Educational Psychology and Learning Theory
Educational psychology supplies the 'why' behind every classroom decision, and examiners test whether you can attach the correct theorist to the correct construct and then to a classroom application.
Core concepts to command
Behaviourism: Pavlov (classical conditioning, stimulus substitution), Thorndike (laws of readiness, exercise and effect), Skinner (operant conditioning, reinforcement schedules, shaping, programmed instruction). Cognitivism: Piaget's four stages (sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, formal operational) with the markers object permanence, egocentrism, conservation and hypothetico-deductive reasoning; Vygotsky's zone of proximal development, scaffolding and private speech; Bruner's enactive-iconic-symbolic representation, discovery learning and spiral curriculum; Ausubel's meaningful learning, subsumption and advance organisers; Gagne's nine events of instruction; information processing (sensory register, working memory of about seven chunks, long-term memory, encoding and retrieval). Social-cognitive: Bandura's observational learning and self-efficacy. Humanistic: Maslow's hierarchy, Rogers' unconditional positive regard. Development of morality and personality: Kohlberg's three levels, Erikson's psychosocial stages. Constructivism and motivation: intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation, mastery goals, attribution theory, self-determination theory.
Traps examiners set
- Equating negative reinforcement with punishment. Reinforcement always increases behaviour.
- Attributing the ZPD or scaffolding to Piaget; it is Vygotsky.
- Confusing egocentrism (preoperational) with conservation failure, or animism with object permanence.
- Mixing Gagne's nine events with Bloom's taxonomy.
- Variable-ratio schedules produce the greatest resistance to extinction, not fixed ratio.
Worked example / rule of thumb
A pupil who shouts out answers is sent into the corridor and stops shouting. Nothing is added; something is removed to weaken behaviour, so this is negative punishment, not negative reinforcement. Rule of thumb: ask (a) is something added or removed? (b) did behaviour rise or fall? Added plus rise = positive reinforcement; removed plus rise = negative reinforcement; added plus fall = positive punishment; removed plus fall = negative punishment.