educational psych midterm

four main domains of human development

• Physical (body changes)  

• Personal (identity and personality changes)  

• Social (changes in relationships with others)  

• Cognitive (changes in thinking) 

maturation and learning

• Maturation: natural development largely guided by genes, but influenced by resources such as nutrition, teaching cannot push development beyond physical readiness  

• Learning: change through environmental interaction, active exploration, observing others, and guidance 

nature vs nurture

• Genes are expressed within environments; neither work alone 

• Development reflects heredity-environment interactions 

• The expression of inherited traits can vary across cultures and environments  

principles of development

• People develop at different rates, so age expectations are guidelines rather than fixed rules  

• Development is generally orderly and gradual, especially for physical abilities  

• But children may temporarily appear to regress when a skill isn’t fully secure  

Piaget’s two basic tendencies

• Organization: arranging thoughts and behaviours in schemas – mental frameworks for what to expect  

• Adaptation: adjusting schemas to fit the environment through assimilation and accommodation  

assimilation, accommodation, equilibration, and disequilibrium

• Assimilation: fitting new info into an existing schema  

• Accommodation: changing or creating a schema when info doesn’t fit  

• Equilibration: restoring balance when expectations match experience, using assimilation and accommodation  

• Disequilibrium: an uncomfortable mismatch between expectations and experience that prompts adjustment  

main features of the pre-operational stage (ages 2-6/7)

• Pretend play and symbolic thought (using language and numbers) emerge 

• Children often show egocentrism (difficulty taking another person’s perspective) and one-way logic -> can lead to failure on conservation tasks (ex: thinking a cut sandwich is more food than an uncut one)  

concrete and formal operational stages

• Concrete operational (about 7-11): understand conservation and reasons logically about concrete objects and events but may struggle with abstract ideas 

• Formal operational (about 11+): can reason abstractly about ideas, metaphors, identity, and social issues  

adolescent egocentrism

• A strong focus on one’s own thoughts, feelings, and concerns 

• The imaginary audience is the belief that others are constantly watching and evaluating you  

• These tendencies generally decline after early adolescence  

Piaget’s educational implications and main criticisms

• Teaching should match students’ developmental readiness, recognize individual differences, and let children actively engage with new info 

• Criticisms: abilities don’t always appear in neat stages, Piaget may underestimate children because tasks or instructions can be difficult, and his theory gives too little attention to social and cultural influences  

what neo-Piagetians added to Piaget’s theory

• They combine stage-related ideas with information-processing research and brain maturation 

• Executive functions – attention, working memory, planning, and problem solving – depend partly on the frontal/prefrontal cortex, which is among the last brain areas to mature  

Vygotsky’s three central ideas

• Cognitive development occurs in social and cultural contexts  

• Social interaction drives development 

• Language is a key tool mediating thought and interaction 

co-construction

• People build knowledge together through interaction, sharing perspectives, and jointly solving problems 

• Strategies learned socially can later be internalized  

• Cultural tools (ex: calculators or an abacus) support thinking and problem-solving  

private speech development

• Children first follow others’ instructions, then tell others what to do, and eventually talk themselves through tasks  

• Private speech becomes quieter and is internalized as inner speech, but may reappear as whispers or lip movements during difficult tasks  

scaffolding, assisted learning, and the zone of proximal development (ZPD)

• Scaffolding: support to guidance from a more knowledgeable person 

• Assisted learning: guided participation, with help gradually reduced as skill improves   

• ZPD: the gap between what a learner can do alone and what they can do with guidance, the goal is independent performance  

Genie example from Vygotsky’s perspective

The case is used to illustrate how severe lack of early social interaction can disrupt cognitive and language development and how missed development windows may limit later learning  

early maturing vs late maturing

• Girls:  

• Early – sexual activity, school achievement, drug/alcohol use, depression, anxiety, eating disorders  

• Late – anxiety about development, fewer problems  

• Boys:  

• Early – social skills, popularity, risk-taking 

• Late – initial difficulties, creative, tolerant, perceptive  

• Issues:  

• Cultural differences, limited mixed results, challenges greater for gender non-conforming/non-binary youth 

bronfenbrenner’s bioecological model

• Microsystem: direct settings and relationships (family, school, peers)  

