Spring 2015 - From the Editor

Dear TEP Members:

As glad as I was to see the cool, crisp temperatures of the fall, I am ready for spring.  This winter has been rough.  My area did not see snow, but we have had our share of rain, cold, and gloomy clouds.  The sunshine has been a welcomed sight these past few days in Georgia.  My infant and I have enjoyed long walks to see the trees “waking up” and to hear the sounds of birds “talking”.  Drew is quickly approaching the toddler stage.  He started crawling a week ago, and now he is full-stream ahead!  I am sure that I will see the same learning curve when he learns to walk. 

I hope that the fall newsletter ignited a desire within you to incorporate some of new ideas into your classroom.  We will continue with Part II of my interviews with the four prolific authors in the field of educational psychology.  The topic for this issue will be pre-service and in-service teachers.  As a final note, the authors discuss their favorite theories.  Personally, I love information processing theory.  As a former high school special education teacher and math teacher, I found it quite practical in the classroom.  As teachers, we must teach students how to organize that long-term filing cabinet and how to retrieve a desired file of information efficiently.  When it comes to classroom management, I tend to lean toward B.F. Skinner.  I think it stems from my experience in special education.

Of course, the annual meeting of AERA will be held in Chicago next month.  I am sure that all of you are hoping for good weather in the Windy City.    With my son, I will not be able to attend this year’s conference.  I look forward to seeing everyone in Washington, DC!

                                                                                Jennifer  

Facts and figures

76% of public school teachers in the US were females in 2007—2008.

52% of public teachers in the US had a master’s or higher in 2007—2008..

8% of public teachers in the US left the profession during the 2008—2009 school year.

19% of US teachers have been formally mentored by another teacher.

28% of US teachers felt they were “very well prepared” to use student assessment techniques.

The world will need 6.8 million teachers in 2015 to provide every child with a primary education.

In Central African Republic, the pupil to teacher ratio is 1 teacher to 84 primary students.

(Sources:  NCES & UNESCO)

Favorite Theories -- Interview

Unfortunately, there are a variety of critical need fields in education (e.g., math, science, and special education).  These critical need fields also see high teacher turnover.  Can educational psychology assist with the retention of K-12 educators?  If so, how?

Ormrod:  Good question. I think the retention issue is something that must be systematically addressed at state and district-wide levels.  One obvious problem is that, especially for people in STEM fields, teacher salaries can’t compete with salaries in other career paths.  There’s also the teacher burnout issue:  Full-time teaching is hard work, and it’s even more difficult and energy-consuming when children (a) face significant physical or cognitive challenges and/or (b) come to school convinced that they either can’t or don’t want to tackle important instructional goals. There are many possible solutions to these problems, but in one way or another they all involve money.  As citizens, we need to convince our fellow taxpayers that raising intelligent, well-informed future generations is important for everyone’s well-being and requires significant financial support.

As for what we can do in our individual teacher education classes, it’s important that we try to entice our students into these high-need fields.  One simple way is to show them the data:  “If you want to find a good teaching position after you graduate, you’ll have the greatest success in math, science, technology, and special education.”  Also, we should describe the strengths of students with special needs—they often have many—and provide concrete, research-based strategies for working effectively with them.

Reese-Weber:  Educational psychology can assist with retention by providing theoretical and applicable guides for keeping students motivated and interested in content.  Teacher turnover may be a function of students’ lack of interest in the subject areas (e.g., math and science).  Learning how to engage students in content that is not typically viewed as engaging or interesting may increase teacher retention.

McInerney:  Being a teacher is a multifaceted career and it is simplistic to consider that educational psychology can assist with the retention of K-12 educators in any specific way.  Teachers leave the profession for a multitude of reasons, some of which are positive (e.g., to enhance their lives by taking on new professional challenges), some might be pragmatic (e.g., to earn a better salary) and some might be negative (e.g., lack of teacher efficacy or dissatisfaction).  Nevertheless, educational psychology does provide useful insights into some important aspects of successful and engaged teaching such as the developmental nature of teacher efficacy and the importance of teacher efficacy (both personal teaching efficacy and general teaching efficacy) for effective and rewarding teaching. Educational psychology also provides many insights into effective teaching and learning from the students’ perspective; indeed the major purpose of educational psychology textbooks and associated texts is to catalogue this wealth of knowledge for informing teaching practice.  It is well documented that teachers who have good pedagogical and content knowledge are less likely to leave the profession.  But, as I said before, there are so many reasons for teachers leaving the profession that it would be simplistic to argue that a good foundation in educational psychology would stem the flow of teachers from the profession.  However, conversely, those teachers who have low teacher efficacy, and poor pedagogical and content knowledge are certainly more at risk.

Eggen:  This is an important issue, and it’s one that doesn’t have easy solutions.  If easy solutions existed, we wouldn’t have the problem.

To the extent that educational psychology can make a contribution to this issue, it is with a focus on professional knowledge. Educational psychology can help teachers in all areas acquire the professional knowledge—particularly the pedagogical content knowledge, general pedagogical knowledge, and knowledge of learners and learning—needed to become expert teachers.  As teachers’ expertise increases, their ability to promote their students’ learning and make their teaching more efficient will also increase, and their teaching will become more rewarding for them.  If their teaching becomes more rewarding, they will be less likely to leave the profession. 

