Category Archives: Education

CC BY-SA, Education, Psychology

► Seifert, et. al. Educational Psychology (2009)

Seifert and Sutton,  Educational Psychology (2009)

From the authors, “All in all, we hope that you find Educational Psychology a useful and accessible part of your education. If you are preparing to be a teacher, good luck with your studies and your future! If you are an instructor, good luck with helping your students learn about this subject!”

Purchase print copy $49.95 (365 pages, 12 chapters, see table of contents below)

Download Free PDF (color, 4 Mb, 365 pages).

Original Source:  Global Text Project

Table of Contents

1. The changing teaching profession and you.

  • The joys of teaching
  • Are there also challenges to teaching?
  • Teaching is different from in the past
  • How educational psychology can help

2. The learning process

  • Teachers’ perspectives on learning
  • Major theories and models of learning

3. Student development.

  • Why development matters.
  • Physical development during the school years
  • Cognitive development: the theory of Jean Piaget
  • Social development: relationships,personal motives, and morality
  • Moral development: forming a sense of rights and responsibilities
  • Understanding “the typical student” versus understanding students.

4. Student diversity

  • Individual styles of learning and thinking.
  • Multiple intelligences.
  • Gifted and talented students
  • Gender differences in the classroom
  • Differences in cultural expectations and styles
  • Oppositional cultural identity.
  • Accommodating cultural diversity in practice.

5. Students with special educational needs

  • Look at these three people from the past. All were assigned marginal status in society because of beliefs about disabilities:.
  • Growing support for people with disabilities: legislation and its effects
  • Responsibilities of teachers for students with disabilities.
  • Categories of disabilities—and their ambiguities
  • Learning disabilities.
  • Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
  • Intellectual disabilities.
  • Behavioral disorders.
  • Physical disabilities and sensory impairments
  • The value of including students with special needs

6. Student motivation

  • Motives as behavior
  • Motives as goals.
  • Motives as interests.
  • Motives related to attributions
  • Motivation as self-efficacy.
  • Motivation as self-determination
  • Expectancy x value: effects on students’ motivation
  • TARGET: a model for integrating ideas about motivation.

7. Classroom management and the learning environment

  • Why classroom management matters
  • Preventing management problems by focusing students on learning.
  • Responding to student misbehavior.
  • Keeping management issues in perspective.

8. The nature of classroom communication

  • Communication in classrooms vs communication elsewhere.
  • Effective verbal communication.
  • Effective nonverbal communication.
  • Structures of participation: effects on communication
  • Communication styles in the classroom.
  • Using classroom talk to stimulate students’ thinking
  • The bottom line: messages sent, messages reconstructed

9. Facilitating complex thinking

  • Forms of thinking associated with classroom learning
  • Critical thinking
  • Creative thinking
  • Problem-solving
  • Broad instructional strategies that stimulate complex thinking
  • Teacher-directed instruction
  • Student-centered models of learning.
  • Inquiry learning
  • Cooperative learning.
  • Examples of cooperative and collaborative learning
  • Instructional strategies: an abundance of choices.

10. Planning instruction

  • Selecting general learning goals.
  • Formulating learning objectives
  • Differentiated instruction and response to intervention.
  • Students as a source of instructional goals.
  • Enhancing student learning through a variety of resources.
  • Creating bridges among curriculum goals and students’ prior experiences.
  • Planning for instruction as well as for learning.

11. Teacher-made assessment strategies.

  • Basic concepts.
  • Assessment for learning: an overview of the process
  • Selecting appropriate assessment techniques I: high quality assessments
  • Reliability
  • Absence of bias
  • Selecting appropriate assessment techniques II: types of teacher-made assessmentsSelected response items
  • Constructed response items
  • Portfolios.
  • Assessment that enhances motivation and student confidence
  • Teachers’ purposes and beliefs
  • Choosing assessments
  • Providing feedback
  • Self and peer assessment
  • Adjusting instruction based on assessment.
  • Communication with parents and guardians.
  • Action research: studying yourself and your students.
  • Grading and reporting

12. Standardized and other formal assessments

  • Basic concepts.
  • High-stakes testing by states
  • International testing.
  • International comparisons
  • Understanding test results.
  • Issues with standardized tests

Appendices and Resources

  • Appendix A: Preparing for licensure.
  • Appendix B: Deciding for yourself about the research
  • Appendix C: The reflective practitioner.
  • Resources for professional development and learning
  • Reading and understanding professional articles
  • Action research: hearing from teachers about improving practice.
  • The challenges of action research.
  • Benefiting from all kinds of research
Education, News & Research, OpEd

Why publish an open-access textbook [about educational psychology?]

Excerpted from “Educational Psychology” by Drs. Seifert and Sutton  (p. 8) ( CC BY)

(Red and bold added by Textbook Equity)

Why publish an open-access textbook about educational psychology?

Why publish an open-access textbook about educational psychology? I have taught educational psychology to future teachers for over 35 years, during which I used one or another of the major commercial textbooks written for this subject. In general I found all of the books well-written and thorough. But I also found problems:

(1) Though they differed in details, the major textbooks were surprisingly similar in overall coverage. This fact, coupled with their large overall size, made it hard to tailor any of the books to the particular interests or needs of individuals or groups of students. Too often, buying a textbook was like having to buy a huge Sunday newspaper when all you really want is to read one of its sections. In a similar way, commercial educational psychology textbooks usually told you more than you ever needed or wanted to know about the subject. As a format, the textbook did not allow for individualization.

(2) Educational psychology textbooks were always expensive, and over the years their costs rose faster than inflation, especially in the United States, where most of the books have been produced. Currently every major text about educational psychology sells for more than USD 100. At best this cost is a stress on students’ budgets. At worst it puts educational psychology textbooks beyond the reach of many. The problem of the cost is even more obvious when put in worldwide perspective; in some countries the cost of one textbook is roughly equivalent to the average annual income of its citizens.

(3) In the competition to sell copies of educational psychology textbooks, authors and publishers have gradually added features that raise the cost of books without evidence of adding educational value. Educational psychology publishers in particular have increased the number of illustrations and photographs, switched to full-color editions, increased the complexity and number of study guides and ancillary publications, and created proprietary websites usable fully only by adopters of their particular books. These features have sometimes been attractive. My teaching experience suggests, however, that they also distract students from learning key ideas about educational psychology about as often as they help students to learn.

By publishing this textbook online with the Global Textbook Project, I have taken a step toward resolving these problems. Instructors and students can access as much or as little of the textbook as they really need and find useful. The cost of their doing is minimal. Pedagogical features are available, but are kept to a minimum and rendered in formats that can be accessed freely and easily by anyone connected to the Internet. In the future, revisions to the book will be relatively easy and prompt to make. These, I believe, are desirable outcomes for everyone! – Dr. Kelvin Seifert