Ability
grouping - The technique of helping students achieve
individual goals by placing those of similar ability together, either in groups
in the same classroom (homogeneous grouping) or in separate classrooms
(tracking).
Acceleration - A change in the
regular school program that permits a gifted student to complete a program in
less time or at an earlier age than usual.
Accommodation - Piaget's term that
refers to a change in cognitive structures that produces corresponding
behavioral changes.
Accountability
- the
idea of holding schools, districts, educators, and students responsible for
results
Achievement
test -
Measures accomplishments in such specific subjects as reading, mathematics,
etc.
Adaptation - Piaget's term for one
of the two psychological mechanisms used to explain cognitive development.
The other is organization.
Adolescent
egocentric thinking - A characteristic of adolescent thought in which adolescents assume
that everyone thinks as they do; that everyone is "looking at them."
Advance organizers - David Ausubel's term
to describe a type of teaching that explains what is to come. It could be an
outline, a list, an introductory paragraph, etc.
Aesthetics - referring to the nature of beauty and judgments
about it.
Aptitude
test -
A test that assesses a student's general or specific abilities; it shows
ability, potential, "flair," talent, etc.
Assessment - All 50 states now have some statewide testing
policies in place. The logic behind these state assessment systems has been to
find a more accurate way to measure student success as well as to hold schools
accountable for results. While a centerpiece of standards-based reform, state
testing policies have caused considerable controversy. The resulting debate
over assessment is at the heart of the debate over education reform.
Assimilation - Piaget's term to
describe how we take new information into our minds and make sense of it, based
on our background knowledge.
Authentic
assessment - A means of securing information about a student's success or failure
on meaningful and significant tasks. There is a performance component where the
student actually shows what he/she can do, unlike a paper-and-pencil objective
type of test.
Axiology - The study of valuing and values, what is
good.
Behavior
modification - A deliberate attempt to control student behavior by using positive
and negative reinforcement.
Behaviorism - a psychology and a philosophy that contends
that behavior represents the essence of a person. B.F. Skinner
Bilingual
Education
- A program designed to help those with limited English proficiency (LEP) to
acquire English and learn in school by teaching them partly in English and
partly in their own language.
Brown vs.
Board of Education - case in 1954, which
resulted in a decision to provide an equal opportunity for a free and
appropriate education for students with disabilities. No segregation that is deliberate. Separate but equal is unequal.
Centering - Piaget's term to
describe a child's tendency to concentrate on only part of an object or
activity. This is a characteristic of preoperational children (ages 2-7).
Charter
Schools
- The basic concept of a charter is
simple: Allow a group of teachers or other would-be educators to apply for
permission from their local education authority to open a school, operating
with taxpayer dollars, just like a public school. The difference? Free them
from the rules and regulations that charter school supporters say can cripple
learning and stifle innovation.
Choice - School choice initiatives are based on the
premise that allowing parents to choose what schools their children attend is
not only the fair thing to do, but also an important strategy for improving
public education.
Cognitive style - a preference to respond to a variety of
problems or tasks in a particular fashion.
Concrete
operations - Piaget's third stage of cognitive development, extending
approximately from ages 7 to 11.
Conservation - Piaget's term that
refers to the realization that the essence of something remains constant,
although surface features may change. Example: Show a student a ball of clay;
in front of the student, mash the clay flat. Ask, "Is this still the same
amount of clay that we started with?" If the child says "No,"
the child is not using conservation.
Construct
validity -
A test has construct validity when it actually measures the knowledge domain or
behavior it claims to measure. For instance, if you give a social studies test
and a student does poorly because the reading level was too difficult. That
test does not have construct validity, because it is measuring reading ability
besides social studies content.
Constructivism - individuals differ in what they perceive and
how they form ideas.
Content
validity
- A test has content validity if it adequately samples behavior that has been
the goal of instruction.
Contingency
contracting - A teacher and student decide on a behavioral goal and what the
student will receive when the goal is reached.
Core Curriculum - curriculum design in which one subject or group
of subjects becomes a focal unit around which all other subjects are
correlated.
Criterion-referenced Testing – Taking student scores on
an instrument and comparing them to a standard.
Example being a spelling test, or, “Johnny got 88% of his math questions
correct.”
Cultural Pluralism - a set of tenets based upon
3 principals (1) every culture has its own internal logic; (2) no culture is better or worse than another
(3) all persons are to some extent
culture-bound.