This is admittedly a complex, long-term, and demanding process, but the acquisition of professional knowledge is the essential route to expert instruction, and expertise is essential for retention in the profession.  Educational psychology can help teachers acquire this professional knowledge.

At the post-secondary level, retention of incoming freshmen has become a prominent issue along with progressing them in a timely manner toward graduation.  How can we, as educational psychologists, impact the retention and progression of these students beyond our classrooms?

Ormrod:  An infuriating fact is that many of our colleagues in other academic departments don’t think they have anything to learn about how best to teach or assess knowledge of their subject matter.  Accordingly, when I served as assistant to the Vice President for Academic Affairs at the University of Northern Colorado, I organized an all-day faculty in-service event in which faculty members had no classes and instead attended various sessions related to effective teaching practices.  As it turned out, I couldn’t attend the in-service myself because I was in the hospital delivering my son Jeff that day, so I wasn’t able to observe how many faculty actually showed up or how well things went.  Rumors led me to believe that the faculty members who most needed the in-service were those least likely to attend.

Perhaps a more effective strategy might be to collaborate with colleagues in other disciplines to write articles about effective teaching and assessment practices, as I once did with geographer friend David Cole in the teaching-oriented Journal of Geography.  In general, we educational psychologists tend to talk among ourselves using our discipline-specific lingo (often with a fair amount of know-it-all arrogance) and then wonder why no one else listens to us or reads our work.

Reese-Weber:  Our university provides freshmen who are at-risk with faculty and student mentors to help provide support and modeling of successful skills.

McInerney:  The retention and progression of students is an important issue as student dropping-out reflects a potentially great wastage of talent.  Educational psychologists can help by researching the reasons for the ‘drop-out’, and if these reasons are related to motivational reasons, sense of self reasons, and/or identity reasons then the educational psychologists may be able advise and counsel appropriately. If the reasons are related to a change of interest, enhanced job opportunities, and so on, then these factors may lie outside the influence of educational psychologists.  If the question more specifically relates to our own classes, educational psychologists can inspire students about the worth of the teaching profession, and help arm them with a battery of skills and attitudes to withstand any hard-times they may fall upon that might challenge their resolve to become teachers. However, it is important to note that a certain level of wastage is healthy in a system because students who decide they are not well suited to the teaching profession should dropout, rather than becoming unhappy and unfulfilled teachers.

Eggen:  The solution here is similar to the solution to the problem presented in previous item.  The way we use educational psychology to improve the retention and progression of students is through the quality of our educational psychology courses.  If students leave our educational psychology classes believing that they have learned little that is useful in the real world of teaching, they will be less likely to stay in teacher preparation programs.  On the other hand, if they leave our courses believing that they have acquired essential professional knowledge and skills—the knowledge and skills needed to help them become expert teachers, they will be less likely to drop out of teacher preparation programs.

From my experience, students have a difficult time applying the theories and concepts of educational psychology into their classroom practice.  For the instructors who teach pre-service and in-service teachers, how can we make those theories and concepts more practical and useful for the students?

 Ormrod:  For a long time I’ve been trying to convince my colleagues across the nation that organizing an educational psychology course around specific theories (a unit on behaviorism, a unit on constructivism, etc.) isn’t the best approach to take. Think about it: When teachers face difficult problems in their classrooms, how many of them are likely to ask themselves, “Hmm, how might I apply sociocultural theory in this situation?” Very few, I suspect.

Instead, as I increasingly gained experience teaching educational psychology, I gradually moved from a theories-based approach to a big-ideas organization structure that focuses on basic principles (which often transcend particular theories) and their applications. I describe this approach in a chapter in the upcoming book Challenges and Innovations in Educational Psychology Teaching and Learning (M. C. Smith & N. DeFrates-Densch, Eds.), to be released sometime in mid-to-late 2015. A big-ideas approach has been slow to catch on, however, as manifested in the fact that many more instructors use my Educational Psychology: Developing Learners book (which is organized partly around theories) than my shorter Essentials of Educational Psychology book (which takes a big-ideas approach).

In addition, not only must we conduct regular activities in which students must apply general principles and concepts to actual or realistic classroom scenarios and problems—that’s a no-brainer—but we must also assess students’ ability to apply what they’re learning. For example, when I taught undergraduate educational psychology courses (which I did fairly often up through 2008), one key assignment was for students to develop a lesson plan in which they not only spelled out what they would do in teaching a certain topic or skill but also why they would teach it that way, with their reasons being based on principles and theories of learning, cognition, child development, and/or motivation. It’s the latter component—thinking about the whys—that is too often missing in lesson planning.

A focus on application is possible even in multiple-choice tests. For instance, a test item might ask something such as “Which one of the following is the best example of teacher scaffolding?” and then present four choices depicting concrete teacher behaviors. Alternatively, an item might present a one-paragraph classroom scenario followed by four possible theoretical explanations of why events unfolded as they did.