• Mesosystem: links between microsystems (ex: parent-teacher relationship) 

• Exosystem: setting that affect the child indirectly (ex: parent’s workplace) 

• Macrosystem: wider cultural and social values 

• Chronosystem: changes overtime and historical context 

parenting styles

• Authoritative: warm and supportive, with clear enforced rules; associated with stronger self-esteem and achievement  

• Authoritarian: strict “do as you’re told,” with little warmth; associated with lower self-esteem/self-control and more hostility  

• Permissive/indulgent: warm but few rules or limits; may contribute to impulsivity, immaturity, and self-centred behaviour  

• Rejecting/neglectful: low warmth and little guidance; associated with lower achievement, weaker relationships, aggression, risk-taking, insecurity, or withdrawal  

attachment

• A strong, enduring emotional bond between an infant and caregiver  

• Securely attached children explore, are comforted by the caregiver, and experience the world as more predictable 

• Secure attachment is associated with better school adjustment, independence, social interaction, and achievement  

insecure attachment

• Resistant: little exploration, clinging to caregiver, and strong distress  

• Disorganized/avoidant: few clear signs of attachment, muted emotions, or contradictory reactions  

aggression

• Instrumental: behaviour is to gain access to object/privilege 

• Hostile: intended to harm someone 

• Overt – physical (ex: hitting, kicking)  

• Relational – harms social relationships, such as exclusion or spreading rumours  

• Aggression can be learned from friends and media and can increase with frustration, hunger, stress, physical discomfort, or perceived unfairness  

bullying

• Grades 4-8:  

• 86% have seen someone bullied  

• At least half have been bullied once  

• 20% cyberbullied  

• Grades 7-8 – critical developmental age (bullying has a large impact on victim)  

• Relational bullying:  

• Targets social relationships (social exclusion, rumours)  

• Can be more damaging than overt + victims less likely to report (think it’ll make situation worse)  

• Can be difficult to detect (teasing common in friends)  

Erikson’s theory of psychosocial development

• Development involves 8 stages, each with a lasting psychosocial challenge or crisis  

• Each stage has 2 extremes, and healthy development generally lies between them rather than at either extreme  

first 5 stages and their central questions

• Trust vs. mistrust (birth – 1 ½): can I trust the world? 

• Autonomy vs. shame and doubt (1 ½ - 3): can I act independently and control myself?  

• Initiative vs. guilt (3-6): is it okay for me to explore and take initiative? 

• Industry vs. inferiority (6-12): am I competent? Peer relationships and skills become more important  

• Identity vs. role confusion (adolescence into early adulthood): who am I, and where am I going?  

identity

• Sense of self  

• Development more complicated if both dominant culture and one’s own culture are explored  

• Racial/ethnic pride -> better mental health, higher achievement, shorter moratorium  

Marcia’s identity statuses

• Diffusion: no commitment and little active exploration; everyone begins here  

• Moratorium: actively exploring actions but not yet decided  

• Foreclosure: commitment without much personal exploration; identity may be imposed by others and person can be rigid or dogmatic  

• Achievement: commitment made after exploring options; the person’s choices feel personally congruent  

• Remaining in diffusion is also possible, may be associated with an external locus of control (life is controlled by outside forces), apathy, susceptibility to peer pressure or isolation, and low self-esteem  

difference between self-concept and self-esteem

• Self-concept: what you believe or describe about yourself; can be general or domain-specific (ex: athletic) 

• Self-esteem: your emotional/evaluative response to that self-description; can also be general or domain-specific  

• Realistic high self-esteem can support achievement and well-being, while unrealistically high self-esteem may lead to defensiveness or aggression when challenged  

what shapes students’ self-concept and self-esteem

• School performance experiences, support when struggling, feedback from peers and teachers, and comparisons with others all contribute  

• During grades 7-8 and high school, self-concept, self-esteem, and self-efficacy may decline, while appearance becomes more important and is judged more critically  

how peer groups change with age

• Peer groups become more important around age 6, they develop norms for appearance, speech, behaviour, and interests  

• Cliques: small, close friendship groups with similar members; especially important in grades 6-9  

