BLOG TASK 3

REFLECTION ON TPI SCORE

In the TPI result sheet; there are five important perspectives that an effective teacher should have.  According to the TPI result, my average performance was 36.2, and this varies 1.2 points in different perspectives.  The highest perspective score was 38, and the least was 35. By seen my sub-scores, I noticed that, there was no much differences among the bars of different perspectives except in Apprenticeship. In Apprenticeship, there was a five point gap between believes and intentions.   

    

Transmission: Effective teaching requires a substantial commitment to the content or subject matter. It means the teacher should have enough knowledge on the subject or the content.  In my TPI score, I got 35 points in this perspective. It was below the range of my overall score. In this, I noticed, I should improve my content knowledge, providing clear objectives, making efficient use of class time, providing timely feedback etc in my teaching. 

Apprenticeship:  Effective teaching is a process of socializing students into new behavioral norms and ways of working. For this perspective, I got 36 points. It means I was within the boundary of perspectives. So, I believed I have some skills of classroom teaching. And also I believed, I am following the zone of proximal development. It means I am helping according to the student’s levels of understanding.  

Developmental:  Effective teaching must be planned and conducted from the learner’s point of view. I score 37 points in this perspective. This score is also fit into the given range of points.  So, I have the ability to understand how students think about the content, and able to help students to increase complexity of cognitive structure.  Moreover, the questioning methods that I use in my classes are helpful to increase their level of thinking. 

Nurturing: Effective teaching assumes that long-term, hard, persistent effort to achieve comes from the heart, not the head. This was the highest score of my result. And this was the dominant perspective of my result. I believe my attitude towards the subject and the students were good. And also I believed my motivation techniques are also helpful to the students. 

Social Reform: Effective teaching seeks to change society in substantive ways. This gives the least sore in my result. So, I have to improve this perspective in my future. It includes, advocating students role in social reform and can create chances to the students to participate in social activities 

Before concluding this, I can say, this TPI score gives the real picture of myself on teaching. And it also helps me to change my teaching philosophy. Overall I can say this is a good tool that the teachers can be more familiar. And it helps them to check their perspectives toward teaching and learning process.   

BLOG TASK 2

MY TEACHING PHILOSOPHY

Teaching is an art that can defer something wonderful when the right ideas and beliefs are implemented in the classroom. I believe that the aim of teaching is not to teach students how to learn facts, or how to identify all the correct answers. I also believe that as a teacher, I must know what to teach in my classroom. It is vital that I have a solid understanding of the subject matter being taught. I realize that I cannot rely only on textbooks, but rather I must seek out other sources of information to aid in my teaching.

I will be a facilitator in my classroom. As a facilitator, I will direct my students through the subject matter in order to help the students in their own findings. According to the constructivist learning theory, the students can construct their own learning. To achieve this, I always plan my lessons according to the levels of the students and create an environment where the students can think critically and creativity.

The excellent teacher knows and appreciates students, how they develop and learn. I know that students actively produce and transform their own knowledge based on past experiences and prior learning. According to Vygotsky’s ZPD, students will learn from their prior knowledge. I know that students do not all learn in the same way or at the same rate. I believe it is my duty as a teacher to be an effective facilitator of students’ interests, abilities, and prior knowledge.

I believe a good teacher must also know how to motivate and create a positive interaction among the students. If I want actively participate all my students in the lessons, I use some of motivation techniques. Using intrinsic and extrinsic motivation techniques in our classrooms, it encourages life-long learning and it also helps to achieve effectively our daily objectives of the lessons. And I also know most learning happens through social interaction; therefore, I plan my lessons so that the students productively collaborate and cooperate with each other during most of the class time.

I believe a teacher is the most powerful of role models. Social learning theory is a perspective that states behavior is learned primarily by observing and imitating the actions of others. During my lessons I used to include more examples, activities and real material, so I hope students will gain the lesson more effectively. And also I create some chances to present their ideas among the students. I try to treat all people with dignity and respect, and I expect my students to do as same.

Finally, a teacher is dedicated to teach his or her students, and to making the future the best possible place for all of us to live. And I also believe a teacher should have multiple of roles and responsibilities in his/her way of delivering the lessons and his/her personality as well.

Cognitive theory and Vygotsky

Cognitive theory and Vygotsky

Vygotsky was a pioneer of psychology; he contributed much important research to the field. He graduated from the Moscow State University in 1917, and went on to work in many research facilities and educational establishments in Moscow. His extensive research into cognitive development has leaded his theory to be one of the most important of its kind. He believed that children’s thinking is affected by their social knowledge, which is communicated by either psychological or technical means.

He also suggested that language is the most important tool for gaining this social knowledge; the child can be taught this from other people via language. He defined intelligence as “the capacity to learn from instruction”, which emphasizes the fact there is a requirement for a more knowledgeable other person or ‘teacher’. He described something known as the zone of proximal development (ZPD), which is a key feature of his theory.

Cognitive teaching/learning approach is on making knowledge meaningful and helping learners organize and relate new information to prior knowledge in memory. There are two levels of attainment for the ZPD;

· Level 1 – the ‘present level of development’. This describes what the child is capable of doing without any help from others.

