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I.Theories, Principles, and Strategies, oh my!

Educational Psychology

Educational Psychology is the study of how people think when they learn. But, who

cares? That's a question I've often heard when a student begins to study Educational Psychology.

I think I found the best answer to that in Robin Williams' introductory book on graphic design.

With permission, I'd like to share her story.

Many years ago I received a tree identification book for Christmas. I was at my

parents' home, and after all the gifts had been opened I decided to go out and identify the

trees in the neighborhood. Before I went out, I read through part of the book. The first

tree in the book was the Joshua tree because it only took two clues to identify it. Now the

Joshua tree is a really weird-looking tree and I looked at that picture and said to myself,

"Oh, we don't have that kind of tree in Northern California. That is a weird-looking tree. I

would know if I saw that tree, and I've never seen one before."

So I took my book and went outside. My parents lived in a cul-de-sac of six

homes. Four of those homes had Joshua trees in the front yards. I had lived in that house

for thirteen years, and I had never seen a Joshua tree. I took a walk around the block, and

there must have been a sale at the nursery when everyone was landscaping their new

homes at least 80 percent of the homes had Joshua trees in the front yards.And I had

never seen one before! Once I was conscious of the treeonce I could name itI saw it

everywhere. Which is exactly my point: Once you can name something, you're conscious

of it. You have power over it. You own it. You're in control.


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The reason we study the way people learn is to have power over learning itself. When we begin

to describe what we see, when we name it, we are able to notice it. When we notice it, we're able

to talk about it. When we talk about it, we begin to understand it. When we understand it, we

can begin to manipulate it.

Does this mean that there is a treasure trove of knowledge that, if unlocked, will provide

any educator a panacea with which to solve all educational troubles? Not really. Becoming aware

of what Educational Psychologists have observed about learning, though, will help you begin to

see things in learners you otherwise might not have. Can you be a good teacher without

understanding Educational Psychology? Certainly. But learning the psychology behind teaching

and learning can help a poor teacher become better and a good teacher become great. Instead of

being a good teacher on accident, learning the underlying psychology can help you be good on

purpose.

As you read through this book, you may begin to notice what many others havethe

different theories and their constituent principles and concepts kind of look like the same thing,

only with different names. Through studying the psychology of education, researchers have

come up with multiple theories to describe what they think may be happening when they observe

some sort of learning occur. Consider the following experience I had when I first took my two

oldest children to a Spanish-speaking pre-school:

[WOULD BE GREAT TO ACCOMPANY THIS WITH A VIDEO OF THE MCKEE

LANGUAGE SCHOOL IN PROCESS, IF POSSIBLE]

There were about ten children gathered around a small table. A native Mexican teacher sat at the

head of table babbling away in Spanish and pointing at things. I noticed that all of the kids


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looked like minewhite, fair-skinned, and mostly light-haired. In other words, none of them fit

the (sometimes accurate, but often eroneous) stereotype of a native Spanish speaker. But the kids

were speaking Spanish. And when they did, the teacher would reach into a pouch she had

hanging around her neck and give them a token. She didn't do it every time they talked, but often

enough that they seemed engaged in what she was saying and doing. A couple of kids were off

to the side chatting on their own, but the teacher didn't stop them (or reward them with tokens),

probably because they were speaking in Spanish.

[I DON'T REALLY LIKE THIS EXAMPLE. CHANGE IT]

What learning is going on? Are the children learning? What is 'causing' it, if anything? Are just

the ones being rewarded with tokens learning? How are they picking up new words? Is there a

general process that can describe what's going on? Would the children speak Spanish even if the

teacher weren't giving out tokens? There are a lot of questions we could ask about this learning

situation, and that's what educational psychology is all aboutobserving a learning situation and

analyzing what is going on. The questions we ask determine the answers we're able to come up

with (see chapter XX for more about research questions and methods). The perspective we take

when observing such a learning situation can change the outcome and the way we see things.

Our observations often lead us to come up with three kinds of knowledge: (a) theories, (b)

principles, and (c) strategies.

TheoriesTheories are the grand ideas that encompass a worldview of the way something happens.

