"Educational Psychology" is an authoritative book in the field of educational psychology. It has been published to the 12th edition and has been selected as a teaching material by many universities around the world. This book emphasizes the close integration of theory and practice, emphasizing the educational implications and applications contained in research on child development, cognitive science, learning, motivation, teaching, and assessment. From this book, you can learn how to apply the information and concepts obtained from educational psychology research to solve daily teaching problems.

About the author

Anita Woolfolk, an internationally renowned educational psychologist, teaches at the Ohio State University School of Education and served as the Educational Psychology Branch of the American Psychological Association (APA) President, Vice President of the Teaching and Teacher Education Section of the American Educational Research Association (AERA). Anita's research focuses on motivation and cognition, particularly student and teacher perceptions of efficacy and teacher beliefs about education.

What to study? How to raise a positive, healthy and happy child

There is an old saying in China: "Hope your son will become a dragon, hope your daughter will become a phoenix". Every parent hopes to cultivate their children to become successful. However, while blindly pursuing results, children's mental health issues are also ignored. Recently, news about some top students committing crimes is not uncommon, which not only makes people reflect: What is wrong with our education? How on earth should we raise children?

"Educational Psychology" is a classic of educational psychology. Such an old professional book with nearly 500 pages has a Douban score of 9.3. The book contains a large number of cases, classroom clips, case studies and practical guides, and also summarizes many teaching magic weapons summarized by experienced teachers themselves, which are more helpful in solving daily teaching problems. By reading this book, you will realize the tremendous practical value of educational psychology.

You will also find

·The development history of educational psychology;

·The benefits of studying educational psychology;

·Differences the importance of cultural teaching.

1. What is educational psychology?

In this section, we mainly talk about the following issues: understand what educational psychology is, what is the history of the development of educational psychology of? What does educational psychology look like today, and what are the commonly used research methods in educational psychology? Why should we study educational psychology?

Let’s talk about the first question first, what is educational psychology, and what is the development history of educational psychology?

Some people believe that educational psychology is just the simple application of psychological knowledge to classroom practice; others believe that educational psychology is the use of psychological research methods to explore classroom learning and school life. In fact, the connotation of educational psychology is much broader than these two understandings. It is not a simple mechanical connection between psychology and education as commonly understood.

Educational psychology has a very long history. As early as 400 BC in ancient Greece, Plato and Aristotle had begun to discuss topics such as the role of teachers, teacher-student relationships, teaching methods, the nature of learning and the role of emotions in learning, and these topics are still discussed today. It is the focus of educational psychology research.

Our country also formed a relatively complete educational thought in the Spring and Autumn Period around 500 BC. In "Mencius: Endeavor to the Heart", there is a saying of "getting the world's talents and educating them" "Shuowen Jiezi" explains that "teaching is the effect of what is applied above"; "education is about raising children to do good", which clarifies the interactive relationship between teachers' demonstration and scholars' imitation in education, and the purpose of education is to guide People are kind.

The origin of modern educational psychology is generally believed to be in 1890. At that time, William James, known as the "Father of American Psychology", opened a psychology course at Harvard University and conducted a series of lectures called "Psychology with Teachers", which were originally intended for American teachers. Established as a summer training course, the manuscripts of the lectures were collected and published in 1899, becoming the first text of modern educational psychology.

Later, Stanley Hall, a student of William James, founded the American Psychological Association. His doctoral thesis studied students' understanding and knowledge of the world. During the research process, many teachers helped him collect With a large amount of data, Hall encouraged teachers to continue to observe students' development in depth, laying the foundation for further systematization of educational psychology.

Edward Lee Thorndike, another student of William James, continued to conduct in-depth research on educational psychology under the influence of his teacher and Hall, and wrote the first educational psychology textbook in 1903. , and founded the "Journal of Educational Psychology" in 1910, making educational psychology an independent discipline. Therefore, Thorndike is called the founder of modern educational psychology.

After that, the areas of concern of educational psychology began to gradually expand and deepen. In the 1940s and 1950s, educational psychology began to pay attention to individual differences, assessment methods, and learning behaviors; in the 1960s and 1970s, the focus of educational psychology research turned to students' cognitive development and learning, focusing on how students learn concepts. and memory.

