Elements of Educational Psychology (Иностранный язык в профессиональной сфере — психология). Учебное пособие
.pdfSummary
1.Group dynamics suggests measures for healthy interactions among the learners, proper social and emotional climate, problem areas of the learners and the ways of better management of the classroom. Impartial and psychological approach, ideal modeling, organization of various co-curricular activities, guidance and counseling, freedom in interaction etc. are some of the steps for healthy group life.
2.Any individual who heads the group and acts on behalf of the group is called its leader. A leader functions is a manager, coordinator, organizer, supervisor, administrator and friend, philosopher and guide in the croup, which he represents.
3.For developing better leadership qualities in the learners, they should be made aware of their own assets and limitations, be exposed to various challenging situations, be allowed to get influenced by great leaders of history. The teacher should himself project as a leader of worth following.
Study questions and tasks
1.What is a group dynamics?
2.How can a good group relationship be measured?
3.What are the types of leadership? Which type of the leadership can be called the most effective one?
4.State different measures for developing a good leadership.
5.Highlight the qualities of a good teacher.
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Chapter 12
Teacher Effectiveness
Psychology and the Teacher
Why should we educate? What is the end of goal of education? A discussion of the aims and ideals of education, of the purposes and values, educational efforts is the philosophic quest.
What is the use of psychology to the teacher? What psychology should he study?
There are three ways in which the study of psychology can help the teacher.
At first, it will enable him to know and understand the people for whom he is employed.
Secondly, as a result of this knowledge the teacher will feel in himself a greater power over his pupils.
Thirdly, psychology will help the teacher know himself and accordingly adjust himself better to the school environment.
There are two ways of studying pupils. They may be studied as individuals, unlike all others, and they may be studied as a class, like others. No two pupils are exactly alike; each child is a unique individual; this is his individuality. The attention of the teacher should be directed to each pupil as a unique person.
Teach the child rather than the subject is the essential principle of new education. Work in and outside the classroom, the school programme, the curricula, the selection and grading of lessons should be determined and arranged in the light of dominant interests and urgent needs of pupils at different stages of mental development.
The success of the prevailing system of education depends upon the teacher who should be appropriately well to do. It is the teacher who is supposed to be the hub of the educational system from which everything emanates.All our highly sophisticated, scientific and ultramodern strategies would be in vain in the absence of an effective and versatile teacher who actually, by applying his fitful hand, sets things
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and derives benefits. The personality of the teacher impresses and moulds the personality of the children entrusted to him.
Therefore, the teacher should adopt certain strategies to systemize the process of instruction to ensure efficient learning that will ultimately result in effective memorization.The following approaches are considered as the prescribed ones to attain the objectives:
1.Multisensory Approach. The teacher should try to involve as many sense organs of the learners as possible. With the help of it the learning material will be vigorously and rigorously inculcated and learnt.
2.Bring the outside into the classroom. While teaching abstract
concepts, the teacher should use as much similes and concrete materials as possible for better understanding and remembering.
3.Association. Utmost care should be taken by the teacher to associate or relate the new learning materials into the previous experiences that would hasten learning and retention.
4.Learners’Participation. The classroom should be made living
by involving the learners’activity in the teaching-learning process.
5.HierarchicalAtmosphere.Theteachershouldpresentthelearning material in a logically sequential manner — from the known to unknown, concrete to abstract, easy to difficult, simple to complex etc.
6.Conductive Atmosphere. The entire teaching-learning proc-
ess should be organized in a cool, tranquil and stable environment. The teacher should ensure that no external influence affects the process.
7. Practice and Rehearsal. The learner should make provisions for proper practice and rehearsal of the learnt material in the active supervision of the teacher.The teacher should encourage spaced or interval practices for better learning.
Completely and Partial Learning. The teacher should advise the pupils regarding the type of learning (completely or partial) they would entertain, keeping in view the nature of the learning tasks.
9. Avoidance of Roting. Unless the extreme cases rote learning should be discouraged by the teacher. The thing should be given some meaning from various orientations whereby rote learning suffer setbacks and will be avoided. Learning should be made meaningful.
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10.Postures and Gestures. The pupils should be instructed to sustain proper postures and gestures in their educational setting.
11.Good Mental and Physical Health. Before intending to teach
anything, the teacher should ensure that the mental and physical health of the learners is normal. It is because learning is directly linked with both physical and mental health of the learners.
The teacher is the chief architect of the nation building of producing valuable human assets. So, he should bear certain qualities. These qualities will help accomplish the cumbersome task of educating the future citizens of the nation in a better way.
This is noting but the idiosyncratic influence that the growing and prosperous teachers need to possess for a happy professional life.
It is found that some teachers a very successful in their profession and pupils adore them but there some teachers who have no popularity and professional satisfaction.