• Crowds: loosely organized categories (ex: jocks or nerds) based on stereotypes; especially important in early to mid-adolescence

intelligence

the ability to acquire and use knowledge

Spearman’s hierarchical model

• General intelligence (g): an innate, single overarching factor that underlies all cognitive tasks and performance 

• Specific factors (s): narrow, unique skills tied strictly to individual, specific types of tasks (such as musical or mathematical proficiency)

Cattel-Horn-Carroll theory (CHC)

• Three-strata hierarchy:  

• Stratum III: general intelligence  

• Stratum II: broad cognitive abilities (about 10-16 domains)  

• Stratum I: many narrow, specific abilities (about 70-80) 

• Cattell-Horn distinguishes fluid intelligence (processing and solving new problems; peaks in late adolescence) from crystallized intelligence (using acquired knowledge, can increase throughout life)  

multiple intelligences: Gardner

• 1) Logical-mathematical: reasoning, numbers, patterns 

• 2) Linguistic: language, reading, writing, storytelling 

• 3) Visual-spatial: visualizing and manipulating objects mentally  

• 4) Musical: rhythm, pitch, tone, melody 

• 5) Bodily-kinesthetic: movement and coordination 

• 6) Interpersonal: understanding other people  

• 7) Intrapersonal: understanding oneself  

• 8) Naturalistic: classifying living things and natural patterns  

• 9) Existential: thinking about life, death, and meaning  

issues/criticisms of Gardner’s theory

• Benefits: it highlights varied abilities and encourages educators to look beyond one intelligence score  

• Criticisms: the abilities may be correlated, it is difficult to measure them reliably, and overly tailoring lessons to supposed “intelligences” may be unhelpful  

Sternberg’s 3 types of intelligences

• Analytic: formal problem-solving and analysis  

• Creative: adapting and dealing with novel problems  

• Practical: handling everyday problems  

intelligence tests

• The 1905 Binet-Simon test was an early practical standardized test designed to identify children needing extra educational help 

• It assessed mental processes, not just school knowledge  

• The Stanford-Binet followed in 1916; Wechsler tests followed (WAIS in 1939, WISC in 1949) 

mental age and IQ

• Mental age: the age group whose average performance matches the child’s test performance 

• Original IQ formula: (mental age / chronological age) x 100  

how heredity impacts IQ scores

• Clear heritable component – 50-80%  

• Interaction with environment – biological (nutrition, prenatal care), social/educational (school quality, SES, parental encouragement) 

• Reaction range – the genetically determined limits on IQ, while the environment determines where a person falls within that range  

emotional intelligence (EI)

• The ability to perceive emotions, use them to fit the task at hand, understand them, and manage them 

• Relevant to social and emotional learning (SEL)  

creativity

• Generating novel ideas or approaching a task in a new way  

• Draws on domain knowledge and skills, creativity-related processes and work habits, and intrinsic motivation or fascination with the area  

difference between convergent and divergent thinking

• Convergent: narrowing ideas to one answer, as in many conventional tests 

• Divergent: generating multiple possible ideas  

• Creative work often uses divergent thinking to generate options, then convergent thinking to organize and refine them  

Torrence Test of Creative Thinking (TTCT)

• Make as many different pictures as you can 

• Scores on:  

• 1) fluency – number  

• 2) flexibility – diversity  

• 3) originality – commonality (an idea is deemed as original if it is generated by <10% of a normative peer group) 

learning style and cognitive style

• Cognitive style: ways of perceiving, organizing, and using info 

• Learning style: characteristic way of learning and studying  

• No credible evidence that matching instruction to preferred style improves learning outcomes 

exceptional students and inclusion

• Exceptional students perform outside the expected range, above or below it and may need specialized instructions 

• Inclusion places students in regular classes when appropriate, but doesn’t require full integration in every situation 

• Least restrictive placement means choosing the most enabling setting with needed supports  

gifted and talented students

• Giftedness may involve high competence, creativity, and sustained motivation, sometimes limited to one area  

• Can reflect early talent/interest and intensive practice  

• Some gifted students prefer older peers or adults, struggle to connect with same-age classmates, become frustrated when others learn more slowly, or experience existential concerns  

