1. Motivation
1.1. Goal Theory
1.1.1. Mastery-oriented goals are defined in terms of a focus on learning, mastering the task according to self-set standards or self-improvement. It also encompasses developing new skills, improving or developing competence, trying to accomplish something challenging and trying to gain an understanding or insight.
1.1.2. Performance-oriented goals represent a focus on demonstrating competence or ability and how ability will be judged relative to others. For example, trying to surpass normative performance standards, attempting to best others, using casual comparative standards or striving to be the best in a group or even avoiding judgments of low ability or appearing dumb are examples of performance-oriented goals.
1.1.2.1. Outside of School: Students should make personal mastery-oriented goals to help them improve on whatever they need. It helps them understand that effort directly affects outcome.
1.1.3. Approach-oriented goals are goals in which individuals are positively motivated to look good and receive favorable judgment from others.
1.1.4. Avoidance-oriented goals are goals in which individuals can be negatively motivated to try to avoid failure and to avoid looking incompetent.
1.1.4.1. Inside School: Conferring. I would confer with my students to help them set meaningful goals for the school year and reevaluate where they are monthly. Helps keep them on track while also lighting the fire of self-motivation.
1.1.5. A core goal is a goal set for long term while a proximal goal is one set for short term.
1.1.6. The reason I chose goal theory is because we as teachers need to be able to help our students set meaningful goals and help them achieve it. I use the example of conferring with students individually to learn more about them while also helping them set a SMART goal.
1.2. Mindset Theory (Dweck)
1.2.1. Entity (fixed) Theory
1.2.1.1. The idea that there is a predetermined amount of gifts, talent, skills, intelligence, and the like in each human being.This idea leads them to a constant struggle to maintain their appearance of looking smart rather than seeking challenges.
1.2.1.1.1. Out side of School: I'm not good at football because I wasn't born with the natural ability to play unlike the other students so i'm just going to quit.
1.2.1.2. They see setbacks and mistakes as threats to their ego and usually lose confidence and motivation when work is no longer easy for them; no matter how smart or talented they are, they often lose their coping mechanisms in the face of setbacks.
1.2.2. Incremental (growth) Theory
1.2.2.1. The belief that whatever intelligence and abilities a person has, he can always cultivate more through focused effort. People with growth mindset belief that virtually all people can get better at anything if they try.
1.2.2.1.1. Inside School: for these students, it's not about immediate perfection; it's about learning something over time: confronting a challenge and making progress.
1.2.2.2. They are energized by challenge and see setbacks and failures as temporary and mainly attributable to lack of effort or focus rather than a deficiency of ability or intelligence.
1.2.3. I chose mindset theory because it relates so heavily to young adolescents. The idea that we as teachers should change the students who have a fixed mindset to have a growth mindset, but we understand that we can't do it own our own. It is up to that student's own motivation.
1.3. Attribution Theory
1.3.1. It is the reasons people give for their success or lack of success on certain tasks, and why they were able or not able to achieve certain goals.
1.3.1.1. Out of School: Didn't perform well at the cheerleading competition because the judges were biased toward the other team.
1.3.2. It is classified into four groups: task difficulty, luck, innate ability or talent, and effort.
1.3.2.1. In School: praise effort not the outcome. As teachers, we should give appropriate feedback to show them that their effort was their main contribute to their success, not luck or difficulty in task.
1.3.3. I chose attribution theory because students will constantly say things like "I'm never going to be good at math because math is my worst subject" which is not true. They just have to try harder. As teachers, we shouldn't let them say these things and give them appropriate feedback to fix this mindset.
2. Learning
2.1. Theory of Cognitive Development (Piaget)
2.1.1. According to Piaget, children progress through a series of four critical stages of cognitive development. Each stage is marked by shifts in how kids understand the world.
2.1.1.1. Outside the School: just because they aren't in school, doesn't mean they aren't learning. Our students come to class with pre-conceptions of how the world works and if we want them to open up to new information, we have to put it into real world concepts and let them figure it out own their own.