Culture - the ways a group of people form beliefs,
evaluates ideas and experiences, the way they behave, and way they perceive the
world.
Decoding - Using the sounds and
grammar of a language to interpret a message.
Desists - A teacher's actions
to stop misbehavior.
Desegregation - In its landmark 1954 decision Brown v. Board
of Education, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously outlawed segregation and
declared that racially separate schools are inherently unequal. This ruling
overturned the high court's previous decision in Plessy v.
Didactic
teaching
- Refers to those effective teachers who persistently seek appropriate goals
and insist on student responsibility and accountability.
Discovery
learning
- Bruner's term for learning that involves the rearrangement and transformation
of material that leads to insight.
Egocentrism - the difficulty a young child may find in taking
another person’s point of view.
Enrichment - A method of
instruction for gifted students in which they are furnished with additional
challenging experiences.
Epistemology - the study of knowing and knowledge. What is
true.
Essentialism: emphasis
on physical sciences as used by authorities; assumption that there are no
absolute truths and that success is based on absorption of knowledge about the
physical world.
Ethnic Group - a collection of people who
identify with one another on one of more of the following, race, religion,
language, values, political interests, economic interests, behavior patterns,
country of ancestry. May favor different
learning techniques.
Experimentalism: emphasis
on social sciences as a framework for problem solving; assumption that the
physical world is constantly changing.
Extrinsic
motivation - Those rewards and inducements external to students. For instance,
students learn some material in order to earn stickers or candy, not for its
own sake.
Field
sensitive
- A tendency to be influenced by personal relationships and praise from
authority figures.
Formal
operations - Piaget's term that refers to that period of cognitive development
that sees the beginning of logical, abstract thinking. This stage begins at
about 11 years of age.
Formative
evaluation (or assessment) - Intended to aid learning by providing feedback
about what has been learned and what remains to be learned. Example, a quiz
over the material covered in a particular lesson; a homework assignment.
Fragmentation - A form of slowdown in
which a teacher has individual students doing something that it would be better
for the entire group to do.
Gender
Equity
- More than a quarter of a century
after Congress enacted Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which
barred exclusion on the basis of sex from federally funded programs, many
experts argue that discrimination against girls in the classroom and on the
playing field continues to be a nationwide problem in elementary and secondary
schools.
Heuristics - Using alternative
search patterns to solve problems; generating new possible solutions.
Home
Schooling
- Home schooling has often been
dismissed as a fringe activity, its practitioners caricatured as
head-in-the-sand reactionaries and off-the-grid hippies. The most vocal and
organized home schoolers have tended to be religiously motivated, most often
conservative Christians. But a newer breed of home schooler is emerging,
motivated not by religious belief or countercultural philosophy. Uppermost for
such parents are concerns about violence, peer pressure, and poor academic
quality in their schools.
IDEA - Individuals with
disabilities Education Act. This was designed to provide services for
handicapped students in the least restrictive environment.
IEP - Individual
Educational Plan. A form of individualized learning plan for a specific
student.
Inclusion - The concept of "full inclusion" calls for
teaching students with disabilities in regular classrooms, rather than in
special classes or pull-out sessions.
Inquiry
teaching
- Bruner's belief that teaching should permit students to be active partners in
the search for knowledge, thus enhancing the meaning of what they learn.
Intelligence Testing -
numerous test try and measure a trait known as general intelligence or G or
Spearman's G. (IQ tests)
Intermittent
reinforcers - Reinforcers or rewards that are only occasionally implemented.
Intrinsic
motivation - Students themselves want to learn and do not need external
inducements, such as stickers or candy.
Irreversibility - Piaget's term to
describe children's inability to reverse their thinking. Example: a child can
count 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 but cannot count backward, 7,6,5,4,3,2,1.
Learning
disabilities - Refers to a handicapping condition characterized by a discrepancy
between ability and achievement, most commonly manifested in reading, writing,
reasoning, and/or mathematics.
Least
restrictive environment - A learning environment or classroom situation that provides necessary
support for a handicapped student's continuing educational progress while also
minimizing the time the student is removed from a normal educational
environment. Similar in intent to the concept of mainstreaming. Mandated by
Public law 94-142.
