Educational Psychology

For the Teacher Interview assignment, I gave one of my cooperating teachers, Mrs. Lowrance, the questions ahead of time and then asked her the questions the next day. The first question was "What do you do to lay the groundwork for a well-managed class at the beginning of the year, and how do you maintain a positive learning environment?" In response, she said that the class creates a list of rules together and then signs it in order for the students to gain ownership of their decisions. This is similar to an "expert teacher who worked with his students to establish a students' 'Bill of Rights' instead of defining rules" (Woolfolk 496). She also mentioned that the school implements PBIS, or positive behavior supports, which are "actual interventions designed to replace problem behaviors with new actions that serve the same purpose for the student" (Woolfolk 275). Although these are especially required for students with disabilities, these inter...

In Chapter 7, there is a section that discusses Positive Behavior Supports which is required for students with disabilities by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. They are also referred to as Positive Behavioral Intervention Supports, which is a school-wide and three-tiered system that addresses potential and current problem behaviors. As a student moves from the first to the third tier, the interventions become more individualized and intensive. One of the second tier interventions is creating a Functional Behavior Analysis, which is a process that determines the purpose of a student's problem behavior. As I have said in an earlier discussion, there is a step that involves recording the frequency and causes of a target behavior which I had to complete as an assignment for one of my SPED classes. At the end of the FBA, a Behavioral Intervention Plan would have to be created in order to actually address the target behavior. This sometimes includes creating a safety plan...

In Chapter 4, there is a section about Howard Gardner's theory of Multiple Intelligences which are linguistic, musical, spatial, logical-mathematical, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalist. I think that this theory is a very important concept to consider in regards to students' intelligence because people often define their intelligence by IQ scores. As a part of my Psychology class in freshman year, we took a test that helped us determine our areas of strongest intelligence. I ended up with a strong interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligence. Respectively, this means that I am able to understand the needs and desires of others and respond appropriately, and that I am knowledgeable of my own strengths, weaknesses, and capabilities. Our class was also given a chart that described each Intelligence's skills and possible career paths that could be applied with them. One of the career paths that was listed under interpersonal was a teacher, which ma...

One of the concepts that Woolfolk discusses is the qualities of good teaching. Under this section, she presents three classrooms that have effective teachers and then explains what good teaching is, including the models and measures of effective teaching. The effective teacher quality that stuck out to me was being reflective. This means that teachers “constantly think back over situations to analyze what they did and why, and to consider how they might improve learning for their students” (9). Last semester, I completed a service learning project in Elim Adult Services where I helped guide students with disabilities through their educational and vocational tasks. A part of this project involved setting goals and trying to accomplish them. I also had to complete frequent reflections of my work as I tried to meet my goals. For example, I had a goal to help a student improve on her social skills, so I would reflect on the 10-minute lessons I gave for meeting that goal. This was a valuabl...