Educational Psychology

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Educational Psychology
Define and differentiate important terms in
educational psychology.
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Variables

• Attributes which vary among individuals or events
• The Concept of Cognitive ability is a variable
  because human beings vary in cognitive ability

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Educational Psychology Purpose Methods
Purpose

• Reasonable level of order necessary for learning
• Effective practices through research
• Researching the Obvious
• Problems with research human participants
• biased research
• safe practices
• Control Experimental Groups

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Educational Psychology Concepts Principles
Concepts refer to

• Characteristics
• Behavior
• Mental processes
• Environment

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Educational Psychology
Concepts

• Cognitive ability
• Transferability
• Attribution
• Memory
• Encoding

• Low-inference variables
• Test reliability
• Attention
• Constructivist learning
• Academic learning time

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Educational Psychology Principles
Relationships between concepts

• Cognitive ability is related to school
  achievement
• or
• Cooperative learning environments improve
• student attention
• When we link concepts by stating some kind of
• relationship, we are developing a principle.

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Define differentiate the following terms
Education
1) developing the capacities and potential of the
individual so as to prepare that individual to be
successful in a specific society or culture.
From this perspective, education is serving
primarily an individual development function.
Education
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Define differentiate the following terms
Education
2) the process by which society transmits to new
members the values, beliefs, knowledge, and
symbolic expressions to make communication
possible within society. In this sense,
education is serving a social and cultural
function.
Education (con)
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Define differentiate the following terms
Schooling
The teaching and learning that takes place in
formal environments
Schooling
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Define differentiate the following terms
Psychology
the scientific study
of mind and behavior
(or behavior and mental processes),
especially as it relates to individual human
beings
Psychology
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Define differentiate the following terms
Educational Psychology
Concerned primarily with understanding the
processes of teaching and learning that take
place within formal environments and developing
ways of improving those methods
Important topics include learning theories
teaching methods motivation cognitive,
emotional, and moral development and
parent-child relationships
Educational Psychology
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Define differentiate the following terms
Learning
relatively permanent change in an individual's
behavior or behavior potential (or capability) as
a result of experience or practice
an internal change inferred from behavior
Learning
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Define differentiate the following terms
Learning
can be compared with the other primary process
producing relatively permanent change--maturation-
-that results from biological growth and
development
Learning (con)
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Define differentiate the following terms
Teaching
the purposeful direction and management of the
learning process
Teaching
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Educational Psychology
is the scientific discipline that addresses the
questions
Why do some students learn more than others?

What can be done to improve that learning?
Educational Psychology
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Qualitative Variables

• The Qualitative researcher describes or analyzes
  events
• Usually subjective data analysis

Quantitative Variables

• The Quantitative researcher measures
  characteristics of events
• Usually numerical analysis

Qualitative Quantitative Variables
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• Explain
• To account for relationship
• Predict
• To state the future value of one variable given
  knowledge of the earlier value of the same or
  another variable
• Control
• To change one variable in such a way as to
  change the value of another variable

Explain Predict Control
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• Types of Control
• Experimental group
• Control group
• Random assignment
• Causal relationship
• Cause Effect relationships
• A relationship exists which causes or influences
  a change in another variable

Types of Control
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• 3 Goals of Scientific Effort
• Explanation
• Prediction
• Control
• Explanation depends on rational, sensible,
  logical relationships
• Prediction depends on temporal relationships
• Control depends upon cause-effect relationships

3 Goals of Scientific Effort
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• Correlational Relationships
• Indicates that certain values for one variable
  tends to be found together with certain values of
  another variable.
• Students who score high on a cognitive-ability
  test tend to achieve higher grade point averages
  that students who score low
• Students from wealthier families tend to have
  fewer absences from school than students from
  poorer families

Correlational Relationships
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• Experiment
• Refers to a particular kind of research or study
• Independent variable
• A variable that can be manipulated by the
  researcher
• Dependent variable
• The variable in which change is hoped to be
  observed through manipulation if the independent
  variable

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Example Suppose one group of students is taught
algebra but another similar group is not. Being
or not being taught algebra would then be the
independent variable, the one being manipulated.
The students knowledge of algebra would be the
dependent variable. If the taught group has
greater knowledge than the group not taught we
could say that the teaching of algebra caused the
greater knowledge.
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• Statistically significant
• Differences on the dependent variable so large as
  to reflect a probably nonchance difference.
• Suggesting that there must be a causal
  relationship somehow
• Statistically nonsignificant
• Differences on the dependent variable so small as
  to be easily due to chance
• Replication
• Results confirmed through repetition
• Meta-Analysis
• The quantitative synthesis of results usually by
  averaging the results across replications.

Statistically significant Nonsignificant