Educational Psychology

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learning objective several times, you realize that you understand it differently than the first time you taught it. And
so on. The job never stays the same; it evolves continually. As long as you keep teaching, you will have a job with
novelty.

Are there also challenges to teaching?............................................................................................................

Here, too, the simple answer is “yes”. Every joy of teaching has a possible frustration related to it. You may wish
to make a positive difference in students' lives, but you may also have trouble reaching individuals. A student seems
not to learn much, or to be unmotivated, or unfriendly, or whatever. And some teaching problems can be subtle:
when you call attention to the wonderful immensity of an area of knowledge, you might accidentally discourage a
student by implying that the student can never learn “enough”. The complexity of designing and implementing
instruction can sometimes seem overwhelming, instead of satisfying. Unexpected events in your classroom can
become chaos rather than an attractive novelty. To paraphrase a popular self-help book, sometimes “bad things
happen to good teachers” (Kushner, 1983). But as in the rest of life, the “bad things” of teaching do not negate the
value of the good. If anything, the undesired events make the good, desired ones even more satisfying, and render
the work of teaching all the more valuable. As you will see throughout this book, there are resources for maximizing
the good, the valuable, and the satisfying. You can bring these resources to your work, along with your growing
professional knowledge and a healthy dose of common sense. In this sense you will not need to “go it alone” in
learning to teach well. You will, however, be personally responsible for becoming and remaining the best teacher
that you can possibly be; the only person who can make that happen will be you. Many of the resources for making
this happen are described in this book in the chapters ahead.

Teaching is different from in the past............................................................................................................

In the past decade or two teaching has changed significantly, so much in fact that schools may not be what some
of us remember from our own childhood. Changes have affected both the opportunities and the challenges of
teaching, as well as the attitudes, knowledge, and skills needed to prepare for a teaching career. The changes have
influenced much of the content of this book.

To see what we mean, look briefly at four new trends in education, at how they have changed what teachers do,
and at how you will therefore need to prepare to teach:

• increased diversity: there are more differences among students than there used to be. Diversity has
  made teaching more fulfilling as a career, but also made more challenging in certain respects.


• 
  
  
  
  • increased instructional technology: classrooms, schools, and students use computers more often
    today than in the past for research, writing, communicating, and keeping records. Technology has created
    new ways for students to learn (for example, this textbook would not be possible without Internet
    technology!). It has also altered how teachers can teach most effectively, and even raised issues about what
    constitutes “true” teaching and learning.
  
  
  
  


• greater accountability in education: both the public and educators themselves pay more attention
  than in the past to how to assess (or provide evidence for) learning and good quality teaching. The attention
  has increased the importance of education to the public (a good thing) and improved education for some
  students. But it has also created new constraints on what teachers teach and what students learn.

Educational Psychology 10 A Global Text