Locus of
control
- Refers to the causes of behavior. Some individuals believe it resides within
them (internal locus of control) while others believe it resides outside of
themselves: other people, "fate," etc. (external locus of control).
Mainstreaming - Integrating
physically, mentally, and behaviorally handicapped students into regular
classes.
Mean - The average of the
raw scores. Example: Twenty students in the class take a test. To get the mean
score, add up all the scores of all 20 students and divide by 20.
Median - The point in a
distribution above which and below which 50% of the scores lie. Example: 11
students take a test. Their scores are 100, 98, 95, 94, 92, 88, 86, 86, 85, 83,
77. The medial is 88 because it is the middle score.
Melting pot - A term referring to the assimilation of diverse
ethnic groups into one national mainstream.
Metacognition -
The ability to think about thinking.
Metaphysics - The study of what is real
Mode - The score obtained by
the largest number of individuals taking a test. Example: 11 students take a
test. Their scores are 100, 98, 95, 94, 92, 88, 86, 86, 85, 83, 77. The most
frequent score is 86. The mode is 86. In the case of two most frequently
occurring scores, such as 100, 98, 95, 94, 92, 92, 88, 86, 86, 83, 77, there
are two modes (bimodal): 92 and 86. A multimodal test has a distribution
with more than 2 modes.
Multiple
intelligences -
A Nation at Risk - the first major national report (published by
the National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983) calling for
educational reform in the curriculum, expectations, time and teaching.
Negative
reinforcers - Stimuli whose withdrawal strengthens behavior. Example: putting a
student in a "Time out" area is a negative reinforcer, because he/she
is placed in a situation for a certain amount of time, after which he/she may
again join the group.
Normal
distribution curve - A theoretical curve noted for its bell-shaped form. The theory is
that most of any population will score with an average range, which is
represented by the highest points of the bell shape.
Norm-referenced
testing
– Taking student scores on an instrument and comparing those scores to other
students or a normed group of peers.
Example being ACT, SAT, TCAP, GRE, Praxis I and II.
Overdwelling - A form of slowdown in
which a teacher spends excessive time on a topic.
Overlapping - Teachers can handle
two or more classroom issues simultaneously. Example: the teacher sits with a
reading group while s/he watches the rest of the classroom, occasionally
signaling directives to students through body language.
Pedagogy - The science of
teaching.
Percentile
score -
A score that tells the percentage of individuals taking a test who are at or
below a particular score; a percentile rank of 85, for example, means that the
student did as well or better than 85% of those taking the test.
Perennialism - emphasis on the humanities as presented in
great books; assumption that there are absolute truths and standards that are
more real that the physical world.
Phonics v Whole Language - Traditional American education, therefore, begins
with reading lessons that focus on phonics (sounding out first letters, then
combinations of letters), tightly controlled vocabulary, and short
"basal" (or basic) reading passages, followed by numerous skills
exercises, each with only one correct answer.
"Whole language" represents a
different philosophy about teaching, learning, and the role of language in the
classroom. It stresses that children should use language in ways that relate to
their own lives and cultures. In the whole-language classroom, the final
product--the "answer"-- isn't as important as the process.
Portfolio
assessment - A means of assessing a student based on a collection of his/her work
that the student and teacher feel are important evidence of learning. Example:
included may be student drawings, written work, tests and quizzes, homework,
projects, etc.
Postconventional
level -
Kohlberg's 3rd level of moral development - when individuals act
according to an enlightened conscience.
Pragmatism - a philosophy that maintains that the value and
truth of ideas are tested by their practical consequences.
Preconventional
level -
Kohlberg's first level of moral development - when children respond mainly to
reward and punishment (ages 4-10 approximate).
Preoperational - Piaget's term to
describe a child from about ages 2-7 who has begun to use symbols but is not
really capable yet of mentally manipulating them.
Pretend play - A characteristic of
the early childhood years - the child shows an increasing ability to let
something represent another thing. Example: these blocks are a castle; or this
pillow is a mountain.
Progressivism - educational philosophy in which learning
focuses on the child while he or she is acquiring the content of the
curriculum.
Proximity
control
- Moving close to a misbehaving student.
Pygmalion Effect - impact of teacher expectations leads to
self-fulfilling prophecy. Seen in TESA
(Teacher Expectations and Student Achievement.)
Qualitative
data -
Observations that consist of words, labels, or numerical codes. More difficult
to measure than quantitative data.
