Psycology in Education - Essay Example

?Psychology in education: Applying intricate but useful psychological ideas and theories to education in an appropriate manner not only forms a tough job in the present times for the educationists around the world, but it also raises huge concern for the future of the students. It is a good thing that more and more instructors today happen to be keenly instructed in applying to psychology as this is a very important measure for developing minds of students both academically and behaviorally. Using authoritative style to teach students certain dry and complex scientific concepts is considered a very unwise approach taken to education by all psychologists and critics. This is the age of diversity which can be also seen in the classrooms and addressing the issue of learner diversity is quite impossible and difficult without the aid of psychological tools which can help an instructor in developing a student as good on the behavioral side as on the academic. This paper aims at explaining and discussing with the help of important human and adolescent development theories how psychology applied in the right way can bring positive changes in the instructional setting without having to compromise on the curriculum content. It will also explain the strategies and recommendations with the help of research which can help an instructor much to account for predicted and unpredicted behaviors of culturally diverse adolescent learners of 9th grade who happen to be in custody. Adolescents in custody are especially seen to be coping with difficult learning challenges which can keep them from acquiring knowledge and behaving morally so this paper will also explain what an instructor could do in this regard. Task# 1 A. Classical conditioning and instrumental conditioning are the two human development theories which I find to relate the most with my instructional setting consisting of 9th graders in custody. It is understandable that the learning behavior of such adolescents who already have faced trouble with the law might be quite difficult and unpredictable. Anxiety problems are also frequently faced by learners who happen to be in custody. I find classical conditioning to be most appropriate for my instructional setting because by employing this psychological technique, a teacher can help students in getting rid from anxiety problems. I remember how one of the science teachers in my elementary school used classical conditioning to develop a positive learning environment. When teachers scold young learners despite the fact that they may be having psychological problems, anxiety shows whenever teacher enters the classroom. By using the effective tool of classical conditioning, as a teacher I will try eliminating the link between my students’ bad past learning experiences and anxiety. For this, I will first assess the general outlook and mood of every young learner for applying myriad psychological techniques later in order to remove the weaknesses I might notice in them. Then, I will subtly pair the stimulus of test with encouraging words so that the anxiety my students might feel upon being asked a question could get replaced with positive conditioned response of confidence. That is how I deem classical conditioning to act as a benefit for me because I think it will help me remove negative stimuli to develop positive behavior. Now, instrumental conditioning is another development theory and the probability of how long this tool could last when applied to education could depend on the severity of reward or punishment. Instrumental conditioning can be used to both strengthen and repress a certain good or bad behavior by way of encouragement or reprimand, respectively. I find it to be relevant in my instructional setting because from my own past learning experience I have learned that teachers can play a huge role in either repressing or strengthening a certain behavior in the classroom. Some of my students might have an annoying habit of talking incessantly in the classroom and showing aggression when reprimanded for that which is why I intend to make it my business to repress a bad behavior by force and foster a good behavior by encouragement. Volunteering to answer a question by raising hand is a good student practice and I was also appreciated upon doing so as a student which reinforced this particular eager behavior. On being encouraged before the whole class often, I got in the habit of talking out of turn. So seeing this, I was given punishment whenever necessary to weaken that behavior. As a result, I learnt to wait for my turn in life. Children take a great influence from what happens around them and I believe if they would see anyone having a bad experience due to display of bad behavior, they will take lesson from it and avoid trouble themselves. B. It is true to say that teaching is a difficult process and requires to engage the students by preparing difficult lessons in an interesting way. This whole process could not just be reduced to assigning each learner a task and requiring him/her to be ready with it after a certain time. Teachers should strive to win their students’ hearts while gaining an entry inside their minds at the same time. Those teaching 9th grade adolescents surely face mounting pressures and challenges in the classroom setting from time to time. In my case, the 9th graders happen to be in custody as well which raises the level of both teaching and learning challenges. In context of the social learning theory which I intend to use to account for predictable and unpredictable behaviors in my instructional setting, it is important to mention that “social aspect of the learning process is fundamental to socialization and personality development” (Mwale, 2010). Social learning theory is a very good approach taken to understand adolescent development. I intend to integrate this theory in my classroom by devising such instructional strategy that could help me acknowledge every type of behavior I might come across while teaching the young learners. Both for social learning theorists and those intending