Awareness of Child Abuse (Final blog post)

In our last class, we learned some staggering but insightful statistics on the reality of child abuse in our country. One fact that stood out to me was as follows: By 12th grade about one child in 10 has been exposed to sexual misconduct at school, by peers or teachers. This sad truth is actually quite believable, due to how much bullying goes on in schools. And if that wasn't bad enough, to think that teachers play a part in this sexual misconduct at school is horrifying. This made me pause and think about how these individuals with confused, misconstrued world views on humanity are put in positions of power and authority over children. Are they good liars or good actors? Do they start out on a straight path and then start to lose it after a while? I think it is incredibly important for administrators and higher authorities in schools to carefully check not only backgrounds of new teachers but characters. Have we gotten lazy when it comes to safety and integrity within our schools' faculties? I don't think it's as simple as that, at all, but I think we can always be more aware and more careful when it comes to these delicate situations.

Not only is it important to hire teachers of good character and moral viewpoints ( human value and rights being a part of their schema) but it is also important to be that ourselves, as teachers. This can very well often mean holding firm boundaries between you and your students. While it is important to support them and form relationships with them, healthy boundaries will keep those relationships from getting too personal or even misconstrued. We mentioned a number of specific ways to do this, in class, but I think a really important one is never being alone in a room with a student. No matter what gender or age, there really is never a need to be alone in a room (door closed, etc) with the student. This, along with frontal hugs or excessive touchiness, is just asking for confusion and trouble. It's 100% okay to set those boundaries and enforce them, even if denying a child a certain kind of affection. In fact it's highly beneficial for a child to learn that they can't always (or ever really) have control over the people around them, and there are rules put in place for a reason. A teacher might hurt a child's feelings at the present moment, but standing firm in these rules and boundaries will result in long term benefits and wellness for everyone.

Jean vs. Lev

        Jean Piaget makes some pretty good ball-park estimates in his 4-stage theory of cognitive development. Infants tend to be hands-on, with little understanding of anything and therefore a tendency to experience separation anxiety. Toddlers, and kids ages 2-6 are prone to be egocentric and often fail to understand conservation. In the same way he makes generally accurate assumptions about development between the next pivotal transition times for kids, but his theory stops suddenly at the formal operational thinking stage ("12 years and up"). While I agree with this to an extent, Lev Vygotsky presents some resolutions to some of the questions that Piaget's theory failed to address.
        One thing I appreciate about Vygotsky's theories is the way they emphasize the importance of society and culture. Piaget's basis for his study was more or less limited to his own kids, who grew up under his roof in a specific culture and community. These controlled situations hardly leave room for culture diversity to be analyzed and included in his stages of cognitive development. In some countries, kids learn concrete operational thinking skills at a younger (or later) age than what Piaget observed with his kids. Additionally, Vygotsky's basic assumption involving both "informal conversations" and "formal schooling" in the process of relaying a culture's interpretation on the world seems to me a realistic assumption to make about child development, more so than sweeping generalizations on age.

Is Intelligence Even A Thing? (Yes...)

                 Intelligence is incredibly hard, in my opinion, to articulate in a clear, concise, but thorough definition. Intelligence is such a huge umbrella that contains so many skills, ways of thinking and personality traits. In no way does one's intelligence rely solely on their ability to solve math problems or write a speedy, well-developed essay. The definition we talked about in class said that it involved a combination of one's prior knowledge and experiences flexibly to accomplish new tasks. On the one hand, intelligence is starting to sound a lot like a constructivist's goal in life. But I also want to note that intelligence is not only one definable trait that you either have or don't have. Rather I keep picturing it as this umbrella that contains many skills etc., like creativity for instance.
                 I know a lot of individuals who are incredibly book smart and earn excellent grades. However, some of those people lack creativity and wit so much so that I argue whether they're intelligent at all. Getting answers right and have a quick-paced brain are great tools to have, especially for a student seeking a college degree and thus a good job and future. However, there are many answers to problems in life that cannot be found in a text book, and there are ways of thinking that only a creative person can accomplish, and I believe these are right up next to intelligence in importance.
               Relating all this to constructivism, I prefer to think of one's learning as a giant toolbox that continues to fill up with different tools that help them with different tasks, skills, and subject areas, the more they learn. Learning is an accumulation of these things- and intelligence is merely one of them. Learning is not limited to an acquiring of intelligence, or a number on an IQ test (as many people see these as the same thing). This is why my ACT score did tell me some things about the skills I had acquired (or not acquired) in certain subject areas, including simple test-taking, but it did not reflect my overall learning experience up until that point. Many things were overlooked, and that is something I find problematic about testing in our society.

