Module 9

After several years of not attending a public school, it was quite a shock to come into the school district as a substitute teacher where I once was a student.  The expectations of teachers in the schools were completely different from the time I was in school.  I could remember being required to type a six-page term paper as a sophomore.  After being substitute teaching a high school for a while, I witnessed that many of the teachers would not dare assign their students, who were seniors in high school, to write a six-page paper.  They would rather assign them to write a two-page research paper for the last semester of school.  In addition, students literally never had homework. 

I understand that comparing a generation of students with mine is probably not fair, but something has to give.  Those kids were not even expected to have an inkling of accountability throughout the process of their education.  I agree with Dweck (2006) when she noted, “Lowering standards just leads to poorly educated students who feel entitled to easy work and lavish praise” (p. 187).

I know that it is never easy to teach at every student’s capacity level and keep track of 30+ students’ zone of proximal development in class, but lowering expectations too low can hamper learners’ cognitive development.  Lowering expectations may also cause students to develop performance goals by only focusing on the outcome of their performance instead of putting the appropriate effort into improving the process of their learning (Dweck, 1999).   

I like that Dweck (2006) explained that what makes a great teacher is the belief that intelligence is malleable and that the process of learning is exciting (Dweck, 2006).  I believe that something as basic as having those beliefs can dramatically impact the effectiveness of a teacher’s instructional approach to all students no matter what their motivation is for learning. 

There are so many ideas that can describe how people learn.  I feel that some theoretical approaches can positively influence certain individual’s process of learning.  However, I believe that Bandura’s triadic reciprocal model (factors such as environment, behavior, and personal all works together to influence one another) generally describes everyone’s own processes of learning.  

Have a nice summer everybody : )

R 11

R11

In school, students who believe their abilities are flexible and are attributed to effort will most likely have metacognitive knowledge.  Thus, the students will be aware of their knowledge and the various strategies that will help towards accomplishing different tasks (Pintrich, 2002).    However, for students who lack self-efficacy for believing that they are capable of regulating, planning, and monitoring their cognition and learning.  Pintrich notes a type of metacognition, he says, “Strategic knowledge is knowledge of general strategies for learning, thinking, and problem solving” (Pintrich, 2002, p. 220).  Dweck (1999) explains, “Many of the students with performance goals showed a clear helpless pattern in response to difficulty.  A number of them condemned their ability, and their problem-solving deteriorated” (Dweck, p. 16). 

According to achievement goal orientation theory (Dweck 1999) and attribution theory (Weiner 2010), the students who are performance goal oriented may only attribute their failures and success to outside forces, such as, luck and teachers’ instructional methods.  Usually, students develop performance goal oriented through several past academic failure experiences.  According to some researchers, these negative experiences can significantly cause a lack of self-regulatory learning strategies because the students may think that their cognitive ability is not malleable, which can cause a lack of academic self-efficacy.  Thus, if a student has always performed badly on essay form exams, he or she may believe that using techniques to improve at that particular task is a waste of time and effort.  In addition, under the expectation-value theory (Wigfield & Eccles, 2000), students may not put a significant amount of effort (i.e., rehearsal, elaboration, and organizational strategies) into studying for a difficult exam because they want to avoid disappointment if they fail after trying so hard to succeed.

Sometimes our awareness of our cognition can be misleading to us.  Pintrich mentions about researchers believe that students can develop the use of metacognition, “Regardless of their theoretical perspective, researchers agree that with development students become more aware of their own thinking as well as more knowledgeable about cognition in general” (Pintrich, 2002, p. 219).  Even with development, our awareness of our strengths and weaknesses are not always accurate.  For example, some people who are in college may have for so long believed that they are innately bad at math, when in fact they can use strategies to improve their math skills.  Thus, in order to have metacognition, you have to believe that knowledge is flexible when there is an appropriate use of strategies for a certain task.  How can students who believe that their abilities on certain tasks are fixed be taught to possess and apply metacognition?

References

Dweck, C. S. (1999). Self-theories: Their role in motivation, personality, and development. Philadelphia, PA: Psychology Press. [Chapter 3, pp. 15-19]

Weiner, B. (2010). The development of an attribution-based theory of motivation: A history of ideas. Educational Psychologist, 45, 38-36

Wigfield, A., & Eccles, J. S. (2000). Expectancy-value theory of motivation. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 25, 68-81.

R 10 Multi-tasking

R 10

            Although many people believe that multitasking is a positive characteristic trait to possess, some do not believe the hype.  We tend to perceive multi-tasking as being a skill to have when trying to get things done on a quick and easy manner.  Yet, sometimes we think that we are accomplishing a lot, when really we are not.  Furthermore, in many ways, multitasking negatively affects our learning.

            According to Rosen (2008) “When we talk about multitasking, we are really talking about attention: the art of paying attention, the ability to shift our attention, and, more broadly, to exercise judgment about what objects are worthy of our attention” (p. 109).  It is commonly known that a major part of the effectiveness for learning is attention.  Information has to be in an individual’s focal attention in order for information to process and store in his or her brain.  In addition, once information is included in our focus, we are then able to efficiently develop memory. 

