Veronica Dean-Reg Ed Psych 2019

Current Teacher Behaviors 1. Which of Erikson's psychosocial crises are the children in the class facing (may be more than one)? Which of Marcia's identity states seem(s) to be most prevalent? What specific teacher behaviors do you observe that either help or hinder the students to successfully navigate their identities? Cite specific examples.  While I understand that Erikson's crises are mostly related to specific age ranges, I do feel that students are facing a variety of them and not just the Identity/Role Confusion crises that is typical of their age. I feel that many of the students at the specific high school I've spent time at are still struggling with the crises involving Industry?Inferiority. Being that the social background of this school includes mostly middle to upper class students, many of them have very involved parents  that have "helped" them succeed in lower grades by involving themselves too much in the student's work. This has led t...

Current Teacher Behavior 1. Describe how the teacher implements a consideration of the students' physical development and/or Bronfenbrenner's Bioecological Model into instruction, assessment, and/or procedures. What more could/should the teacher do in this regard? Provide specific examples. To be honest, I haven't seen much consideration of this concept in any of the classes I've observed. Occasionally a teacher will acknowledge to students that they are part of a bigger unit as far as society and their communities? But I'm not sure if that's an example of this within the classroom or not really. This could also have to do with the fact that the school I've been at is quite homogeneous as far as its student body? So teachers can generalize a lot of their approach in this regard because most students come from similar cultural backgrounds as far as religion, race, ethnicity, family structure, etc. For physical development considerations, one of the teache...

Current Teacher Behavior 1. What evidence do you see in your field experience of specific teacher behaviors that are related to Vygotsky's theory of sociocultural cognitive development? Specifically address the use of More Knowledgeable Other(s), how the teacher determines the students' Zones of Proximal Development, the types of scaffolding/assisted learning provided, how the teacher helps students internalize the information, the types of cultural and technological tools used, etc. Most of the classes I've observed have group or partner work as part of instruction. This is an example of learners using a more knowledgeable other to understand a concept. Sometimes group work is organized into a jigsaw type activity where a student becomes an "expert" in a topic and then becomes the MKO to the rest of the group as they teach them what they learned, other times the students might fill that role based on placement from the teacher as one that is doing better than...

Current Teacher Behaviors 1. What evidence do you see in your field experience of specific teacher behaviors that are related to Piaget's theory of cognitive development? Specifically address how the teacher introduces disequilibrium, aids in the process of adaptation (separate assimilation and accommodation, please), the stage(s) to which the teacher is gearing instruction, etc. The most common thing I see in classes I've observed is the effort the teachers make to link the new information they are teaching to previous material they have already covered. This is an example of trying to help resolve the student's disequilibrium by assimilating the new material into schemas that already exist within the student's minds. Doing this helps them retain the information as well since they can relate to it something they already know and understand. At the same time, I occasionally saw teachers attempt to do that same assimilation approach when they saw students appear to b...

Current Teacher Behaviors 1. How does the teacher assess student learning? Identify specific instances of informal and formal, formative and summative assessment and explain the types of assessments (e.g., self-assessment, portfolio, project, performance, etc.) that are used. How valid, reliable, biased, and practical are these assessments? In every classroom I've been in I really have seen a variety of assessments taking place. Some examples of formal formative include the starters students have to complete. In an Ancient World History class I observed, the teacher was able to use the fact that only two students were even able to complete the starter to realize that her instruction on the topic had been inadequate and needed repeating. Some of them use this as a graded assignment based on content, others simply award participation points if its done at all. To be honest, I see this as a less than reliable way of assessing each student's understanding of the topic because o...

Current Teacher Behaviors 1.  Describe how your cooperating teacher teacher develops and promotes true growth mindset in his/her instruction, assessment, and/or procedures. Describe how the teacher and/or school motivate students. Give specific examples of both extrinsic motivators and how they are developing and promoting intrinsic motivation. Include information from specific motivational theories (e.g., Maslow's Hierarchy, Self-determination Theory) and cite specific examples. Most of the classes I have been observing have adopted a more flexible policy concerning due dates and really encouraging test re-takes. These two examples allow students to stay motivated when things don't go as planned regarding classwork, and to be able to identify what they got wrong or didn't understand during assessments, and to try again to do better. As far as motivation, I really have been able to see a wide range of students and teachers to see this in action. Some students, maybe mo...

Current Teacher Behaviors 1. Describe how the teacher is helping students develop metacognition and become more self-regulated learners. Include information about the type(s) of metacognitive knowledge being developed and address the metacognitive skills and/or the cycle of self-regulated learning. The teacher in one of the history classes I've been observing has copies and encourages the use of Cornell notes for her students. At the beginning of every lecture she reminds them to get out their notes, and briefly reviews what their notes should include by that point in the unit. She also frequently, but not always, models notes on the whiteboard so students can follow along and write down the key points of her lecture. One thing I like is that she doesn't require they use Cornell notes, and tells them they can use any note-taking method they'd like, but to take notes in some way. She doesn't collect them or grade them either, but will occasionally have them complete ...