Reflection on Educational Psychology
Week 5 Written Assignment
Response:
Introduction
Educational technology is termed as the modern of facilitating learning in schools, thus advancing learners performance through the use of technological process such as hardware and software (Woolfolk, 2013). In the education sector, it is essential to determine the viability of the assessment measures as well as teaching methods used. This paper seeks to provide a response to traditional teaching method and assessment measures used in the education sector, thus providing a conclusion on whether to adopt modern methods.
Testing, Testing | Linda Darling-Hammond | TEDxStanford
Linda Darling-Hammond, in her TEDxStanford talk, offers an explanation about how the United States has taken the wrong turn by providing them with standardized tests, something lacking in other countries, thus making them fewer benefits. According to her explanation of the TEDxStanford event, a standardized test can be termed as an anachronism. Therefore, she moved to offer an alternative that would offer American Students with more benefits across the world. In her talk, she stated that standardized exams were not the solution to evaluate future success, referring to Google, who stopped evaluating future success through standardized testing. Linda argued that there was a better alternative used by other top-performing countries such as Singapore, which leads to increased accuracy in students’ and teachers’ evaluations.
In the current era, the education sector is faced with increased technological changes, thus affecting the learning and assessment of learners. A study conducted by Cradler et al. (2002) stated that the technology adoption in education sector promotes the academic performance of learners. The United education system is associated with huge gaps; therefore, it is important to close such gaps. In my opinion, Linda has done her best by identifying different loopholes in the education sectors, such as standardized exams, and offered an alternative. Currently, problem-solving requires meaningful tests whereby individuals who solve such tests are referred to as successors, and individuals who fail to solve are termed as failures. I agree with Linda’s alternative approach to testing since it provides more innovative and meaningful ways of doing things. Adopting an international testing agency that is not controlled by any government could help in intelligence assessment since it is not attached to the country’s curriculum, but the score of specific students.
From her talk, I agree with her view on changing the current standardized testing to more innovative ways, which would positively impact the American students. It is clear that she focused more on the different ways to avoid teacher’s accountability and focus more on the student’s ability. In my opinion, testing is supposed to ensure an effective intelligence system that offers support to the students learning.
Constructivism
An exploration of the constructivism teaching method in the video uploaded by John Wilkinson provides a wide understanding of how to handle students in the classroom. In my opinion, the constructivist teaching style is one of the favourite methods which needs to be adopted by all schools since it helps teachers to engage with students. Besides, it helps the learners to interact with others, thus making learning easy (Kafai & Fields, 2018). For instance, in the constructivism video, the teacher seems engaged with her learners and making them socialize with each other through active participation.
In my opinion, I think that the constructionist classroom teaching style is helpful to different learners since it helps them to pay attention, thus grasping the concept. For instance, the teacher in the constructivism video called out a student for contribution, thus making them pay attention and have them internalize the concept learned trough repeating the taught content in their own words. Besides, the constructivist style makes the student have an increased level of independence, thus making them practice individualism.
In rewarding the best behaviour from students, the teacher used the scoring system. Although such behaviours could have been impacted by the presence of cameras in class, I support the ideology since it makes the students remain cooperative throughout the class. This leads to an increased level of responsibility and creativity from students. Generally, constructivism leads to increased confidence in students as they search for the solution.
Conclusion
From the above discussion, it can be concluded that it is essential to change from the standardized tests to other advance assessment method. Besides, the traditional constructionist classroom teaching style need to be retained since improving active participation of learners
References
Cradler, J., McNabb, M., Freeman, M., & Burchett, R. (2002). How does technology influence student learning?. Learning and Leading with Technology, 29(8), 46-49. Retrieved from: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/b8cf/7272909296681ccf9ffc609666a3eafecb5f.pdf
Kafai, Y., & Fields, D. (2018). Some reflections on designing constructionist activities for classrooms. Proceedings from Constructionism.
Woolfolk, Anita. (2013). Educational Psychology (14 Edition). Boston: Pearson. ISBN13: 978-13-444680-6