An edition of Essentials of educational psychology
(2006)
Essentials of educational psychology
big ideas to guide effective teaching
3rd ed.
by Jeanne Ellis Ormrod
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Synopsis: Unlike most educational psychology books, which take one theory at a time, explain its assumptions and principles and then identify implications for educational practice, Essentials of Educational Psychology focuses more on the commonalities than the differences among theories, because although researchers from different traditions have approached human cognition and behavior from many different angles, they sometimes arrive at more or less the same conclusions. This book integrates ideas from many theoretical perspectives into a set of principles and concrete strategies that psychology as a whole can offer you. See for Yourself exercises will help you discover more about yourself as a thinker and learner and also help you come to a deeper and more personal understanding of educational psychology's core ideas.
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Textbooks, Educational psychology, Effective teachingShowing 10 featured editions. View all 10 editions?
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Table of Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1: Introduction To Educational Psychology:
Case Study: Starting high school
General guiding principles of educational psychology:
In-depth knowledge of students must drive teacher decision making
Effectiveness of various classroom practices can best be determined through systematic research
Research can provide quantitative information, qualitative information, or both
Different kinds of research lead to different kinds of conclusions
Drawing conclusions about cause-and-effect relationships requires that all other possible explanations for an outcome be eliminated
Theories can help synthesize, explain, and apply research findings
Developing as a teacher:
Keep up to date on research findings and innovative practices in education
Learn as much as you can both about the subject matter you teach and about strategies for teaching it effectively
Conduct your own research regarding questions and issues at your own school
Learn as much as you can about the culture(s) of the community in which you are working
Continually reflect on and critically examine your assumptions, inferences, and teaching practices
Communicate and collaborate with colleagues
Believe that you can make a difference in student's lives
Strategies for learning and studying effectively:
Relate what you read to things you already know
Tie abstract concepts and principles to concrete examples
Elaborate on what you read, going beyond it and adding to it
Periodically check yourself to make sure you remember and understand what you've read
Summary
Practice for your licensure exam: New software
MyEducationLab.
Chapter 2: Learning, Cognition, And Memory:
Case Study: New world
Learning as a constructive process:
By the time they reach school age, young learners are usually actively involved in their own learning
Cognitive processes influence what is learned
Learners must be selective about what they focus on and learn
Learners create (rather than receive) knowledge
Learners use what they already know and believe to help them make sense of new experiences
Thinking and learning in the brain:
Various parts of the brain work closely with one another
Most learning probably involves changes in neurons, astrocytes, and their interconnections
Knowing how the brain functions and develops tells us only so much about learning and instruction
How human memory operates:
Sensory input stays in a raw form only briefly
Attention is essential for most learning and memory
Working memory-where the action is in thinking and learning-has a short duration and limited capacity
Long-term memory has a long duration and virtually limitless capacity
Information in long-term memory is interconnected and organized to some extent
Some long-term memory storage processes are more effective than others
Practice makes knowledge more automatic and durable
With age and experience, children acquire more effective learning strategies
Prior knowledge and beliefs affect new learning, usually for the better but sometimes for the worse
Why learners may or may not remember what they've learned:
How easily something is recalled depends on how it was initially learned
Remembering depends on the context
How easily something is recalled and used depends on how often it has been recalled and used in the past
Recall often involves reconstruction
Long-term memory isn't necessarily forever
Promoting effective cognitive processes:
Remembering how the human memory system works:
Grab and hold students' attention
Keep the limited capacity of working memory in mind
Relate new ideas to students' prior knowledge and experiences
Accommodate diversity in students' background knowledge
Provide experiences on which students can build
Encouraging effective long-term memory storage:
Present questions and tasks that encourage elaboration
Show how new ideas are interrelated
Facilitate visual imagery
Give students time to think
Suggest mnemonics for hard-to-remember facts
Promoting retrieval:
Provide many opportunities to practice important knowledge and skills
Give hints that help students recall or reconstruct what they've learned
Monitoring students' progress:
Regularly assess students' understandings
Identify and address students' misconceptions
Focus assessments on meaningful learning rather than rote learning
Be on the lookout for students who have unusual difficulty with certain cognitive processes
Summary
Practice for your licensure exam: Vision unit
MyEducationLab.
