Research Based Theory on Teaching

My Research-Based Theory Of Teaching

My Research-Based Theory of Teaching

Abstract This paper is expressing my own theory of teaching based off the research that I have done and from my educational psychology class. This paper will be describing my own opinion on what are the major topics of education psychology. The areas of information that this paper will be covering are in the areas of child development, learning theory, motivation, teaching strategies and keeping control of a classroom, teachers and technology, assessments, and grading. In each topic I discussed which areas within the topics I believe are more important and what I would incorporate into a classroom if I was a teacher. Each topic is supported with my own personal opinions from going through school, information from my educational psychology book, and from an internet resource. My Research-Based Theory of Teaching

What makes a good teacher? Is a good teacher based off the knowledge that each student brings out of the classroom, or is it based off how a teacher motivates their students to become what they have inspired to be, inside and outside of a classroom? A good teacher to me is a person who can motivate a student or even a friend to work to hard to reach a new level. Now that new level can be in any area ranging from education, sports, or even music. While growing up, all of my good teachers had similar qualities but each had their own method of teaching. It is interesting to understand how each style of teaching worked best for them, and was also effective in the classroom. For a better understanding on what makes a good teacher, this paper will be explaining the major topics such as teaching strategies, attributes, and other characteristics that I believe are important from my research in educational psychology. When inspiring to become a teacher, students and future teacher 's to be needed to understand what areas to excel and improve in. Most excellent teachers for the most part share similar traits. These traits would consist of understanding the academic subjects they teach. Not only should they understand the academia but also how to relate to his or her students. General teaching strategies that can be applied to all areas is good to learn. The teacher must realize their classrooms abilities, and the curriculum 's materials and programs must be set appropriate for students to be able to understand. Subject-specific knowledge for teaching certain topics and certain students will help a teacher excel. The characteristic and cultural backgrounds of the learners will help a teacher to better realize how to relate such material in a classroom. The settings in which students learn will help teachers ' asses themselves and understand what methods are working better in the classroom. Finally, having and understand the goals and purposes for teaching help expert teachers standout (Woolfolk, p.6). People will become expert teachers faster once they begin to understand as many of these key concepts as possible. I think it is important for teachers to understand what it takes for them to be an expert teacher before going into the classroom, in order to get expert students to come out of it. Before a teacher is ready to start influencing and challenging his or her students, my theory is that a teacher must realize what stage or how far along in development his/her student 's cognitive skills are. A teacher is not going to be able to teach physics or advanced chemistry to a third grader. Those cognitive and advanced thinking skills have not yet developed. Our understanding of children 's cognitive development was deeply influenced by two individuals, Jean Piaget and Lev Semenovich Vygotsky. Jean Piaget believed that four factors influence development. They were biological maturation, activity, social interactions and experiences, and equilibration. He believed that maturation had the biggest influence on the way we make sense of the world around us. Based off of our biological maturation, we are then able to bring in new information through activity. Children will be able to learn and physically interact with their environments bringing in vast amounts of information. Social transmission was also important to Piaget because cognitive development is highly influenced by learning from others. According to Piaget however, the amount of information that a person is able to bring in is delayed by their stage of cognitive development. Equilibration is described as the balance of new schemas into our system of knowledge. If the new schema works, then equilibration is achieved. If the new schema does not work, then disequilibrium is achieved making us uncomfortable (Woolfolk, p. 30-31). Jean Piaget 's counterpart would have been Lev Semenovich Vygotsky. Vygotsky believed in the sociocultural theory emphasizing the role in development society had on children between their peers and people of greater knowledge. Vygotsky applied the idea that human activities take place in a cultural environment and cannot be understood away from these setting (Woolfolk, p.45). After understanding the concepts of both Piaget and Vygotsky, I would have to say that my teaching method would be influenced by both of these men. My understanding of a child 's cognitive development is influenced by both men 's perspectives. I would have to say that I believe a child 's ability to learn is first influenced by the idea of Piaget 's biological maturation. A child has to first mentally and physically develop to begin to think more complex. Where I differ from Piaget and start to lean towards Vygotsky is where parents and teachers come in. Both are very important when a child is young and growing because there is so much development going on in a child 's brain that parents and teachers can have a huge influence on that development. My next belief in the theory of development agrees with both Piaget and Vygotsky. I believe that social interactions play a huge role on cognitive development because people do learn a lot through the observation of people interacting in public. I also agree that as we mature, we begin to have the ability to affect and increase our cognitive development through personal activity. Going away from public interactions, I have come to realize that much can be learned