Classroom Observation Analysis Research Paper
Armstrong University of Phoenix/MTE 506 November 12, 2012 Kathleen Sherbon Classroom Observation Analysis Research Paper Education theory can either be descriptive like the sciences or normative like in philosophy. Education theory postulates what education processes are supposed to consist of; it sets the standards, norms, and goals in carrying out an education process. The scientific education theory gives a set of hypotheses, which have to be experimented and verified.
The two approaches have produced two broad categories of education theories, which are the functionalist’s theory of education arising from the Sociological perspective of education and the behaviorist theory of education from the psychology of education. I will conduct an observation Analysis in an Elementary classroom to observed teachers and students as they work using the education theory. Introduction Many instructional approaches exist that have been developed to reach more students. Teachers have to select the instructional approaches that work best for students.
These approaches have been tested and researched from various theoretical perspectives. An education theory is the speculative thought or education and just like any other theory, it explains, guides, and describes the practices of education. The earliest speculation on educational processes began during the times of classical sophists Greek philosophers. Current education speculations use terms like and rogogy, curriculum, learning pedagogy, education organization, leadership, and policy. Education thought is derived from various disciplines like, philosophy, sociology, critical theory, psychology, and history among others.
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This paper will discuss five topics based on the best education theory to be applied in the classroom setting with focus on two education theories postulated by Gardner and Sternberg. This paper will also address information processing by students, behaviors of teachers to promote thinking, implications of language development on learning and teaching, and on the relationship between the emotional and social development on student behavior and learning. On November 10, 2012, I went to Park Elementary/Middle School and conduct an Analysis Observation with a first grade teacher (Mrs. C. Turner). There were twenty students in this class.
The ratio was consisted of 12 girls to 8 boys. All of the children were African American except two of the students. There were two white girls in this class. This school is placed on academic probation because the school did not do well on their school performance test. This school has an “F” because too many children failed the ILEAP Test. My reason for choosing this school is because I wanted to know why this school was not improving on their school performance and test scores. The observation was conducted in Mrs. Turner’s class. Mrs. Turner teaching grade first; I observed two subjects (English and Spelling) on that they.
Evaluate the Application of Educational Theories in the Classroom Setting Which Educational Theories Were Employed? There seems to be a continuum of intelligence and ending with Gardner’s multiple intelligences (Bee & Boyd, 2010). The standard IQ test only measures the intellectual and academic dimensions of intelligence and Gardner’s multiple intelligences proposes eight separate domains of intelligence each with their strategies for measurement. On this continuum the teacher went so far as to employ the precepts of Sternberg’s triadic theory of intelligence, but not so far as to try and cover Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences.
I observed the class on Friday, so it was test day. There was a language comprehension test and a spelling test. Both tests specifically gauge intellectual ability to the absence of any type of measure about practical or creative intelligence. However, after the tests the students were asked to color, cut out, and paste a large pumpkin to their folders (creative), and then the teacher had a story time where the class talked about the dangers of lightning (practical). Which Educational Theories Could Have Been Used to Better Enhance Instruction and Learning?
As per Gardner’s multiple intelligences, the naturalistic and intrapersonal aspects of intelligence were those that were addressed the least in the class I observed. The class is almost entirely indoors-only having outside time at the playground-so there no time to develop the ability to recognize patterns in nature. I think the teacher tries to compensate by covering activities that invoice nature themes, such as the lightning worksheet, but there is only so much of nature that can be studied in the air conditioning, under fluorescent lights.
Also, there was very little development of intrapersonal intelligence. The teacher mostly relied on consequences as a means to control behavior rarely trying to develop the personal strengths and goals of the students. I also believed that the teacher could have used constructivism; to better enhance instruction and learning. Constructivism is “that learning is meaning, it is reflecting on experienced” (Educational Theories, November 2012). Mrs. Turner could have enhanced lesson to incorporate real life connections to the students to make it meaningful for them.
Also, she could have had students predict what was going to happen next in the story. The teacher could have asked the students who were the main characters in the story. What do they think the title is going to be about? How do they think the story is going to end? How practical is the Application of Educational Theories in the Classroom? I think that the application of Sternberg’s tri-archaic theory is extremely practical. Public School already attempts to cover all three domains of intelligence through the use of band, athletics, music, art, workshop, and work-study programs.
