp ). Prentice Hall.  Zambo, D. & Hansen, C.C. (2005). Once upon a theory: Using picture books to help students understand educational psychology. Teaching Educational Psychology, 1(1), 1-8.