In recent years, educational psychologists have begun to explore the impact of cultural and social factors on student learning and development.

The above is the general development trend of modern educational psychology.

So, what does educational psychology look like today, and what are the commonly used research methods?

As we mentioned earlier, modern educational psychology is an independent discipline with its own theoretical system, research methods, research directions and research techniques. Educational psychologists focus their research on learning and teaching with the goal of improving educational practice.

In order to better understand learning and teaching, educational psychologists are committed to exploring the interactions between education providers, teaching content, educatees, and teaching environments.

The key areas of educational psychology include: the development of children and adolescents, students’ learning motivation and learning methods, the impact of social and cultural factors on learning, teachers’ teaching strategies, teaching evaluation and testing, etc. Various themes.

In order to understand the learning process and promote learning results more scientifically and systematically, educational psychologists have designed and conducted various types of research. Currently, there are three main research methods:

< p>The first is descriptive research. As the name suggests, this method describes events that have occurred. This approach cannot be used to make precise predictions or to explain causal relationships. Descriptive research methods can also be divided into three categories: observation method, case analysis method and survey method.

To put it simply, descriptive research is to deduce based on existing cases and summarize some revolutionary issues and rules from a large number of cases. In reality, this research method is most commonly used in various statistical analyses, such as census reports, GDP data reports, Forbes rankings, etc.

The second type is experimental research. This is easy to understand, just design a model and do experiments. For example, the famous "Cat Uncage Experiment" designed by Thorndike is also called "Thorndike's Hungry Cat" experiment.

Put a hungry cat in a cage and put a fish outside the cage. The hungry cat is eager to rush out of the cage door to eat the fish outside the cage, but in order to open the cage door, the hungry cat must complete three separate tasks in a row. action. First lift the door latch, then press down on a hinged platform, and finally move the slat across the doorway to a vertical position.

In the experiment, when the cat was put into the maze box for the first time, it struggled desperately, biting or scratching, trying to escape from the maze box and eat the fish. Finally, it accidentally touched the pedal, escaped from the box, completed the subsequent actions, and ate the food.

In many efforts and attempts, the hungry cat may accidentally catch the door latch or step on the platform or touch the horizontal bar, and as a result, he eats the fish. After repeating the experiment many times, the hungry cat finally There are fewer and fewer ineffective actions, and finally when you enter the cage, you will immediately touch the mechanism in the correct way, open the door, and eat the fish.

In the "Cat Opening Cage Experiment", Thorndike called the process of trial and error learning in which the cat kept trying and eliminating errors in the cage and finally learned to open the door to get food. He also proposed the method of learning. "Trial-error" theory.

The third research method in educational psychology is microgenetic research. The so-called microgenesis means that the behavior is "under the microscope", that is, the observed behavior needs to be tested repeatedly.

This research method usually takes many years, but it is usually the most accurate and referable.

For example, in 1966, the famous marshmallow experiment was designed by Stanford University psychologist Dr. Walter Mischel. He followed 60 children for 30 years and finally concluded that "The ability to delay gratification determines a person's success or failure." Although some psychologists have now come out to say that the conclusion of Dr. Michel's "marshmallow experiment" is not reliable, and the influence of the original family is the decisive factor. The key to a child's success or failure, but no matter what the conclusion is, if anyone wants to overturn Dr. Michel's conclusion, I'm afraid he will still have to use the same microgenetic research method to prove that he is right.

Learned about the three most commonly used methods in educational psychology research. Next, let’s talk about why we should learn some educational psychology?

Author Anita Woodwork believes that in order to support and promote students' learning and growth, everyone should learn some educational psychology.

Education is a large subject. A person’s growth will involve many factors, such as: investment at the behavioral level, investment at the cognitive and motivational level, investment at the emotional level, learning strategies, cognition Strategies, metacognitive strategies, behavioral strategies, etc. Everyone hopes that their children will become outstanding talents, but how easy is it to train children to become outstanding talents?