EducationalApplications
These facts and principles about human behavior bear closely on educational practice. The principle of self-activity is essential to all organic growth and education should be a process of arousing this self-activity. It means that no influence from environment, no stimuli of any sort, no amount of educational material, not even the inherited tendencies, can have the slightest effect in promoting mental development except the things that are responded to by the individual to be educated.
Teachers may provide materials and means for education but they cannot create the motive power, cannot perform the educative activities for a child. What a child does himself is not the same the teacher does for him. Modern education lays great stress on freedom, spontaneity and initiative; this is a simple recognition of the fundamental principle of self-activity. The truth is emphasized by the popular slogans: “All education is self-education”, “learning by doing”.
If purpose is an essential mark of living behavior, it should not be neglected in education.Achild works and learns far better if he knows the goal or purposes to which his activity is leading. In all teaching,
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it is worthwhile to help children understand the value and purpose of what they are going to learn.
Mental activity means growth in the ability to attend, perceive, observe, remember, imagine, think, use language or solve problems. Mental development is often described as adding to the stock of knowledge and information but if understanding and wisdom do not accompany it such knowledge is barren. It is also described as growth in discrimination and analysis in thinking, or as problem solving and reasoning. But it would be better to enumerate the areas of growth more definitely.
At first, mental development implies intellectual growth, increase in intelligence. A large part of the knowledge and understanding of children comes through attention, perception and observation.
Secondly, mental development consists of better and greater use of language that is not only the medium of communication but also thetoolofthinking.Wordsarepegsonwhichideashangandthefacility to use language is considered a mark of great mental development. Teachers rightly emphasize the importance of ready and accurate expression of thoughts and feelings for better social understanding. One who has the command of language can define his difficulties and problems that is the first step to their solution. It is through language that people are able to influence and persuade others. That is why most tests of language really test the ability to use the language.
Thirdly, mental development means the discovery of the universal in experience and forming what we call “concepts”. Concepts are general ideas we form about things after having experienced a great many of them. The formation of concepts means both analysis and generalization.
As reading is introduced early, too many children use words, which they are not able to connect with things. This means that they have concepts that they have memorized without having any intimate knowledge of things for which they stand. This means saying that an education is bookish and verbal; it emphasizes words without referring to any experience to any things they denote.
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WORK and PLAY
First, work is serious; it is engaged in for some result useful to the individual or society. Work is always carefully selected and done for some special purpose — hence it is always deliberate rather than spontaneous. Play is instinctive.
Secondly, play is activity, and it is not idleness. Play is not limited to any one particular kind of activity. Play is a characteristic of the intellectual activity as truly as it is of the physical; observation, attention, imagination, judgement, reasoning are all used in play.
Thirdly, attention and interest of a strong all-absorbing type mark play.
Fourthly, play is engaged in for its own sake rather than for any ulterior goal or end. It is its own reward. The feeling of joy and satisfaction found in activities called play is their sole motive. This does not mean that play is aimless and has no purpose. The purpose is selfprescribed and is a vital part of human behavior.
To sum up, play is activity promoted by a feeling of vigor. It is free self-expression for the pleasure of expression. It is a natural unfolding of the inner impulses from inner necessity, an act performed spontaneously, and for no conscious purposes beyond the activity itself.
Characteristics of Play
Play is not easy to define, as it is instinctive. Every child breathes, moves his arms etc. Similarly, he throws runs, jumps and talks. All these activities are instinctive. A curiosity review of the play activities can reveal how varied and numerous are the interests, what are the kinds of activity, impulse, mood and instinct of players. Play is a general field for a certain exercise and development.
Values of Play
The values of play are varied and many. In the first place, it is a means of physical education. Play is so interesting that a physical exercise is secured without compulsion.
Secondly, play affords exercises for all limbs. Play is also a great intellectual influence.As an intellect it is sharpened and stimulated. In
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a play young people throw off all restraint and self-consciousness and can know and judge each other more correctly. They learn from their playmates, they learn about them, and this equips them to meet and deal with people in life.
Thirdly, play is a great training ground for character. It regulates the thought, desires and actions of the child to form habits of conduct, which determine his moral worth.
The Play-Way in Education
Play is free, spontaneous activity is engaged in it for its own sake and is marked by a complete absorption of attention and interest. This aspect is a great asset to education. Modern education insists on what is known as the play-way method. The whole movement in plays as a rule is based on a realization that the center of all educational efforts and activity should be the child.
Most of the recent educational methods and movements emphasize the play-way in education.
PROBLEM SOLVING
The Nature of Problem Solving
Problem solving is an art of recollection and manipulation of the previously learnt materials to learn the subsequent but more complex and novel things. In the words of Robert M. Gagne — “Problem solving may be viewed as a process by which the learner discovers a combination of previously learnt rules which can be applied to achieve a solution for a novel situation.”
