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psychology

20 psychological principles for teachers #17 Classroom management

2015-07-12T13:06:45+01:00June 28th, 2015|behaviour, psychology|

This is #17 in my series on the Top 20 Principles From Psychology for Teaching and Learning and is the second of two posts examining how classrooms should be managed: "Effective class- room management is based on (a) setting and communicating high expectations, (b) consistently nurturing positive relationships, and (c) providing a high level of student support." It's an oft-repeated truism that nobody rises to low expectations. This is as true of standards of behaviour as it is for academic achievement; the more you expect, the higher you place the bar, the less children will expect to get away with. What we accept [...]

20 psychological principles for teachers #15 Well being

2018-02-04T18:18:18+00:00June 23rd, 2015|psychology|

This is the third of three posts examining social context, interpersonal relationships, and emotional well-being and the extent to which they are important to learning. This is #15 in my series on the Top 20 Principles From Psychology for Teaching and Learning: “Emotional well-being influences educational performance, learning, and development.” What's more important, well-being or academic outcomes? The answer tends to be a no-brainer: almost everyone values happiness above academic ability. This leads, inexorably to a second question, should schools teach well-being as well academic subjects? Intuitively we might think the answer's obvious, but maybe it isn't. What if happiness can't be taught? [...]

20 psychological principles for teachers #14 Relationships

2015-06-22T07:41:44+01:00June 22nd, 2015|psychology|

This is the second of three posts examining social context, interpersonal relationships, and emotional well-being and the extent to which they are important to learning. This is #14 in my series on the Top 20 Principles From Psychology for Teaching and Learning: “Interpersonal relationships and communication are critical to both the teaching–learning process and the social-emotional development of students.” Guess what? Psychologists have discovered that relationship are important in teaching. Who knew? This falls squarely into the 'how obvious' camp and as such seems to require little in the way of investigation. Quite simply, how could relationship not be important to teaching [...]

20 psychological principles for teachers #13 Situated learning

2015-06-21T16:39:04+01:00June 21st, 2015|psychology|

My next three posts will look at social context, interpersonal relationships, and emotional well-being and examine the extent to which they are important to learning. This is #13 in my series on the Top 20 Principles From Psychology for Teaching and Learning: “Learning is situated within multiple social contexts.” It's fair enough to point out that we're all part of a variety wider social groups. Of course we're influenced by the languages, beliefs, values and experiences of those with whom we interact. And of course these different cultural factors will exert pressures on each other and collide, but what difference does it [...]

Why the ‘false growth mindset’ explains so much

2020-01-20T18:56:42+00:00June 20th, 2015|psychology|

Modest doubt is called the beacon of the wise. - Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida In the same way that I learned nothing from listening to the polished performance of Ken Robinson at yesterday's Education Festival at Wellington College, I found myself surprised at just how challenging Carol Dweck's slightly awkward delivery and clunky slides turned out to be. And to think I nearly didn't bother staying. After reading Self Theories and Mindset I thought I knew as much about Dweck's theories as anyone could ever reasonably want to know, but it turned out I was dead wrong. (A recurrent theme in my life!) [...]

20 psychological principles for teachers #12 Goal setting

2017-05-06T21:40:57+01:00June 14th, 2015|psychology|

This is the last of four posts exploring what motivates students in my series examining the Coalition for Psychology in Schools and Education’s report on the Top 20 Principles From Psychology for Teaching and Learning. This time I turn my attention to Principle 12: “Setting goals that are short term (proximal), specific, and moderately challenging enhances motivation more than establishing goals that are long term (distal), general, and overly challenging.” Goal setting, we're told, is "important for motivation because students with a goal and adequate self-efficacy are likely to engage in the activities that lead to attainment of that goal. Self-efficacy is also increased as [...]

20 psychological principles for teachers #11 Expectations

2015-06-13T11:17:39+01:00June 13th, 2015|psychology|

This is the third of four posts exploring what motivates students in my series examining the Coalition for Psychology in Schools and Education’s report on the Top 20 Principles From Psychology for Teaching and Learning. This time I turn my attention to Principle 11: “Teachers’ expectations about their students affect students’ opportunities to learn, their motivation, and their learning outcomes.” It's no surprise that we usually experience what we expect to experience. You will, of course, be aware of the placebo effect – the phenomenon that a placebo triggers a psychological response, which in turn impacts on a patient’s health. Sometimes a patient’s symptoms may improve, but equally [...]

20 psychological principles for teachers #10 Mastery

2015-06-07T18:48:33+01:00June 7th, 2015|psychology|

This is the second of four posts exploring what motivates students and the tenth in my series examining the Coalition for Psychology in Schools and Education’s report on the Top 20 Principles From Psychology for Teaching and Learning . This time I turn my attention to Principle 10: “Students persist in the face of challenging tasks and process information more deeply when they adopt mastery goals rather than performance goals.” Mastery gets bandied around a lot at the moment. Everyone who's anyone is shoehorning 'mastery' into their post-Levels replacements and it seems to mean something different every time it's used. In layman's terms, mastery just [...]

20 psychological principles for teachers #9 Motivation

2016-06-07T19:03:05+01:00June 6th, 2015|psychology|

The next four posts in my series examining the Coalition for Psychology in Schools and Education's report on the Top 20 Principles From Psychology for Teaching and Learning will be on what motivates students. This time I look at Principle 9: “Students tend to enjoy learning and to do better when they are more intrinsically rather than extrinsically motivated to achieve.” It goes without saying that motivation is important, but as Graham Nuthall said, “Learning requires motivation, but motivation does not necessarily lead to learning.” So do some kinds of motivation matter more than others? If we're intrinsically motivated we do a thing for its own [...]

20 psychological principles for teachers #8 Creativity

2015-06-07T10:44:11+01:00May 31st, 2015|psychology|

In this, the eighth in a series of posts examining a report on the Top 20 Principles From Psychology for Teaching and Learning, I take a closer look at Principle 8: “Student creativity can be fostered." Of all the psychological principles I've read about, this seems the weakest. The report starts badly: "Creativity—defined as the generation of ideas that are new and useful in a particular situation—is a critical skill for students in the information-driven economy of the 21st century." Anything suggesting the 21st century demands fundamentally different skills than previous centuries is guaranteed to get my back up, but the idea that [...]

20 psychological principles for teachers #7 Self-regulation

2015-06-01T21:24:13+01:00May 31st, 2015|psychology|

In this, the seventh in a series of posts examining a report on the Top 20 Principles From Psychology for Teaching and Learning, I take a closer look at Principle 7: "Students’ self-regulation assists learning, and self-regulatory skills can be taught." Before getting into the thorny matter of whether self-regulation can be taught, we need to be clear about what we actually mean by the term. Rather than attempting a definition, the report merely says self-regulation helps students to master curriculum content and includes, "attention, organization, self-control, planning, and memory strategies". Psychologists define self-regulation as the ability to control our behaviour and impulses in [...]

20 psychological principles for teachers #6 Feedback

2015-06-01T21:25:26+01:00May 30th, 2015|psychology, research|

In this, the sixth in a series of posts examining the Top 20 Principles From Psychology for Teaching And Learning, I cast a critical eye over Principle 6: “Clear, explanatory, and timely feedback to students is important for learning." The fact that feedback is important is regularly used to wallop teachers. This has been accepted as a self-evidently truth. And by and large it's true. There are, however, a few points worth making that appear widely overlooked. Feedback is, for instance, not the same as marking. In the abstract to their seminal 2007 paper, The Power of Feedback, Hattie & Timperley make the [...]

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