9780135981948

Introduction

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Educational Psychology and Teaching

(1)

Case Studies and Teacher Education

(1)

Sample Case

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Analyzing Cases

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Sample Case Analysis and Decision

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Critique of Sample Analysis and Decision

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Organization of Cases

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PART 1 INTRODUCTION TO EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY

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1 Science or Art? An educational psychologist is employed as a consultant by a school district to assist in the development of a merit pay plan for teachers. When he meets with the school district planning committee of administrators, teachers, and parents, questions arise regarding the relationship between educational psychology as a science and teaching as an art.

(8)

2 Quality Control The educational psychologist in Case 1 has been awarded a contract by the school district to develop, implement, and train school personnel in the procedures for evaluating teachers for merit pay purposes. When he meets with the school district development committee, he finds them divided on such issues as the nature and measurement of effective teaching, the value of process-product research methodology, the use of classroom observation procedures, and the strengths and weaknesses of using standardized achievement tests on a pretest-posttest basis as a measure of student learning.

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PART 2 HUMAN DEVELOPMENT

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3 To Retain or Not to Retain? A first-grade elementary teacher and the building principal meet to make a promotion-retention decision about Juan Rodriguez, a physically small, somewhat emotionally immature boy from a large Hispanic family in which English is a second language. Juan has difficulty reading and writing English, and his father becomes upset when he learns that they are considering retaining Juan.

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4 Splitting the Differences A Math 8 teacher attempts to deal with a class somewhat evenly divided by ability level by working with pupils in homogeneous groups. The teacher is not sure what to do when this creates hostilities between the groups, evaluation problems, and upsets some of the parents.

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5 Baiting the Hook The Math 8 teacher in case 4 tries to figure out why a student who has an IQ of 128 only makes C's and only does those assignments that interest him. The teacher finds out that the boy has no close friends, no clear vocational goals, but enjoys fishing with his father and has become something of an expert on casting and lures. How can this teacher use this information to motivate the boy in class?

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6 Through Thick and Thin A junior high school social studies teacher becomes interested in the close friendship between two fourteen-year-old girls, one of whom is thin, frail, and somewhat introverted, while the other is physically attractive, popular, and a cheerleader. The teacher later finds out that one girl is anorexic with an abusive mother, while the other is bulimic. She wonders what she can do to help.

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7 Honesty or Maturity? An elementary teacher observes a third-grade boy from an upper-middle-income home cheating and stealing in class. She wonders how to handle the situation when the boy tries to lie his way out of the situation and his parents see him as merely going through a phase that he will grow out of.

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PART 3 CULTURAL DIVERSITY

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8 Potpourri An eighth-grade social studies teacher seeks advice about the best way to teach a U. S. history class that is very diverse in terms of IQ, cognitive style, academic achievement, socioeconomic status, racial/ethnic origin, and mainstreamed exceptionalities. The teacher is not sure what to do when his efforts to work with the students in heterogeneous groups seem to be ineffective.

(11)

9 The Computer Generation A sixth-grade middle school teacher experiences feelings of inadequacy when the classrooms in her school receive new computers for classroom instruction. She is unsure how to handle the situation when it becomes clear to her that her knowledge of computers is woefully lacking compared to that of her students.

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10 Double Trouble A fourth-grade elementary teacher is surprised when two boys, one diagnosed as having a behavior disorder and the other as having attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, are mainstreamed into her class. Neither she nor the special education teacher assisting in her classroom is sure how to handle the boys when they evidence severe discipline and learning problems.

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11 My Brother's Keeper Following the defeat of a local tax referendum, a high school building principal asks his teachers of exceptional and gifted students to attend the next meeting of the school advisory committee, where the main issue will be whether the special education program should be pared back to legal minimums financially in order to salvage the program for gifted students. The principal seeks the advice of the teachers about what to do when a straw vote of parents indicates that the majority favors the cuts even though they will seriously curtail the functioning of the special education program.

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PART 4 LEARNING AND INSTRUCTION

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12 Remembering Stuff A beginning high school history teacher changes the way that he presents material and tests when he realizes that his students are having trouble memorizing isolated facts. The chair of the social studies department pressures him to return to an emphasis on important facts and giving multiple-choice-type tests to prepare students for taking the SAT.

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13 Learning the Lines Two high school English teachers in a small rural school district agree to co-direct the senior school play. However, they soon find that the students are having trouble learning their lines, and the two teachers must decide on the best strategy for helping them.

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14 Making Connections The students in a tenth-grade world history class see little relevance between events of the past and those of today. How can the teacher change the way he is teaching the course so that the students are motivated to make connections between the past, especially ancient history, and their lives today?

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15 The Problem With Problem-Solving Two sixth-grade teachers attend a workshop on problem-solving and attempt to integrate problem-solving activities into their teaching. One of the teachers has to decide how to apply what she has learned when she is faced with a classroom management problem.