to apply this theory to education, setting a good teaching example by the right use of reward and punishment without having to compromise on classroom instruction holds extreme importance. Children learn a lot from what happens around them and they try to observe and imitate their adults also. Much of the adolescent learning comes from observational learning and on the basis of those observations, they learn to behave in a certain manner. This is also called social learning as adolescents try to learn various issues from the society they happen to live in. A teacher should consider him/herself as a kind of powerful social influence as such social influences or models actively contribute to adolescent development. Adolescent learners try to imitate their social models during the learning process and I will intend to make myself a social model for them so that they could imitate me during the learning process. I intend to do that by describing the consequences of behavior to them so that good behaviors could be increased and bad or unpredictable behaviors could be decreased. Another useful educational implication of social learning theory is modeling good behaviors so that students could learn how to imitate them afterwards. Working on the self-esteem of the students can also help as social learning theory implies that students should be made confident by making them experience success on their own. As students, especially young learners, learn a great deal of knowledge simply by observing others so when they will see their class fellows being encouraged and getting successful, they will also try to do the same by abandoning their bad behavior. This adolescent development theory also tells that self-monitoring could be a great way to handle one’s own messed up self, so a teacher could also use self-regulation techniques to improve students’ behavior. Task# 2 A. Curriculum should be designed in such a way that students could be developed morally, behaviorally, and socially without making compromises on the academic content. This is the only way confident and morally responsible students could be prepared in my instructional setting also. As a teacher who is assigned the duty of 9th graders in custody, I could adjust the curriculum content in such a way that it could then address and acknowledge the changing nature and desires of my students without favoring them completely. Wherever educational strategies fail, it happens mainly when the desires and ideas of the students are overlooked completely. After making some adjustments, I will devise a curriculum that would fully acknowledge the importance of my students as young learners and that would help me coming across with all the learning challenges I might come across while teaching them not only academics but also making them familiar with behavioral, social, and moral principles. Curriculum is one single element that decides the most how well the students would be going to perform in their future lives by the education they get and I could also adjust it so that the students could be equipped with skills needed to polish and shape their learning in the future. Curriculum is also important because it sets the level of expectation of the students’ learning and an educational implication of the social learning theory also suggests that learners should be expected to meet high level of requirements. For this a teacher should make it his/her business to give the learners copious amounts of attention and trust them to come up with the required amount of creativity so that expectations could be met. “High-performing countries set high expectations. They support the fulfillment of those expectations with high-quality teaching” (ACARA, 2009). In order to address the learner diversity issue, I could adjust the curriculum content in such a way that it would become more suited to the diverse needs of my learners. I could prepare engaging lessons for this purpose and work on identifying and eliminating any racial, cultural, or lingual bias or confusion plaguing the classroom environment. In order to address the issue of lingual diversity, I could use help of a good and trusting translator and as for cultural diversity, I intend to make my learners realize how important it is to respect each other’s cultures without necessarily having to compromise on the personal cultural values. By developing relationships with students who might be facing cultural, social, moral, or behavioral challenges, I could make a variety of adjustments and use a variety of strategies to improve the level of learners’ commitment. When learner diversity is not handled appropriately, the learners remain unable to handle the challenges of adolescence and foe this purpose, the teachers should become more involved with students in such a way that every student no matter what background he/she hails from could be treated equally both academically and emotionally and no emotions of jealousy or envy could develop within the classroom. B. A teacher should be very careful with the instructional strategies he/she decides to use in order to meet diverse learning needs within a classroom. I will also be dealing with diverse learners in my instructional setting so in order to meet diverse needs, I will try to maintain a reasonable balance between demands of the instructional environment and curriculum content on one side and student demands on the other side. Most of the diverse needs can be reasonably accommodated without having to compromise on the curriculum content by first acknowledging them within a classroom and later making adaptations for them. One good instructional strategy for diverse learners could be devising interesting lessons that would be able to grab the attention of every adolescent. In order to devise engaging and riveting lessons, I could employ the instructional strategy of focusing on essentials. This means making an effort to identify such major concepts and key ideas in the curriculum content that could apply across all major themes in the subject content. Now instruction could be based on those major themes identified