2. EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY IG113 Instructor: Philipus Pirenomulyo

3. UNIT 1: PROLOGUE A teacher knows very well both professional and academic issues and problems in their job. What issues or problems are they? Issues and problems: motivation, attitudes, abilities, learning and thinking styles, social attitudes, classroom management, evaluation, testing, personality, age-level development, interests, media, teaching methods, learning materials, material development, etc.

4. What’s the importance of Educational Psychology?  Educational Psychology helps us simply to become a BETTER teacher. How?  First, it gives information about the processes that involve learning, organization, remembering, thinking for problem solving, and becoming creative. Second, it gives both strategic and practical description and illustration to make teaching and learning easier.

5. Third, it gives us information about human behavior and attitudes and experiences as what psychology tries to study. So, what does Educational Psychology do in teaching and learning processes?  Educational Psychology tries to apply psychological concepts, theories, processes, and research findings in order to help in the process of behavior changes.

6. Are teaching and learning interrelated?  Smith (1970): teaching is a systemic activity which is expected to stimulate learning. Learning is often defined as a process which results in new activities or changes an activity by way of practices or experiences at school, in laboratory, or in open air. What does a teacher need to know in order to make learning much easier?

7. Let’s examine the variables: 1.Teaching assignment. One of the important decisions is determining the instructional objectives (Box 3). Here the teacher will consider entry behavior and level of difficulty and complexity of the teaching materials. Further, he/she has to consider cognitive domain (Bloom, 1956), such as knowing, understanding, summarizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, evaluating, and combination of them.

8. 2. Student’s behavior. It is to consider before deciding on the instructional objective (Box 3). What must they do to learn and how? Their activities should be consistent with the instructional objectives. 3. Teacher’s behavior. It is how the instructional process will go about? There are variables which affect methods of teaching (Boxes 4, 5, 6, 7). Gagne (1985) says not all instructions are the same; a teacher needs good methods that affect teaching activities.

9. Classroom arrangement is an important part of teacher’s behavior. Teachers who make good arrangement of the classroom tend to result in students who like learning (Good &Grows, 1975; McDonald &Ebas, 1976). Summary: 1. What learning assignments can students do? 2. What learning behavior and personality fit the assignments? 3. Which instructional objectives are important? 4. What learning principles can be applied?

10. 5. What changes are expected of the students? 6. How can teacher’s competencies and personality be used in the process? 7. What method is most suitable for each of the objectives? 8. How will the teacher integrate previous decisions with the later ones? 9. How can the process of teaching and learning be successful? What has happened?

11. Apply those things on the real learning situation. For example, you will teach Science at grade 5 about making young plants by way of cutting a stump and sticking it on a stem.. Procedure: planning  implementing  evaluating.

12. General Teacher’s Competencies A good teacher will prepare for herself four kinds of competencies in her effort to become effective: 1.Possess knowledge on learning theories and human behavior. 2.Show a helpful attitude to students who are learning and build up a good humanistic relationship. 3.Have a good mastery of teaching materials. 4.Have a good control of student’s activities and of her teaching techniques.

13. Let’s discuss one by one about teacher’s competencies: 1. Possess knowledge on learning theories and human behavior. What is the traditional way of teaching? What happens if a teacher does not know psychology? What is the role of reinforcement?

14. 2. Show a helpful attitude to students who are learning and build up a good humanistic relationship. Is the teacher’s attitude important? Why? Explain how the teacher should show her attitude and behavior to a. herself b. the students c. her colleagues and student’s parents d. the subjects and lessons.

15. 3. Have a good mastery of teaching materials. How do teachers prepare the teaching materials? What kinds of efforts will she take? What can the teacher do to enlarge or deepen her knowledge of a subject matter?

16. 4. Have a good control of student’s activities and of her own teaching techniques. Can she control student’s activities in a way that she wants them to do? What will she do when there is a student unwilling to take part in a particular activity? Show how teacher’s observation on student’s activity is important.