Reese-Weber:  There are several ways that theories and concepts can be taught in practical and applicable ways. First, instructors should use multiple examples of concepts within the educational setting. Second, students should be asked to create multiple examples of concepts. Third, students should be asked to read case studies, view videos of classroom interactions, or observe in classrooms and connect theory and concepts to those experiences. For example, in my course, students are asked to read a case study and then apply multiple theoretical frameworks to that same case.

McInerney:  I am not convinced that students have a difficult time applying the theories and concepts of educational psychology into their classroom practice. It seems to me that this opinion reflects a stereotype about the lack of perceived usefulness of principles and practices drawn from educational psychology and psychology more generally. In educational psychology courses with which I am familiar, classroom-based examples are emphasized, and workshops designed to allow students to practice the relevant skills drawn from theory and research. On any visit to contemporary classrooms one would see a vast array of pedagogical techniques being employed that have their roots in learning and motivation theory. At the most elementary level, information on the importance of feedback, the usefulness of active involvement of students in learning, the effectiveness of various motivational strategies, the importance of well structured learning episodes, and, in general, information on how to develop powerful learning environments are all clearly drawn from educational psychology, and easily implemented in classrooms. I do not think students should have a difficult time applying these and other theories, principles and practices unless absolutely incompetent instructors have taught them.

Eggen:  I believe this is the single most important issue that exists in the teaching of educational psychology. Students often leave their educational psychology classes with essentially “inert” knowledge. They can describe each of the components of the classic model of human memory, for example, but they have little idea of how it can be applied in the real world of P-12 classrooms. This helps us understand why many faculty members in departments such as curriculum and instruction believe educational psychology is essentially irrelevant and has little to offer with respect to teacher preparation. This is a huge paradox because educational psychology arguably should be the most important class pre-service teachers take in their teacher-preparation programs.

                The solution is simple (but admittedly not necessarily easy). Pre-service and in-service teachers must have direct and concrete experiences with applying the theories in their educational psychology courses. As I said in my response to item 2, if they don’t have these experiences, their understanding of the theories won’t transfer. This means that educational psychology instructors must help pre-service and in-service teachers understand the concepts and theories of educational psychology, but they must also directly focus on applications in their own teaching. Pre- and in-service teachers must see concrete examples of the theories being applied to topics they will teach in the P-12 world. Simply “describing” and “talking about” applications isn’t enough. Doing so isn’t significantly different from the emphasis on teacher-centered instruction and rote memorization that is a problem in today’s P-12 classrooms.

                Again, and I’m saying this for the sake of emphasis, the idea that students should learn theory in their educational psychology classes and applications in their methods course is misguided. Students’ understanding won’t transfer. (Part of the problem is the fact that most methods instructors don’t understand the content of educational psychology well enough to help students apply it in their teaching.)

                If we, as educational psychology instructors, want our students to be able to apply the concepts and theories of educational psychology with their students, we must teach the applications ourselves. Again, teach, not simply discuss, these applications. 

As an educational psychologist, I tend to favor a few theories.  What theories would you refer to as your “favorites”?  Why?

Ormrod:  As I write my books, I try very hard not to play favorites, partly because I tend to think eclectically rather than exclusively within one theoretical framework.  My undergraduate training in psychology in the late 1960s was almost entirely within a behaviorist framework, with just a smidgeon of Piaget’s theory thrown into my developmental psychology class.  When I focused on educational psychology in graduate school in the early 1970s, the field was very quickly moving toward a more cognitive orientation.  After Ulric Neisser came to campus to give a lecture on this relatively new approach, his groundbreaking book Cognitive Psychology (1967) became required reading and opened up a whole new world and way of thinking for me.  As the field has more recently moved in contextualist directions (e.g., by building on Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory), I’ve gradually moved with it, although in this case through my own independent readings rather than through explicit training.  In general, I’m a staunch advocate of “mix-and-match”:  Different theories are useful in different situations and can help us look at educational problems from different angles.

Still, I must confess that my heart lies in a blend of information processing and constructivist theories, in large part because of my graduate school years.  In fact, Neisser’s Cognitive Psychology effectively integrated information processing and constructivist ideas, to the point that debates between information processing theorists and constructivists have never made much sense to me.  Another early game changer—for others as well as for myself—was Bransford and Franks’ 1971 article in the journal Cognitive Psychology.

Reese-Weber:  Social learning theory is one of my favorites.  I strongly believe that the demonstration or modeling of social skills, emotions, academic skills (reading, writing, completing math problems), time management skills, and many other important aspects in educational settings is key to facilitating learning.  For example, as stated above, instructors should provide numerous examples of concepts and then ask students to do the same.

McInerney:  As an educational psychology teacher and textbook writer, I am eclectic.  I believe that all contemporary theories of learning and teaching, and associated theories such as motivation theories, have something to offer.  There is no one approach suitable to all situations, and teachers should be armed with many different skills to enhance effective learning. However, as an academic educational psychologist and researcher, I focus on motivation theory, and, in particular Personal Investment Theory (see Maehr, M. L. & McInerney, D. M. (2004). Motivation as personal investment. In D. M. McInerney & S. Van Etten (Eds.), Research on multiculteducation and international perspectives Series: Vol.4. Big Theories Revisited (pp.61-90). Greenwich, CT: Information Age, and King, R. B., McInerney, D. M. (2014). Culture’s consequences on student motivation: Capturing universality and variability through personal investment theory. Educational Psychologist, 49, 175-198.)

