Top 20 Principles From Psychology for PreK–12 Teaching and Learning

1. HOW DO STUDENTS THINK AND LEARN?

1.1. Principle 1 Students’ beliefs or perceptions about intelligence and ability affect their cognitive functioning and learning.

1.1.1. Intelligence student’s perceptions affect the learning. Those students who think intelligence is incremental tend to be more aware, open to feedback and to improve, those who have an opposite view tend to get frustrated quickly

1.1.2. Teachers must motivate students saying that abilities and intelligence can be reached through the effort and are not attributions

1.2. Principle 2: What students already know affects their learning.

1.2.1. Prior knowledge affects how students will incorporate new learning because what students already know interacts with the material being learned.

1.2.2. Teachers can transform knowledge of students by making use of conceptual change (revising and correcting knowledge students already have) and/or by using conceptual learning (adding learning and new knowledge). It is important to try meaningful interactions with the information to be learned

1.3. Principle 3 Students’ cognitive development and learning are not limited by general stages of development

1.3.1. Students are capable of a higher-level thinking and behaviour if they are engaged to a high level of knowledge, it doesn’t depend on determined cognitive stage of development.

1.3.2. Teachers must take into account the domain-relevant and contextual knowledge of their students. Having into account students’ developmental levels can help teachers decide which instructional experiences might be appropriate and relevant to use.

1.4. Principle 4 Learning is based on context, so generalizing learning to new contexts is not spontaneous but instead needs to be facilitated.

1.4.1. Learning occurs in different contexts, learning is more effective when it is generalized to new contexts and situations

1.4.2. Teachers can help to the process of transportation of knowledge to a context by teaching a topic in different contexts, comparing the different contexts and seeing the application of the topic in their real context.

1.5. Principle 5 Acquiring long-term knowledge and skill is largely dependent on practice.

1.5.1. As the information is saved in the short-term memory (that is forgotten in a short time) to have a long-term knowledge is necessary to make use of different strategies that involve practice.

1.5.2. Teachers must propose solving practice problems by designing activities to encourage students through using reviews or tests, to encourage to interleaved practice

1.6. Principle 6 Clear, explanatory, and timely feedback to students is important for learning.

1.6.1. Feedback that is clear, explanatory and constant/regular helps students to get motivate and understand better their learning

1.6.2. Teachers must use give Feedback according to the knowledge and current learning goals of the students

1.7. Principle 7 Students’ self-regulation assists learning, and self-regulatory skills can be taught.

1.7.1. Self-regulatory skills, which include attention, organization, self-control, planning, and memory strategies, can facilitate mastery of the material to be learned, these skills can be taught or enhanced.

1.7.2. Teachers must encourage specifically through direct instruction, modeling, support, and classroom organization and structure

1.8. Principle 8 Student creativity can be fostered

1.8.1. Creative approaches can help to make enjoyable the learning process, while the student enjoyment and creation of modeling a real-world application of knowledge increase.

1.8.2. Teachers must engage creative thinking by making it an important outcome during learning process

2. WHY ARE SOCIAL CONTEXT, INTERPERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS, AND EMOTIONAL WELL-BEING IMPORTANT TO STUDENT LEARNING?

2.1. Principle 13 Learning is situated within multiple social contexts.

2.1.1. It is important to understand that not all students are bringing up in the same context. Understanding the context and all the factors that it includes and affects the students can be helpful when communicating not only with students but also with students’ partners.

2.1.2. Teachers must understand the impact and importance of classroom’s social context to stablish a better interaction and communication to make a better process of teaching-learning

2.2. Principle 14 Interpersonal relationships and communication are critical to both the teaching learning process and the social-emotional development of students.

2.2.1. Connection, communication and respect between teachers and students are important for facilitating a healthy social-emotional development of students.

2.2.2. Teacher must provide opportunities to stablish an effective, clear and thoughtful communication with the use of the cooperative learning.