• Gifted adults may experience impatience, workplace alienation, underachievement, or burnout when insufficiently challenged or overly perfectionistic  

how gifted students are identified and the possible emotional effects

• Screening often occurs around grades 3-4 

• Methods include educational assessments, individual IQ tests, subject-specific tasks, creativity tests, and case studies  

• Being labelled as gifted can create performance pressure, perfectionism, or anxiety  

acceleration vs enrichment for gifted students

• Acceleration: learning the standard curriculum at a faster pace 

• Enrichment: adding deeper or more challenging work, sometimes through pullout programs with specialized teachers and academic peers 

learning disabilities

• Neurodevelopmental disorders that persistently and significantly affect learning or the use of academic skills  

• Difficulties may be specific (ex: reading/language or math) or involve organization, attention, behaviour coordination, memory, or social skills  

• They can persist across life so early intervention matters  

working with students with learning disabilities

• Direct instruction:  

• Clear, frequent explanation, instructions, guidance  

• Small steps, frequent practice  

• Frequent, immediate feedback 

• Peer support 

• Self-regulated learning 

individual education plan (IEP)

• A plan for each exceptional student, reviewed, and updated yearly, that includes:  

• Educational expectations (specific goals)  

• Special education programs/services provided  

• Progress monitoring methods  

• Transition plan, if appropriate  

• Responsibility: team approach, but the classroom teacher usually makes program-planning decisions and prepares the report card  

• Benefit of identification: access to additional resources 

• Concern: labels may cause stigma or self-fulfilling prophecies  

early language development

• Infants can initially distinguish sounds from many languages (2000 sounds)  

• Around 7-14 months, sensitivity to sounds not heard regularly declines, and perception becomes more specialized for the child’s native language 

early language learning

• Children have a biological predisposition to acquire language; two important supports are:  

• Joint attention: caregiver and child focus on the same object or action, helping the child connect words with meanings 

• Child-direct speech (“motherese”): speech with simpler structure and exaggerated, higher-pitched intonation; found across cultures 

prespeech

• Cooing (to about 3 months): vowel-like sounds such as “oo” and “ah” 

• Babbling (around 4-6 months): combines consonants and vowels, such as “ba-ba”  

• Around 7-11 months: sound repertoire narrows toward to the native language and speech-like intonation/jargon develops 

approximate early language milestones

• Around 10 months: responds to name, babbles, imitates simple sounds/gestures  

• 12-18 months: first meaningful words and a small single-word vocab 

• 18-24 months: around 50 words and two-word “telegraphic” phrases (ex: “want cookie”)  

• 2-3 years: vocab grows to roughly 100-450 words and sentences often contain 3-4 words  

• 3-5 years: longer stories, basic grammar, tenses, and rapidly growing vocab 

• Treat age ranges as guidelines, not rigid cutoffs  

early language acquisition errors

• Over-extension: using a word too broadly (calling all four-legged animals “doggie”)  

• Under-extension: using a word too narrowly (Using "dog” only for one familiar dog) 

• Overregularization: applying a regular grammar rule to an irregular form (saying “tooths” instead of “teeth”) 

language skills during elementary school

Children improve pronunciation, use more complex syntax (ex: although and because), expand vocab through reading, understand nonliteral language (jokes, irony, sarcasm, metaphors), and learn abstract/academic words  

pragmatics and metalinguistic awareness

• Pragmatics: adapting language to the listener and social context; it is culturally specific and emerges early  

• Metalinguistic awareness: stepping back to analyze language itself, separate from its meaning; develops beyond age 5  

influences on children’s reading development

Reading depends on decoding (linking speech sounds/phonemes to written letters/graphemes), oral language (vocab, grammar, story comprehension) and the home literacy environment  

benefits of multiple languages

• Improves cognitive abilities  

• Metalinguistic (easier to grasp grammar and build stronger reading/writing skills)  

• Easier time learning additional languages  

what supports early bilingual development

• Learn both languages before age 5  

• Exposure across varied settings and systematic, consistent, sustained input  

• A good-quality program may support everyday conversational language in 2-3 years and academic language in 6-9 years  

profiles of language learners

• Balanced bilinguals: L1 and L2  

• Monolingual/literate students: literate L1, limited proficiency in L2

• Monolingual/preliterate students: limited/no literacy in L1, limited proficiency in L2

