Educational Psychology: Learning Experiences

Educational Psychology

• Helps in deciding what learning experiences, activities, and skills are desirable at each stage of the learner's growth and development
• Discusses laws, principles, and theories of learning, including remembering and forgetting, perceiving, concept formation, thinking, and reasoning, problem-solving, and transfer of learning

The Learning Situation or Environment

• Deals with environmental factors and learning situations that come between the learner and the teacher
• Topics include classroom climate and group dynamics, practices that facilitate learning, evaluation techniques, and guidance and counseling

The Teacher

• Emphasizes the need for self-awareness to play a role properly in the education process
• Discusses topics such as teacher conflicts, motivation, anxiety, adjustment, and level of aspiration, and how these factors affect the learning process

Evaluation of the Learning Process

• Equips teachers with different methods of assessment and how to use them
• Teachers must decide on the type of devices suitable for measuring the effectiveness of teaching and learning outcomes

Importance of Educational Psychology to the Trainee Teacher

• Enables teachers to understand and guide learning processes effectively
• Helps teachers evaluate and influence curriculum changes to make school learning more relevant to cultural settings
• Assists learners in achieving personal prestige and higher levels of performance
• Translates educational objectives into instructional objectives
• Acquires a comprehensive set of psychological theories and principles of how learning takes place
• Employs appropriate pedagogical skills in delivering learning tasks
• Acquires techniques for motivating students to learn
• Enriches skills in managing the learning environment
• Constructs better evaluative devices for assessing student performance
• Identifies strengths and weaknesses in the educational process and its results
• Acquires strategies and methods to understand students through educational curricula

Educational Objectives

• Statements that clearly describe what learners are expected to achieve or be able to do as a result of their participation in an educational program
• Must be observable and measurable
• Verbs to consider when writing educational objectives: list, describe, recite, write, compute, discuss, explain, predict, apply, demonstrate, prepare, use, analyze, design, select, utilize
• Verbs to avoid when writing educational objectives: know, understand, learn, appreciate, become aware of, become familiar with

Instructional Objectives

• Specific performances or terminal behaviors that the instructor expects students to demonstrate after an instructional session
• Must specify the terminal behavior, conditions, and acceptable level of performance
• Examples of well-written instructional objectives include reading a passage silently and answering questions, or stating uses of water with the aid of pictures

Instructional Objectives and Domains of Instruction

• Must be formulated to cover the domains of cognitive, affective, and psychomotor
• Examples of cognitive objectives include stating and explaining rules, infractions, and concepts underlying strategies for a game