Chapter 3: Learning In Context:
Case Study: Ben and Sylvia
Immediate environment as context:
Some stimuli tend to elicit certain kinds of behaviors
Learners are more likely to acquire behaviors that lead to desired consequences
Learners are also likely to acquire behaviors that help them avoid or escape unpleasant circumstances
Learners tend to steer clear of behaviors that lead to unpleasant consequences
Learners acquire many behaviors by observing other people
Learners learn what behaviors are acceptable and effective by observing what happens to others
By seeing what happens to themselves and others, learners form expectations about the probable outcomes of various behaviors
Learned behavior and cognitive processes are sometimes situated in specific environmental contexts
Social interaction as context:
Learners sometimes co-construct knowledge and understandings with more experienced individuals
Learners also co-construct knowledge and understandings with peers who have ability levels similar to their own
Culture and society as context:
Behaviors that others encourage and model are usually compatible with the culture in which they live
Concepts and other cognitive tools are also the products of a culture
Inconsistencies between the cultures of home and school can interfere with maximum learning and performance
Many groups and institutions within a society influence children's learning and development either directly or indirectly
Access to resources at home and in the community also affects learning
How learners modify their own environments:
Learners alter their current environment both through their behaviors and through their internal traits and mental processes
Learners actively seek out environments that are a good fit with their existing characteristics and behaviors
Providing supportive contexts for learning:
Encouraging productive behaviors:
Create conditions that elicit desired responses
Make sure productive behaviors are reinforced and unproductive behaviors are not reinforced
Make response-reinforcement contingencies clear
As an alternative to punishment, reinforce productive behaviors that are incompatible with unproductive ones
Model desired behaviors
Provide a variety of role models
Shape complex behaviors gradually over time
Have students practice new behaviors and skills in a variety of contexts
Providing physical and social support for effective cognitive processes:
Provide physical and cognitive tools that can help students work and think effectively
Encourage student dialogue and collaboration
Create a community of learners
Taking into account the broader contexts in which students live:
Learn as much as you can about students' cultural backgrounds, and come to grips with your own cultural lens
Remember that membership in a particular cultural or ethnic group is not an either-or situation but, instead, a more-or-less phenomenon
Incorporate the perspectives and traditions of many cultures into the curriculum
Be sensitive to cultural differences in behaviors and beliefs, and accommodate them as much as possible
Work hard to break down rigid stereotypes of particular cultural and ethnic groups
Identify and, if possible, provide missing resources and experiences important for successful learning
Summary
Practice for your licensure exam: Adam
MyEducationLab.