I think that some of the areas of Gardner’s multiple intelligences might be outside the prevue of public education, such as naturalistic intelligence or intrapersonal intelligence. Both of these areas of intelligence require a large investment of time to develop properly and require special circumstance to be implemented adequately. For instance, a naturalistic education would in clue a lot of time in nature itself, which goes again the classroom environment of current-day education. Also, intrapersonal development requires quite a bit of alone time to think, which is not readily available in a classroom environment of current-day education.
Also, Intrapersonal development requires quite a bit of alone time to think, which is readily available in a classroom setting. Also, it is very practical to apply educational theories in the classroom like constructivism, behaviorism, and the social learning theory. A teacher can use a combination of educational theories in a classroom. The teacher can build upon the student’s knowledge and emphasize problem solving and the teacher can also use the Social Learning Theory with modeling. The teacher can model the behavior to the student and use positive and negative reinforcements with behaviorism.
Even though, the teacher did use Gardner’s Multiple Intelligence in the classroom. Gardener’s theory “has eight domains of intelligence” (Linguistics Logical, Spatial, Bodily Kinesthetic, Musical, Interpersonal, intrapersonal, and Naturalistic) according to Bee and Boyd, (2010). The different types of intelligence can be used in daily lessons throughout the day. Describe The Application of Information Processing to Student Learning? How Does Theory of Information Processing Apply to Student Learning?
There appear to be two forces at work when discussing the application of information processing: 1) innate ability; 2) acquired knowledge (Bee & Boyd, 2010). So, a large volume of acquired knowledge can compensate for a lower IQ but only to a point. An expert with a higher IQ; will still performance better than an expert with a middle or low IQ. As this applies to student learning, children with lower IQ, and therefore less effective and efficient strategies for processing information must acquire a largely body of information on a given subject before they can perform as well on testing as students who have higher IQs.
How Does the Classroom Environment Affect Information Processing and Learning for Adolescents? Information processing theory also explains that, “children are born with some basic, in born cognitive strategies [that] change during the early years of life, with more complex ones emerging and old, ones being used more flexibly” (Bee & Boyd, 2010. p. 197). The text goes on to explain that as adolescents engage more in a particular activity, say building blocks, they develop more complex and efficient ways of accomplishing their creative goals.
The classroom environment should foster development of these complex cognitive strategies. There needs to be a repetitive assortment of tasks that are geared towards building the same cognitive strategies, such as when a spelling word is studied by writing it, reading it, putting it in a sentence, drawing a picture of it, defining it, and then acting it out. In this way repetition can bread cognitive development. Compare Adolescent Student Learning in a Social Environment and on Educational Environment. Which are More Conducive to attention and Memory?
Willingham (2007) makes it clear that attention is a finite, cognitive resource that can only process a limited amount of information at a time. In particular, it is important to realize that refractory period exists between the firing of neurons during which no new attention stimuli can be chosen. In social situations there is usually more than one stimulus competing for the attention of and individual; whereas, in a classroom attention is directed to one stimulus-the teacher. This would seem to dictate the educational environments are more conducive to attention than social situations.
Furthermore, Willingham posits that secondary memory is encoding, stored, and retrieved along semantic lines. As this pertains to adolescent student learning, it is important for new information to be connected new to pre-existing information. Rote memorization is not as effective as learning information through rhymes or saying or through stories, since all of these involve connecting new information to existing information. Social situations would seem to have the upper hand here, since the social environment provides a context for learning that builds upon existing peer relationships and shared experience.
Whereas some of this is presented in the classroom setting it is between the teacher and the students, but only to a lesser degree. Evaluate Teacher Behaviors That Promote Student’s Thinking Abilities What Teacher Behaviors Did You Observe That Facilitated Student Comprehension and Reasoning? There was one activity in Particular that I think facilitated student reasoning: the teacher held two objects in each hand and asked the class which one weighed the more. The teacher would then put the objects on each side of a scale and find out which one was heavier.
Then the class would hypothesize about why they were wrong or right. This teaches students that objective information can be determined quite separate from subjective opinions and estimations. Estimations are only useful as long as scientific instrumentation is not present to determine objective facts. On the subject of comprehension, they took a comprehension, test. It was apparently design to measure grammatical and spelling skills. It was a list of sentences with a blank and multiple choice answers. The students had to read the sentence and decide which word best fit-in- the blank.
