evaluation, and application of principles and theories of human learning (Wittrock &
Farley, 1989). Principles are descriptions of established relationships between events.
An example is the well-known automaticity principle, which states that, with sufficient
practice time, previously learned skills become automatic (Schneider, 1999). When several
principles about a particular topic are developed, they can be combined into a theory,
a scientific explanation for why events happen in a certain way that helps make
predictions about such events in the future. For example, as you will learn when you read Chapter 6, cognitive load theory uses several principles such as the automaticity
principle to explain and predict how difficult it will be for a certain student to learn a
complex skill (Sweller, 1999). Educational psychology can provide teachers with the
principles and theories they will need to make good decisions in the classroom as well
as with the concepts needed to discuss and reflect on their decisions.
You will learn more than one theory to explain a certain phenomenon (i.e., several
theories have their own approaches to what motivates students). Each theory
(behaviorist, cognitive, or sociocognitive, for example) focuses on different factors or
mechanisms that affect student motivation. For instance, behaviorist theory explains
why rewards may motivate some students to study harder for a test. However, sociocognitive
theory explains why rewards may not be motivating when students believe that
they lack ability in the content domain. As you will learn in Chapter 9, both behaviorist
and sociocognitive theories explain different phenomena by focusing on the effects
of reinforcement or beliefs on students’ behavior.
Furthermore, you will learn that quality teaching does not merely consist of applying
a set of recipes but rather of developing and mastering a variety of perspectives
and strategies and being flexible about their application. For example, although one
study found that a rapid pace of mathematics instruction increased achievement (Good,
Grouws, & Ebmeier, 1983), a teacher may decide to spend a significant amount of time
on math concepts that are critical or decide to slow down the pace of instruction after
realizing through a classroom assessment that students did not grasp the concepts as
intended. In sum, making the right classroom decisions will depend on the teaching
context, the objectives of the teacher, and the characteristics of the learners. As you
will soon read in this chapter, one of the skills of effective teachers is to interpret educational
psychology theories and research critically and apply those that are most appropriate
for the unique characteristics of each learner in creative and practical ways
(Borko & Shavelson, 1990).
The Theories and Principles of Educational Psychology
Where do educational psychology principles and theories originate? Before reading the
answer to this question, think about teachers you have had. What was the origin of their
decisions? Did your teachers use common sense to make classroom decisions? Or did
they base decisions on personal educational experiences? Did they consult with more
knowledgeable people, such as expert teachers or authorities in the field?
Although it is tempting to conclude that common sense, personal experience, and
even expert advice are valid sources to guide teaching practice, you will soon find the
limitations of this approach. First, common sense may lead you astray. To experience
this yourself, decide whether each of the statements in Table 1.1 is true or false by using
common sense.
Let’s see how you did with the statements in Table 1.1. Educational psychology
research has found that ability grouping has negative effects on students’ self-esteem
and motivation (Darling-Hammond, 2004), so the first statement is false. The second
statement is also false. Although randomly calling on students to keep them attentive
may make sense to many, research shows that going around a circle in order in a reading
class leads to better achievement than calling on students randomly, presumably
because the second method allows all students to participate and receive feedback
(Woolfolk & Brooks, 1983). The third statement is true. When you learn about sociocognitive
theories of learning, you will realize that a significant amount of what students
learn comes from observing the consequences of other students’ behavior (Bandura,
1977). Research shows that students will learn which behaviors are desirable and undesirable
simply by watching whether the teacher rewards or punishes other students’
behavior, respectively. The fourth statement is false. Once you
read the chapter on complex cognitive processes, you will discover
that misconceptions are much harder to change than most
teachers believe (Alparsian, Tekkaya, & Geban, 2004; Yip, 2004).
Educational psychology research shows that merely providing the
right explanation does not change students’ ways of thinking.
So common sense or personal beliefs are not a valid or reliable
basis for making good classroom decisions. Let’s assume for
a moment that you decided to place your students in ability
groups because it makes sense to you. Now imagine that one of
your students is struggling and you decide to have a parent conference
to strategize about how to help this student improve at
school. What would you say to the students’ parents if they asked
you to explain the rationale for using ability grouping? Would you
respond that it just makes sense to you? Would you state that ability
grouping worked for you when you went to school? Or would
you say that other teachers that you know engage in the same practice? As you read
this text, you will realize that many of your beliefs and experiences may have research
support, yet many others may be proven to be inaccurate, no matter how obviously
appropriate or familiar they might be to you. So, going back to our original question
regarding where educational psychology principles and theories originate, the answer
is: They originate in educational psychology research.
Types of Research in Educational Psychology
Educational psychologists conduct research on all the main topics of this text: group
and individual learner differences, human growth and development, learning and motivation
to learn, classroom management, assessment, and technology-based learning.
Some researchers conduct individual studies, which are designed to answer particular
research questions. Others set out to synthesize the current state of understanding
about a topic by compiling past research findings in review studies.
Although most research is a one-time investigation of the topic of interest, some
research is longitudinal and consists of following the participants of the study over time.
For example, a language development study may be cross-sectional if it includes groups
of children of different ages and conclusions are made by comparing the language skills
of the developmental groups at the time of the study. Alternatively, the study can be
designed to be longitudinal by following a group of young children over a certain time
and recording the changes in language development over that time. The reason there
are few longitudinal studies is that they are typically expensive, time consuming, and
subject to attrition—the original participants may move or fail to participate in all
research sessions.
All these types of research studies—individual, review, cross-sectional, and
longitudinal—contribute to the science of learning and help develop guidelines for
effective classroom practices. However, depending on their objectives (i.e., the research
question that they aim to answer) and the methodology used, they vary in the type of conclusions that can be drawn from the study findings. Next, we review a classification
of research studies based on their objectives.