For example, in this book, we'll talk about theories of Behaviorism, Cognitivism, Social

Interactionism, Developmental Cognitivism (commonly referred to as Constructivism), and


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others. Each of these different theories provides a distinct perspective for viewing a learning

situation. For example, a Behaviorist viewpoint holds that we can only know what learning is

occurring based on observable behavior. Behaviorism proposes that learning is the result of an

antecedent, a behavior and its ensuing consequence. Thus, students in the Spanish preschool

described above are learning because, when they speak in Spanish, they are rewarded for it by

being given a token. Behaviorism therefore would conclude that students learn because they

want the reward.

A Social Interactionist theory would perceive the above situation differently. Students in

the course are speaking Spanish because that is the place where Spanish is spoken. Their friends

are there, their teacher is there, and they always speak Spanish when in that environment. That is

why even the students that are not being rewarded with a token are still considered to be learning

Spanish, and the teacher is encouraging the learning by allowing the conversation to occur.

When a student doesn't know what a word means, it is her interaction with her peers and a more

knowledgeable otherthat allows her to negotiate this meaning. The tokens are merely tools that

teacher and student use to agree on meaning.

Each theory provides a way to interpret the whole learning situation, favoring certain

aspects over others. Does this make one theory more correct than another? Some would contend

that, perhaps, it does, arguing for one worldview over another. Curiously, as a parent with a

child in this preschool, I saw several theories playing out simultaneously. My child that spoke

best in the preschool would never speak Spanish at home because, to him, we were not part of

his Spanish-speaking group (regardless of the offer of a reward, and the fact that my wife's first

language is Spanish). Yet, at school, he chose to speak so that he could earn tokens toward

desired prizes. Taken as a whole, however, each theory gives educators a way to interpret the

learning going on and to do something about it. That's exactly why we present each of them in


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this book. Perhaps by studying several theories you, as an educator, will be better equipped to

interpret and manipulate your own learning experiences through a distinct perspective.

PrinciplesPrinciples are foundational concepts that make up the different components of a theory.

They do not necessarily have a specific form, but are rather guidelines for describing certain

phenomena. To illustrate, let's consider the universal principle of faith. A simple definition might

be that faith is believing in something even though you cannot see it (e.g., the value of money,

the existence of deity, etc.). But, what does it look like? Faith can take innumerable forms, and

the canons of each religion provide numerous varied examples. In the movieIndiana Jones and

the Last Crusade, faith manifests itself as Indiana must leap out onto apparently thin air. Only

after his faith is tried is he rewarded. Likewise, Educational Psychology is full of principles. One

principle that a Behaviorist perspective might glean from the above example is that of positive

reinforcement, or the presentation of something desirable after someone performs a targeted

behavior in order to increase that behavior. Is there one correct reward for all situations? Is there

a correct way of presenting that reward? A principle is simply an idea upon which a theory

might be built.

StrategiesAstrategy, on the other hand, is the practical embodiment of a principle. Strategies are

procedural and prescriptive. They describe what to do and how to do it. Teachers often refer to

their classroom strategies as a "bag of tricks." A strategy in the above example is to reward the

positive behavior of speaking Spanish, but to do it at random, in response to the desired behavior

being performed. Thus, while a teacher might reward the speaking of Spanish the first time a

child responds in Spanish, she might reward that same student after 3 more times of responding

in Spanish, then another 2 times, then 5, and so on (this strategy is referred to as a variable ratio


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schedule ofreinforcement, and is described in greater detail in chapter XX, on Behaviorism).

Strategies are varied and can be built upon or modified to create new strategies.

