Educational Psychology

2 Pages 422 Words

Define educational psychology. Provide three reasons why and how exposure to educational psychology will help you become a better teacher?

Educational psychology is the application of psychology and psychological methods to the study of learning and teaching. It focuses on the interaction of human development, cognitive science, instructional methods, measurement and assessment. Research on effective teachers associates several teacher behaviors or practices with good teaching. (Education Psychology Evective Teaching)
The reason why educational psychology will help you become a better teacher is because as it states in the definition. Educational psychology focuses on the interaction of human development this is very import in undestanding your stundents.. If you understand your students then you will know what kind of teniques to use to be sucessful in the classroom. A good example would be buying car. You could easily drive the car without reading the mannual but when a problem occurs you would have to refer to it. If you read the manual before driving the car when some thing happens you will have an idea how to fix it. That is what educational psychology is it is a manual that gives you a general idea how to handle different situations that may occur in the classroom from displine to learning styles. It might not give the exact answer to the problem ,but it will give you an idea on why a problem is occuring and how to fix it.
Another reason why educational psychology is essential is for modivation Behavioral pychology states that behavior can change as a result of extrinsic motivatiors such as incrntives, rewards, and punishments. (P23) Modivation is the key in any learning statigy if the kids are modivated to learn the tranfer of learning process is easy. To modivate students you must use educational psycholoy. The difficult part is trying to figure out what paticular thing modivate each individavidual student. That is w...