Chapter 4: Complex Cognitive Processes:
Case Study: Taking over
Metacognition:
Some effective study strategies are readily apparent in learners' behaviors
Even more important than observable study behaviors are the cognitive processes that underlie them
Metacognitive knowledge and skills gradually improve with age
Learners' views about the nature of knowledge and learning influence their approaches to learning tasks
Self-regulation:
Self-regulating learners establish goals and standards for their own performance
Self-regulating learners plan a course of action for a learning task
Self-regulating learners control and monitor their cognitive processes and progress during a learning task
Self-regulating learners also monitor and try to control their motivation and emotions
Self-regulating learners seek assistance and support when they need it
Self-regulating learners evaluate the final outcomes of their efforts
Self-regulating learners self-impose consequences for their performance
Learners become increasingly self-regulating over the course of childhood and adolescence
Transfer:
Transfer of knowledge and skills is most likely to occur when there is obvious similarity between the "old" and the "new"
Learning strategies and general beliefs and attitudes can also transfer to new situations
Relevant context cues increase the probability of transfer
Meaningful learning and conceptual understanding increase the probability of transfer
Problem solving and creativity:
Depth of learners' knowledge influences their ability to solve problems and think creatively
Both convergent and divergent thinking are constrained by working memory capacity
How learners encode a problem or situation influences their strategies and eventual success
Problem solving and creativity often involve heuristics that facilitate-but don't guarantee-successful outcomes
Effective problem solving and creativity are partly metacognitive activities
Critical thinking:
Critical thinking requires sophisticated epistemic beliefs
Critical thinking is a disposition as much as a cognitive process
Promoting complex cognitive processes:
Promoting specific processes:
Actively nurture students' metacognition awareness and self-reflection
Explicitly teach effective learning strategies
Communicate that acquiring knowledge is a dynamic, ongoing process-that one never completely "knows" something
Encourage and support self-regulated learning and behavior
Provide numerous and varied opportunities to apply classroom subject matter to new situations and problems
Create the conditions that creative thinking and problem solving require
Encourage critical thinking
Promoting complex processes in general:
Teach complex thinking skills within the context of academic disciplines and subject matter
Pursue topics in depth rather than superficially
Foster complex cognitive processes through group discussions and projects
Create an overall classroom culture that values complex thinking processes
Incorporate complex cognitive processes into assessment activities
Summary
Practice for your licensure exam: Interview with Emily
MyEducationLab.
Chapter 5: Cognitive Development:
Case Study: Hidden treasure
General principles of development:
Sequence of development is somewhat predictable
Children develop at different rates
Development is often marked by spurts and plateaus
Development involves both quantitative and qualitative changes
Heredity and environment interact in their effects on development
Children's own behaviors also influence their development
Developmental processes:
Brain continues to develop throughout childhood, adolescence, and adulthood
Children have a natural tendency to organize their experiences
Children are naturally inclined to make sense of and adapt to their environment
Development builds on prior acquisitions
Observations of the physical environment-and, ideally, frequent interactions with it-promote development
Language development facilitates cognitive development
Interactions with other people promote development
Formal schooling promotes development
Inconsistencies between existing understandings and external events promote development
Challenging tasks promote development
Trends in cognitive development:
Children's growing working memory capacity enables them to handle increasingly complex cognitive tasks
Children's growing knowledge base enhances their ability to learn new things
Children's knowledge, beliefs, and thinking processes become increasingly integrated
Thinking becomes increasingly logical during the elementary school years
Thinking becomes increasingly abstract in the middle school and secondary school years
Several logical thinking processes important for mathematical and scientific reasoning improve considerably during adolescence
Children can think more logically and abstractly about tasks and topics they know well
True expertise comes only after many years of study and practice
To some extent, different cultures encourage different reasoning skills
Intelligence:
Intelligence can be measured only imprecisely at best
To some degree, intelligence reflects speed, efficiency, and control of cognitive processing
Intelligence also involves numerous specific processes and abilities
Learners may be more intelligent in some domains than in others
Intelligence is a product of both heredity and environment
Learners may have specific cognitive styles and dispositions that predispose them to think and act in more or less intelligent ways
Learners act more intelligently when they have physical, symbolic, or social support
Addressing students' developmental needs:
Accommodating developmental differences and diversity:
Explore students' reasoning with problem-solving tasks and probing questions
Interpret intelligence test results cautiously
Look for signs of exceptional abilities and talents
Consult with specialists if children show significant delays in development
Fostering cognitive development:
Encourage play activities
Share the wisdom of previous generations
Rely heavily on concrete objects and activities, especially in the early elementary grades
Present abstract ideas more frequently in the middle school and high school grades, but tie them to concrete objects and events
Initially introduce sophisticated reasoning processes within the context of familiar situations and group work
Scaffold students' early efforts at challenging tasks and assignments
Involve students in age-appropriate ways in adult activities
Be optimistic that with appropriate guidance and support, all students can perform more intelligently
Summary
Practice for your licensure exam: Stones lesson
MyEducationLab.