Thoughts on Constructivism and Why I Love It.

Constructivism is defined by Ormrod as a mental process in which a learner takes many separate pieces of information and uses them to build an overall understanding or interpretation. After putting much thought into this learning theory and writing my paper about it, I have re-realized with greater emphasis how important this "building" of knowledge is in one's learning. Students don't simply walk into a class and leave their past experiences at the door. Everyone comes from a unique and specific set of experiences in their stories that highly affect the way he or she perceives an idea or field of study.

One of the activities we did in class the other day, where we looked at a an image of a bustling city street (perhaps NY city) for 30 seconds and then had to recreate the visual in a drawing from memory. This was very challenging even for an artist like me, to fully remember where each building met the sidewalk, which direction the cars were heading, the signage on the bus and billboards etc. The exercise really helped me understand the idea of construction in retrieval and how our brains build off of prior knowledge when approaching new information. For example, while I was drawing that city scene I included a crosswalk, because I figured there should be one in the picture. When in the actual image, there was no visible crosswalk. The fact that there were pedestrians crossing the street triggered some pre-existing understanding of a city environment that resulted in my thinking there was a crosswalk there. Keeping these ideas in my mind will be a helpful tool in measuring the learning of my students. I must consider equally the current environment, behavior, and prior experiences and backgrounds of my students in order to teach them in the most appropriate and efficient way.

Teaching Ourselves Self-Efficacy

Georganna Greene

June 17, 2014

Last class' discussion and lesson on self-efficacy sparked a lot of thought for me on learning and practicing self-efficacy as a teacher. As it is of utmost importance to encourage self-efficacy for our students, we as teachers have equal if not more responsibility in exhibiting self-efficacy ourselves. A good way I think we can do that is to pay close attention to our priorities and the order they assume. For instance, if hurrying through lessons to get through curriculum takes priority over the effectiveness of the teacher's quality of communication, then self-efficacy will be faltering most likely, and learning will suffer. 

         Self-regulation of our routines as teachers will also play a big role in maintaining self-efficacy. We talked about the way that students can self-regulate, and consequently be "good learners," and some of the attributes to a good learner. Some of those attributes were open-mindedness, attentiveness, self-control (self-efficacy), and willingness to be corrected and to improve.  As teachers we carry the same responsibilities in the education system, especially in the classroom with our students. We must be checking ourselves, as our professional days become routine. If something appears to be getting sloppy, its up to us be checking for that, see it, and tighten up the screws. Without self-regulating and really looking at ourselves and our teaching methods/tendencies thoroughly, we won't catch much sloppiness. We must sincerely demonstrate the things that we emphasize and encourage our students to live up to.

        

Religion and "The Winter Problem" [Group Differences]

         Georganna Greene

Jonah Ruddy

Educational Psychology 401

June 12, 2014

Religion and "The Winter Problem":

Response to the article by Ozlem Sensoy

          