I was astonished that the exercise had several trick questions and questions that could have two possible answers. I believed the teacher designer of the sheet was trying to teach the students how to think, rather than how to find the right answer. Why Did These Teachers Behaviors Positively Affect Students’ Thinking Abilities? Both of these activities were designed to cause the students to think. When I was in school teachers were concerned with how to teach us to get the right answer. We had just started state standardized tests and we had learned a lot of multiple choice strategies.
However, in the class I observed there were many times multiple right answers and the teacher didn’t just want to know the right answer she wanted to know how the students got the right answer. The weight questions were particularly positive, since it forced the children to confront their deficits in conservation with scientifically determinable facts. This lesson translates into all kinds of cognitive advancements: different height glasses can have the same amount of water (volume) and different sized objects can have the same weight (density). Which Teacher Behaviors Impeded Student Comprehension and Reasoning?
The spelling test was, I believed, the least productive. It was based on the rote memorization model of learning, in that the student had to hear the word and write it on a piece of paper. Some students do not learn this way and do not regurgitate information this way. There are children that are audio learners and they should be allowed to recite the spelling of the word. Some of the students had a very hard time writing the spelling, words, not because they didn’t know the word, but because they have a hard time translating the audible letters of the word into the written letters of the word.
Why Did The Teacher Behaviors Negatively Affect Students’ Thinking Abilities? The teacher behaviors negatively affect students’ thinking abilities because the students wanted to get a 100% on their spelling test to be able to get a prize out of the prize box. This auditory/visual deficiency also speaks to the inverted-relationship between stimulation and performance. As stimulation increases (social pressure, teacher pressure, and peer pressure to make a good grade on the test), so performance on the test increases; however, there is a cutoff beyond which simulation begins to effect performance negatively.
The students were motivated to get a 100% on their spelling test, because their teacher added increase pressure by adding a reward to the performance on the test. This affected the grades on their spelling test making the students to perform negatively, since the stimulation was too much for these students. Analyze The Implications of Language Development Affect Teaching? How Does Delayed Language Development Affect Teaching? “Delayed language development seems to be the result of a defect in fast-mapping processes and a poor receptive language” (Bee& Boyd, 2010).
As with many other types of cognitive development component to language assimilation, acquisition they have. In the case of school education, this would mean that persistent reading can compensate for any biologically or environmentally caused deficits in language development can be used of phonic approach that translates specific letters into sounds and vice-versa. Since poor language learners have a problem with letter- sound combinations, this approach should overcome that obstacle. Lastly, it is paramount that the reading program for the students be flexible and responsive to the student’s linguistic needs.
If pa phonic approach is not working well, then maybe a reading comprehension-learning the words as part of phrase or sentence-approach would work better. How Does Language Development Affect Learning in Children And Adolescents? The systematic and explicit phonics approach to language instruction stipulates “that the lessons should move from simple words to more complex words in an explicit manner that emphasizes the letter-sound correspondence” (Bee & Boyd, 2010). On the other hand, the whole langrage approach seeks to teach language through the meaning and context of the word rather than the actual structure of the word.
This avenue tries does not explicitly teach letter-sound correspondence unless the student has specific questions about how the sound work. Last, the balanced approach to language learning pursues a bi-lateral means of instruction, making use of both of the systematic and the whole language approach. They argue that it is important to develop a love of reading in children through the efficient uses of phonics. Language development has a large impact on reading comprehension. After all, the meaning of a complex sentence cannot be derived without first understanding the subsidiary words and grammar of the sentence.
Moreover, reading comprehension helps with writing abilities of the students as well. Conclusion Finally, the five topics based on education theory have been explained and the teacher and the students were observed; and I believed that educational theories were conducted in Mrs. Turner’s second grade class. References Bee, H. , & Body, D. (2010). The developing child (12th ed. ) Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon. Education Theories. http://crescentok. com/staff/jaskew/isr/education/theories. htm. Retrieved November 10, 2012. Willingham, D. T. (2007). Cognition: The thinking animal. New York, NY: Pearson Prentice Hall.
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