Chapter 6: Motivation And Affect:
Case Study: Passing algebra
Basic human needs:
Learners have a basic need for arousal
Learners want to believe they are competent and have self-worth
Learners want to determine the course of their lives to some degree
Learners want to feel connected to other people
How motivation affects behavior and cognition:
Motivation directs behavior toward particular goals
Motivation increases effort and persistence in activities
Motivation affects cognitive processes
Motivation determines what consequences are reinforcing and punishing
Motivation often leads to improved performance
Intrinsic motivation is usually more beneficial than extrinsic motivation
Conditions in the learning environment influence intrinsic as well as extrinsic motivation
Cognitive factors in motivation:
Learners find some topics inherently interesting
To engage voluntarily in activities, learners want their chances of success to be reasonably good
When learners think their chances of success are slim, they may behave in ways that make success even less likely
Learners are more likely to devote time to activities that have value for them
Learners typically form goals related to their academic achievement; the specific nature of these goals influences learners' cognitive processes and behaviors
Learners must juggle their achievements with their many other goals
Learners identify what are, in their minds, the likely causes of their successes and failures
Learners' attributions for past successes and failures affect their future performance
With age, learners increasingly attribute their successes and failures to ability rather than to effort
Over time, learners acquire a general attributional style
Culture influences the cognitive factors underlying motivation
Cognitive factors underlying sustained motivation build up over a period of time
Affect and its effects:
Affect and motivation are interrelated
Affect is closely tied to learning and cognition
Positive affect can trigger effective learning strategies
Affect can also trigger certain behaviors
Some anxiety is helpful, but a lot is often a hindrance
Different cultures nurture different emotional responses
Promoting motivation and positive affect:
Fostering intrinsic motivation by addressing students' basic needs:
Conduct stimulating lessons and activities
Protect and enhance students' self-efficacy and overall sense of competence and self-worth
Present challenges that students can realistically accomplish
Give students control over some aspects of classroom life
Evaluate students' performance in a noncontrolling manner
Use extrinsic reinforcers when necessary, but do so in ways that preserve students' sense of self-determination
Help students meet their need for relatedness
Promoting motivation-enhancing cognitions:
Relate assignments to students' personal interests, values, and goals
Create conditions that foster internalization of values essential for students' long-term academic and professional success
Focus students' attention more on mastery goals than on performance goals
Ask students to set some personal goals for learning and performance
Form and communicate optimistic expectations and attributions
Minimize competition
Generating productive affect:
Get students emotionally involved in the subject matter
Foster emotion self-regulation
Keep anxiety at a low to moderate level
As students make the transition to middle school or high school, make an extra effort to minimize their anxiety and address their need for relatedness
Summary
Practice for your licensure exam: Praising students' writing
MyEducationLab.
