Applying Educational Psychology in the Classroom
Introduction
Psychology as a whole is an extensive chapter that defines the characteristics and attitudes of an individual based on their behavioral traits, emotionally, mentally and also intellectually. On a wider point of view, psychology has stretched further from the early 18th century till today’s emerge as a separate discipline. Philosophers though have created and used a variety of methods in order to distinguish the field of the study in ways that some are still pending if they are as efficient as expected. The observations, on the other hand, enable psychology to be a more sophisticated discipline in all ages with different results.
In my opinion, psychology should provide an individual with the free will to open up their innermost feelings, acts or behaviors without criticism. This is a big issue to us as humans because people like judging each other and thus making us be laid back. I do not deny the fact that psychology has its advantages and disadvantages, but honestly it’s complicated as it sounds due to its categorization into different sectors. Some of those fields are counseling, health, educational, forensic, occupational psychology and so forth.
Therefore the act of knowing how to solve one’s problems is a big responsibility that should be looked into carefully as it can bring about grave consequences. On a definite note, educational psychology is my focus because students encounter a lot of issues during the learning experience, which in short is half of their lives while growing up. Education is also a big part of psychology because it helps determine the feelings, acts and the behaviors that reflect from all the pressure of studying and the larger educational environment. So psychology is a science that requires patience and persistence to cater for the needs of the troubled individuals at large in all sections of life.
Focus on elementary schools
In a classroom setting, educational psychology revolves in cooperative learning from the students. Precisely, the latter are in a stage where learning is fun and also are eager to explore what education has to offer. Their mental ability to configure the learning processes is as simple as counting or reading, thus increasing perspectives that would define quality performances. Teachers express this through different activities set up to monitor the performances and reactions to certain problems experienced along the way. These children, being at a young age, encourages the teachers to learn how to implement different teaching practices that incorporate the psychology behind teaching and studying.
For an elementary school learning experience, new methods should be adopted by teachers because the world is changing and new discoveries emerge each day. For instance, involvement of students in discussions and project expeditions in groups has recently brought about quality understanding of the course work given in schools, than when only one student is given homework by himself or herself. Thus it diminishes and slows down the understanding result in average performance or even poorer based on each student’s intellect. Many researchers have come up with different methods to monitor this educational psychology starting with the teachers’ ability to project their teaching experiences to their students, and the ability of students being able to acquire, comprehend and actualize what they have learnt into practice (Hickey, 2004).
The major thing that enlarges the teaching experience is the cooperative learning and the relationship between that learning and to what extent the exchange of information is socially structured. To expand on this, each student is accountable for his or her learning experience because what they acquire and understand motivates them to participate in groups as well as motivate others. This is a good tactic to growing the brains of these elementary students. Elementary school consists of third, fourth and fifth graders who have different learning structures of curriculum and the level of motivation become diverse too.
Third grade level is the stage where students’ learning is viewed as viewed as a transition to challenging expectations like in math and language. Children are subjected to more ways in expressing themselves than the second graders. On the contrary, fourth grader is a stage where the curriculum focuses on critical thinking, creativity of the students and the knowledge acquired has content. They are given projects so to enable independence in performing activities that help them end up achieving a goal. The written, oral and math concepts become more advanced than the third graders, thus requiring in depth concentration and motivation. Thirdly, the fifth graders are at a stage where they take more control in their learning because the curriculum is also designed to make them more aware of studying, and being able to explore even complex environments. Therefore assisting them to ask for help if they are stuck somewhere.
Parents of today’s educational curriculum have also been given the opportunity to help this growing learning expedition of their children through helping in practical learning experiences and also the written like homework and oral tasks. Teachers can only do much if the parents’ support isn’t enough. That is why education should not end or start in schools, it should rather have its support system right from home before even going to school. Therefore, teachers have to minimize talking a lot in the classrooms and provide time for their students to participate through talking too and sharing their views with each other.