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16 Which Is Higher? A social studies curriculum director chairs a committee of teachers to revise the secondary world history curriculum. His problem is to get the committee off dead-center when two teachers polarize the group around two different approaches to teaching: one emphasizes the learning of facts through lecture-discussion teaching methods and objective testing procedures, while the other argues for higher-order learning through small-group problem-solving methods and essay-type tests.

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17 Teamwork A middle school principal encourages four of his teachers to implement cooperative learning procedures in their classroom. He and the teachers have to decide how to handle problems that develop when some of the students and parents become upset with the way the cooperative learning classes are operating.

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PART 5 MOTIVATION AND CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT

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18 The Little Engine That Couldn't A beginning sixth-grade teacher becomes frustrated when the students in his culturally diverse class do not believe they can learn the material and seem unmotivated to try. He begins to question his ability as a teacher when some of his classroom teaching strategies fail and his students' parents do not seem to value learning either.

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19 The Ins and Outs of Discipline Two elementary teachers who are close friends and teach the same grade in the same school attend a workshop on classroom management. Although they decide to implement different classroom management models (Teacher Effectiveness Training and behavior modification), they do such good jobs that the building principal has a hard time deciding which one she should choose as the school's nominee as "Teacher of the Year."

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20 The Comedienne A seventh-grade science teacher has to decide what to do about the antics of a female class clown. Her classroom disruptions have reached the point where they not only interfere with student learning but have begun to encourage imitators.

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21 Family Values A seventh-grade English teacher in an urban middle school with a culturally diverse population notices that students from low-income and certain racial/ethnic backgrounds have different values regarding physical aggression and learning than do students from other family backgrounds. The teacher not only has to decide how to teach such a diverse population of students in his classes but how to help a middle-income white student who is being bullied by a gang.

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22 Parents as Partners The seventh-grade middle school English teacher in Case 21 convinces the building principal to employ two low-income mothers of students in his class to work as teacher aides. Although the two teacher aides, one African-American and the other Hispanic, help facilitate learning and discipline in the teacher's classes, the principal becomes upset when they become active in parent advisory committee and school board activities.

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23 Delisha the Disrupter A third-grade teacher in her second year of teaching has to decide how to handle a disruptive African-American girl in her class. The teacher, the building principal, and a school psychologist ponder what to do based on observation data that the school psychologist has collected on the child.

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24 Involving Parents A beginning elementary principal who is a strong believer in parent involvement encourages her teachers to involve parents, especially low-income parents, as classroom volunteers and teacher aides, as participants in parent advisory committees, and as teachers of their own children at home through home visits. However, by the end of the school year, the principal and teachers have to decide whether to end or revise the parent involvement program due to a number of problems that have emerged.

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25 Motivation or Control? A consultant conducts a workshop with a high school faculty with the intention of helping the teachers agree upon and implement a common classroom management model. However, a problem develops when the teachers split into two groups regarding their core beliefs about classroom management--whether the first priority is getting control of student behavior or motivating students by determining and capitalizing upon student interests.

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PART 6 ASSESSMENT, EVALUATION, AND TEACHER EFFECTIVENESS

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26 Teaching to the Test The school board in a large west coast city expresses its concerns regarding the poor performance of its eleventh graders on the basic skills portion of the state standardized achievement test by mandating that all teachers become teachers of the basic reading, writing, and math skills in their courses and give monthly practice tests which contain items like those on the state tests. A math teacher and a history teacher at the high school in the school district which has performed the poorest on the state test become concerned about the effects of such "teaching to the test" policies upon student learning and meet with their building principal to express their concerns.

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27 Ignoring the Test It is two years later, and the high school in Case 26 has fully implemented the school system's standardized testing focusing on the basic skills of reading, writing, and math, although without much success since its students still make the lowest scores in the school district on the annual state standardized achievement test. This creates a problem for the history teacher in Case 26, who will be coming up for tenure at the end of the school year, since his students scored below average on the basic skills portion of the state test. The building principal also has a problem because the history teacher is considered an excellent and extremely popular teacher by his students, parents, and fellow teachers but refuses to "teach to the test" on the grounds that the state test does not measure real learning.

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28 Grading the Teacher A beginning high school world history teacher becomes quite popular with her students and parents when she uses teaching and evaluation procedures different from those of the other teachers. However, a problem develops when the other teachers begin to complain that she entertains her students "instead of teaching them something of substance" that will prepare them for college.

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29 The Change Agent The social studies teacher in Case 28 now has tenure with seven years of teaching experience and a master's degree and is considered a good teacher now by everyone. When she is appointed to a school district grading and report card committee, she sees an opportunity to function as a change agent with regard to teaching methods and evaluation procedures, especially in the social studies area. She is unsure how to proceed, however, when she surveys the social studies teachers and finds that the majority favor lecture-discussion teaching methods and objective testing methods.

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30 Who's the Best? A school district selects three teachers to serve on a committee to choose the "Teacher of the Year." The committee finds the decision to be a difficult one as they sort through the survey, classroom observation, and student achievement data that have been assembled for their use.

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APPENDICES

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A Theory Guide

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B Using Cases in College Teaching

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