Quantitative
data -
Observations consisting of numbers that indicate differences in amounts.
Random
sample
- A sample selected so that at each stage of the sampling, all members of the
population have an equal chance of being included in the sample.
Range - Indicates the measure
of variability from the highest score to the lowest score.
Reconstitution - Reconstitution means the taking over or closing of
a school, or the replacement of any or all school staff. It is one of the most
drastic sanctions and most severe interventions a state or district can take to
turn around low-performing schools.
Reliability - A test is said to be
reliable if a student's scores are about the same in repeated testing.
Reversibility - Piaget's term for a
child's ability to use cognitive operations to take things apart and to reverse
thinking.
Ripple
effect
- Kounin's term to signify the effects on students seated near a particular
student who is being reprimanded or praised.
Schema - The mental framework
that serves as a foundation for thinking; this is the framework that will
modify incoming data.
School - Based management - a reform concept that
encourages individual schools to be involved in decision making and urges
greater teacher participation in governance.
SES - socioeconomic status characteristics - quantifiable
social standing, determined by government.
Self-Efficacy - beliefs for academic and social tasks become
strong influences on behavior.
Semantics - Refers to the meaning
of words, the relationship between ideas and words.
Sensorimotor - Piaget's term for the
first stage of cognitive development (ages birth to 2).
Seriation - Piaget's term that refers
to the ability of children to arrange objects by increasing or decreasing size.
Shaping - A form of classroom
management. Teachers determine the successive steps that are needed to master a
task, then teach them separately, reinforcing each step.
Social
cognitive learning - Bandura's theory that refers to the process where the information we
get from observing others will also influence our own behavior.
Social
reinforcers - Interpersonal activities, such as the attention of others, which
reinforces behavior.
Sociometrics - A method of
summarizing a student's status with peers. The results will indicate the most
and least popular students, for example.
Standard deviation - A
measure of variability that roughly indicates the average amount by which scores
deviate from the mean or average score. Example: A score with a standard
deviation of +1 means that the student scored above the average student's score
on that test. Standard deviations are written -3, -2, -1, 0 (the mean), +1, +2,
+3
Stanine
scores
- A standard score that classifies those taking a test into one of 9 groups. An
average stanine would be 5.
Summative
evaluation - A measure of a student's achievement at the completion of a block of
work. Example: an end of chapter test; an end of grade test; an end of unit
test.
T-score - A standard score with
a mean (average) of 50 and a standard deviation of 10. A student who scores 80,
for example, is 3 standard deviations about the mean.
Taxonomy - A classification
system. Bloom's Taxonomy, for example, is a classification of upper to lower
levels of cognitive processing. There
are taxonomies in all three of the following domains…
(a) Psychomotor domain - classification
of instructional outcomes that focuses on physical abilities and skills.
(b) Affective domain -a classification
of instructional outcomes that concentrates on attitudes and values.
(c) Cognitive domain - A classification
scheme of instructional outcomes that stresses knowledge and intellectual
skills, including comprehension, application, analysis, syntheses, and
evaluation (Bloom’s theory)
Time on task - The time a student
spends actively engaged in learning.
Time out - A form of punishment
in which a student loses something desirable for a period of time. Example:
sitting at an empty desk in the corner of the room, having no contact with
other students, for a set period of time.
Token
economy - A form of classroom management in which
students receive tokens for desirable behavior. These may be exchanged for
something else, such as candy, gum, pencils, stickers, etc.
Tracking - method of placing students according to their ability
level or learning experiences, where they follow same curriculum, that is,
college preparatory, vocational or both.
Unions – The National Education Association is the largest
(~3M), the AFT is the second largest (~1M) and is associated with AFL-CIO.
Validity - A test is said to
have validity if it measures what it is supposed to measure.
Vouchers - taxpayer-financed tuition aid that parents can use
to send their children to private schools.
With-it-ness - A teacher has the
proverbial "eyes in the back of her/his head." Teachers know what's
happening in their classrooms at all times.
Zone of
proximal development - Vygotsky. What children can do independently and what they can do
with help. Instructional level.
Z-scores - A score that tells
the distance of a student's raw score from the mean (in standard deviation
units). Example: a student with a z-score of +3 is scoring 3 standard
deviations above the mean (average).