· Level 2 – the ‘potential level of development’. This means what the child could potentially be capable of with help from other people or ‘teachers’.


The gap between level 1 and 2 (the present and potential development) is what Vygotsky described as this zone of proximal development. He believed that through help from other, more knowledgeable people, the child can potentially gain knowledge already held by them. However, the knowledge must be appropriate for the child’s level of comprehension. Anything that is too complicated for the child to learn that isn’t in their ZPD cannot be learnt at all until there is a shift in the ZPD. When a child does attain their potential, this shift occurs and the child can continue learning more complex, higher level material.

Another important feature of this theory is scaffolding. When an adult provides support for a child, they will adjust the amount of help they give depending on their progress. For example, a child learning to walk might at first have both their hands held and pulled upwards. As they learn to support their own weight, the mother might hold both their hands loosely. Then she might just hold one hand, then eventually nothing. This progression of different levels of help is scaffolding.

Vygotsky provided a very influential theory which provided a meaningful social context in the development of learning. The emphasis of cultural knowledge was something unseen in Piaget’s theory.

· The zone of proximal development differentiates between a learner’s current development and their potential development.
· Scaffolding provides an effective way to reach potential levels of development, but only when different levels of assistance are given when required.
· Social and cultural tools are an important means of gaining intelligence.
· There is a close link between the acquisition of language and the development of thinking.

Reference

Web Quest, Retrieved on March 14, 2013, from http://psychohawks.wordpress.com/2010/11/03/theories-of-cognitive-development-lev-vygotsky/

Jean Piaget

Jean Piaget

(1896 - 1980)

Piaget was the first psychologist to make a systematic study of cognitive development. His contributions include a hypothesis of cognitive child development, detailed observational studies of cognition in children, and a cycle of simple but ingenious tests to reveal dissimilar cognitive abilities. According to Piaget, children are born with a very essential mental structure on which all subsequent learning and knowledge is based.

The objective of his theory is to explain the mechanisms and processes by which the infant, and then the child, develops into an individual who can motive and think using hypotheses. Cognitive development was a progressive reorganization of mental processes as a result of biological maturation and environmental understanding. Children build an understanding of the world around them, and then experience discrepancies among what they already know and what they discover in their environment.

Piaget’s Stages of Development



Evaluation of Piaget's Theory

Strengths
· He changed how people viewed the child’s world and their methods of studying children.
He was an inspiration to several who came after and took up his thoughts, and has created a huge amount of research which has increased our perceptive of cognitive development.
· His ideas have been of practical use in understanding and communicating among children, mainly in the field of teaching and learning.

Weaknesses
· He failed to believe the effect that the social setting and culture may have on cognitive development.
· Piaget endorsed out his studies with a handful of contestants – in the early studies he generally used his own children.
· As more than a few studies have shown Piaget underestimated the abilities of children because his tests were sometimes confusing or complex to understand.

Reference

Web Quest. Retrieved on March 8, 2013, from http://www.simplypsychology.org/piaget.html#stages

Behavioral Leaning Theory

Behavioral Leaning Theory

Learning can be defined as the process leading to relatively permanent behavioral change or potential behavioral change. In other words, as we learn, we alter the way we perceive our environment, the way we interpret the incoming stimuli, and therefore the way we interact, or behave. John B. Watson (1878-1958) was the first to study how the process of learning affects our behavior, and he formed the school of thought known as Behaviorism. The central idea behind behaviorism is that only observable behaviors are worthy of research since other abstraction such as a person’s mood or thoughts are too subjective.

Perhaps the most well known Behaviorist is B. F. Skinner (1904-1990). Skinner followed much of Watson’s research and findings, but believed that internal states could influence behavior just as external stimuli. He is considered to be a Radical Behaviorist because of this belief, although nowadays it is believed that both internal and external stimuli influence our behavior.

Classical Conditioning One important type of learning, Classical Conditioning, was actually discovered accidentally by Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936). During his experiments, he would put meat powder in the mouths of dogs who had tubes inserted into various organs to measure bodily responses. What he discovered was that the dogs began to salivate before the meat powder was presented to them. Then, the dogs began to salivate as soon as the person feeding them would enter the room. He soon began to gain interest in this phenomenon and abandoned his digestion research in favor of his now famous Classical Conditioning study.

Operant Conditioning Another type of learning, very similar to that discussed above, is called Operant Conditioning. The term "Operant" refers to how an organism operates on the environment, and hence, operant conditioning comes from how we respond to what is presented to us in our environment. It can be thought of as learning due to the natural consequences of our actions. The classic study of Operant Conditioning involved a cat who was placed in a box with only one way out; a specific area of the box had to be pressed in order for the door to open. The cat initially tries to get out of the box because freedom is reinforcing. In its attempt to escape, the area of the box is triggered and the door opens. The cat is now free. Once placed in the box again, the cat will naturally try to remember what it did to escape the previous time and will once again find the area to press. The more the cat is placed back in the box, the quicker it will press that area for its freedom. It has learned, through natural consequences, how to gain the reinforcing freedom.

Reference

Web Quest. Retrieved on February 27, 2013, from;

http://allpsych.com/psychology101/learning.html