Chapter 7: Personal, Social, And Moral Development:
Case Study: School play
Personality and sense of self:
Heredity and environment interact to shape personality
Despite their relatively stable personality traits, children often behave somewhat differently in different contexts
As children grow older, they construct increasingly multifaceted understandings of who they are as people
With age, self-perceptions become more realistic, abstract, and stable
As children reach puberty, they understand that they are unique individuals, but they sometimes go overboard in this respect
Learners' self-perceptions influence their behaviors, and vice versa
Other people's behaviors affect learners' sense of self
Group memberships also affect learners' sense of self
Gender plays a significant role in most learners' sense of self
Despite the influence of others, learners define and socialize themselves to a considerable degree
Peer relationships:
Peer relationships promote personal and social development in ways that adult-child relationships often cannot
Peers help define "appropriate" ways of behaving
Boys and girls interact with peers in distinctly different ways
Social groups become increasingly important in adolescence
Romantic relationships in adolescence provide valuable practice for the intimate relationships of adulthood
Truly popular children have good social skills
Social cognition:
As children get older, they become increasingly aware of other people's thoughts and emotions
Children's cognitive processes in social situations influence their behaviors toward others
Aggressive behavior is often the result of counterproductive cognitive processes
Moral and prosocial development:
At an early age, children begin applying internal standards for behavior
Children increasingly distinguish between moral and conventional transgressions
Children's capacity to respond emotionally to others' misfortunes and distress increases throughout the school years
With age, reasoning about moral issues becomes increasingly abstract and flexible
Challenges to moral reasoning promote advancement toward more sophisticated reasoning
Cognition, affect, and motivation all influence moral and prosocial behavior
Moral values become an important part of some learners' sense of self
Promoting personal, social, and moral development:
Fostering personal development
Accommodate students' diverse temperaments
Help students get a handle on who they are as people
Channel adolescents' risk-taking tendencies into safe activities
Create a warm, supportive environment with clear standards for behavior and explanations of why some behaviors are unacceptable
Be especially supportive of students at risk
Be on the lookout for exceptional challenges that students may face at home
Provide extra support and guidance for students who have disabilities that affect their personal or social functioning
Be alert for signs that a student may be contemplating suicide
Encouraging effective social cognition and interpersonal skills:
Encourage perspective taking and empathy
Explicitly teach social skills to students who have trouble interacting effectively with others
Provide numerous opportunities for social interaction and cooperation
Talk with students about the advantages and potential dangers of Internet communications
Explain what bullying is and why it cannot be tolerated
Be alert for incidents of bullying and other forms of aggression, and take appropriate actions with both the victims and the perpetrators
Promote understanding, communication, and interaction among diverse groups
Promoting moral reasoning and prosocial behavior:
Expose students to numerous models of moral and prosocial behavior
Engage students in discussions of social and moral issues
Get students actively involved in community service
Summary
Practice for your licensure exam: Scarlet letter
MyEducationLab.
Chapter 8: Instructional Strategies:
Case Study: Oregon Trail
Planning instruction:
Identify the desired end results of instruction
Ask students to identify some of their own objectives for instruction
Create a class website
Break complex tasks and topics into smaller pieces, identify a logical sequence for the pieces, and decide how best to teach each one
Develop step-by-step lesson plans
Conducting teacher-directed instruction:
Begin with what students already know and believe
Promote effective cognitive processes
Intermingle explanations with examples and opportunities for practice
Take advantage of well-designed educational software
Ask a lot of questions
Extend the school day with age-appropriate homework assignments
Shoot for mastery of basic knowledge and skills
Conducting learner-directed instruction:
Have students discuss issues that lend themselves to multiple perspectives, explanations, or approaches
Create a classroom atmosphere conducive to open debate and the constructive evaluation of ideas
Conduct activities in which students must depend on one another for their learning
Have students conduct their own research about new topics
Have students teach one another
Assign authentic real-world tasks, perhaps as group activities
Use technology to enhance communication and collaboration
Provide sufficient scaffolding to ensure successful accomplishment of assigned tasks
General instructional strategies:
Take group differences into account
Take developmental levels and special educational needs into account
Combine several instructional approaches into a single lesson
Summary
Practice for your licensure exam: Cooperative learning project
MyEducationLab.
