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 15

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 15

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 15

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 15 Visual Impairment

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The major source of maladjustments, psychological disorders, and lifestyle discontent; from the point of view of a cognitive psychologist, lies in a person's faulty thinking.  That is to say that the person very often is thinking of a situation in a way that is unproductive for them.  Cognitivists focus their therapies on beliefs, perceptions, and interpretations of their client's world.  It is still a phenomenological approach in that they believe that everyone's experience of the world is unique to them.  The idea is that your interpretation of your world has a profound effect on your motivation.  I'm sure that we have all heard statements from friends or others like, "I'm just not good at (Math/Art/Sports)."  Part of what that person is communicating is that they have no expectation of ever being good at Math/Art/Sports.  If that is true, then their chances of even a minimal effort at any of those subjects is fairly remote.  In short, because of that belief about Math/Art/Sports, their motivation is very low.  A cognitive therapist focuses their work with clients on correcting that faulty thinking.  They might suggest alternative beliefs that are more factual, less hyperbolic, more productive, and less overwhelming.  In a nutshell, a cognitivist believes that we all become exactly what we think we are.  

Attribution theory then is a purely cognitive approach to motivation.  It is the causal explanations for the our successes and failures in academics.  If a student experiences a good grade on a test, to what does s/he attribute that success?  If they experience a failure, to what do they attribute that failure.  Bernard Weiner did some ground breaking work in this field.  Basically, he collected thousands of actual, verbatim student excuses for analysis.  What he found was that there are three different axes that all of these student excuses have in common.