Principles of Classroom Learning and Perception

Richard J. Mueller

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351785075
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psicologia
• Subtopic: Psicologia cognitiva e cognizione

Originally published in 1974, this introductory text has been designed specifically for teachers in training, and it presents the basic psychological principles governing learning, perception, motivation and the retention of knowledge at the time. The text is carefully tailored for would-be teachers in its clear and informal style, and in its selective aspects of psychology which the teacher can use to advantage in his efforts to assist the child. The book has an eclectic approach to psychological theory, drawing upon the insights of behaviourism, perceptualism and the Gestalt school, as well as the developmental theories of Jean Piaget.

The author discusses in some detail theories concerning the nature of intelligence, and the relationship between creativity and intelligence; and he investigates the dynamics of social adjustment, introducing the part that may be played by meditation in helping to solve some of the problems of emotional stress within the learning situation. In his consideration of the management of learning, the author lays much emphasis upon the importance of individual cognitive styles, individualizing instruction and independent learning.

In one chapter Dr Mueller is concerned with factors in the measurement of personality and of performance in the classroom, and he reflects upon the specific problem of objectivity in such assessment. Finally, some consideration is given to the problems and characteristics of the socially disadvantaged child and to the role of the teacher in helping to solve some of the learning problems of these children.

PART 1

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The Process
of Learning

CHAPTER ONE

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The Scope of
Educational Psychology

MAN LEARNS BEST what he most urgently needs and wants to know. He also learns best what he feels good about. There is little doubt that the future welfare of our nation and perhaps even its survival as a nation and as a world leader will depend on how successfully our schools teach young people to profit from what man has learned about himself and his planet and to generate new ways of solving both old and new problems.

The objective of educational psychology is to discover, explain, and apply knowledge to the educative process. But, before we can design and implement an effective educational program for the child, we must understand how he thinks and acts and feels. This is a formidable mission, for nothing is more complex than the behavior of a human being. Yet, ironically, so important a concern as the nature of a child was not considered a scientific subject worth studying until the late nineteenth century. Of all the applications of the scientific method of inquiry, the study of man’s psychological nature has been among the last to develop.

THE ORIGINS OF EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY

Educational psychology began during the latter half of the nineteenth century as a part of the expanding field of psychology itself. Such individuals as E. L. Thorndike studied the learning and retention of school subjects, in the hope of building a body of theory that would describe the basic learning processes. From this, they believed, would flow the power to predict and ultimately control or change human learning in the direction of positive goals. The difficulties of achieving this goal were readily apparent. An eminent educator, William James, expressed the view of many of his time: Teaching will always remain more an art than a science. Nevertheless, the study of educational psychology began to grow.

Except for the work of Thorndike, who formulated several laws of learning that have stood well the test of time, psychology in those early days was limited in both theory and scientific method. Much research dealt with reflex actions and other basic aspects of physical behavior. Some of the early efforts at theory building drew on ideas originally advanced by Aristotle, which later served as a foundation for modern experimental psychology. Another source, the new field of psychoanalysis, led by the Viennese physician Sigmund Freud, gave us a dynamic view of human thought and behavior while it explored the problems of psychosis and neurosis. Eventually, psychoanalytic theory contributed to educational psychology by casting new and penetrating light on the nature of the child’s internal forces, the role of fear in learning, and the diagnosis and control of deviant behavior.

THE PREDICTION OF HUMAN BEHAVIOR

Most of those in the mainstream of educational psychology have believed that the key to learning and behavior lies in the research methods and tools of the physical sciences. Science has enabled man to predict, control, and offer increasingly accurate explanations of the world around him. Without prediction there can be no control, and without prediction and the possibility of control, explanation is meaningless. Obviously, the better our explanations or theories, the more sensitive our predictions will become and the greater will be our ability to bring about constructive change. The methods of science require that behavioral as well as physical scientists be objective in their pursuit of knowledge.