Classroom setting
The setting should be a place where teachers and students have to learn to talk and listen differently, not like the traditional ways where each plays a role that seems rehearsed each and every day while learning. Freedom should be exercised so as to remove fear and uneasiness to express oneself fully as required. Recently the curriculum is extended to longer depths where more of new and challenging practices are incorporated. To top that, the classroom should reflect more ideal student-driven capabilities which provide adequate understanding of the curriculum (Elizabeth, 2014).
My preferred classroom setting is where students treat each other as a family. The latter in this context means that the students are free to express their ideologies and share their thoughts without the fear of being criticized, judged or even laughed at. To monitor their psychology in different ways, various methods are put in place to produce exemplary results as opposed to the normal classroom, which is a routine for learning- traditional methods.
Students do not have similar intellectual capacity to understand concepts at the same level. In my classroom discussions are a major practice where every student will be given a chance to participate and air their views, and also be accountable for it. Every student will be required to analyze what they learn and provide an explanation on the basis of their comprehension. The discussion will be a mixture of their different levels of intellect so as to promote confidence in those who are less intellectual than the others. That freedom is an environment where the teacher will also be motivated to be more indulged in what the students are doing and correct the accordingly where they need assistance(Covington, 2000).
Goal preferences will be another factor that each student should have so as to know how to achieve their objectives and if not achieved what tactics one should use to reach it. Maybe they would be attained through group discussions or even through challenging exercises like homework, as some students work better alone. As philosophers stated that every person is different and unique, so as the tactics used to increase the educational psychology for students. On another note, teachers should have an open perspective of conceptualizing and enacting cooperative learning, which involves group interactions between students in order to achieve a common assignment either tasking or not; for it encourages a comprehensive construct on the study.
Secondly, gender plays an important role in educational psychology because girls acquire more beneficial results from cooperative learning than boys. An explanation to this is that latter view this type of learning as a competition ground so as to be dominant in a peer group environment where their learning area is represented in their mental capacity. On the contrary though, girls view it as a behavioral association where providing help to others, organization of verbal skills and turn talking, has created a sense of belonging and security to them. To cater for such a differential need in a classroom, the discussions should be a mixture of non-academic exposure with social achievements, and also superiority goals to the level of having a sense of belonging and security. However much of the comparisons can be hectic sometimes, with several personalities involved, cooperation and the ability to accept each other is the key to initializing coherence in learning (Ormrod, 2006).
Therefore, in my classroom this enabled coherence will help in distinguishing not only various characters but also the strengths and weaknesses of each and every student. Thus it will provide the teacher with an easier task of knowing how to monitor the students’ performance from the beginning. The elementary students will be required to harbor their expectations to the teacher and to themselves as well; bringing much confidence and trust to the curriculum projected to them and at large to their teacher who will be patient to achieve that with them.
Thirdly, when it comes to performing tasks, certain objectives set in the classroom ought to be achieved and if not, accountability and punishment that is educative should be set in place. Countering on this, it is very important to choose the appropriate stages of challenging tasks, their designation and selection. This will provide aid to focus their aims based between fluency, accuracy and complexity, to a more effective opening, that encompasses the availability of increasing the learners’ capacity to manage and deliver the informational context, into a resourceful and meaningful use of language. Moreover, the ability of the students to accomplish the stipulated tasks should be a reflected in awareness of much consolidation and deep procession.
Some educators will differ with this because the stage of the elementary graders maybe too difficult for them to handle or even too complicated to understand. The good thing about it is that the level of tasks set will be according to their standards and comprehension. It will stretch their thinking capability a little further to be able to come up with solutions for themselves and be more independent in the assessment of quality informational structure. Elementary graders are influenced by their surroundings differently as opposed to the high school students who are more mature than they are. These influences enable them to realize on their own that the way they see things and conceptualize, has a lot in common with how they think and react to issues at hand.
Conclusion
In conclusion, educational psychology is a massive phenomenon that most educators, researchers and also students are yet to understand. Everybody has a perspective of how psychology should be analyzed and monitored, although skepticism is always around to linger into their minds whether it is as easy as some describe it to be.
