Educational Psychology

1. Learning

1.1. Learning is non-linear, and will happen at different rate for everybody (See Development). Not all students will have the same ZPD (see Teacher's Insight).

1.2. Since learning happens within a ZPD, leaarning acts need to be scaffolded properly so that the learners have the tools to succeed.

1.3. Self-efficacy: the belief that you can learn or perform the task at hand.

1.4. Learning has to be relevant and meaningful so that it can be integrated into the learner's life and experiences.

1.5. Constructivism: knowledge is build from experiences and interactions with the physical and social world (Piaget), and/or from the sociocultural world (Vygotsky).

1.6. Motivation to learn can be either intrinsic and extrinsic (see Teacher's Insight).

1.7. Meaningful learning is done through elaboration (storytelling), organization, visual imagery and relationships between ideas/theories/facts.

1.8. Effective learning strategies (overt and covert) that needs to be taught: *Taking notes (not just for the sake of copying what is on the board!!!) *Creating summaries *Identifying key points in a lecture *Self-explanation and self-questioning (monitoring one's own progress and comprehension.

1.9. Learning depends of: *Attention *Retention *Ability to reproduce *Motivation

2. Teacher's Insight and Tools

2.1. Differenciation: because children develop at different rhythm and learn differently, differenciation is a crucial tool in the teacher's toolkit. It It makes the classroom more inclusive and allows students to work within their own ZPDs.

2.2. Motivation: teachers should help their students cultivate intrinsic motivation, and provide extrinsic motivation when needed.

2.3. Self-reflection and regular (informal) checkpoints allow students (and teachers!) to better understand and evaluate their own learning, help them identify what they need without the pressure/anxiety that comes with formal evaluation.

2.4. Classroom rules and procedures: select a small number of rules and procedures that are logical, adapted and appropriate. Rules and procedures should be modeled by the teacher at all time, and monitored through reinforcement.

2.5. Teachers should privilege intrinsic reinforcement, and use extrinsic reinforcement only in places where the deisred behaviour would be otherwise absent.

2.6. Social constructivism and modeling: students learn by observing others. Successful modeling is achieved, in the relevant context, through competence, and perceived power and prestige. At the high school level, adults are no longer the only models available, and prstige and power is of paramount importance.

2.7. Negative reinforcement (punishment) should be doled out in a humane fashion, with logical and appropriate consequences, and should be followed by cueing and modeling of the appropriate behaviour.

2.8. Learning strategies should be overtly taught. Teachers too often assume that sudents know how to learn, as if it was an innate knowledge.

2.9. Strategies for knowledge constructions: *Observation and experimentation (Makers Movement) *Dialogue and community to broaden and challenge students' perspectives. *Authentic activities *Scaffolded learning.

3. Knowledge Construction

3.1. Knowledge is constructed through change (LEARNING), either in representations (Cognitive Psychology) or in behaviour (Behaviourism).

3.2. Changes come either through social interactions (Social Cognitivists), through reinforcements (Behaviourism) or through experiences (Cognitive Psychology). My understanding is that all three are not mutually exclusive.

3.3. Knowledge is built of: *Theories *Beliefs (Worldviews) *Concepts *Schemas *Scripts

3.4. All of the above can either be "good" (desirable?) or "bad" (undesirable?). "Bad knowledge" could arise from cognitive biases, misremembering, etc. It could be "naïve" theories (like folk-etymologies), or core beliefs that inhibit other knowledge construction (deeply religious people who refuse to entertain the Theory of Evolution).

3.4.1. These biases and "folk" theories can be hard to work through because they are often linked to core beliefs.

3.5. Higher Level Thinking: As sophisticated cognitive processes become available to students, an emphasis on HLT skills should be placed: *Transfer of skills *Problem solving *Critical thinking These are often the "job-market" skills.

4. Development

4.1. Linear and predictable, but not even paced (plateaus and spurts, just like physical development); different from child to child.

4.2. Influenced by "nature", such as temperament, disabilities, individual preferences, etc.

4.3. Influenced by "nurture" such as social environment and opportunities.

4.4. Piaget's four stages of development, from sensorimotor (infant) to abstract thinking (teenage and beyond)

4.5. Brain plasticity that decreases over time (leading to possible critical periods for learning; see Language)

4.6. Vygotsky's zones of proximal development (ZDP): a task that is just out of reach of the learner's ability; the zone in which learning occurs.

4.7. As students become older, increasingly sophisticated cognitive processes become available to them.

4.8. Students grow up with cultural and social core beliefs and worldviews that can either hinder or facilitate learning.

4.9. As they grow older, students develop the capacity for better self-regulation. Self-regulation is linked to intrinsic motivation and reinforcement, and facilitate learning. Self-regulated learners know how to set their own goals, plan accordingly, monitor their progress, evaluate their performances, and adjust for future iterations.

5. Language

5.1. Language learning start from the womb; at birth, babies are already more attuned to the sounds (phoneme, pitch, tones, etc.) of their language(s) than other sounds.

5.2. Language learning is non-linear.

5.3. Although speed of learning decrease over time, it is possible to learn languages throughout lifespan (see Development for critical periods).

5.4. Linguistic knowledge is built both top-down and bottom-up.

5.5. During early acquisition (around first two years), there's a general, quasi universal order in which phonemes are acquired, typically from the front of the mouth to the back.

5.6. While there might be an initial vocabulary gap, there are no disadvantages in teaching multiple languages at once to kids; it won't confuse them, and the (in)famous vocabulary gap will eventually disappear.

5.7. The methodologies for teaching a second language will be depend, to an extent, to the age of the learners (see Piaget's development stages) and will have to factor in affect (absent form L1 acquisition).

6. Memory

6.1. Memory = storage + retrieval

6.2. Storage can be short-term (working memory, like the RAM of a computer) or long-term (like a SSD hard-drive of a computer).

6.3. There is memory loss at all stages of processing. Memory loss can be mitigated by undivided attention, meaningful learning, and frequent retrieval through practice.