through personal exploration, contrary to Vygotsky 's beliefs. My understanding of cognitive development has greatly been influenced by Piaget and Vygotsky, but I personally believe that where one man excelled in cognitive development, the other was not so strong. My views on development are the intertwined beliefs of both Piaget and Vygotsky. Do children begin to understand subjects that they are more interested in, or do they lack the necessary thinking abilities in certain subjects. As a teacher, you are going to have to be able to realize when a child is struggling in certain subjects or is just not interested in learning that area of school. One of the most productive ways a teacher can help a child that is struggling I believe is to make a class constructive. A teacher needs to be able to allow the students to learn through a constructive process. Piaget made a very good point when saying that, "Knowledge is not a copy of reality. To know an object, to know an event, is not simply to look at it and make a mental copy or image of it. To know an object is to act on it. To know is to modify, to transform the object, and to understand the process of this transformation, and as a consequence to understand the way the object is constructed," (Woolfolk, p.41). For me a good constructive process would have to be bored work. Even though the experience may be embarrassing for students at times, it give the teacher a good evaluation of who is struggling. Also, it provides the student with hands on work and immediate feedback on what areas they may be misunderstanding. So to me board work is a constructive process to allow the teacher to monitor the students who may be having trouble and also make the classroom more constructive. One of the most difficult areas of teaching that people will run into is making subjects interesting enough to be able to get the attention of a whole class. The role of the teacher though is to make sure that a student comes out of the class with a better understanding of the subject before they went in. One of the simplest ways to try to make a subject more interesting for a student would be to relate to an area of interest to a student. For example, if a teacher was trying to teach a football player the concepts of physics, he could use his/her knowledge of football to relate the concepts of force, weight, pressure, equal and opposite reaction, and so on. Being able to relate the concepts of physics to an interest of the students could perhaps enhance the student 's knowledge and interest of physics. For a teacher to be able to motivate her class she has to understand first what motivation is, and how motivation can work. Motivation is defined as the internal state that arouses, directs, and maintains behavior (Woolfolk, pg. 350). As a teacher, motivation is one of the biggest elements that he/she has to enforce into her students. Motivation students will not only allow the students to learn better, but it will also help prevent discipline problems. Students who are more involved in learning are less likely to have conflicts with the teacher or other students. A teacher can better their chances of motivating their students by a couple of ways. There is intrinsic motivation in which motivation is associated with activities that are their own reward. The second example is extrinsic motivation which is created by external factors such as rewards and punishments. My theory of teaching involving motivation would have to be more intrinsic motivation rather than extrinsic. My reason for favoring intrinsic motivation is because I would like to keep the idea of learning as positive as possible. I know that rewarding some students may make other students feel bad if they are not rewarded as often as they would like or as much as other students. My thinking though is that I do not want to punish a student for not being able to understand a subject of answer a question. The reason I don 't want to punish a student for not understanding a subject is because there can be so many factors inside and outside of the classroom that could be affecting their learning or attention. A student will learn best in an environment that allows them to learn. Creating such a positive learning environment is the responsibility of the teacher. I believe one of the best teaching strategies that a teacher can use is making a classroom as productive as possible. That is by first maintaining a good environment for learning. A teacher can maintain control over their class by keeping students engaged in productive learning activities. In return, keeping students engaged in learning activities will be a hurdle that most teachers will have to jump. Understanding what format of a lesson works best in keeping students on task will help keep the learning environment productive. Through my own observations and going through school, my theory on what would work best as a teaching strategy would have to involve group work and teacher involvement. Going through grade school and high school, it always seemed that group work was a productive and educational environment for all students. Students working with their peers allow for the mixing of ideas and concepts when solving problems and also helping students realize what areas they excel in and what areas they need improvement. Second is teacher involvement. Teacher involvement to me not only means that you are helping your students with their work but you are also aware of what is going on in the classroom as a whole. One study done by T.W. Frick, for example, found that elementary students working directly with a teacher were on task 97% of the time, whereas students working on their own were on task 57% of the time (Woolfolk, pg. 408). Now by teacher involvement does not mean helping a student step by step just to get the right answer. You still want to allow the student to try to complete the work on their own, but you just want to keep a close monitor over the students to keep an eye on any that might need help. Withitness in teacher involvement is also an important concept. Withitness is defined as communicating to students that you are aware of everything that is happening in the classroom, that you aren 't missing anything (Woolfolk, pg. 409). Withitness is good attribute for most teachers to have because it allows for you