• Limited bilingual students: converse well in both but trouble learning academically in both L1 and L2

heritage language and types of bilingualism

• Heritage language: a home language that differs from the dominant societal language; may be lost by the third generation as families shift to dominant language  

• Additive bilingualism: learning a second language while maintaining the first  

• Subtractive bilingualism: learning a second language at the expense of the first  

• Balanced bilingualism: similar or near-equal proficiency in both languages  

2 approaches to learning English

• Immersion: instruction in English with max exposure; aims for rapid transition to English-only instruction 

• Most common but students may fall behind in core subjects (ex: math/science) and lose their first language  

• Native-language maintenance/bilingual learning: maintains and teaches the first language, transitioning to English when possible  

• Produces better outcomes but limited by funding, lack of bilingual teachers, and policies favouring English-only instruction 

metacognition and its 3 main skills

• Thinking about your own thinking 

• Planning: set goals and choose strategies, time, and resources before starting 

• Monitoring: check your understanding and progress during a task 

• Evaluating: reflect on the outcome and judge strategy effectiveness afterwards  

3 types of metacognitive knowledge

• Declarative (knowing what): knowing about yourself as a learner, the content, factors affecting performance, and available strategies  

• Procedural (knowing how): knowing how to perform a task or use a strategy  

• Self-regulatory (knowing when and why): knowing when and why to use a strategy in a particular situation 

learning strategies and the 3 main types

• Learning strategies are techniques for understanding, remembering, and applying information; they require effort, motivation, and self-regulation 

• cognitive - process info directly (ex: summarizing/organizing notes)

• metacognitive - monitoring and regulate understanding (ex: checking comprehension)

• behavioural - manage learning through actions (ex: setting timers)

effective learning strategies

• PARS: preview, ask, read, summarize  

• Effective studying requires active processing, background knowledge, motivation, and self-regulation 

• Productive deficiency occurs when students know about effective strategies but fail to use them  

problem solving

• Means finding a solution when the path toward a goal is not obvious  

• Well-structured problems: have clear goals and procedures  

• Ill-structured problems: have ambiguous goals and multiple possible solutions  

• Three steps:  

• 1) identify and represent: frame the problem, activate relevant schemas, and ignore irrelevant details  

• 2) develop strategies: consider approaches such as breaking the problem into subgoals or working backwards  

• 3) decide and evaluate: choose the most appropriate strategy based on effectiveness, experience, motivation, and risks  

algorithm and heuristic

• Algorithm: a precise, step-by-step procedure that guarantees a correct solution when applicable and followed correctly, but may be time-consuming  

• Heuristic: a mental shortcut or rule of thumb that saves time and effort but doesn’t guarantee a solution  

cognitive biases that interfere with problem-solving

• Functional fixedness: seeing an object only for its usual purpose, preventing alternative uses  

• Response set: getting stuck on one way of representing or solving a problem 

• Representativeness: judging likelihood by resemblance to a typical example or a typical example or stereotype while ignoring statistical probabilities  

• Availability: judging likelihood by how easily examples come to mind, potentially overestimating memorable events  

• Belief perseverance: maintaining a belief despite contradictory evidence  

• Confirmation bias: favouring evidence that supports existing beliefs while ignoring or dismissing contradictory evidence  

critical thinking

• Analyzing and evaluating info and your own reasoning to make clear, logic, evidence-based judgments  

• It involves questioning assumptions, assessing evidence, considering alternative explanations, and identifying weaknesses in arguments  

transfer of learning

• Occurs when knowledge, skills, strategies, or attitudes learned in one situation influence learning or performance in another 

• Positive transfer: previous learning helps new learning 

• Automatic (direct) transfer: a well-practiced skill is applied spontaneously, with little conscious thought  

• Thoughtful (preparatory) transfer: the learner deliberately recognizes an underlying principle or strategy and applied it to a new situation 

• Negative transfer: previous learning interferes because an earlier strategy or assumption is inappropriate  

• What impacts transfer:  

• Transfer is easiest between related domains when connections are direct and explicit  

• Transfer across unrelated domains requires recognizing abstract, conceptual similarities  

• Mastery, overlearning, deliberate strategy use, practice, feedback, and exposure to novel situations supports transfer