PI theory focuses on how persons choose to invest their energy, talent, and time in particular tasks and is particularly helpful in studying motivation in diverse settings.  It does not assume that people from a given culture or social group will choose to invest their effort in the same set of activities.  Neither does it assume that they invest their effort for the same reasons.  PI theory rests on the assumption that whether persons will invest themselves in particular activities or domains (e.g., academics, sports, work) depends on the interaction among three components: sense of self (who am I?), perceived goals (what do I want to achieve?), and facilitating conditions (what is the environment like?).  The reason I focus on this theory is that it provides a much broader schema for examining motivation in school settings than the more restricted schemas provided by achievement goal theory, attribution theory, self-regulation theory, self-determination theory and a range of other theories of motivation popular in educational psychology today.

Eggen:  I have a number of “favorites.” The general pattern that exists in all my favorites is their application in the real world, both the real world of teaching and the real world as we live it in our daily lives.

So, to begin, I am a big fan of both Piaget’s and Vygotsky’s theories of cognitive development.  Piaget’s concepts of equilibrium and centration explain a great deal of behavior in both classrooms and in the real world. For example, even though centration is considered to be characteristic of the thinking of young children, we see it frequently illustrated in adult behavior.  Also, both theories help us understand why experience is so important for learning and development, and the emphasis on experience even relates to neuroscience research focusing on our brains’ neuroplasticity.  This research suggests that with the right kinds of experiences we can literally become “smarter.”  This is one of the most exciting research findings in many years.  As we continue to acquire experiences, our development advances throughout our lives. These are theories that apply to all of us—children and adults alike—and they apply to us every day.  Vygotsky’s emphasis on the use of language is also powerful. This emphasis suggests that we should have our students use as much language as possible to support their developing understanding.  The use of language may be even more important in math and science, where it is often under-used.

Information processing is another of my favorites.  Although criticized in some respects, it arguably has more implications for classroom practice than any other theory. For instance, it helps us understand that to promote learning we must first have our students’ attention; then we must ensure to the extent possible that our students accurately perceive our examples and other representations.  Perhaps most important, it helps us understand that working memory, because of its limitations, can easily be overloaded, and teachers often do overload students’ working memories with lengthy lectures and explanations.  It helps us understand a common teachers’ lament, “I explained it so carefully, and it was as if they didn’t hear a word I said.” It has many more applications, such as suggestions for promoting meaningful encoding and the power of metacognition.

Constructivism is likely a favorite of all educational psychology instructors, and it is certainly one of mine.  The reason it’s a favorite is that it is so “real.”  For instance, we know that, fundamentally, we all want our experiences to make sense.  So, to meet this goal we construct knowledge that makes sense to us.  This helps us understand why students sometimes have and retain misconceptions.  Individuals construct the misconceptions because the misconceptions make sense to the individuals (and help them achieve and maintain equilibrium).  This also helps us understand why simply explaining often does little to eliminate misconceptions. Until a misconception no longer makes sense to individuals, they are likely to retain it.  Regarding misconceptions, I believe that some exist with respect to constructivism.  For instance, it is a theory—or principle—of learning, but it is sometimes misconstrued as a theory of instruction, as in “constructivist instruction.”  Constructivist instruction doesn’t exist; it is a principle of learning, not instruction.  Constructivism has important and powerful implications for teaching, which is another reason it’s one of my favorites.  For instance, it helps us understand why providing high-quality experiences for our students is so important (they are what students use to construct their knowledge and meet standards), why interacting with students is essential, and why assessment is one of the most important aspects of the teaching-learning process.

Self-determination theory is another of my favorites.  For instance, it helps us understand why we see so many people attempting to demonstrate how competent or “smart” they are, why autonomy and self-direction are so important for people, and why we need to feel connected to others.  The needs described by self-determination theory are real for all of us, and they have powerful implications for the way we teach and the way we live.

Goal theory is also one of my favorites, and I have applied in my own life in areas such as exercise and weight control.  If, and this is a big if, we could get students to commit to goals, this goal commitment is one of the most powerful motivators that exist.  However, getting students to commit to moderately challenging but attainable and measurable goals is very difficult, so goal theory is often difficult to apply in classrooms.

Finally, I am a fan of expectancy x value theory.  For instance, it helps us understand why practical application is motivating; it helps us understand how to promote intrinsic interest in students, and it also helps us understand why success on trivial tasks is not motivating.  I could offer other examples of “favorites,” but I have already been somewhat lengthy, so I’ll stop here.

Biographies of the Featured Authors

Paul Eggen has worked in higher education for nearly 40 years.  He is a consultant for public schools and colleges in his university service area and has provided support to teachers in 12 states.  Paul has also worked with teachers in international schools in 23 countries in Africa, South Asia, the Middle East, Central America, South America, and Europe.  He has published several articles in national journals, is the co-author or co-editor of seven books, and presents regularly at national and international conferences.  Paul is strongly committed to public education. His wife is a middle school teacher in a public school, and his two children are graduates of public schools and state universities.