The behavioral scientist begins the process of developing theories by making first-hand observations, studying achievement-test results or responses made to items on a questionnaire, or examining the results of any other way of measuring human or animal behavior. How the investigator feels or believes is not acceptable scientific evidence. Nor can conclusions reached by logic alone be accepted as scientific truth. A person who believes that all tall people are born leaders because he has seen many people in leadership positions who are tall is basing his conclusions on inadequate observation and logic. Beliefs such as “gifted children are usually weak and underdeveloped physically” or “high-strung people are more sensitive and artistic by nature” are oversimplifications rejected by scientists because they do not square with evidence from the scientific study of behavior.

Scientific investigation is a combination of theory, shrewd guesswork, and painstaking, thorough gathering of data. Usually, the more the scientist knows about the subject at hand, the more accurate is his guesswork, or hypotheses. Most theories are a refinement of theories that preceded them, so that the development of a body of scientific knowledge is really the process of developing better and better research questions. As long as a hypothesis does not have 100 per cent predictive value, it remains a hypothesis. When it has been so thoroughly supported by evidence that it always turns out as predicted, then it is no longer a theory but a law. Newton’s original theory of gravity is now a law because it yields perfect prediction. When a celestial body appears to resist gravitational force, the explanation is sought elsewhere than in the possibility of a breakdown in the theory itself. To cite an example from psychology, as we will see later in this text, the so-called reinforcement principle is no longer a hypothesis, because its basic validity is no longer questioned. What is under investigation is the dynamics of reinforcement phenomena—how they function. Furthermore, although the principle itself is supported by substantial research, it frequently fails to predict behavior in real-life situations—in other words, it does not always work. Nevertheless, as with gravity, the reason is sought elsewhere, because so many complex factors operate in human behavior that any one factor or combination of factors can nullify the effects of a principle of behavior such as reinforcement.

INFORMAL LEARNING

A primitive society has little need for an educational psychologist. Everything the child must learn is reinforced by social sanction. Life in a primitive society is much more homogeneous and closely knit than life in a civilized community. What one child must learn, all must learn. Learning is informal and tied in with daily tribal life. The child is expected to learn (1) the skills of food gathering, hunting, and fishing and (2) the religious customs and beliefs of the tribe. To the child in such a society, it is quite obvious that both areas of subject matter must be mastered if he wants to join the adult world. Failure to do so will result in starvation, exclusion from tribal activities, or both. The child is motivated to learn the curriculum of his society because he is rewarded for doing so, and the reasons for performing the activities are intrinsic to the activities, not extraneous to them.

Our society, by contrast, makes much greater demands on the child. There is much more to learn, and the child is expected to take longer to learn it. Furthermore, the American child in elementary school is not so clearly aware of the survival value of what he learns. For example, he is exhorted by his parents to learn to read, and his teacher tells him how his life will be enriched by reading, but from his frame of reference there is little direct connection between reading and meeting his primary needs. Even the “tribal customs” of an American family do not appear to be a compelling reason for learning to read. After all, plenty of people appear to get along quite well with very little reading. In modern society, the child must accept the value of reading largely on faith.

As Margaret Mead (1943, p. 634) has stated:

There are several striking differences between our concept of education today and that of any contemporary society, but perhaps the most important one is the shift from the need for an individual to learn something that everyone agrees he would wish to know to the will of some individual to teach something which it is not agreed that anyone has any desire to know.

Our society is diverse. Variable home environments, parental values, life-styles, and other culturally related forces influence the motivation of children—but not uniformly. In addition, the relationship of formal schooling to life usually becomes apparent quite late in the educational process. Even many high-school students have difficulty making a connection between what they study in school and what appear to them to be the demands of daily life, and this contributes to large differences in attitudes toward school. Partly as a result, the outcomes of our educational system become ever more variable, even though schools are moving closer to providing equal educational opportunities for all children. In the first week of first grade, every child is confronted with about the same curriculum, but the products that finally emerge at the end of the process some twelve years later range from near illiterates to highly sophisticated National Merit Scholarship winners.

To be sure, there are instances of strong motivation and much informal learning in the home, on the playground, and even in school. I doubt that anyone has ever found it necessary to study the motivational problems involved in getting kids to turn out for baseball in the spring. The home, too, is a motivational source because the reward and punishment system is so closely tied to the personal needs of the child.

But the school poses a special problem. Education serves not merely to preserve and perpetuate the cultural heritage but also to advance it, to raise the cultural level of society by leading the child to new skills and understandings—much of which the child is not ready for in the sense that he actively seeks them. Can our schools continue to use the pressures of competition to get children to study and still provide the conditions that lead to a spontaneous desire to learn?