This requires a basic understanding of the growth patterns of children, and at least one must first jump out of the traps of wrong "common sense". For example, the so-called "scientific knowledge" that "public account scientists" are flooding everywhere now:

Some people say that we humans have only developed 10% of our brains, and Einstein was smart because of his The brain is 15% developed. This is complete nonsense. In fact, the brain of ordinary people and Einstein's brain are both 100% fully developed, and the working mechanism of neurons in the brain is exactly the same.

Some people say that listening to Mozart’s music can make children smarter; in fact, this statement was originally an advertisement for a music school. Listening to music will not make people smarter. , but learning an instrument well can indeed promote children's cognitive development.

Some people also say that some people are "right-brained" and some are "left-brained"; playing Sudoku can prevent brain degeneration; alcoholic drinks can kill brain cells...etc. , these specious statements are very confusing. Scientific experiments have proven that the activities we engage in require the cooperation of the two hemispheres of the brain. Playing too many games will only make you more addicted to games. Exercise is the best way to delay aging. ;Alcohol will not directly kill brain cells, but it will damage the dendrites of nerve endings, causing problems in the process of information transmission in the brain.

If you don’t read this book, you may not know that this knowledge is wrong. Therefore, it is necessary to study educational psychology. It can help us abandon those erroneous knowledge and teach us truly scientific educational rules. Who doesn’t want their children to be smart, healthy in body and mind?

2. Piaget’s Cognitive Development Theory

Next, let’s talk about the second key point of this book: what are the growth characteristics of children of different ages? Such a pattern. It focuses on the "Cognitive Development Theory" proposed by Jean Piaget, a Swiss psychologist and founder of genetic epistemology.

Piaget was a genius. He was very interested in biology since he was a child. He was only 10 years old when he officially published his first paper, which was about observations of albino sparrows. Later, he became interested in molluscs, such as oysters, clams, octopuses, snails, squid, etc. During this period, he published many papers about these small animals.

The Geneva Historical Museum invited him to be the curator in charge of the mollusk collection, but he declined the offer because he wanted to finish high school. In 1915, 19-year-old Piaget received his bachelor's degree in biology. Subsequently, he continued to study for a doctorate in biology and a doctorate in philosophy at the same time. He believed that the integration of biology and philosophy was a shortcut to epistemology. In 1918, at the age of 21, Piaget received a double doctorate in biology and philosophy.

After graduation, Piaget participated in the development of children's intelligence tests in Alfred Binet's laboratory. In the tests, the question "Why do children give wrong answers?" deeply interested him. This attracted Piaget and prompted him to start studying the thinking process behind the answers, which became his main research direction later.

During his long career, Piaget created a system of "genetic epistemology" based on a large number of observations and experiments, and constructed a model to describe how humans collect and Organizing information to understand the external world.

The "Cognitive Development Theory" model proposed by Piaget divides children's growth into four stages, namely: sensorimotor stage; pre-operational stage; concrete operation stage; formal operation stage. Below we introduce the characteristics of these four stages respectively.

1. Sensory motor stage: 0-2 years old. The characteristics of children during this period are: learning through interaction with the environment such as reflection, feeling and movement, imitation and memory, and gradual transition to symbolic thinking. Children of this age do not yet need education, the main thing is to ensure their nutrition and health.

2. Preoperational stage: around 2-7 years old. The characteristics of children during this period are: language ability and symbolic thinking ability gradually develop; difficulty in thinking about the future and past, thinking is present; ability to carry out one-way logical thinking; difficulty in understanding other people's perspectives.

To educate children of this age, specific physical props should be used as much as possible, such as: using candies and small stones to teach children addition and subtraction; taking children to zoos, parks, theaters, and concert halls Conduct field trips and visit, and encourage children to talk about what they see. Let children practice a lot of basic skills to lay the foundation for learning complex skills in the future. For example, hold pieces of paper and let your children learn to form words. etc.

3. Concrete operational stage: around 7-11 years old. The characteristics of children during this period are: being able to solve specific problems in a logical way; being able to understand various laws, classifying and sorting; being able to think reversely; and being able to understand the past, present and future.