which form the hallmark of a certain subject taught to the class. Research shows that such an instructional strategy helps the diverse learners with diverse learning needs to establish a solid connection between acknowledging difficult key concepts of the subject and effective ways to use higher thinking skills to digest those concepts. So this is how this strategy of focusing on essentials could also help me in playing a useful role in cognitive development of my diverse learners. I also intend to make it my business to incorporate this strategy into the instruction on a regular basis so that my learners could get used to it and benefits could be maximized. Another useful strategy that could lead to more effective instruction would be making linkages between different key concepts across the subject curriculum obvious and easily recognizable. If a teacher gets able to make the students realize how different concepts relate with each other and which elements they share by using techniques like “outlining or mind mapping” (State of Florida, 2009), explicit verbal explanations, and eye-catching visual displays, learning could ne made easier and even interesting. Problems in learning occur many times when students find themselves unable to make an easy connection between what is taught and what they grasp. This connection can be achieved faster if the teacher makes links found between different key concepts obvious to the learners. By acknowledging the similar features between major themes across the subject content, understanding could be developed faster and students could memorize the crucially important elements for long. This instructional strategy works best when lessons are combined with interesting visual displays like flow charts or colorful diagrams. In order to use these instructional strategies in the right way so that students’ minds could be developed both mentally and emotionally, a teacher’s teaching style should be both loving and firm and he/she should work devotedly with his students suffering from diverse learning challenges. Task# 3 A. The Learner Centered Curriculum Approach (LCCA) is a really good and much talked about curriculum content strategy adhering to learner-centered approaches. This curriculum strategy will remain appropriate in my instructional setting because I might have to face a host of difficult challenges while trying to cope with diverse learning needs. Such challenges can only be faced if such curriculum strategic planning model is followed which provides a focus on the learners through the curriculum content. LCCA is a strategic model which is designed to achieve a premium quality learning environment through a learner centered approach. Identifying, developing, and evaluating the appropriateness of curriculum remains highly important and LCCA provides a whole framework for this purpose. The element of design integrity forms an important feature of this strategic model which could help the curriculum designers and teachers in maintaining multi curricular processes. LCCA components like attaining a deeper understanding of the kinds of learners who could be served sufficiently, acknowledging the desired objectives and demands of the learners, assessing the choices available to them, and developing and redesigning the entire curriculum to meet learners’ needs could immensely help me in my instructional setting. My instructional setting would most likely include diverse adolescent learners coming from tough backgrounds and having troubled pasts, so it would be good to employ LCCA as it is a learner-centered approach and lays a great emphasis on the learners. Research suggests that this approach or strategy has proven to be a powerful and successful tool to handle learning challenges when meeting the learners’ needs within a classroom. It is interesting that every LCCA component revolves around the learners themselves. The questions addressed by this strategic model like what kind of learning provider models would remain most effective for simplifying the learning process, what kind of learner objectives should be addressed first and given prime importance, and which learning theories and models would be most appropriate etc. all focus on learners in context of curriculum. The learner-centered curriculum aims at redefining the curricular elements and processes for the benefit of the learners so that learners’ objectives could be met. Services form another important element of LCCA which means providing the learners with choices or facilities like advising and counseling which are also going to hold immense importance in my instructional setting as those 9th graders held in custody could definitely need academic, emotional, and mental counseling from time to time. Such services should be seen as important processes that must be included in the curriculum (Dolence, 2012). Redefining the curriculum means adding such valuable features to it for the learners’ benefit. As curriculum plays a huge role in deciding how well a student would perform in practical terms, I could use LCCA as it fully acknowledges the importance of students as young learners and that would help me coming across with all the learning challenges I might come across while teaching them both academic and behavioral elements. A curricular strategy laying the focus on learners would be helpful in my instructional setting. B. Objectives within a classroom setting remain unable to be achieved when focus is on the teachers while it should be on the learners. A learner-centered instructional strategy is especially helpful in a class which consists of diverse learners and when both academic and behavioral development is required. It is futile to expect from the learners to achieve the set targets and behave in an appropriate manner if the focus is not centered on them. Problem-based learning is one such learner-centered instructional strategy which challenges the students to work in cooperation and find answers to certain problems they might come across during the learning process by themselves. Curiosity to find answers and interest to participate form