17. Problems Faced by New Teachers Kinds of problems: number of students in one classroom; economic problem; students’ misbehavior/misconduct; personal problems; problems with the school; interpersonal problems; adjustment problem. What other problems can you identify? What will probably be the feelings of a new teacher seeing that the students are uncontrollable? Is it possible for a new teacher to quit teaching? Why?

18. Fuller (1995) divides teachers into three phases: 1.Survival phase: anxiety, fear. Of what?

19. Reflection phase: how can I cope with such a situation? I’m not that competent.

20. Action phase: giving attention to the student’s needs. What needs?

21. Teaching as Art and Science It’s been a long-standing thought: is teaching an art or a science? If it is an art, then teaching needs inspiration, intuition, talent, creativity. If it is a science, then it needs knowledge and skills, and these can be learned. What do you think?

22. Let’s examine aspects in teaching. 1. Teacher’s role: tell what each means. a.Teacher as an instructional expert b.Teacher as a motivator c.Teacher as a manager d.Teacher as a counselor e.Teacher as a model

24. Roles of Educational Psychology Educational Psychology studies students, learning, and teaching. Information, skills, values, and attitude are passed out by the teacher to the students. Need for a scientific approach for the following questions: 1. What method is used to ask a student to read or answer a question? 2. What should a teacher do when students are noisy?

25. 3. What will a teacher do: a. to slower students? b. when two students are quarrelling? c. when a student lost money? d. to frequent absences. e. to a late student? f. to a sudden illness or an accident? g. when a student is not wearing a uniform? h. when a student will not want to do anything?

26. 4. Make a research to find a solution of a problem in class, such as: a.Observations b.Experiments c.Interviews d.Class Action Research

27. Scope of Educational Psychology Educational Psychology is a branch of Psychology. Since teachers deal with the principles of human behavior and attitudes, most of them take Psychology. Generally speaking, educational Psychology is defined as psychological principles applied in education. The following are relevant topics:

28. 1.Theories and models of teaching and learning in the classroom. 2.Interactions between teacher and students. 3.Effective learning theories and personality development. 4.Motivational principles and classroom management. 5.Strategies for creative development of special students and disability. 6.Writing strategies and testing. 7.Teaching methods that account for differences in abilities, personality and styles of thinking.

29. Wrapping up... 1. All teachers have hypotheses or opinion about the process of teaching and learning. 2. Teacher’s opinion and belief in guiding students make up an important decision which affects the way students learn in class. 3. Teachers need to a) examine the effect of her decision towards learning, b) review her opinion or belief on teaching and learning processes, c) evaluate effectiveness of her opinion and practices, and d) identify other teachers’ attitudes for learning, if necessary.

30. 4. An instructional model identifies important variables in teaching and learning, including differences of individuals, teacher’s behavior, instructional goals/objectives, and evaluation on students’ behavior. 5. Some teachers will not want to improve their teaching methods, because they are not able to make effective decision for problems arising in the classroom.

31. 6. Teachers should learn to analyze their problems so to practice applying their psychological knowledge. Therefore, they must know their own problems, understand educational psychology, and apply it in the classroom. 7. There are four competencies of the teacher: a) possess knowledge of learning theories and human behavior; b) show helpfulness in development of learning and good interpersonal relationship; c) have good mastery of knowledge on subject matters; and d) control her teaching ability to ease learning.

32. 8. Young teachers look more serious in their personality adjustment. Problems that they face are class disciplines, motivating students, facing differences in individuals, scoring student’s assignments, handling relationship with parents, and organizing classroom setting. 9. Educational psychology grows out of psychology and has its own identity. It studies teaching and learning in the classroom, affective and humanistic teaching, motivating students and managing classroom, setting a program for the gifted, being creative, deciding learning objectives, and coordinating teaching strategy for different individuals.

33. 10. She is an instructor, manager, motivator, counselor, and model. 11. Both observation and experimental studies can give valuable information to the teacher. 12. Psychological principles offer the teacher a number of answers to specific problems. Theories offer perspectives to analyze most problems which arise.

34. BE A GOOD TEACHER !