PEOPLE
Alfred Binet -
French psychologist that tested the intellectual functioning of
Benjamin Bloom -
The first Educational Psychologist that organized cognitive activity into a
taxonomy. You know Bloom’s taxonomy!
Jerome Bruner
– Cognitive psychologist (add stuff
here…)
William James -
generally recognized as the first American psychologist and author of Talks
with Teachers.
Robert Mager -
recommends that teachers use objectives that identify the behavioral act that
indicates achievement, define conditions under which the behavior is to occur
and state the criterion of acceptable performance.
David Wechsler -
devised Wechsler Sacles, most popular tests for classification purposes,
WPPSI-III 3 to 7 years; WISC-III 7 to 16 years WAIS-III 16 years. Information,
comprehension, similarities, arithmetic, etc.
Jean Piaget -
cognitive development -caused by 2 factors, heredity and environmental
experience. Involves organization;
scheme; adaptation; (most affected by heredity i.e. brain, reflexes, etc.)-
assimilation; accommodation; cognitive development more affected by peers than
adults (environment); instruction can accelerate development of schemes that
have already begun to form. Avoid what
children cannot meaningfully understand; gear activities to each student’s
intellectual level; begin with concrete ideas before introducing abstract;
(Birth - 2) develops schemes through sensorimotor; (2-7) preoperational-
acquires ability to conserve and decenter , but not capable of operations an
unable to mentally reverse actions.; (7-11) concrete operational - capable o
operations; solves problems from generalizing concrete experiences; cannot
manipulate conditions mentally unless they have been experienced; (11 and up)
formal - ability to deal with abstractions, form hypothesis, solve problems
systematically, engage in mental manipulations.
Eric Erickson -
involves the whole life span; personality grows out of successful resolution of
psychosocial crisis (personal experience)
(ages
2-3) autonomy vs shame
(4-5)
initiative vs guilt
(6-11)
industry vs inferiority
(12-18)
identity vs role confusion
Lev
Vygotsky - believed cognitive
development more strongly influenced by those more intellectually advanced and
social interactions. Children learn more from instructional interactions;
especially in their zone; aim slightly ahead of what children should know (zdp)
- learn by giving instruction within a child’s zone of proximal development,
this helps them learn what they could not master on their own.
B.F. Skinner -
developed theory of operant conditioning, based on the fact that organisms
respond to their environments in particular ways to obtain or avoid particular
consequences.
Sigmund Freud -
psychoanalysis, the id, ego and superego.
Interpretation of dreams.
E.L. Thorndike and Robert Woodworth proposed an
alternative explanation of how transfer occurs.
They argued that the degree to which knowldge and skills acquired in
learning one task can help someone learn another task depends on how similar
the two tasks are. The greater degree of
similarity, the greater amount of transfer will be. Theory of identical elements.
Tom Gordon
pshychologist offers teachers practical suggestions in Teacher Effectiveness
Training.
Socrates -
teacher would ask a series of questions that led the student to a certain
conclusion.
Aristotle -
believed that a person’s most important puropse was to serve and improve
mankind. Educational method, sicentific,
practical objecctive, believed it should be regulated by law and be useful.
Plato - educational
method discovered each individuals’ abilities, who should do manual work, who
should be soldiers and philosophers.
Carol Gilligan -
says males and females use different approaches to solving moral dilemmas;
females - caring, helping, cooperation; males
- justice, fairness, individual rights.
L. Kohlberg -
elaborated on Piaget’s ideas on moral thinking - differed on stages - believed
moral development is accelerated through instruction.
Six stages
of development
(stage 1) punishment-obedience orientation - physical
consequences of an action determine how bad it was;
(stage 2)
instrumental relativist orientation - an action is judged to be right if
it is instrumental in satisfying one’s needs or involves an even exchange.
(stage 3) good
boy - nice girl orientation. right
action will please others.
(stage 4) law and order orientation - maintain the
social order by established fixed rules which must be obeyed.
(stage 5) social contract orientation - rules needed to
maintain the social order should be based on mutual agreement, the rights of
individuals should be protected.
(stage 6) universal ethical principle orientation -
moral decisions should be made in terms of self-chosen ethical principals.
Diana
Baumrind - analysis of child
rearing. Authoritative - authoritarian -
permissive parents:
Authoritative parenting - confident children
Authoritarian parenting - children act out of fear.
Permissive parenting - children have no self-confidence,
disorganized.