EPSY+7400-+Educational+Psychology+and+Educational+Implications

Semester: Summer 2010

 * Summary:** This course provided an overview of major learning theories and their theorists. The primary focus was theories regarding the physical and mental development of students and how this affects their learning. Ultimately, students were asked to evaluate their own assumptions regarding learning and reconsider their instructional strategies.

Roles of the Library Media Specialist

 * Program Administrator:** As a program administrator, I will need to consider what is developmentally appropriate for my students when building policies and selecting materials. This course required that we complete a project evaluating a state's curriculum standards. This allowed me to see that just because a policy has been put into effect, it does not mean that it is developmentally appropriate for the students. When developing such documents as an AUP, I must not only consider the reading level and stage of mental development of my students so that I can create a document they can easily comprehend, but I must also remember their stages of moral development and create rules that they can follow.


 * Instructional Partner/Teacher:** This course required me to think about my role as an instructional partner because my primary responsibility in this role is developing collaborative lessons that target age appropriate 21st Century Skills. While I will use such sources as the ALCOS, ISTE, and AASL standards to determine what skills to include in learning objectives, I must also take into account the rate of which my students are developing physically and mentally as well as the needs of students with disabilities. I will need to conduct surveys and pretests to determine what skills have been mastered and what areas students need to improve upon before assuming that they are ready to learn an ALCOS objective. I will also need to consult with faculty as to what skills they want to be prioritized to support their curriculum and class assignments as they will have more time to observe student ability and will be more knowledgeable in this area. Lastly, I will need to work with the special education department to ensure that we have assistive technologies that meet the needs of all of our learners.

Work Samples


The final project for this course required me to select a set of content standards and analyze their appropriateness according to the mental and physical development of the targeted students utilizing the various theories discussed in class. For this project I chose to analyze the contents standards for sixth grade reading in the state of California. I had worked with these standards during my student teaching internship and had found a number of the expected learning objectives set for students at this grade level had not been introduced to me until I was in high school. I felt this project was the perfect opportunity to analyze whether or not these standards were developmentally appropriate for students at this grade level. I came to the conclusion that several of the standards I analyzed were not developmentally appropriate for sixth graders due to their state of cognitive development. For example, understanding symbolism is often a very abstract concept. While students may able to identify concrete examples, such as a white wedding dress representing purity in western cultures, they will have a difficult time understanding the more abstract symbols or symbolic interpretations from other cultures. This project required me to operate in both the role of a teacher and a program administrator. As a teacher, I analyzed the standards and evaluated my past instructional methods and what I might do in the future to improve learning. As an administrator, I realized the importance of researching student development and needs before developing an enacting a policy. I will need to put this into practice when selecting materials to support student learning. For example, I would not want to purchase materials that require an 11th grade reading level for an elementary school library unless I have students who are capable of reading at that level.