EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY

(Ben Green) #1

Chapter 1, page 20


answer out of the book. My students could define higher-order questions and persuasively justify their
importance. But when I presented my students with transcripts of class discussion and asked them to
identify instances of higher-order questions, they often experienced considerable difficulty. They counted
as higher-order questions many questions that did not require much thinking by the students. Similarly,
when they wrote their own higher-order questions, their questions frequently fell short of what a higher-
order question should be. In short, they could not apply what they had learned to real teaching. They did
not have a real understanding of the material. Examples such as these showed me that if I wanted students
to really understand key concepts, they needed a great deal of practice actually analyzing real classroom
practices.
For this reason, each chapter in this textbook includes many problems—within the main body of
the chapter, at the end of the chapter, and in the online materials that accompany each chapter. Many of
these problems involve analyzing video on My Education Lab. By working through as many of these
problems as you can, you will gain skill at applying powerful ideas about how students learn and how
teachers can teach more effectively.
There are three different types of application problems in the body of each chapter. Most
problems have a response at the end with a suggested approach to answering the problem. Simple
examples of each type of problem are presented on this page; the problems are related to the concept of
transfer.
The first type of problem is called Understanding Students’ Thinking. These problems give you
practice at analyzing what students say and write so that you can understand their thinking. Problem 1.1
asks you to analyze the extent to which two students are able to transfer their understanding of one story
to another story.
The second type of problem is called Evaluating Teaching. In these problems you will evaluate
instances of teaching. For example, Problem 1.2 asks you to evaluate a teacher’s assessment according to
whether it really assesses far transfer. Other problems ask about how well teachers have done at important
teaching tasks such as designing learning activities, organizing group work, developing handouts for
students, leading discussions, or tutoring individual children.
The third type of problem is called Designing Instruction. In these problems, you will develop
instructional plans or design instructional materials. For instance, you might design a quiz that you could
use for formative assessment, or you might design a handout that would be effective in supporting group
work. Or you might outline a lesson that could achieve specified goals such as helping students learn to
summarize more effectively.
It is important not just to read these problems, but to actually try to solve the problems, even if
you are not successful. One of many psychological studies that shows the value of trying to solve
problems before learning how to solve them was conducted by psychologists Douglas Needham and Ian
Begg (1991). Needham and Begg wanted to determine how to help students learn to solve problems better.
They randomly assigned undergraduates to one of two learning conditions. Figure 1.6 shows what students
in each of the two learning conditions did. As Figure 1.6 shows, all the students were presented with a
problem. Half of them tried to solve the problem before being told the solution and an explanation of the
solution. The other half did not try to solve the problem before being given the solution and an explanation
of the solution. Later in the session, all the students attempted to solve a new, transfer problem with a
solution very similar to the one that they had earlier learned.

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