Chapter 9: Strategies For Creating An Effective Classroom Environment:
Case Study: Contagious situation
Creating an environment conducive to learning:
Arrange the classroom to maximize attention and minimize disruptions
Communicate acceptance, caring, and respect for every student
Work hard to improve relationships that have gotten off to a bad start
Create a sense of community and belongingness
Create a goal-oriented, businesslike (but nonthreatening) atmosphere
Establish reasonable rules and procedures
Enforce rules consistently and equitable
Keep students productively engaged in worthwhile tasks
Plan for transitions
Take individual and developmental differences into account
Continually monitor what students are doing
Expanding the sense of community beyond the classroom:
Collaborate with colleagues to create an overall sense of school community
Work cooperatively with other agencies that play key roles in students' lives
Communicate regularly with parents and other primary caregivers
Invite families to participate in the academic and social life of the school
Make an extra effort with seemingly "reluctant" parents
Reducing unproductive behaviors:
Consider whether instructional strategies or classroom assignments might be partly to blame for off-task behaviors
Consider whether cultural background might influence students' classroom behaviors
Ignore misbehaviors that are temporary, minor, and unlikely to be repeated or copied
Give signals and reminders about what is and is not appropriate
Get students' perspectives about their behaviors
Teach self-regulation strategies
When administering punishment, use only those consequences that have been shown to be effective in reducing problem behaviors
Confer with parents
To address a chronic problem, plan and carry out a systematic intervention
Determine whether certain undesirable behaviors might serve particular purposes for students
Addressing aggression and violence at school:
Make the creation of a nonviolent school environment a long-term effort
Intervene early for students at risk
Provide intensive intervention for students in trouble
Take additional measures to address gang violence
Summary
Practice for your licensure exam: Good Buddy
MyEducationLab.
Chapter 10: Assessment Strategies:
Case Study: Akeem
Using assessment for different purposes:
Guiding instructional decision making
Diagnosing learning and performance problems
Determining what students have learned from instruction
Evaluating the quality of instruction
Promoting learning
Assessments influence motivation
Assessments influence students' cognitive processes as they study
Assessments can be learning experiences in and of themselves
Assessments can provide feedback about learning progress
Assessments can encourage intrinsic motivation and self-regulation if students play an active role in the assessment process
Important qualities of good assessment:
Good assessment is reliable
Good assessment is standardized for most students
Good assessment has validity for its purpose
Good assessment is practical
Conducting informal assessments:
Observe both verbal and nonverbal behaviors
Ask yourself whether your existing beliefs and expectations might be biasing your judgments
Keep a written record of your observations
Don't take any single observation too seriously; instead, look for a pattern over time
Designing and giving formal assessments:
Get as much information as possible within reasonable time limits
When practical, use authentic tasks
Use paper-pencil measures when they are consistent with instructional goals
Use performance assessments when necessary to ensure validity
Define tasks clearly, and give students some structure to guide their responses
Carefully scrutinize items and tasks to be sure they are free from cultural bias
Identify evaluation criteria in advance
When giving tests, encourage students to do their best, but don't arouse a lot of anxiety
Establish conditions for the assessment that enable students to maximize their performance
Take reasonable steps to discourage cheating
Evaluating students' performance on formal assessments:
After students have completed an assessment, review evaluation criteria to be sure they can adequately guide scoring
Be as objective as possible
Make note of any significant aspects of a student's performance that a rubric doesn't address
Ask students to evaluate their performance
When determining overall scores, don't compare students to one another unless there is a compelling reason to do so
Give detailed and constructive feedback
Make allowances for risk taking and the occasional "bad day"
Respect students' right to privacy
Summarizing students' achievement with grades and portfolios:
Base final grades largely on achievement and hard data
Use many assessments to determine final grades
Share grading criteria with students, and keep students continually apprised of their progress
Keep parents in the loop
Accompany grades with descriptions of what the grades reflect
Accompany grades with additional qualitative information about students' performance
Use portfolios to show complex skills or improvements over time
Assessing students' achievement and abilities with standardized tests:
High-stakes tests and accountability
Using standardized achievement tests judiciously:
When you have a choice in the test you use, choose a test that has high validity for your curriculum and students
Teach to the test if-but only if-it reflects important instructional goals
Make sure students are adequately prepared to take the test
When administering the test, follow the directions closely and report any unusual circumstances
Take students' ages and developmental levels into account when interpreting test results
Make appropriate accommodations for English language learners
Never use a single test score to make important decisions about students
Summary
Practice for your licensure exam: Two science quizzes
MyEducationLab
Appendix: Interpreting standardized test scores
Glossary
References
Author index
Subject index.
Edition Notes
Includes bibliographical references (pages R1-R54) and indexes.
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