to keep control over a classroom, it provides a feeling of professionalism in the classroom, it gains respect from students, and it keeps minor disruptions from turning into major problems. Group work between students, teacher involvement, and a teacher that shows a good example of withitness, can really help produce an environment that makes it easy for students to excel in a classroom. In today 's advanced world, technology is no longer the way of the future; it is the way of today. Teachers need to start becoming more technological literate and increasing the amount of technology they use in the classroom. According to the website GiveKidsGoodSchools.org, effective teachers understand and have training in how to use state-of-the-art technology. They integrate technology into their classroom lessons. Good teachers understand that technology is a tool for increasing student interest, motivation, and achievement (Technological Literacy, #7). Especially in today world when a child 's time is filled with videogames, computers, and big screen televisions, homework or even getting out of the house is nowhere close to their main interest. Technology is a very important tool that I believe can be very useful because it allows a child to interact with their work in a manner in which they are more comfortable and interested. In order to keep up with our technological advancing world, teachers are going to have to incorporate more technology into a classroom to keep kids involved and interested in school. Assessments are no longer looked at as just how much has a student learned but also as an evaluation of a teacher 's expertise in their field and their strategy of teaching. It is a teacher 's job to make sure that they are teaching the class in an effective manner, and an assessment is a way to make sure the students are getting something out of this class. An assessment is accurately defined as the procedures used to obtain information about student performance. Assessment is broader than testing and measurement because it includes all kinds of ways to sample and observe students ' skills, knowledge, and abilities (Woolfolk, pg. 514). I think it is good for teachers to assess their class to not only measure the student on how much they are learning but how well you are teaching. The feedback a teacher can get from an assessment will allow them to understand if they are doing a good job or if they need to improve their teaching method. My research has led me to decide that criterion-referenced testing is the testing that I would prefer to have in my classroom. The reason I would choose to have criterion-reference testing is because first I believe that it shows you if a child has learned enough from your class to move on to more advanced classes. I prefer the standard grading scale because it will clearly show me what the students can and can not do. The reason I go against norm-reference testing is because even though a child may be in the upper percentile of their class in that subject, it does not give you a good result on whether or not they should be allowed to move on. The student could excel better in a class in which no student is doing well. So you could move students on to a high-level class in which they have no learned the basic concepts well enough. For most students, it all comes down to that small little letter they will get in the end. Grades, it 's what all students stress over. Through my research I have come to believe that how a teacher grades should really depend on several factors. These factors are the grade level that you are teaching, the size of the classroom, and the subject that you are teaching. Grade level to me is an important factor on how a teacher should grade. I believe a teacher should grade on standard scoring when the child is younger to make sure that the student understands the basic knowledge that is needed in order to understand more complex problems. When a child is in the upper level of high school or college, I believe teachers can start grading on a curve because of the more complex ideas and concepts that are being taught. The size of the classroom should also affect grading slightly. I believe that when a classroom is very large, concepts might not be understood as well as if the classrooms were smaller and the students had better communication with their teacher. Because of this factor, I believe the scores from large class sizes should be graded on a curve and the scores from smaller classrooms should be compared to a set performance standard. The third factor that I believe should affect the way a teacher grades is the subject that they are teaching. I believe that certain subject such as, chemistry, physics, and advanced mathematics, should grade on a curve because of the difficulty to understand so many specific details. The more advanced classes should be compared to those of their peers to understand what concepts are easy and which ones they are having difficulty with. In easier subject such as English, or history, in which students have a general sense of, I believe a teacher should compare those scores to a set of performance standards. I think a teacher needs to analyze all of the factors that are in play, before they consider how they are going to grade their students. In this paper, I hope I made it clear on what my theory of teaching consisted of based off of my research. This paper was a combination of information on a child 's development, motivation, and teaching strategies to how a teacher should incorporate technology and go about grading their students. I am sure that after reading this paper you will understand what the major topics in this course were to me and what a teacher needs to do in order to increase their teaching performance and their student 's cognitive development.

References
Woolfolk, Anita. Educational Psychology. Ninth Edition. Pearson Education, Inc. 2004

"What are the Ten Traits Of Highly Effective Teachers." What Makes a Good Teacher a
Good Teacher?. 2006. 1 May 2006. www.givekidsgoodschools.com/characteristics.html

References: Woolfolk, Anita. Educational Psychology. Ninth Edition. Pearson Education, Inc. 2004 "What are the Ten Traits Of Highly Effective Teachers." What Makes a Good Teacher a Good Teacher?. 2006. 1 May 2006. www.givekidsgoodschools.com/characteristics.html