two important elements of problem-based learning. Students feel more engaged with the academics when they work in teams to think of an answer to some intricate issue that puzzles them. In this type of instructional strategy, students would hopefully cooperate with one another on a bigger scale than they would if a teacher-centered instruction is used. This will also be highly helpful for me as in my instructional setting, the young students would be required more often to work in groups or pairs. A learner-centered instruction like problem-based learning allows the students to choose certain topics themselves and talk without having the instructor to monitor every student speech as the instructor only intervenes to correct and explain the issues when questions arise. Students are also appreciated to answer each other’s questions without consulting the instructor first which boosts the confidence level of the learners as the instructor is seen as an information resource but the focus is exercised on the learners themselves. This way students also get to assess and acknowledge what they have learned so far while in a teacher-centered instruction, the right to evaluate students’ knowledge only belongs to the instructor. This is why using a problem-based learning strategy in my instructional setting would remain very helpful and effective for teaching diverse learners and meeting difficult learning challenges. Teaching to facilitate the learning process for the learners in contrast to merely instructing and ordering them forms a valuable instruction strategy as it focuses instruction on the learners’ interests and objectives. When a learner gets a chance to evaluate his/her knowledge all by him/herself, the self-esteem also gets a boost which will be especially helpful in my instructional setting. In order to maximize the benefit obtained from problem-based learning, puzzling questions should be asked by the teacher because that helps in stimulating the learners mentally. Then they should be promoted to relate with each other in order to straighten out the complexities while a teacher should supervise them and possibly intervene only when approached by the students for accurate answers. Working on the low self-esteems and confidence level should be one of the primary objectives of the teachers and using a learner-centered teaching approach could serve to be very helpful in this regard which is why I find it to be appropriate in my instructional setting. C. Authoritarian teaching style proves to be toxic for the diverse learners as challenges are not handled appropriately and objectives fail to be met. That is why I intend to develop a learning activity for my instructional setting that would adhere to the learner-centered approach. I will use the learner-centered instruction strategy of problem-based thinking to serve as the backbone of my learning activity devised for the 9th graders in custody. Problem-based learning challenges the students to work in team so that everyone develops the ability to relate with people and social anxiety could be reduced. A learning activity in which puzzling questions are directed at the learners in the hope that they collaborate with one another energetically to solve different dilemmas would suit my instructional setting the most. Following my every English language lecture, I will forward a list of 5 questions to every group leader and require every group to give back to me the answers to those questions in the second lecture. Then at the start of the second lecture, those answers will be discussed and by the end, a new set of questions will be distributed again. On my part, I will only play the role of the supervisor during such an activity and will leave the job of argument and discussion for the learners alone. In this way, the students will acknowledge me as a valuable knowledge resource and will approach me only when unable to find an answer by themselves. In this way, students will feel more motivated and will see themselves as active participants in the class. In response to this type of learning activity, my students will learn to enjoy the benefits of increased cooperation and find answers to certain problems they might come across during the learning process by themselves. There will be heightened curiosity to find answers, increased mental stimulation, and strengthened academic interest to participate. All these features form highly important elements of problem-based learning. Students feel more engaged in the classroom and remain more interested during the lectures when presented with some effective problem-based learning questions which should be preferably puzzling in nature. When the learners are prompted by the instructor to work in teams to think of an answer to some intricate issue that puzzles them, new creative answers and ideas come up to the surface and in this way a beautiful repertoire of ideas is formed. In this type of learning activity consisting of puzzling questions which are devised while keeping problem-based learning in the mind, students are highly likely to be motivated and moved to work in teams so that knowledge could be recalled and practiced by them. Such learning activities should be made an essential component of the curriculum and class routine. At the end of every lecture, at least 15 minutes should be kept reserved for such activity purpose as in this way, the students would hopefully cooperate with one another on a bigger scale than they would if a teacher-centered instruction is used. References: ACARA. (2009). Curriculum Design. Retrieved from http://www.acara.edu.au/verve/_resources/Curriculum_Design_Paper_.pdf Dolence, M.G. (2012). THE CURRICULUM-CENTERED STRATEGIC PLANNING PROCESS. Retrieved from http://www.mgdolence.com/resources/ccspm/lcca.aspx Mwale, M. (2010, Nov 16). THEORIES OF ADOLESCENCE: SOME ANALYTICAL CONSIDERATIONS BY MARISEN MWALE. Retrieved from http://researchcooperative.org/profiles/blogs/theories-of-adolescence-some State of Florida. (2009). Teaching Resources for Florida ESE. Retrieved from http://www.cpt.fsu.edu/eseold/in/strmain.html Read More