Psychology of Teaching and Learning

Brian G. Smith, Ph.D.

You may also check your understanding of the material on the Ablongman web site. Click on the Publisher Help Site button.

The assessments in this course are patterned after the Praxis II, Principles of Learning and Teaching tests required for licensure

Case Study - Lesson 6

Case studies are a very important part of this course of study. You may run through these scenarios an unlimited number of times. If you make errors, you will be referred to the appropriate area of the book, or an appropriate website.  The questions will be narrative, constructed responses to the issues in the study.   Upon submission of your answers, each of the narrative responses will have professionally written feedback of an ideal answer.  Carefully compare this to your answer to determine correctness There is a score associated with each case study but that score will not be recorded.  You will be given credit for participation.

Quiz - Lesson 6

You will have to take a quiz for each of the lessons. You have two opportunities to take each quiz.  The highest score will be recorded in the grade book.   Each of the quizzes will be multiple choice & true/false, open-book, open-notes.  Upon submitting each quiz, your quiz score as well as any items answered incorrectly will be available.

Homework and Quizzes are on Desire 2 Learn. Click on the Desire 2 Learn link, log in, select the Homework/Quizzes icon and choose the appropriate homework or quiz.

Learning Profiles - Lesson 6

Each lesson in this course will have a Special Education topic  associated with it.  Click on the link below to go to the content of the topic.  Each of the Special Education topics was specifically chosen to complement the psychology topic.  There will be Special Education items on each lesson's quiz. 

• Lesson 6 Learning Profile

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There are 2 major theories of moral development, Lawrence Kohlberg's and later Carol Gilligan's.  The first theory of moral development was put forth by Lawrence Kohlberg in the early 1970's.  Kohlberg was a Jewish/American soldier in world war II in the European theatre.  He was among the first American GI's to witness the atrocities of the concentration camps.  For the rest of his life Kohlberg was keenly interested in the way that people could develop morally so that ordinary people could think that doing such atrocities was justified.  He did his main body of research on how children develop their moral reasoning skills. 

As the name would imply then this theory is highly related to Piaget's theory of cognitive development.  He basically presented a series of moral dilemmas to children of various ages, then recorded their responses for later analysis.  One of the most common errors when applying this theory are to get caught up in the "right" or "wrong" part of the moral dilemma rather than the reasoning that took place to get to deciding "right" or "wrong"  He later became very involved in "character education."
Kohlberg's Theory of Moral Reasoning.

Then, after Kohlberg's publishing of his theories and findings, Carol Gilligan became an outspoken critic of his for a number of reasons the most pressing of which for her was the fact that she pointed out that nearly all of Kohlberg's research subject were males.  She maintained that females in western societies develop morally in profoundly different ways than males do.  One of her main points of difference is that females in America are socialized/encouraged into having an ethic of caring, or concern for harmony within the peer group.
Gilligan's Moral Reasoning for Females