Marla Reese-Weber is a Professor in the Psychology Department at Illinois State University.  She received her Bachelor’s degree in Psychology and Master’s degree in Clinical Psychology at Illinois State University.  Marla went to The Ohio State University and received her doctorate degree in Human Development and Family Science.  Her research interests continue to be on how the family context influences adolescents and emerging adults (i.e., 18-27 year olds), specifically their romantic relationships.  Marla has taught several undergraduate and graduate courses in her department, but the two she has most often taught are Educational Psychology and Adolescent Development.  Dr. Reese-Weber is the co-author of an educational psychology textbook, EdPsych Modules, that provides a modular approach and includes multiple case studies.

Professor Dennis M.   McInerney began his career as a primary and secondary teacher in Sydney, Australia. He joined a teachers college in 1975 as a lecturer and progressed from there to a variety of academic, administrative, and research posts at the University of Western Sydney, The National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, and The Hong Kong Institute of Education.  Professor McInerney began his research career with his B.Ed and M.Ed (Hons) theses examining the development of multiculturalism within Australian schools.  This work was followed by his doctoral research examining the motivational determinants of school achievement for non-traditional Aboriginal students in New South Wales.  From these early research roots, Professor McInerney developed an extensive research agenda examining motivation, learning, and self-processes among a diverse range of cultural groups, including urban Indigenous Aboriginal and remote Indigenous Aboriginal groups in the Northern Territory of Australia, Navajo and Yavapai Indians in the United States, Chinese in Hong Kong, Malays, Chinese and South Asians in Singapore, and Lebanese and other immigrant groups in Australia.  The major focus of these studies has been the psychological determinants of school engagement of underachieving minority groups.  A range of competitive grants has supported these studies.  Professor McInerney has published over 300 research articles, edits two international research series, Research on Sociocultural Influences on Motivation and Learning (Vols 1-10) and International Advances in Self Research (Vols 1-4).  He has written major textbooks, including Educational Psychology: Constructing Learning (Pearson 6th Edition, 2013), Helping Kids Achieve Their Best: Understanding and Using Motivation in the Classroom (Allen & Unwin, 2000 and republished by Information Age Publishing, 2005), and Publishing Your Psychology Research (Sage and Allen & Unwin, 2001).  

Jeanne Ellis Ormrod is currently Professor Emerita of Psychological Sciences at the University of Northern Colorado.  The “Emerita” means that she officially retired from her position there, but she isn’t really retired at all.  After returning to her native New England in 1998, she taught several courses at the University of New Hampshire as an adjunct professor, and she continues to give occasional guest lectures elsewhere.  But. she now devotes most of her time to updating and (she hopes) improving her textbooks, including Human Learning, Essentials of Educational Psychology, Educational Psychology: Developing Learners, and Practical Research.

Nominations for TEP SIG elections 2015

Dear TEP SIG members:

Now is the time to serve your SIG and gain valuable leadership experience!  if you are interested in serving as a part of the SIG leadership team, please send in your self-nomination by Monday, October 6, 2014.

Serving as a member of the SIG leadership team is a rewarding and enjoyable experience - we are a highly collaborative and collegial group!  As a member of the leadership team, you get the opportunity to work with colleagues across the continent and to shape the efforts of our SIG.

Elections will be held early in 2015 and newly elected officers will take office at the close of the 2015 annual meeting.

Below are descriptions for each of our elected offices. 

In addition, you will need to provide the following information to me: 

 *   Your full name;
 *   Your institutional affiliation;
 *   A biographical statement, which can be up to 250 words. 

If you have any questions, please email me at cynthia.bolton@armstrong.edu

Thank you,

Cynthia Bolton
Past TEP SIG Chair/Nominating Committee


Chair-elect/Program Chair (elected for a 1-year term, continuing the next year as Chair, and the following year as Past Chair) The Chair-elect/Program Chair will serve as TEP Program Chair for the 2015 AERA meeting in Chicago.  These duties include, but are not be limited to, submitting the call for proposals to AERA; soliciting proposals via the SIG website or other forums; recruiting members to serve as reviewers, discussants, and chairs; receiving proposals and assigning them to reviewers for blind review; deciding on proposals to be accepted and scheduling them in appropriate formats; in consultation with others on the Executive Committee, deciding on a substantive format for part of the business meeting and arranging for such; publicizing our annual meeting sessions; and submitting all required program-related forms to AERA. The Chair-elect/Program Chair becomes the SIG Chair the following year. The TEP SIG Chair is responsible for the general administration of the SIG and acts as liaison between the SIG and AERA. The Chair presides at the annual business meeting.  The Chair then becomes the Past Chair, who is in charge of the nominations process.


Secretary/Treasurer (elected for a 1-year term) The Secretary/Treasurer is responsible for any official correspondence, keeps the minutes of all business meetings, and compiles and disseminates the minutes to members of the SIG.  The Secretary/Treasurer also keeps track of the financial status and membership of the SIG and reports on these to members periodically.


