The theory that I scored the highest on in my quiz and thus am most closely aligned was humanism, which makes sense to me because I am so big on the relationships that I want to build with my students. Social interaction is a key part of children’s cognitive and linguistic development, as well as their personal and social development. It is important to set clear guidelines for appropriate behavior and when the rules are broken, instead of just punishing the child, teach them why what they did was wrong and help them see different perspectives so they can better understand why their behavior was unacceptable. It is important to have a warm, supportive environment but with expectations that are firmly held. Children need positive feedback to help their development of their sense of self. Students create their own personal social, and moral understanding so as teachers it is important to allow them to examine and reexamine what they believe and their understanding of themselves and others. I believe that students wont succeed if they don't know how to have good healthy relationships and as their teacher, I can model that for them and help them develop a good sense of self and help them figure out who they are and who they want to be. The can learn to practice good relationships with others because they have learned how to have a healthy relationship with me as their teacher and now can apply it to other relationships and situations they might find themselves in.
Right behind humanism was cognitivism. Cognitivism studies the mind and how it works and obviously as teachers it is important to know how the minds of the students we will be teaching work so we can help them understand and retain new information. We need to know how they process information so we can help them with the process to help them succeed in any area of life but especially in your classroom. I think that it is important to understand how students learn, process, understand, and remember information. It is important to understand how the memory works so as teachers we can focus on how to get the students to understand the material and commit it to their long term memory. Knowing this information can help us better understand what teaching styles to use to help students not only learn the material but remember it and also to understand what teaching style might work best for a particular student.
Behaviorism, while important and I think that everyone uses it in one way or another throughout their lives, especially when they are in a leadership role, I think it is important not to go crazy with this theory and it's practices. I think that just trying to condition responses based purely on positive or negative consequences kind of robs students of the ability to think and decide for themselves what is appropriate and what they like to do or what works best for them. This theory can be helpful while practiced with other theories but if used on its own, can cause children to never develop to their fullest potential because everything they do would be purely external and they wouldn't know how to think for themselves.
I think that the biggest weakness for each theory is that each theory only encompasses a part of what makes students develop and that it is important to understand that you don't have to pick one theory and stick by it, but you can take bits and pieces from each theory and kind of make your own. Any theory standing on it's own, is not enough to help us as teachers be the best we can be to help our students.
So What?
I think that learning these different theories is so important for future teachers. I think that each theory has it's strengths and weaknesses which is why I think that it is good to have an understanding of each theory so we can draw on the things that we think will help us as teachers and help our students develop cognitively, as well as socially and emotionally. It is important as teachers to understand the whole development of the students we are going to be teaching because we are going to be an active participant in their development whether we want to be or not, so it is good to know how we can help our students succeed in all aspects of their development.
While I believe that I will incorporate bits and pieces of every theory, I think that I lean most towards humanism. I think that this is because I believe that the student and the relationship that you have with the student is so incredibly important. I feel like that needs to be the foundation to their learning because if they don't have a relationship with you or trust you, then the learning place will not be one that is conducive to them really learning and retaining the knowledge that you are trying to guide them to. I believe that learning is important and along with that, I believe that there are many things that need to be going on the outside of a teacher just standing at the front of the room lecturing, for the students to feel like they are in a safe nurturing environment and thus can really learn and experiment with what they learn and with themselves as individuals.
Now What?
I think that the biggest area that needs improvement for me is giving assessments. I know that it is important to know all the theories that we learned in educational psychology because that will help us in working with our students but it will also help us in working with ourselves to come up with lesson plans and assessments that are appropriate for our students. While I feel much more comfortable with writing lesson plans and I can write objectives that I want my students to reach as a result of that lesson plan, I am still a little shaky on assessments and how to adequately assess every lesson. This is something that I think I need to practice but also I think it would be helpful to get out there and talk to other teachers and learn from them how they assess their own lessons and students.
I also think that I need to practice differentiation more. I understand the theory behind differentiation and I can incorporate it into my lesson plans, but this is another area where I feel I need to get out in the classroom and interact with students who need to be differentiated for, so I have a better understanding of what differentiation can do and does do for some students. I think that differentiation is important and helpful for both teacher and students, but I feel I need more active practice with differentiation in the classroom.
Overall, I think that I have a pretty good understanding of the psychological theories and I will constantly be mixing and matching theories to kind of mold my own theory that works best for each class and/or each student that I work with. I also know that it is important to keep myself up to date on these theories and review them every once in a while to see if there is something I need to change in the way I conduct my classroom.
No comments:
Post a Comment