Psychology's Impact On Education Flashcards
Alfred Binet’s theories and impact on intelligence testing in education
Intelligence is defined as scholastic aptitude. At the beginning of the 20th century, psychologist Alfred Binet designed the first intelligence test as a way to identify at-risk students. The test gave a mental age for a student, which is often contrasted with the student’s chronological age. Through his research, Binet showed that intelligence is a complex process, made up of many different skills. However, some educators use Binet’s research in a negative way, to label students as smart or not smart instead.
Bloom’s taxonomy and assessment
Bloom’s Taxonomy is a useful tool for teachers to determine a student’s level of thinking. It is often used as a sort of checklist when teachers create assessments. It helps us ensure that our students have completely mastered the learning objective. Students should be able to not only remember and understand the facts but also apply them to everyday life, analyze them, evaluate them, and use them to create new solutions to old problems.
Mastery learning: students should master each skill that demonstrates lower-order thinking before moving on to the more advanced skills that demonstrate higher-order thinking.
Remembering (or knowledge) Understanding (or comprehension) Applying (or application) Analyzing (or analysis) Evaluating (or evaluation) Creating (or synthesis)
Jerome Bruner’s theory of development: discovery learning and representation
Jerome Bruner, a cognitive psychologist, created a theory of development based upon the idea that the goal of education should be intellectual development. In this theory, he identified three modes of representation. Enactive is the stage that involves direct manipulation of objects without an internal representation. Iconic is the stage in which there is an internal representation of external objects in the form of a mental image or picture. Finally, symbolic is the stage where information is stored in the form of a symbol, such as language.
Bruner felt the teacher should encourage discovery learning by allowing the student to construct knowledge for him or herself. The role of instruction was to guide and provide enough information for understanding, but not too much that would stifle the child’s own construction of knowledge.
Bruner and Jean Piaget agreed on several components of learning, including the fact that children are born as ready and active learners. They disagreed, however, on several critical components of learning. Bruner believed development does not consist of discrete stages but is a continuous process. He also believed language is a cause and not a consequence of learning. He believed that more knowledgeable people play a major role in the cognitive development of a learner and that you could speed-up the learning process.
Erik Erikson’s eight stages of psychosocial development: conflict VS growth
Erikson identified eight stages of psychosocial development that are somewhat fluid and overlapping with each other. The three characteristics of the stages are that each unfolds from the preceding stage in a particular sequence, involves an ever-widening involvement with others, and presents the individual with a life task. The task involves a conflict between two opposites and, if the balance is toward the positive, the individual will be helped in the conflicts in later stages.
Four stages encompass the years from birth through elementary school. First, the quality of the relationship between the infant and the primary caregiver is essential in the first stage, trust vs. mistrust. The second stage, autonomy vs. shame and doubt, continues through the third year. Initiative vs. guilt is characterized by a willingness to learn quickly and make things together with other children. Then, the industry vs. inferiority stage involves planning, working, and sharing with others. The potential danger in this stage is the possibility of the child developing feelings of inadequacy or inferiority. Adolescence, in Erikson’s view, is the final stage of childhood. The task in this stage is identity vs. role confusion. Then identity continues to develop during the three stages of adulthood: intimacy vs. self-absorption or isolation, generativity vs. stagnation, and integrity vs. despair.
Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences
Intelligence was traditionally defined as scholastic aptitude. Psychologist Howard Gardner, though, argued that there were many different intelligences, including linguistic, logical-mathematical, musical, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalist.
Traditionally, schools have focused only on linguistic and logical-mathematical intelligences, but Gardner’s work has made it possible for classes like music and athletics to be valued, as well.
Teachers can help students by recognizing that, in order to be a well-rounded and successful individual, they should nurture many different intelligences. They can present material in ways that makes sense to students of differing aptitudes and encourage students to work in groups to develop interpersonal and intrapersonal skills.
Piaget’s stages of cognitive development
In summary, Piaget’s research indicated four general levels of cognitive development. Sensorimotor is presymbolic and preverbal. Preoperational thinking involves some decision making, but it’s based solely on perceptual cues. The logical forms of thinking are concrete and formal operations. Concrete operational thinking involves the direct manipulation of objects in situations that require understanding of simultaneous changes in two characteristics. Formal operational thinking, our highest level, can systematically test hypotheses about cause and effect situations in which multiple factors interact with each other.
B.F. Skinner’s behavioral theory
B.F. Skinner was a psychologist who believed that observing people’s behaviors is key to understanding how they learn. To Skinner, learning meant changing behaviors. He believed that people learn in two ways: by striving for positive things and by avoiding negative things. Skinner’s theory works particularly well for behavioral modification, which is a program meant to change someone’s behavior. It works less well in terms of learning whether students understand material or not.
Thorndike’s law of effect
Thorndike and his experiments with cats in puzzle boxes was the foundation for all of behavioral psychology. Thorndike’s law of effect states that behaviors followed by a reward or reinforcement are more likely in the future, whereas behaviors followed by a punishment are less likely in the future. This basic principle is the foundation for many ideas and techniques in the behavioral perspective within educational psychology.
Vygotsky’s theory of cognitive development
So, in summary, Vygotsky’s theory is guided by six major assumptions. Children develop through informal and formal conversations with adults. The first few years of life are critical for development, as this is where thought and language become increasingly independent. Complex mental activities begin as basic social activities. Children can perform more difficult tasks with the help of a more advanced individual. Tasks that are challenging promote cognitive development growth. And finally, play is important and allows children to stretch themselves cognitively. Vygotsky maintained that speech is a major psychological tool in the child’s development of thinking. As the child ages and develops, his or her basic speech becomes more complex.