Newsletter Editor (elected for a 1-year term) The Newsletter Editor is responsible for soliciting information that relates to the purposes of the SIG from SIG members and outside constituencies and publishing that information at least three times a year (generally, Fall, Spring, Summer) in a newsletter that is shared with all SIG members via the SIG listserv.


Webmaster/Blog/Wiki Master (elected for a 1-year term) The Webmaster/Blog/Wiki master is responsible for maintaining and sharing all electronic sources of information that relate to the purposes of the SIG, including our TEP Blog, the TEP Wiki, and the TEP website at aera.net.

News

AERA HEADS TO THE WINDY CITY

The 2015 Annual Meeting of AERA will be held in Chicago, Illinois beginning on Thursday, April 16 and ending on Monday, April 20, 2015. In addition to the research presentations and networking opportunities, “The Windy City” has numerous attractions, including the Navy Pier, the Field Museum, the Sears Tower, and The Magnificent Mile down Michigan Avenue. The theme for this year’s meeting is “Towards Justice: Culture, Language, and Heritage in Education Research and Praxis”. According to Joyce E. King, AERA President, and Beverly M. Gordon, Annual Meeting Program Chair, the theme should focus our attention on local and global justice. The pro-gram will examine whether or not justice is an interest in cur-rent educational research and policy-making. If you submitted a proposal, you will be notified of acceptance or rejection on November 3, 2014.

CSU HOST IES GRANT WRITING SEMINAR

Columbus State University in Columbus, Georgia, will host an Institute of Education Sciences (IES) Grant Writing Seminar on Friday, October 17, 2014. At the session, the participants will sit in groups and interact with fellow colleagues in order to get peer input during the session. The groups will be able to submit various examples to Dr. Meredith Larson, Education Research Analyst with IES, who will lead the seminar. This interactive format will allow for immediate feedback from Dr. Larson. Her presentation will focus on writing an IES research grant proposal, including the abstract, common pitfalls, and the major sections of the proposal. After the interactive presentation, lunch will be provided. Following lunch, there will be break-out sessions with IES Grantees from the University of Georgia, Georgia State University, and Florida State University. At these sessions, the IES Grantees will discuss their funded projects, your IES grant proposals, and offer possible suggestions for future submissions. Handouts will be provided. All faculty, staff, and graduate students are encouraged to attend. For more information, contact Jennifer Brown (brown_jennifer2@columbusstate.edu) or check out the information website, te.columbusstate.edu/grantwriting. The deadline to register is Friday, October 3, 2014.

Eastern Educational Research Association (EERA) is accepting proposals for the 2015 Annual Meeting, which will be held in Sarasota, Florida on February 26—27. The EERA conference has been held each spring for nearly 40 years and brings together the leading scholars from the eastern and mid-western United States. The refereed conference typically hosts over 300 scholars, meaning that the conference is small enough to network and connect with colleagues, but it is large enough to offer a wide range of ideas, research methods, and topics. In addition to research papers, roundtable discussions, symposia, posters, and panels, there will be two keynote addresses featuring Stephen Miles, Provost of the New College of Florida, and Marueen Thomas, Curator of Education at the Ringling Museum. Proposals can be submitted online at www.eeraonline.org/conference. The deadline for submission is Wednesday, November 12, 2014.

Changing Demographics & Making a Difference in Schools - Discussion

With the changing demographics (e.g., increasing Hispanic population and increasing number of students from low socio-economic households) of the K-12 classroom, how can educational psychology assist teachers with creating an effective learning environment and improving student achievement?

Ormrod: An essential first step is to enhance teachers’ understandings of students’ every-day life circumstances, including students’ physical and social environments, cultural practices, and (often implicit) cultural worldviews. This step is easier said than done, as teachers at all levels—including ourselves!—tend to have trouble looking outside their own belief systems and ways of doing things to acknowledge that other beliefs and ways of doing things might be just as “good” or “right” (with some exceptions, obviously). As Barbara Rogoff has put it, “Like the fish that is unaware of water until it has left the water, people often take their own community’s ways of doing things for granted.”

As teacher educators, we can’t possibly engender complete awareness and understanding of diverse social and cultural groups in a single semester, but we can make a good start by engaging students in conversations with people from varying backgrounds, ideally outside the classroom and, even better, outside the local community. As an illustration, I once took a group of teacher in-terns on a day-long field trip to an inner-city K–8 school that served predominantly low-income immigrant families. We were able to observe the truly inspiring things the school was doing for students and their families, but we also heard stories from the principal and teachers about the many challenges some of their students faced—quite eye-opening.

But, our strategies must extend well beyond show-and-tell activities. In our educational psychology courses, we must regularly integrate social and cultural diversity into the topics we discuss, the questions we ask, the assignments we give, and the ways in which we assess our own students’ learning and achievement. True multicultural education doesn’t come to a halt at Grade 12; it must also continue throughout higher education, including teacher education.

Reese-Weber: Instructors teaching educational psychologist need to understand themselves the difficulties among underrepresented populations. For example, I was awarded a small grant at my university to redesign my educational psychology course to include more information on urban education. This redesign included spending three days my-self in a underrepresented com-munity observing at the schools and interacting with the community leaders. Now, I take students to that same community for a day to observe in the schools and participant in the community. In addition, research should focus on determining what characteristics exist in current, successful schools system within underrepresented populations.

