Educational Psychology

Educational PsychologyEducational Psychology

Cem BalçıkanlıLanguage Acquisition

2010 Spring

OUTLINEOUTLINE

• Educational Psychology

• Approaches to Educational Psychology

• Positivist School

• Cognitive Psychology

• Education is something carried out by one person, a teacher, standing in front of a class and transmitting information to a group of learners who are willing and able to absorb it.

• The successful educator is the one who understands the complexities of the teaching/learning process and can draw upon this knowledge to act in ways which empower learners both within and beyond theclassroom situation.

Education

• Learning of vocabulary items - ??

• Learning of structures - ??

• Learning training - ??

Different psychological approaches

An application of psychology to education by focusing on the development, evaluation and

application of theories and principles of learning and instruction that enhance lifelong

learning.

Educational Psychology

• Learning is a part of the process of education.

• Educative- means giving a broader value and meaning to the learner’s life.

• How about the learning activities you have experienced?

Education & Learning

• Teachers should maintain a continuous process of personal reflection, within which

they become aware of the personal and cultural values and beliefs that underpin their

own and other people’s actions.

• Teachers can come to understand fully their own implicit educational theories and the ways

in which such theories influence their professional practices.

• A number of changes and fashions in its brief history

• An understanding of how theories emerge and connect or conflict with each other

enable the teacher to evaluate their respective contributions to language

teaching.

Approaches to Educational Psychology

• They ignored the human mind in their attempts to understand and predict human behavior. • They rather sought to find the principles of human learning by investigating the behaviour of animals under defined conditions.

• Knowledge and facts exist within the real world and can be discovered by setting up experiments in which conditions are carefully controlled.

EMPIRICAL DATA MATTER!

The Positivist School

It is an approach to psychology that has its roots within positivism and which has had a profound

influence on language teaching all over the world.

What do you know about Behaviourism?

Behaviourism

They concentrated almost exclusively upon the nature of the incoming stimuli and the way these

could be altered to provoke different kinds of responses.

Behaviourism

* The founder of modern behaviourism* A system of principles to account for human

behavior in strictly observable terms.* Learning is the result of environmental rather than

genetic factors.* This theory explains learning in terms of operant

conditioning. i.e. An individual responds to a stimulus by behaving in a particular way.

* If the behavior is reinforced (i.e. rewarded or punished), the likelihood of that behavior occurring on a subsequent occasion will be decreased or increased.

Skinner

Four simple procedures 1- teachers should make explicitly clear what is to be

taught.2- tasks should be broken down into small, sequential

steps3- students should be encouraged to work at their

own pace by means of individualized learning programmes

4- learning should be programmed by incorporating the above procedures and providing immediate positive reinforcement.

Skinner

How about language learning/teaching?

* A powerful influence on the development of ALM.* Language is seen as a behavior to be taught.* Pattern drills, memorisation of dialogues, choral

repetition.

• stimulus- language patterns. • responds- students’ responds.• reinforcement- grade.

Skinner

1- Learners are fairly passive ones.

2- There is little concern for what goes on inside the learners’ heads.

3- There is little attention to the meaning that the language conveys.

4- There is no room for the actual process of interaction and negotiation of meanings.

5- There is no tolerance for making mistakes.

Limitations- ALM

Even though it has certain limitations, why do you think ALM dominated language teaching

around the world?

Brainwashing or Education?

• Concerned with the way in which the human mind thinks and learns.

• The mental processes are of significance.

• How people build up and draw upon their memories and the ways in which they become involved in the process of learning.

Cognitive Psychology

The learner is seen as an active participant in the learning process, using various

mental strategies in order to sort out the system of the language to be learned.

Cognitive Psychology & Language Learning

• The ways in which human thought has been investigated have themselves varied considerably.

Information processing

Memory

Intelligence and Intelligence Testing

Approaches to CP

• The way in which people take in information, process it and act upon it.

• Attention, Perception and Memory are the focus of the information processing.

• Models and scripts to account for the way in which the human mind works.

• They claim to be able to predict the kind of mental processes that will be necessary for effective learning to take place.

Information processing

• Attention, where an information processing approach has provided invaluable insights into the workings of the human mind.

• Some learners have considerable difficulty in paying attention to their work.

• Attention, a process of filtering out an overwhelming range of incoming stimuli and selecting out only those stimuli which are important for further processing.

• Attention, a cognitive resource which can be drawn upon as a means of concentrating our mental efforts.

Information processing

The ability to select (ir)relevant information and focus their attention on how this can be remembered

and used distinguishes efficient from inefficient learners.

Information processing & Language Learning

• This model describes the memory process in terms of a sensory register where stimuli are initially recorded for a brief amount of time before being passed into short-term memory.

• Working memory refers to whatever one has in mind at any particular time, which tends to be o a short duration.

• It is necessary to find ways of breaking down complex material into related chunks before consigning these to the long-term memory.

Memory

• Vocabulary items & memorization.• Mnemonic strategies…• Linkword… (Gruneberg, 1987)

nappe----nap----tablecloth• Advance organisers…

* some kind of topical introduction to a lesson that orientates learners to the subject matter and relates new learning to what the learners already know.

Memory & Language Learning

• What is intelligence? ???!!!!!!• Some form of inborn, general ability which enables

some of us to learn better or faster than others. • Intelligence is the main factor in predicting success or

failure in school. • Psychometricians- to seek ways to measure the so-

called (general intelligence). • Intelligence tests and their use for the purposes of

prediction or placement and diagnostic tools to explain learning failure.

Intelligence and Intelligence Testing

• 1956- MLAT (Carroll and Sapon)People possess a fixed amount of ability at language learning and this ability can be measured.

• 1964- Intelligence A, B and C (Vernon) A represents the intelligence with which we are born.B refers to the intelligence we display in all aspects of our every day lives which is continually changing and very much context-bound.C represents what is measured by IQ tests.

• 1983- Multiple Intelligences (Gardner)At least seven intelligences are clearly identifiable.Problem-solving oriented…

Intelligence and Intelligence Testing

• We can help ALL learners become better at language learning.

• We see everyone capable of succeeding, given appropriate teaching.

• We can help learners to develop the strategies needed to learn more effectively (through learner training)

• Learning how to think effectively is an issue to be considered.

Intelligence- Language Learning

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QUESTIONS?

CONCERNS?