        As educators it's important for us to consider and evaluate the role of religion in our classrooms. As everyone knows, religion is something that is hard to address, yet its something that cannot be simply ignored. In his article: "Kill Santa: the Winter Holiday Problem," Sensoy addresses the most religiously sensitive and concentrated season of the year: Christmas. Some say, "Merry Christmas," as follows their beliefs, traditions, and values, whereas others feel more comfortable saying, "Happy Holidays." Some people hold Christmas concerts, and others hold Annual Winter dances. While it may appear that we've worked out a compromise here in our nation comprised of many diverse cultures, races, and religions, Sensoy points out the remaining issues still at large with religion.
       He both identifies a "christian privilege," or social power, and relates it to "white privilege," and the social influences of other dominating majority groups. He argues this with the evidence from history -the already existing correlation between white people and christianity, and the privileges that exist for both groups. He then seems to stress that christian dominance around the month of december, shown in the Christmas traditions of christmas trees, stockings, carols, and Santa Claus, represents a sort of oppression against other religions who don't celebrate Christmas. But I don't think he limits it to Christians who do this, but perhaps even people who sing Jingle Bells and decorate their houses in red and green, without even truly having Christian faith or beliefs. Thus there is much confusion when the holidays roll around, because people want to celebrate their traditions without oppressing others who differ in beliefs (but of course their are instances where oppression is intended by some groups over others). 

        This article made me reflect on how as a teacher I can be a facilitator of knowledge and creativity in the classroom, approaching students from various backgrounds and religions especially during Christmas time or other holidays that may provoke confusion or discrimination. I think its important to welcome all kinds of backgrounds, beliefs, and experiences into the classroom, educate everyone equally on the differences in religions that exist, and remain in that educator role as much as I might have my own personal beliefs too. It's not our job as teachers to convert students in the classroom, and its not the student's obligation to accept every claim we stake. Therefore, we should be sure there is an emphasis on informing students on valuable topics like religion, and less emphasis on presenting a bias with an expectation of acceptance on their end.

Bandura and the Social Cognitive Theory

             The Social Cognitive Theory makes plenty of sense, in some of its claims, such as learning based on observation of others. I agree and find that learning is a very social, interactive process, whether it intends to be or not. However, one thing I find hard to hang with is Albert Bandura's bobo doll experiment being a main source of evidence of this theory. Perhaps I don't fully understand all the details of his experiment, but it is hard for me to accept that a child would not feel utterly expected to hit a bobo doll, when put into a room with nothing else to look at or do, and after watching someone beat up the bobo doll. It doesn't seem like a pure observational experiment, but rather a  mind game. If I was the child and I watched someone beat up a bobo doll in a room, and then they told me to go into the same room with no further instruction, I would probably assume that they expected me to do what I saw them do. To me, the experiment did not purely measure the validity of the claims presented by the social cognitive theory. 

         Now that I got that out of my system, I'll transition to reflect upon reciprocal causation and how I have seen that play out in the classroom and how I aim to approach it within my own classroom. It is arguably inevitable that behavior of students (are they quiet or loud, on-task or distracted?) affects the environment they inhabit and visa versa. A child's personal factors like experiences, personality-type, and family background certainly impact his or her behavior in the classroom. And in the reverse, if a class environment impacts the child enough, it will impact his role at home and in his personal realms. Behavior, environment, and personal factors all play a role in this triangle of learning and impact. Each of these elements should be considered when evaluating students and their progression of learning. 

        

       In my art classroom especially, I expect there will be students who come from a background of art-loving parents who could be thrilled to learn about painting and collages and why they matter. At the same time there will be students who come from football-loving families that are required to get a fine art credit and would rather write a 10-page paper than pick up a paint brush. As an educator, way to be prepared for this divergence of interests in my students could be to demonstrate the art lessons from multiple viewpoints and make it accessible to students from different backgrounds and with different interests. To continue in the reciprocal cycle, those students who love art might demonstrate enthusiastic and positive behavior which will somehow impact the environment around them. The students who are turned off by art might act out due to boredom or frustration, which will distract the environment around them. And lastly, that environment that has now been established due to all these factors, will to some degree go home with the students and affect them in their personal lives. The best thing I can do as a teacher is focus on facilitating a creative, safe, and fun environment, keeping in mind what kids are bringing with them from home, and paying close attention to behavioral factors playing out in the room.

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