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 12

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 12

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 12

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 12 Spina Bifida

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What makes us do what we do?  That is the question that first drove the likes of Freud to further investigate the inner workings of the human mind.  Every approach to psychology has had to answer that question from the beginning of the study of the human psyche.  It is in fact, one of the most effective ways of understanding the differences between many of the different approaches to psychology.  However, a good, broad definition that most approaches would endorse would be as follows: An internal state that arouses, directs or maintains behavior.  That is a very good working understanding of how motivation works for people.

Arouses:
If a person is motivated, they are itching to get started.  Motivation helps you start a project.  It gets you out of bed in the morning, and gets you going in the worst of weather.  It helps you begin.  It fosters creativity, tickles your imagination, and inspires novel problem solving.

Directs:
Because you are motivated, you tend to focus on only the relevant topics and discard the other stuff of distraction.  It directs you attention to the task at hand.  Astronauts, pilots, soldiers all have amazing powers of concentration when given highly volatile situation with all _ell breaking loose around them.  It is the power of motivation that allows such super-human focus.

Maintains:
Motivation, as Bob Dylan would say, "keeps you keep'n on."  Because you are motivated, you are much more likely to hang tough through difficulties than someone who is not as motivated.  Woody Allen had a famous quote about the secret of success, "90% of success is just showing up."  I think he means that if you show up one more time than the next person, you win.  Persistence is one of the best vocabulary words in all of the English language.

Below you will find links to the different types of motivation and how each can be approached in the classroom.

Extrinsic Motivation

Intrinsic Motivation