Descriptive Research. The goal of descriptive research, as its name implies, is to
describe what is occurring in a certain situation without altering the situation. The
researcher in this case is an observer who might engage in one of the following methods:
observation, interviews, questionnaires, case studies, or ethnographic studies. For
instance, a researcher interested in examining teachers’ time management may sit in
several classrooms and record the percentage of time students are on-task and off-task.
The researcher may interview the participating teachers to ask them how they
planned their instructional time and give the participating students a questionnaire to
rate their engagement in the lesson. Using all the information from observation, interviews,
and questionnaires, the researcher can then write a research article describing
the patterns found in teacher and students’ behaviors and thoughts.
Researchers may also conduct case studies when they are interested in examining a
few teachers or students in depth, such as by contrasting how an expert teacher makes
use of time management in her lesson plans as compared to a beginning teacher or how
a student with high spatial ability solves geometry problems using visual representations.
Finally, descriptive studies are ethnographic when they are designed to observe the
naturally occurring events in the life of a target group with the goal of describing and
interpreting the meaning of the observed events (Berg, 2007). Ethnographies are the
products of anthropological research. Ethnographic studies are typically conducted
over a long period of time, allowing researchers to get immersed in the culture of the
target group. Observations can be documented with personal daily journals, audiotapes
from personal interviews, films, and photography.
Correlational Research. Have you ever made a correlation between two things that
weren’t actually related? For example, every time you had a math test, you got an A
when you wore your blue T-shirt. Of course, the reason you got an A wasn’t because of
the blue T-shirt, even though those two events happened at the same time (wearing
the T-shirt and getting an A). The goal of correlational research is to describe whether
and to what extent there is a relationship between two or more events or factors. For
example, a researcher may collect students’ GPAs and their school attendance record
and find that there is a relationship between the two indicating that students with
higher GPAs have higher school attendance, and vice versa. In this case, GPA and attendance
are said to have a positive correlation because both factors vary in the same direction.
In contrast, a negative correlation indicates that higher values in one factor
correspond to lower values in the other factor, such as the occurrence of teacher anxiety
during the first day of classes and the number of years that they have been teaching.
Typically, the larger the number of years that teachers have been teaching, the
lower the level of anxiety reported during the first day of classes.
An important point to keep in mind when interpreting correlational research is
that correlation does not mean causation (Vogt, 2007). In other words, even when two factors
are found to be strongly correlated, we should not interpret such a finding as indicating
that one of the factors caused the other factor (the blue T-shirt did not cause
you to get an A on your math test). When researchers are interested in examining the
causal relationship between events or factors, they engage in experimental research.
Experimental Research. The goal of experimental research is to study causal relationships
between variables. To this end, researchers go beyond the observation or measurement
of variables in an existing situation by introducing changes to the situation
and measuring the effects of such changes. In any experimental study there are two
types of variables. Independent variables are those that are hypothesized to produce a
change in the dependent variables. Dependent variables are typically an aspect of students’
classroom thinking or behavior, such as their attitudes, persistency, grades, test
scores, or communication skills. Independent variables are manipulated by the experimenter
as a way to investigate whether they have a significant effect on the dependent variables. For example, imagine that you are interested in answering the following
research question: Do students learn chemistry better when taught with molecular models?
To answer this question, you can conduct an experimental study in which one group
of students is taught a chemistry lesson that includes a molecular model of the topic
to be learned whereas another group of students is taught the same lesson with no molecular
model. The independent variable in this case is the molecular model. This variable
is manipulated because one group is presented with the model, but not the other
group. The dependent variable in this case is learning, which can be measured with a
traditional or performance test after the intervention. If the molecular model has a
causal relationship with students’ learning, you will find that the group of students who
learned with the model will significantly outperform the group of students who did not
learn with the model.
In experimental research, the group that is subject to the manipulation (i.e., intervention)
is called the experimental group and the group that is not subject to the manipulation
is called the control group. However, good experimental design requires random
assignment of students to each group, to ensure that the two groups will be mostly identical
in any characteristic and variable (e.g., gender, age, prior knowledge) other than
the variable that you are manipulating.
To summarize, the type of research conducted will depend on the particular
research question that needs to be answered (see Table 1.2.). Nevertheless, many
research studies will combine the three types of questions listed here and will consequently
require the use of mixed research methods. After reading Table 1.2., take a
few minutes to think about a potential mixed research method study.
Action Research. A special type of research of increasing interest is action research,
the research that teachers conduct in their own classrooms with the objective of understanding
and improving their practices (Creswell, 2005; van Manen, 1990). Reflective
teachers draw from educational theory and research to hypothesize about effective classroom
practices, which they apply, evaluate, and revise as needed. Although evaluating the effectiveness of classroom practices can be done in a nonsystematic way, the drawback
of this approach is that the information collected is subjective and anecdotal. In
contrast, teachers can systematically evaluate the effectiveness of their practices through
action research, which follows some of the methods of scientific research used by educational
psychologists such as taking measurements of the frequency, duration, magnitude,
or latency of specific student behaviors (Moore, 1992). See Table 1.3 for the
steps involved in an action research plan.
The data collected during action research may come from classroom observations,
student work, clinical interviews (where teachers interview students with a set of target
questions), parent–teacher conferences, and so on. Action research may also involve
school administrators, more than one classroom, and even several schools. Action
research is different from other research in that it is intended not to meet the rigors
of publication or theory building but to serve as a vehicle to help a reflective teacher
make effective practical decisions (Parsons & Brown, 2002; Sardo-Brown, 1994).
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