McInerney: Educational Psychology, as well being a cognate discipline, distils from a range of ‘psychologies’ such as developmental and personality psychology, principles by which educators may understand the learning and teaching processes. Over the last decades there has been an increasing interest in, and attention to, the diversity of learners, and that a ‘one size fits all’ approach to creating an effective learning environment is no longer considered optimal. Good contemporary educational psychology textbooks emphasize the need to engage in research/ evidence-based practices to enhance effective and diverse learning environments for all students in order to improve student achievement (e.g., McInerney, D. M. (2013) Educational Psychology: Constructing Learning (Pearson 6th Edition)). Teachers concerned with potentially marginalized and underperforming groups have a wealth of research-based techniques at their finger-tips if they read the appropriate professional literature and, in particular, read contemporary educational psychology text-books, and books in specialized areas, such as enhancing motivation, understanding information processing, and so on.

Eggen: Educational psychology has much to offer with respect to the increasing diversity of our students. For instance, educational psychology helps us understand that students’ new learning depends on their existing background knowledge and experiences, and students will bring widely varying backgrounds with them to our classrooms. If students lack the school-related experiences needed to succeed academically, teachers must provide these experiences in the form of high-quality examples and other representations that will provide the necessary background needed to help students understand the topics teachers are teaching. The need to provide these experiences is particularly important for students who come from low socio-economic households because these students often lack the school-related experiences needed to prepare them for success in school.

Reese-Weber: Educational psychologists need to emphasis research findings that support the idea that teaching critical thinking skills will enhance standardized test performance.

McInerney: I am not sure the premise that emphasizing improving standardized test scores implies that classroom instruction becomes teacher-centered and involves rote memorization. Data on this would need to be provided to convince me that this is the case. Improving standardized test scores in not inimical to engaging in ‘best practice’ in teaching, and assist-ing students to become critical thinkers. This question is essentially one regarding appropriate pedagogy, which is related to, but not identical with, educational psychology. Educational psychology informs pedagogical practices and teachers should be mindful of the wealth of insights into effective learning and teaching that are provided by research related to learning strategies, information processing, motivation, self-regulation, metacognition, constructivism, and so on. There are more ways to skin a cat than one, and many routes to enhanced standardized test scores than resorting to teacher-centered classrooms and rote memorization. I think well prepared teachers are quite aware of this.

Eggen: Educational psychology can assist teachers with teaching content in two essential ways. First, it can help teachers understand the way students learn most effectively, and, as teachers better understand the learning process, they will also understand that rote memorization is not the most effective way to help students perform well on standardized tests. So, by emphasizing critical thinking and the deep understanding of topics, teachers are both increasing their students’ long-term learning and increasing the likelihood that their students will perform well on standardized tests.

Simply understanding the way students learn isn’t enough however. Teachers need to see theories of learning directly and concretely applied to standards teachers are expected to help their students meet, and topics teachers are actually teaching. We all know that transfer is very specific. Believing that the role of educational psychology is to teach theory, and teachers should learn specific applications of the theories in their methods courses is misguided; it doesn’t happen. If educational psychology is to help teachers effectively meet standards and go beyond rote memorization, they must understand learning, development, and motivation, and they must also have experiences—in their educational psychology courses—in applying these theories with real-world standards and topics. If teachers don’t have experiences with application, the theories taught in educational psychology classes won’t transfer. This helps us under-stand why we see the emphasis on teacher-centered instruction and rote memorization in the P-12 world.

Ormrod: One common misconception, even among teachers, is that rote memorization is the best strategy for doing well on standardized achievement tests and other high-stakes assessments. For instance, I once co-taught a middle school studies class with a teacher whom I overheard telling a struggling student, “It’s easy. You just memorize it!”

Something I’ve routinely done in my classes and as an occasional guest speaker in other teacher education programs is to try to dispel this myth, often by conducting little in-class “experiments” in which some students are able to learn new material meaningfully and elaboratively while others have little choice but to resort to relatively meaningless learning; the differences between the two groups’ performances are usually pretty dramatic. Then, I continue to hammer away at the point that the human brain and mind are not tape recorders or video cameras, nor are they sponges that “soak up” information—instead, they’re active meaning-makers, and their “owners” (i.e., human learners) can be systematically taught how to make meaning more strategically and effectively. That said, we need to note the increasing trend of standardized tests away from factual knowledge and toward higher-level thinking skills. The wide-spread adoption of the Common Core standards is certainly helping us move in that direction. Anyone who hasn’t looked at these standards should do so (www.corestandards.org). A lot of the paranoia about Common Core—and many residents in my own small town in New Hampshire are paranoid to the point of being hysterical—comes from ignorance about the nature and origins of these standards.

BIOGRAPHIES OF THE FEATURED AUTHORS

Paul Eggen has worked in higher education for nearly 40 years. He is a consultant for public schools and colleges in his university service area and has provided support to teachers in 12 states. Paul has also worked with teach-ers in international schools in 23 countries in Africa, South Asia, the Middle East, Central America, South America, and Eu-rope. He has published several articles in national journals, is the co-author or co-editor of seven books, and presents regularly at national and international conferences. Paul is strongly committed to pub-lic education. His wife is a middle school teacher in a public school, and his two children are graduates of public schools and state universities.

