Educational psychology: summary of all the lectures

Educational Psychology
Summary: Lectures
Inhoud
General introduction..............................................................................................................................2
Psychology..............................................................................................................................................2
Behaviorism............................................................................................................................................2
Cognitivism.............................................................................................................................................5
Memory..................................................................................................................................................6
Individual differences.............................................................................................................................8
Intelligence.............................................................................................................................................8
Giftedness.............................................................................................................................................11
Development........................................................................................................................................12
New learning same as constructivism?.................................................................................................15
Teaching conceptions and collaboration in class..................................................................................18
Metacognition......................................................................................................................................19
Problem solving and transfer................................................................................................................21
Acquiring problem-solving skills (the role of Cognitive Load)...............................................................22
Example-based learning.......................................................................................................................23
Motivation............................................................................................................................................24
Self-determination theory....................................................................................................................25
Engagement..........................................................................................................................................26
Measuring motivation..........................................................................................................................27
Motivation and engagement................................................................................................................27
Boundary crossing................................................................................................................................28
Transfer of knowledge..........................................................................................................................29




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,General introduction
Educational psychology:

- Branch of psychology concerned with the scientific study of human learning
- The study of learning processes allows researchers to understand individual differences in;
intelligence, cognitive development, motivation, etc.

Why do we do educational research?:

- To explore issues, to shape policy, to improve practice

How do we study this?:

- Quantitative research: counting and measuring, comparing conditions, statistical analysis
- Qualitative research: use surveys, interviews, observation, more in-depth research

Psychology
Educational psychology

- Goals: enhance learning, instructional design, learning, classroom management, assessment
- Describe learning (‘qualitative’): observation, questionnaires, interviews, case studies
- Explain learning: controlled experiments, laboratory situations

Psychology

- Past: about the soul  than conscious  than behaviour
o Discipline searched for subject and method for a long time
 Different method (from relation between how people perceive the world
and what really happens  to, science of introspection)
 Experimental: psychophysics, introspection (study of consciousness)
 Non-experimental (pseudoscience): psychoanalysis
- Now: study of mind (brain) and behavior
o Nowadays: relevant and important

Early psychology: consciousness (and its relation to the real world)

- How to study consciousness: changing stimuli and asking how they perceive them (to people)
- Edward Tichener: structuralism  our consciousness is build-up of different dimensions of
consciousness  systematic analysis of structure of consciousness (of the dimensions) 
study this structure  the method to do so = introspection (no practical use, no practical
answer)

Changing views beginning of the 20th century

- Alternative view (John Watson): psychology as the study of behavior
- Goal: psychology as one of the natural sciences

Behaviorism
Characteristics of behaviorism

- Same principles apply to all organisms
o Evolutionary explanations

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, o Parsimonious (simple) explanations
- Study behavior without reference to internal process
(they don’t deny these processes, but don’t refer to this because you don’t know enough
about it)
- Learning is a change in behavior: no change in behavior  behaviorism: no learning has
taken place

Assumptions of behaviorism

1. Same principles apply to all organisms: equipotentiality
o Evolutionary theory (humans aren’t very different from other organisms)
2. No internal/mental explanations
o Don’t look at internal explanations, but to the behavior
3. Learning is a change in behavior
o All learning van be defined in the change in behavior
4. Blank slate (tabula rasa)
o Born with a blank slate  everything we pick up is learned (not born with)
5. Learning is the result of environmental events
o Nothing in yourself creates learning (learning happens because of your
actions/behavior)
6. Parsimonious theories
o The theories are simple and possible (doesn’t always work)
- Debate on these assumptions is possible (behaviorists may disagree)

Classical conditioning

- Learning by association (Pavlov): conditioned stimulus (CS), unconditioned stimulus (US),
conditioned response (CR), unconditioned response (UR)
- Learning: associating CS and US  UR (‘contiguity’)
Results: CS  CR




o Extinction of the conditioned response
(when you keep blowing the whistle, the CR will extinct)  the response will
decrease (maybe because dog is disappointed)
 But: spontaneous recovery of CR  CR will reoccur (memory)
- Other phenomena:
o Second-order conditioning
 E.g.; after conditioning the whistle, you use another neutral stimulus and
after a while get a conditioned response after only using the neutral stimulus
(now CS)  require more trials
 Important for learning, things become associated with each other

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