Download EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY IG113

EDUCATIONAL
PSYCHOLOGY
IG113
Instructor:
Philipus Pirenomulyo
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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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?
• 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.
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.
• 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?
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?
• 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.
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.
• 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?
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.
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?
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.
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?
• Fuller (1995) divides teachers into three phases:
1. Survival phase: anxiety, fear. Of what?
• Reflection phase: how can I cope with such a
situation? I’m not that competent.
• Action phase: giving attention to the student’s
needs. What needs?
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?
• 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
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?
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?
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
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
BE A GOOD TEACHER !