            In the article entitled “How does Multitasking Affect Memory,” Josh Clark mentions how multitasking affects memory.  For example, if an individual is watching an interesting sitcom on television and reading an article about information processing, when it comes time to recall the information, it is not located where it needs to be. Therefore, information was put into the brain, but was not learned (Clark, 2010).  

            More research concerning the negative effects of multitasking continues to evolve in mainstream research.  Multitasking not only affects memory, but Rosen (2008) mentions that it also can negatively affect the economy.  She describes a study saying,

“One study by researchers at the University of California at Irvine monitored interruptions among office workers; they found that workers took an average of twenty-five minutes to recover from interruptions such as phone calls or answering e-mail and return to their original task” (p. 106).

            Many people believe that their mind is able to do many tasks at once, when in actuality, everyone should leave that ability to computers.  In our society, students at school and employees at the workplace are being treated as robots who are supposedly able to produce various outcomes simultaneously as machines.  Even a doctor is not able to perform surgery on one patient and perform a yearly check-up on another.  Therefore, according to James (1899/2001), it is crucial to teach students good habits, the habit of time management and other self-regulatory learning strategies that will help them succeed at learning.  Therefore, how can we teach our students to not multitask when it is encouraged throughout our society?      

References

Clark, J. (2010, April 27).  How does multitasking affect memory?  Retrieved from

            http://www.huffingtonpost.com/josh-clark/multitasking-how-does-mul_b_552673.html

James, W. (1899/2001). Talks to teachers on psychology and to students on some of life's ideals.

            Mineola, NY: Dover.

Module 7

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Module 7

R 9

R 9

James was right when he explained that in order to be an effective teacher; one of the characteristics you must have is creativeness.  After reading about the various techniques that teachers can use to promote memory, I realized how much teaching is indeed an art.  In order to combat those streams of consciousness that interfere with learning and memory, and obtain the focus of the students, classroom instructions should be meaningful and interesting to them. 

King-Friedrich (2001) explained that one of the main concepts of helping the memory of the students is making connections.  She says, “New learning must be connected to what the students already know” (p. 76).  Upon reading the article, I was even able to make several connections with the reading and William James’ views on memory.  It is interesting that over a century ago, the importance of making connections for memory in the process of learning was introduced to teachers.  James (1899/2001) said, “It is mainly that of building up useful systems of association in the pupil’s mind” (p. 42).  Also, while reading this article, I thought about Piaget’s theory on schemas.  It is a natural tendency for everyone to connect information to existing knowledge.  We often put all the information we come across in our environment into categories in order to organize our thoughts for memory, and make our learning process easier.

The author also mentions how crucial it is for teachers to assess their students with various procedures (King-Friedrich, 2001).  She states, “Clearly, however, the great variety of the lesson’s activities allows students to use their preferred styles of learning to make better sense of these new concepts” (p. 78).  It only makes sense that if students are assessed only one way that would not have a significant impact on their memory, in which learning would be difficult to achieve.  James said, “My practical reason for mentioning this law is this, . . . in working associations into your pupils’ minds, you must not rely on single cues, but multiply the cues as much as possible” (James, 1899/2001, p. 44).

We all know that gaining the interests of students helps with memory.  However, it is often not an easy task for teachers to gain the attention and interests of all their students.  Particularly, the higher a student’s grade level is, the more serious the presentation of the material.  Therefore, how can fun activities be implemented in the instruction to endorse students’ memory in secondary education?    

Module 6

Sensory Processing Disorder (SID) is the inability for the brain to correctly process sensory stimuli in the environment.  Individuals with the disorder may have an overload or limited sensory stimuli, in which they may feel the need for an overload of sensory stimuli.  Stimuli such as light, movement, sound, and touch can be misinterpreted.  SID is developed mainly the developmental stages of kids, and can also be developed in adults.  There is no knowledge about the causes of SID.  In school, kids have to undergo accommodations that help them adjust to the proper physical sensory in environment.  For example, a child who has audio sensitive sensory may hear loudness and get annoyed with the sound.  A teacher may have to give the student headphones to minimize the noise.  This sensory deficit has a significant influence on the development of learning in so many ways. 

Just yesterday, I became familiar with Sensory Processing Disorder.  Thereafter, I was interested in the topic simply because I had never heard of it before.  It is not a disorder that is widely known to many because it is not listed in most diagnostic manuals.  Plus, many health professionals do not acknowledge it as a disorder.  Some say that it is the next attention deficit disorder.  This is also often linked to autism spectrum disorders.

Below, I have included two links.  One is a video and the other has information about the disorder and possible treatment ideas.

http://www.learningbreakthrough.com/sensory-processing-disorders

http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/what-is-sensory-processing-disorder/6isexmf