To educate children of this age, you still need to use specific props, and the difficulty can be increased appropriately. For example, teach children to do simple experiments, make candles, bake bread, etc. Teach children how to use timelines, three-dimensional space models, and use charts to illustrate problems. Have your child break the story into its parts: author, story, characters, plot, theme, place, and time. Learn to group or categorize complex objects and ideas.

4. Formal operation stage: from adolescence to adulthood. The characteristics of children during this period are: they can think about problems in a hypothetical and deductive way, and their thinking is more scientific; they can solve abstract problems in a logical way; they can look at problems from multiple angles, and begin to pay attention to social issues, personal issues and fairness just.

Educating children of this age should provide opportunities for children to explore some hypothetical issues. For example, let the children talk about their opinions on environmental, economic, and social issues, and then discuss them together. Provide children with opportunities for problem solving and scientific reasoning.

It should be said that Piaget’s theory of cognitive development is quite complete, but it is not perfect. For example, he did not explain why young children can "think ahead" in the fields they are good at. For example, the genius mathematician von Neumann we introduced before, he mastered calculus proficiently in elementary school and many other college students are doing this. Uncertain and difficult knowledge. But overall, Piaget's model is still of great guiding value to the vast majority of ordinary people with normal IQs.

3. How to carry out differentiated teaching

Our last part talks about how to carry out differentiated teaching. Why differentiated instruction? Let’s talk about a case and everyone will understand. Mr. Lu Xun once told an incident that he experienced when he was a child: One year, there was a god-welcoming competition in the village, and Lu Xun made an appointment with his friends to watch it together.

At this moment, Lu Xun's father came out and forced him to recite "Jianlue". If he couldn't recite it, he would not be allowed to go. Lu Xun was frightened, but he finally succeeded in memorizing this passage. Although everyone was happy and Lu Xun could go to the Sai Shen Meeting, he no longer had any interest.

In the eyes of Lu Xun, his father was a strict and rigid man, but in the eyes of Lu Xun's two younger brothers, Zhou Zuo and Zhou Jianren, their father was a very open-minded and kind man. .

The reason why there are such big differences in the eyes of the three brothers with the same father is because the three brothers of the Zhou family have different personalities, tempers, and temperaments. Lu Xun is more sensitive and delicate, so he You can feel the stronger pressure from your father. When dealing with such children, you might as well be gentle and careful.

On the contrary, for some "nervous" children, a certain amount of pressure and a serious attitude are needed. Otherwise, they may not take your requests to heart at all.

In addition, the current educational environment and the way students obtain credit are also very different from those in the past. It has become a common phenomenon to use mobile phones or Pads to surf the Internet and search Baidu or Google when there are questions. Many schools have electronic classrooms, and students can also use portable computers to complete and submit homework. Students' horizons are broader, and they have a broader understanding of themselves and their understanding of themselves. The understanding of success is more diverse.

The impact of this change is that teachers are no longer the only and absolute authority in traditional education, and students are also pursuing the liberation of individuality.

As you can see, today’s classrooms are very diverse. Students are diverse in terms of prior knowledge, language, socioeconomic status, culture, race and ethnicity. They have different strengths and abilities, and they face different challenges when completing learning tasks.

Many education experts believe that "a class should contain students with different needs, different achievement levels, different learning interests and different learning styles, and effective teaching should make full use of these differences instead of ignoring them."

Differentiated teaching is an orientation that goes beyond adapting to the above-mentioned learner differences and regards diversity as an orientation to effectively construct knowledge advantages. The basic idea of ??differentiated teaching is that teachers need to take into account not only the differences in the subjects they teach, but also the diversity and differences among students.

In differentiated teaching classrooms, students learn at different paces, and the learning content they choose is also different. At the same time, the evaluation indicators for their learning outcomes are also different.

When it comes to differentiated teaching, we have to mention Confucius. As the greatest educator in China, Confucius can be said to be a model of differentiated teaching.

Confucius "had three thousand disciples and seventy-two sages." Confucius' education was divided into four subjects, and each subject had some very outstanding students. For example, in terms of virtue, they were: Yan Yuan, Min Ziqian, Ran Boniu , Zhong Gong; in terms of speech, they include Zaiwo and Zigong; in terms of political affairs, they include: Ran You and Ji Lu; in terms of literature, they include: Ziyou and Zixia. The reason for this result is that Confucius was able to teach students in accordance with their aptitude.