Problem solving is treated as the highest order of learning, which not only involves the cognitive domain but affective and psychomotor domains as well. In this process a rigorous reconstruction of experiences emerges that leads to the solution of the problem at hand.
Types of Problems
We cannot accommodate all types of problems in certain limited groups.The problems of the infants, the problems of classroom pupils,
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the problems of the professionals, the problems of the societies etc. are of different types deserving different approaches for true solutions. How can such a vast area of problems be localized in limited focal points?
The ways of categorizing all these problems:
Problems of meeting basic needs: Food, clothing, shelter, medicine etc.
Problems of meeting secondary needs: Consolation, praise, rewards, affection, love etc.
Problems of meeting social needs: Recognition, acceptance, reciprocation, affiliation etc.
FactorsAffecting Problem Solving
Anumber of factors are found stimulating and hastening the pace of problem solving:
Learning: Proper learning is a pre-requisite for all kinds of problem solving. As learning enables the individual to penetrate deep into the problem and analyze it properly.
Motivation: As is evident for all kinds of activities, motivation is a pre-requisite for problem solving too. Proper motivation: Since motivation plays an essential role in the process of problem solving, the teacher should adapt requisite measures for it. He should relate the differentaspectsoftheproblemwiththepreviouslyacquired knowledge, so that the pupils are properly motivated towards the solution of the problem at hand, half of the battle is won.
Intelligence: Intelligence is having a crucial role in all kinds of problemsolving.Itpresents the totalcognitivestructureofthe individual and accountable for carrying out the internal processes. The pupils by knowing the components, can arrange, rearrange and manipulate them in a productive way to come to the conclusion.
Adequate instructions and cautions: On the part of the teacher, it is desirable to give proper instructions and pre-cautionary measures to the pupils. If the problems are new to the pupils, it does not mean that the teacher will solve the problems for the pupils, he should simply guide them.
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Freedom of thought: Pupils should be allowed freedom of thought.
Feedback Services: The knowledge of the result will invigorate the efforts of pupils whereby they will stick to it whole — heartedly.
Incomplete Solution: The teacher should not provide complete solutions to problems but leave some resolved parts to the pupils. The pupils can solve the rest for themselves at the cost of their own formulations and hypotheses.
Exhaustive exercise: Both time and space should be given to the pupils for proper exercise. Therefore, it is very urgent that the pupils should be allowed practice and repetition to consolidate their capability in a specific direction.
Summary
1.The effectiveness of the teacher is utmost significant since he actually governs the total education. His personal characteristics exert much influence on the pupils in particular and on the whole education system in general. So, obviously the teacher’s efficiency and effectiveness needs to be judged kindly before intending to measure the overall development in education.
2.The research findings of various faculty members reveal the following characteristics of an effective teacher — he treats teaching as the noble profession and has self inclination towards it, he is a good learner, he is happy, resourceful, optimistic, democratic, innovative, creative, deductive, sincere, punctual, industrious and perseverant.
3.Basically,therearethreeyardsticksforknowingtheeffectiveness of a teacher such as process, product and presage. Process means the
teachers classroom activities, product means pupils achievement rate and presage is the teacher’s personal as well as academic achievements.
4.An ideal and effective teacher plays the following roles — he is the leader of a group and a facilitator of learning, a psychological weather maker, a model, a director and a controller, a counselor and a guide, a manager, a member of a professional group, a citizen of a nation and an integral figure of a community, a watchdog of the culture and the pattern of social cumulating etc.
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5.Problem solving is supposed to be the highest order of learning that involves all the three domains namely, cognitive, affective and conative or psychomotor. It is a process of rigorous reconstruction of experiences and it leads to the solution of the problem at hand.
6.Problems can be of different kinds in accordance with our needs and necessities, as problems of secondary needs — love, affection, praise, consolidation etc., problems of meeting the social needs — acceptance, recognition, reconciliation etc.
7.The ability of problem solving is sharply affected by learning, motivation, intelligence, difficulty level, practice, diverging thinking etc. The steps, generally followed in the process of problem solving are —
• a felt need;
• identification of the problem;
• data collection;
•hyperhesization;
•testing and generalization.
8. The factors that develop the problem solving ability of the pupils are —
•present the problem as a whole;
•motivate the pupils adequately;
•instruct then perfectly;
•allow freedom in thinking;
•provide feedback services;
•encourage exhaustive practice or exercise.
Study questions and tasks
1.What strategies should the teacher adopt to systemize the process of instruction to ensure efficient learning?
2.Why is problem solving treated as the highest form of learning? Explain.
3.What are the approaches to problem solving? Highlight their respective affinities.
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