thethingsisee

Along my Educational Psychology course I have discovered new things about myself as a learner, and about my learning process. This course has helped me see my strengths and weaknesses, preferences, and habits as a learner. Some of the theories that helped me learn this semester, and that I could relate to were the Sociocultural Theory by Vygotsky, and the Social Cognitive Theory by Bandura.

         Vygotsky’s theory is all about a learner being a social individual. He believes that learning not only comes from being in school and memorizing things but also from being around others and the environment. Vygotsky believed in social constructivism, which is where individuals build up their knowledge within a social and cultural context. The social interactions and what they bring to the learning situation are interconnected. The Sociocultural theory proposes that formal learning in school pulls development to a new level. (Bohlin, Durwin, & Reese-Webber, 2009) I chose this theory because I can relate to the fact that I am someone who always likes working with other people, I enjoy learning new things from people who are smarter, or may know more about a certain topic than myself. Another thing I could relate to my personal life would be the Zone of Proximal Development, which is the difference between the actual developmental level and the level of potential development. I know understand, for example when I find something hard to understand in this course, I could go to someone who knows about the topic, such as my host teacher, or yourself, Dr. Strickland, and ask questions, so I could be able to reach my potential development. These people that are more capable are also known as psychological and cultural tools, which can help thinking and shape the development of more complex thought. If I had the chance to do it again, I think I would ask even more questions, there is no better way of learning something new than to ask questions and getting the concept, not only what it means but how it relates to your life.

         Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory focuses on models, imitators, and the environment needed for observational needed. Models are more likely to be imitated if they are similar to the imitator, have a high status, and competently display gender-appropriate behaviors that are of interest to the imitator. Observational learning can take place only when the imitator is paying attention, can remember the behaviors observed, and is motivated to imitate the behaviors. Behaviors are more likely to be imitated if the model was reinforced for the behavior, and less likely to be imitated id the model was punished for the behavior. When the model is not punished for behaviors that typically are punished, the behavior is likely to be imitated. Bandura also talks about self-efficacy, or the beliefs about one’s ability to be successful, is related to choosing the way you act, how much effort you put in to, and persistence and achievement. Self-regulation involves a recurring process among self-observation, self-judgment, and self-evaluation that boosts self-efficacy and promotes the setting of higher goals, the acknowledgment of academic success to the self, and enjoyment of learning activities. (Bohlin, Durwin, & Reese-Webber, 2009) This theory also related to me because, like I said earlier, I since I was younger, I have always been around older successful people, I have always admired my teachers, they were great models for me, and this is one of the main reasons why I chose this major, and this career. I look up to my professors, and this past semester, I learned a lot from observing. I think I had a good host teacher and her teaching style really motivated me to doing well in this course, and the rest of my education courses. One of the things that really motivated me, as well was when talking to some of my professors, my host teacher, and the school principal at the elementary school I observed, when I told them my plans as a professional, being a bilingual teacher, they all told me that I will have no trouble finding a job, this really helped my self-efficacy.

         Some of my strengths as a learner would be that I am a good listener, and I am a good note-taker. Some of my weaknesses can be the fact that I can be easily distracted when I am trying to do a task by myself, or when studying. Another thing would be that I like doing my schoolwork under pressure. I rather wait until the assignment is almost due to do my work. When learning new things I like relating them to my everyday life, which I think is very common in college, the material we learn is often related to my life, for example when babysitting children, I understand that they are at different learning, or cognitive levels, depending on their age.

One of the ways I can use the sociocultural theory as a professional would be by encouraging my students to be active learners, engaging in meaningful acquisitions of knowledge. I would consider my students’ level of thinking in designing curricula and activities, because students will benefit from experiences that are within their reach cognitively. I would link new concepts to my students’ prior knowledge, since Vygotsky believed that children’s initial ways of thinking provide the basis for new learning. I would provide multiple exposures to the content. Examining concept from different perspectives may help students to restructure or modify their existing knowledge and revisiting content in different context will promote transfer. Finally, I would recognize the cultural context in learning situations. I should consider how the social settings within the classroom, as well as the larger cultural context might affect the students’ learning.