For example, once, Zi Lu and Ran You asked Confucius the same question: When you hear a good idea, should you do it immediately? Confucius gave them completely opposite answers. He said to Zilu: "My father and brothers are at home. You should ask them for advice first. How can you do it right away?" But he said to Ran You: If you hear a good idea, of course you should do it immediately.

Other disciples were wondering why the answers to the same questions were different. Confucius explained: "Seeking means retreating, so we advance; because we are seeking people, we retreat." This means that Ran You is very cautious in doing things, and such people should be encouraged more; Zilu is different, he This person is very impulsive, so he is asked to think more and ask more questions before taking action. Confucius relied on this method to train a large number of good students with different talents, who later became the pillars of the country.

Differentiated instruction believes that all students have a tendency to seek purpose, challenge, belonging, strength, and contribution. Confident teachers see these diverse student needs as opportunities rather than problems and respond with invitations to participation, engagement, persistence, and ongoing reflection. At the same time, teachers will develop specialized, participatory, demanding, meaningful, and scaffolded courses and teaching for each student.

Of course, differentiated teaching has very high requirements for teachers. Those ancient educators who were able to teach students in accordance with their aptitude were all outstanding experts. Confucius will not mention it. During the Warring States Period, among the talents trained by Guiguzi, there were political strategists like Su Qin and Zhang Yi, as well as military strategists like Sun Bin and Pang Juan.

Zhongzi, a great scholar in the Sui Dynasty, was also an expert. He trained a large number of talents for the Tang Dynasty. It is said that Fang Xuanling, Wei Zheng, and Li Jing were all his students, and their talents were also different. , Fang Xuanling was a strategist, Wei Zheng was a political strategist, and Li Jing was a military strategist.

Cultivating various types of talents requires teachers to have corresponding knowledge, which is a big challenge for previous teachers.

Things are different now. The classification of subjects is becoming more and more detailed. There are corresponding high-level tutors in any field to follow. If this is not possible, there are "MOOCs" online that bring together famous teachers from famous universities, and there are also a large number of professional books in bookstores. For our self-study, it should be said that we have caught up with the best era of learning.

Summary

Anita Woolfolk's "Educational Psychology" is a rare and good book. It has 467 pages and is very dense in knowledge. It is difficult to show all the essence of such a classic book in just 30 minutes. We can only pick out the key points and some of the problems we often encounter in life to talk about it. If we want to have a deeper understanding of this book , you may wish to find the original book and read it carefully.

Tolstoy once said, "Happy families are all similar, and every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." This sentence is also very suitable for students. The growth environment of academic masters Most of them are similar. Students who do not study well have their own problems.

For example, Wu Yishu, the "national talented woman" and the overall champion of the "Chinese Poetry Conference", has exploded in the circle of friends recently. This academic tyrant was admitted to Tsinghua University with a score of 613 (the total score of the Shanghai College Entrance Examination is 660) This is a typical example.

A middle school teacher who knew Wu Yishu well said that Wu Yishu’s reading list when she was a freshman in high school was: Shen Fu’s “Six Chapters of a Floating Life”, Wang Guowei’s “Human Words”, Lu You’s “Jiannan Poems” and “Fang Weng’s Poems” , Yan Jidao's "Xiaoshan Ci", in addition to "Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio", "A Dream of Red Mansions", "Zhuangzi", etc. When other children of the same age are still chasing Korean stars and showing off their "King of Glory" rank, Wu Yishu admires The three "male gods" are Lu You, Su Shi and Li Bai. Therefore, the reason why a top student becomes a top student is not without reason.

This is also a reminder to parents all over the world. Instead of enrolling in various training courses, it is better to create a reading atmosphere where "books are as affectionate as old friends, and mornings and evenings are sad and joyful as each other is on a blind date" and plant sycamore trees. A phoenix will come.

Quotes from "Educational Psychology": The purpose of teaching is to improve self-efficacy and self-regulation abilities.

There is no absolute fairness in this world, but correct education methods can make the tilt of the scale slightly smaller.