Marla Reese-Weber is a Professor in the Psychology Department at Illinois State University. She received her Bachelor’s degree in Psychology and Master’s degree in Clinical Psycholo-gy at Illinois State Universi-ty. Marla went to The Ohio State University and re-ceived her doctorate degree in Human Development and Family Science. Her research interests continue to be on how the family context influences adoles-cents and emerging adults (i.e., 18-27 year olds), spe-cifically their romantic rela-tionships. Marla has taught several undergraduate and graduate courses in her department, but the two she has most often taught are Educational Psychology and Adolescent Develop-ment. Dr. Reese-Weber is the co-author of an educa-tional psychology textbook, EdPsych Modules, that provides a modular ap-proach and includes multi-ple case studies.

Professor Dennis M. McInerney began his ca-reer as a primary and second-ary teacher in Sydney, Austral-ia. He joined a teachers college in 1975 as a lecturer and pro-gressed from there to a variety of academic, administrative, and research posts at the Uni-versity of Western Sydney, The National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological Univer-sity, Singapore, and The Hong Kong Institute of Education. Professor McInerney began his research career with his B.Ed and M.Ed (Hons) theses exam-ining the development of multi-culturalism within Australian schools. This work was fol-lowed by his doctoral research examining the motivational determinants of school achieve-ment for non-traditional Abo-riginal students in New South Wales. From these early re-search roots, Professor McIner-ney developed an extensive research agenda examining motivation, learning, and self-processes among a diverse range of cultural groups, in-cluding urban Indigenous Abo-riginal and remote Indigenous Aboriginal groups in the North-ern Territory of Australia, Nav-ajo and Yavapai Indians in the United States, Chinese in Hong Kong, Malays, Chinese and South Asians in Singapore, and Lebanese and other immigrant groups in Australia. The major focus of these studies has been the psychological determinants of school engagement of under-achieving minority groups. A range of competitive grants has supported these studies. Pro-fessor McInerney has published over 300 research articles, edits two international research series, Research on Sociocul-tural Influences on Motivation and Learning (Vols 1-10) and International Advances in Self Research (Vols 1-4). He has written major textbooks, in-cluding Educational Psycholo-gy: Constructing Learning (Pearson 6th Edition, 2013), Helping Kids Achieve Their Best: Understanding and Us-ing Motivation in the Class-room (Allen & Unwin, 2000 and republished by Infor-mation Age Publishing, 2005), and Publishing Your Psycholo-gy Research (Sage and Allen & Unwin, 2001).

Jeanne Ellis Ormrod is currently Professor Emerita of Psychological Sciences at the University of Northern Colorado. The “Emerita” means that she officially retired from her position there, but she isn’t really retired at all. After return-ing to her native New Eng-land in 1998, she taught several courses at the Uni-versity of New Hampshire as an adjunct professor, and she continues to give occa-sional guest lectures else-where. But. she now devotes most of her time to updating and (she hopes) improving her textbooks, including Human Learning, Essen-tials of Educational Psychol-ogy, Educational Psycholo-gy: Developing Learners, and Practical Research.

FACTS AND FIGURES

 75.5% of public high school students gradu-ated on time in 2008-2009.

 8 states and the District of Columbia had a less than 70% graduation rate in 2008-2009.

 There were 132,200 schools in the U.S. in 2009-2010.

 19% of students attend-ed high-poverty public schools in 2009-2010.

 In 2011, 24% of U.S. public school students were Hispanic. That percentage is expected to increase to 30% in 2023.

 For 24 states and the District of Columbia, at least 50% of their schools did not make AYP in 2011.

 Percentage of public schools that do not make AYP varies by state, from 11% in Wis-consin to 89% in Flori-da in 2011.

(Sources: NCES & CEP)

2014-2015 SIG Board of Directors

 

SIG Chair

Angela M. O'Donnell

Professor

Graduate School of Education

Rutgers University

New Brunswick, NJ 08901

angela.odonnell@gse.rutgers.edu

Past Chair

Cynthia Bolton-Gary

Professor and Assistant Dean

College of Education

Armstrong Atlantic State University

Savannah, GA 31419

cynthia.bolton@armstrong.edu

Program Chair/Chair-Elect

Martha Strickland

Assistant Professor

School of Behavioral
Sciences & Education
Psychological and
Quantitative Foundations
School of Social
and Behavioral Sciences

Pennsylvania State University

University Park, PA 16802

mjs51@psu.edu

Secretary/Tresurer

Joyce L. Moore

Associate Professor

The University of Iowa

Iowa City, IA  52242

joyce-l-moore@uiowa.edu

Newsletter Editor

Jennifer L. Brown

Assistant Professor

Department of Teacher Education

Columbus State University

Columbus, GA 31907

brown_jennifer2@columbusstate.edu

TEP SIG Wiki & Webmaster

Zsuzsanna Szabo

Associate Professor

Marist College

Poughkeepsie, NY 12601

zsuzsanna.szabo@marist.edu