         For the Social Cognitive theory myself as a teacher, can provide my students with successful models and accurate positive feedback on their performance to increase self-efficacy. In addition, if I have high self-efficacy for instruction and if I am in the school system with collective efficacy I could be more capable of increasing students’ self-efficacy. I can increase self-regulation among students by first providing a model and feedback and then giving students opportunities for independent learning.

         In conclusion, I am a social learner. I like being around others and learning from them. This could help me in my upcoming semester I will be more prepared mentally to learn new things, I can relate the new material that I will be learning to previous knowledge. I will most definitely ask as many questions as I can, in order to be able to understand the content at its maximum, and lastly I will get help from more capable peers, or professors to achieve my potential development.

 I observed the ESL classroom again, and Sergio was in there. He is an ELL student, that I mentioned in class I believe. (He’s the one who thinks I’m mean). He was working on his book report again, on the presentation part of it. Mrs N. wanted him to practice what he was going to say in class but he did not want to since I was there. I chose to work on his ESL book. He worked on vowels and consonants and their sounds.

I was sitting across from Sergio. He started kicking my shoe, so then I sat in a different way so he could not reach my feet. Then whenever Mrs. N. would turn around to write on the board he would make a face at me, or stick his tongue out like this:(not actual student). I think he was trying to get my attention, or trying to make me mad and make me yell at him, I am not sure, but I decided to ignore him and pretended that I didn’t notice that he was doing that. I am not sure why Sergio acted the way he did.

Every week, Mrs V. picks a student of the week, and on the bulletin board outside of her room she lets them put pictures up of themselves, their family. Usually they put up pictures of their favorite day, or pictures of the people they care of.  Sometimes they can bring in, for example if they like Penn State football, they would bring in a Penn State Logo magnet and hang it up, and stuff like that. 
This week it was Kim’s turn to put up her bulletin board. She is form Puerto Rico, and she put up pictures of when she was a baby, a picture of her family. She got to tell her classmates what the pictures were and why she picked them.

I think this helps the students self-motivation, mentioned in Module 17.

It makes the student feel important and they get to share who they are and where they come from to the rest of the class. 

Today after recess one of the girls in the class, Sam, had been having some drama with her friends. Earlier in the school year a new girl had joined their class, Kay. This girl was brand new to the school, and the district, she did not have many friends, and she is actually moving to a different school in the next few weeks. Kay has been known for having an attitude with the teachers. According to Sam, she was now trying to break up her friendship with Is and Dina. Kay had apparently been calling her friends name and blaming other people for them. Sam tried to tell Is that Kay was just trying to break their friendship apart, and that they should forgive her and let her be friends with all of the girls. I told Sam that she should listen to what all of her friends had to say and that she should forgive them because that is what friends do. I told her that Kay was going to move away to a different school pretty sure, and that she should not let her break up her friendship with the other girls, but for the time being they should let her play, but if she keeps being mean they should let her know that they don’t like that.

I really liked that Sam trusted me with her friend issues. I thought it was pretty sweet of her to try to get my opinion and that she asked for my advice. 

I relate this to Module 10, where students have models, and they are imitators. I think Sam thought I was nice enough to give her advice, and hopefully she made the right decision!

When I arrived at the classroom, the students weren’t there, they were in art class! When I got to the art room the students were working on making different puzzle pieces, but they weren’t normal puzzle pieces, they were funky ones. One of the instructions given was to put their name on the back of the piece, and the second instruction was that the students were to be creative and find shapes to their pieces, and decorate them. The teacher stated very clearly what was expected of them. The teacher uses a loud tone of voice to emphasize what was important. The teacher really wanted the students to use their imagination. One thing that caught my attention was when one student had a question, but he didn’t raise his hand. Everybody was talking, but the teacher screamed at the student and pointed at him saying “Are you raising your hand?!” All of the students got really quiet. This teacher kept using really loud/angry tones, and then he would make jokes and be silly with the students. It was pretty confusing to me, I couldn’t tell if the teacher was in a good mood, or what! I can only imagine how confusing it would have been for the students