2.1.2. Piaget believed that children are like "little scientists" and that they actively try to explore and make sense of the world around them. Through his observations of his children, Piaget developed a stage theory of intellectual development.
2.1.2.1. Inside the School: Teachers have to be able to let students be "little scientists" or they won't remember the information. Students learn best when they discover it themselves which is better than memorization for a test.
2.1.3. I chose Piaget's theory because students learn through interactions in their environment. We as teachers have to keep in mind that students want to learn on their own, and we need to give them the space and resources to do that.
2.2. Social Cognitive Theory (Bandura)
2.2.1. Social cognitive theory emphasizes that learning occurs in a social context and that much of what is learned is gained through observation.
2.2.1.1. Outside the School: Our students come into the classroom with pre-conceived notions about our classroom without ever being in it and that is because somebody modeled (told them) what the class was going to be like so the students assumed it was going to be that way. That is how young adolescents work.
2.2.2. Learning, according to social cognitive theory, is a result of watching the behavior and consequences of models in the environment. A model could be a person or even an interaction that occurs between two people. A model can also be a teacher.
2.2.2.1. Inside the School: We have to teach our students to not model the bad behavior they see on the TV or in video games. The students need to see us reading a book or doing positive things that maybe rub off on them to model the positive behavior.
2.2.3. I chose social cognitive theory because young adolescents are the most prone to modeling behaviors they have learned or been able to get away with. As teachers, we need to model what behavior is acceptable so that our students know what to do.
2.3. Both of my learning theories were based around the same concept that students need to learn on their own and that their knowledge is directly affected by culture in the home in a sense of school driven, sports driven, or any other type of culture/norm. Both theories also talk about how what students experience outside the classroom directly affects what they do in the classroom.
3. Personal/Social/Emotional
3.1. Erikson's Stages of Development
3.1.1. In Erikson's eight stages of psychosocial development, he outlines what is necessary for a person to master that stage. You can move on to the next stage without mastering it, but it could cause problems in the future based on what you didn't master.
3.1.1.1. Outside of School: If a student doesn't master the trust vs. mistrust stage with their parent, they will have trust issues all the way through life with teachers or with other students which will affect their social development.
3.1.2. I chose this theory because it directly affects students' lives based on the stages they have and have not mastered. This theory also helps us understand what stages our students are going through and how we can help them master it.
3.1.2.1. Inside of School: let students find their interests own their own time or it could lead to couch potatoes and very poor motivation. Students in the age range of 5-12 are in need of this time and autonomy.
3.2. Sociocultural Theory (Vygotsky)
3.2.1. Sociocultural theory seeks to explain how individual mental functioning is related to cultural, institutional, and historical context; hence, the focus of the sociocultural perspective is on the roles that participation in social interactions and culturally organized activities play in influencing psychological development.
3.2.2. Sociocultural theory focuses not only how adults and peers influence individual learning, but also on how cultural beliefs and attitudes impact how instruction and learning take place. According to Vygotsky, children are born with basic biological constraints on their minds. Each culture, however, provides what he referred to as 'tools of intellectual adaptation.' These tools allow children to use their basic mental abilities in a way that is adaptive to the culture in which they live.
3.2.2.1. Outside of School: the interactions that our students have outside of our classroom directly affects who he/she is as a person without even knowing it. The idea that the students cannot help what they learn in their environment without proper guidance is fascinating but also troubling.
3.2.3. According to Vygotsky, the zone of proximal development "is the distance between the actual development level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers." Essentially, it includes all of the knowledge and skills that a person cannot yet understand or perform on their own yet, but is capable of learning with guidance.
3.2.3.1. Inside of School: What we shape our students to understand while we have them for that short year affects every year after that. It affects them not consciously but subconsciously.
3.2.4. The reason I chose this theory is because we as teachers need to fully understand what great impact we have on our students in the short months that we have them. We need to be more developmentally responsive when making our lessons to fit their needs.