The teacher today is faced with two emerging conditions: the explosion of knowledge, and the growing size and complexity of the classroom scene. There has been a fantastic growth of subject matter in all fields, and new fields are introduced almost every year. The teacher must deal with an awesome accumulation of information, much of which is labeled “crucial” for survival. Furthermore, basic skills, such as reading and study techniques, are now a requirement for everyone regardless of economic or cultural level. We need especially to discover how to make the learning of basic skills more efficient and less time-consuming, so that more teacher effort can be devoted to promoting self-directed learning by students.

In addition, there is a growing concern for treating each member of our society as an individual—not as a faceless unit within a mass of people. Government, institutions, military groups, communities, clubs, and schools have always been forced to deal with people in groups—whether the individuals involved liked it or not. When there were fewer people on this planet and life was much simpler, there was a more personal sea of humanity in which to swim. In fact, for most people, the world was not much larger than a pond. Today, the individual has to contend with an ever larger urban mass, and he can very easily begin to lose sight of himself as a distinctive human being. Many in our society have reacted to this situation by developing diverse life-styles, characterized largely by affective responses to environmental forces. The primary objective of these life-styles seems to be to put greater emphasis on the individual and what he himself believes is best for him. Because schools have usually prescribed what is best for young people in terms of the requirements of society, self-determined behavior patterns inevitably come into conflict with traditional school practices. In the past, schools relegated social and emotional development largely to extracurricular programs, but now there appears to be a growing interest in allowing more personal involvement and values in the classroom itself.

It is the task of the teacher to understand and perhaps to help reconcile the personal, emotional needs of the individual child and the expanding educational requirements and depersonalizing social forces. This will require answers to many new questions. For example, to what extent is freedom compatible with learning? When is it better to learn something on one’s own terms, spontaneously, than to do so by traditional, teacher-centered methods of instruction? At what age can a child begin to take active responsibility for his own learning in school? When is he mature enough to make really important choices? These are some of the questions that are being asked by many leaders in education and other elements of society. The study of educational psychology may bring prospective teachers and school administrators to a more analytical understanding of these new and dynamic concerns, and perhaps help to mediate them.

THE TEACHER AS BEHAVIORIST

The traditional role of the teacher has been as a conveyor of academic subject matter and an instructor in basic skills. But the subject-matter requirements for a teaching certificate have increased tremendously since the nineteenth century. Then, the typical public-school teacher was likely to have the equivalent of a high-school education. Today, four or more years of university course work are required. Of these, a few professional education courses and a stint of student teaching are all that is mandated to prepare teachers for classroom responsibilities. Yet, both the teacher’s role and the conditions of learning are in a state of ferment. New resources for learning are becoming available, many of which are designed for the student’s individual use. Students are being grouped in different ways as schools adopt team teaching, individually prescribed instruction, and automated, or programmed, learning. New buildings and facilities are being constructed that include television, electronic learning laboratories, computer systems, and dial-access information and problem-solving systems. Many teachers have an ever expanding array of alternatives from which to choose the learning activities, resources, and spaces required to accomplish defined learning outcomes.

Instead of being an information giver, the teacher is becoming a facilitator of learning. As a consequence, many schools—both elementary and secondary—are beginning to base their teaching on an instructional design model that identifies and arranges all the components of the instructional program, from objectives through performance assessment. Although this is usually referred to as a systematic approach, it is also a behavioral approach, because it focuses on observable, measurable learning outcomes.

In order for a total instructional design system to work, the characteristics of the learner must be identified—especially those that affect his capacity and willingness to learn. In order to achieve this, the teacher-facilitator of learning should know something about (1) the principles of human growth and development, (2) the principles and practices of learning, and (3) the principles of measurement and evaluation of abilities and achievement. Most of these principles are drawn from the field of general psychology, but other fields contribute as well. The teacher needs to know something of the social forces in the community through the study of sociology. The fields of physiology and genetics provide insight into inherited characteristics and the pattern of a child’s physical growth and development. Psychiatry and the principles of mental health offer the teacher a theoretical basis as well as v...