2.3. Principle 15 Emotional well-being influences educational performance, learning, and development

2.3.1. The components of emotional well-being include sense of self (self-concept, self-esteem), a sense of control over oneself and one’s environment (self-efficacy, locus of control), general feelings of well-being (happiness, contentment, calm), and capacity for responding in healthy ways to everyday stresses (coping skills).Being emotionally healthy means to be able to regulate, express, understanding not only our own emotions but also other’s. Understanding others’ emotion in students are affected by the expectation and acceptance of significant people for them

2.3.2. Teachers must be able to create and encourage a classroom environment where students are accepted, valued, respected and have opportunities for academic success.

3. WHAT MOTIVATES STUDENTS

3.1. Principle 9 Students tend to enjoy learning and to do better when they are more intrinsically rather than extrinsically motivated to achieve.

3.1.1. Students enjoy the most activities where there is no pressure because they enjoy the activity instead of activities where they have to do because obligation

3.1.2. Teachers can promote intrinsic motivation with activities according to the need of the students where they are able to be autonomous

3.2. Principle 10 Students persist in the face of challenging tasks and process information more deep-ly when they adopt mastery goals rather than performance goals.

3.2.1. During learning have been identified two types of goals: mastery goals (are related acquiring new skills or improve competences) and performance goals (are related with the demonstration the level of management in an ability). Mastery goals are commonly more useful because students are concerned to learn as much as they can while in performance goals, they are concerned in overcoming the performance of others.

3.2.2. Teachers must make realize students in their own process instead of making comparison with another student’s performance

3.3. Principle 11 Teachers’ expectations about their students affect students’ opportunities to learn, their motivation, and their learning outcomes

3.3.1. Expectations of teachers towards students can lead to wrong instructions, grouping practices, learning outcomes, and methods of evaluation. The teachers’ beliefs can lead them to expecting less of what a student can achieve; that leads to a creation of the reality only from the teacher’s perspective, making the students perform as the way they think.

3.3.2. Teachers must avoid negative self-fulfilling prophecies through the use of communication of high expectations to all students and maintaining appropriately high standards for everyone

3.4. 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.

3.4.1. Goals are important to motivate students to develop different activities to reach certain goal. However, short-term goals are more important to motivate students because they are helpful to judge and evaluate the process to reach future goals

3.4.2. Teachers must give the opportunity to set short-term, specific, and moderately difficult goals in their classroom work

4. HOW CAN THE CLASSROOM BEST BE MANAGED?

4.1. Principle 16 Expectations for classroom conduct and social interaction are learned and can be taught using proven principles of behavior and effective classroom instruction.

4.1.1. It is not expected to remove a wrong behaviour of students with an instruction, it works better if the teachers stablish appropriate behaviours to be taught and reinforce them during the academic year to replace the wrong behaviours.

4.1.2. Teachers can teach behaviours using proven behavioral principles.

4.2. Principle 17 Effective classroom management is based on (a)setting and communicating high expectations, (b) consistently nurturing positive relationships, and(c) providing a high level of student support.

4.2.1. Effective learning climate is based on structure and support. It is necessary to stablish an environment of communication where behavioural rules and expectations are in constant enforcement. Students must know the commitment of support because the teacher is in constant communication with them.

4.2.2. Teachers must use a predictable structure and high expectation in terms of academic achievement and students’ behavior

5. HOW TO ASSESS STUDENT PROGRESS

5.1. Principle 18 Formative and summative assessments are both important and useful but require different approaches and interpretations.

5.1.1. Summative and formative assessments are used for different purposes. Formative is usually in the service of achievement learning goals while summative is usually used for evaluating the process of learning

5.1.2. Teacher must use both, it is important to give importance to the formative assessment because it has important increases in the students learning

5.2. Principle 19 Students’ skills, knowledge, and abilities are best measured with assessment pro- cesses grounded in psychological science with well-defined standards for quality and fairness.

5.2.1. Validity and reliability of a test depend on what extense inferences of students' skills knowledge and abilities

5.2.2. Teachers can use both formative and summative, however the formative helps more to make understand the students about their learning process.

5.3. Principle 20 Making sense of assessment data depends on clear, appropriate, and fair interpretation.

5.3.1. Meaning of assessment outcomes depends on clear, appropriate, and fair interpretation. Results of assessments must be used just for the purpose they were designed to

5.3.2. For giving an effective interpretation of results, teachers must have enough sources to support their interpretation to participants of the educational process