Bringing it all togetherOf theories, principles and strategies, none is more important than another. Up and

coming teachers often express frustration at needing to learn theories and principles. They are

most interested in strategies, in arming themselves with a bag of tricks that will help them be

better teachers. But to amass strategies without understanding the principles on which they are

founded could do more harm than good. It might lead a teacher to believe that she knows how to

teach a particular lesson, but does not prepare her to understand why she is implementing the

strategy or the way in which she could best implement it. A single principle can give birth to

countless strategies, but understanding the foundational principle(s) of a particular strategy will

allow a teacher to understand how that strategy might be changed to fit different situations, or

might provide guidelines for how to create completely new strategies altogether. Likewise, a

teacher that fails to understand a theory, might mix and match principles of different theories in

such a way that what should work appears not to. The theory is a guiding viewpoint that

provides the glue between principles and how they work together to create a synergistic whole

that explains the workings of a learning experience. Of course, to learn the principles without

acquiring any strategies also seems an empty endeavor, as it gives educators ideas of how

something ought to happen, but no practical way to put them to action. Thus, it is our goal in this

volume to present theories, principles and strategies that will help educators look at a learning

situation, interpret it in some reasonable way, and have a way to manipulate it to maximize the

learning of their current or future pupils.


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SetupThe intention of this book is to present Educational Psychology theories, principles, and

strategies in a way that will help educators both comprehend them and provide a way to recall

them when away from the book. We use intentional strategies that we have gathered from

educational psychology and instructional design to help you, the reader, both encode information

so that it gets to your long-term memory and connects to some sort of schema, as well as to help

you retrieve that information from your Long-Term Memory later. We use the following

conventions to achieve this:

Integrated Story: We present a story at the beginning of each chapter (module?). In many

books this story is presented at the beginning and again at the end of the chapter through a few

"apply it" questions. In our approach, we instead present the story and continually refer back to

it several times throughout the chapter (as we've done in this introduction). This ought to help

build episodic memory (see pp. XX), and takes advantage of the power of storytelling as a way

to recallinformation (see pp. XX). Where possible, these stories will be available as video

cases.

Original Research: Many theories and principles came about due to famous experiments or

research (sometimes infamous, as in the case of the "Little Albert" experiments, see pp. XX).

Inasmuch as possible, we present these experiments such that you, the reader, can see what the

original researchers saw and from where they began to draw their conclusions.

In-text references: Educational Psychology is an interconnected mix of ideas. As we present

one idea, it may connect to another, and we do our best to demonstrate that connection through

providing a cross reference to related terms whenever they appear in a text.

Charts and graphs: Charts and graphs are great ways of synthesizing information and helping


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learners visualize written information in a different way. We present a lot of information this

way in our own Educational Psychology classes and provide those charts and graphs

frequently. These are probably some of the better study guides you can use to learn and

quickly stimulate memory recall.

Sidenotes: You'll notice a column on the side of each page. We use this column to make

connections and highlight key principles in the text.

Connections: Many people enrolled in an Educational Psychology course are also interested in

becoming public school teachers. With this goal in mind, we mark the theories, principles, and

strategies that are mentioned or tested in key teaching standards or tests, such as the INTASC

standards and the PRAXIS test.


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II. Research Methods

III. Intelligence

IV. The Brain (physiological)

V. Assessment & Grading


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VI. Standardized Testing

VII. Behaviorism(a) Story: A token economy

(b) Conditioning

(i) Classical

(1) Stimulus Response

a) Pavlov and his dogs

b) Conditioned/Unconditioned/Neutral

c) Contiguity

(2) Associationism

a) Watson and little Albert Experiment

b)Thorndike's 3 laws

i) Law of Readinessii) Law of Exercise

iii) Law of Effect

(ii) Operant

(1) B.F. Skinner's Rats (a.k.a. the "Skinner Box")

a) Reinforcers and Punishers

b) Positive (i.e., 'presentation' and Negative(i.e., 'removal')

(2) Shapinga) Principle: Successive Approximations

b) Strategy: Cueing

c) Strategy: Prompting

d) Strategy: Positive Practice

e) Strategy: Performing a Task Analysis

(3) Positive Reinforcement Strategies


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a) Reward

b) Strategy: Praise

c) Premack Principle

d) Applied Behavioral Analysis

(4) Negative Reinforcement Strategies

a) Satiation

b) Social Isolation

c) Nagging

(5) Punishment Strategies


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VIII. Cognition

IX. Developmental Cognitivism

X. Personal, Social, and Emotional Development

XI. Social Interaction

XII. Motivation

XIII. Culture, Cummunity, and Diversity

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