Educational Psychology

Educational Psychology

Why do you teach in the way you do? How do learners learn in the way they do? Why are course books written in the way they are?

Here’s a brief overview of the influence of three approaches / theories in educational psychology on EFL. They inform the development of effective teaching techniques and the assessment of learners’ attitudes and progress as well as investigating the process whereby skills, attitudes, knowledge and concepts are acquired, understood, applied and extended.

1. Behaviourism.

Key names: Thorndike & Skinner.
The idea is that we learn by building associations between thinking and behaviour. From a stimulus, you get a response which has a consequence. You get the answer right and you’re rewarded (maybe praise or a gold star). You need a lot of drilling and practice in such things as letter shaping and grammar patterns, but can be encouraged through games and songs. The teacher is in control of the activity, timing, pace and materials. Stimuli are often provided through flashcards.
Drawbacks: Little attention to individual needs and interests; rigid, fixed routines and contexts may be rather artificial and practice mechanical.

2. Constructivism.

Key name: Piaget.
Here learning is seen as the result of interaction between thought and experience through a sequence of developmental stages. By being exposed to new experience we restructure our thoughts to create another, new state of affairs. The new is thus accommodated and assimilated. Learners are active participants in examining and discovering the world so play is important as is variety and stimulation; we use realia, colourful materials and encourage discovery.
A drawback might be the focus on the individual, disregarding the social dimension of learning.

3. Social Constructivism.

Key names: Vygotsky & Bruner.
There is here an emphasis on the social / cultural context of learning and interacting with others. A child develops when given scaffolding / support by someone more knowledgeable to help construct meaning. Pair and group work, projects, board games, drama and discussion activities are emphasized as well as giving help in the form of guided writing and pre-writing tasks. Reading skills such as skimming and scanning, prediction and guessing from context are promoted along with general learning strategies.
Drawbacks: classes may be noisy and unpredictable outcomes with the variety of teacher roles needed make the teaching more demanding.

We can probably recognize elements of all three ways of thinking about the nature of learning and thinking in our own work.
A couple of good books to get hold of on the subject:
Margaret Donaldson: Children’s Minds.
David Woods: How Children Think And Learn.