Helping leaders help teachers to manage classrooms
PBL
1. Is It Them or Is It Me?
QED 520 Educational Psychology I
Problem Based Learning
Tutor: Daniel Tan Eng Hai
Group One:
Betty Chua Yi Qin
Eunice Leow Shium Rou
Wendy Fan Wenying
Rodney Sea Chi Huan
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2. PBL Scenario One
SCENE 1 (In the staff room)
Ms Jia sat at her table, staring into
space, drained of every bit of her
energy after class, and then with a
sigh writing into her notepad to-do-
list.
...
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3. Set of questions identified:
I. How will a teacher’s self-efficacy affect the
classroom learning environment?
II. How do teachers’ expectation and students’
motivation impact on academic performance?
III. How do reward and punishment enforce
discipline and enhance performance?
IV. To what extent will cognitive processes, or the
lack of thereof, impact meaningful learning?
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4. Set of questions identified:
I How will a teacher’s self- II How do teachers’
efficacy affect the expectation and students’
classroom learning motivation impact on
environment? academic performance?
III How do reward and IV To what extent will
punishment enforce cognitive processes, or the
discipline and enhance lack of thereof, impact
performance? meaningful learning?
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5. I. How will
a teacher’s self-efficacy
affect the classroom learning
environment?
Self-Efficacy
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6. I Self Efficacy-Evidences
• drained of every bit of her energy
• how am I going to manage
• should I even have signed up for teaching?
• How can others teach for so many years?
• Frustrated, Miss Jia approached Dua Xia, the boy
with loudest voice in class. “Dua Xia, you have the
loudest voice…”
• She always late one lah. Even if I am not in
class, she also won’t notice it.
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8. III Self Efficacy- Analysis
• Her low instructional self efficacy (from Santrock
p.473 & Bandura 1997) can be seen by her
inability to control the classroom, needing Dua
Xia’s help to keep them to settle down so that she
may start her lesson.
• Less time was spent in active teaching and
monitoring of students’ progress; Ms Jia was just
interesting in “getting the job done”, and to
complete the syllabus by the given timeframe, as
possibly prescribed by the SOWs.
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9. IV Self Efficacy- Solutions
• She needs to prioritize her task by classifying it
into two possible categories, namely
important and urgent matters.
• Using Bandura’s theory, Miss Jia can improve
her self-efficacy by practicing self-regulation
which involves these three processes: self-
observation, self-judgment and self-reaction.
• She should set management goals for herself
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10. II. How do
teachers’ expectation and
students’ motivation
impact on academic
performance?
Expectation and Motivation
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11. I Low Expectation- Evidences I
• She suspects him of cheating
• If you didn’t study, be prepared to fail. Face
the music! Why must you copy?
• You’ve never believed me.
• Even if I explain, you won’t be able to
understand. It’s probably too difficult for you!
• Dutifully answered Annie’s questions, one by
one, oblivious to the rest of the pupils in class
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12. I Low Expectation- Evidences II
• Guess what I do is never enough… I give up…
(stomps out of class)
• She asked Annie, her favourite pupil, to try
solving one of them
• Unless you’re really blind, you should see that I
have put in a lot of sweat into my studies.
• Irritated by the disruption, she said in a
condescending tone.
• Really made Minah regret asking. Fine. I will not
ask in the future!” Minah shouted
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14. III Low Expectation- Analysis I
• Ms Jia’s efficacy has led to her low expectation of
her students.
• Not much support provided in helping them
reach high standards, in challenging them
towards high achievements. Lack of scaffolding
• This has become a self-fulfilling prophecy, in
other words, students were not motivated by
excitement and encouraged to learn even though
they had demonstrated inquisitiveness, as in the
case of Minah, as Ms Jia did not believe in their
ability in Math
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15. III Low Expectation- Analysis II
• The exception is in the case of Anne, who was self
motivated (towards self mastery), though there is not much
information was provided.
• negative reinforcement/feedback provided: “Just follow the
rule. You don’t have to know the rationale behind it. Even
if I explain, you won’t be able to understand. It’s probably
too difficult for you!”
• she did not motivate the students to learn. Thus the
resulting effect on Lucy (and perhaps the class too) in the
last paragraph; “Take all she says as facts and follow exactly
what she says we are to do. Sure no problems, that way. ”
Lucy said in a matter-of-fact tone and continued reading
her CLEO magazine.”
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16. IV Low Expectation- Solutions
• She should first believe that all children can
learn and not right them off.
• She should also set learning goals base on
their potentials instead of her bias judgment
on them.
• She should not denigrate her students.
• Miss Jia should understand a student’s social
life and family background before she sets any
stereotypical view on them.
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17. III. How do
reward and punishment
enforce discipline and
enhance performance ?
Reinforcement and punishment
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18. I Misuse of Reinforcement-
Evidences
• I don’t have the time to pursue the matter (smoking)
with you now. See me after class
• That’s not fair! You didn’t even scold John when he was
late for class just now! Lian Huay protested indignantly.
He smoked and you didn’t even care. Then, now you
scold me for such a small thing! What kind of teacher
are you?
• Wah, Jia Lat is very unfair hor. John always gets away
with things. Then, for the rest of us, we always get
scolded. Like how it was just now, I asked her a
question and she scolded me in front of the whole
class. I hate her.
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19. II Misuse of Reinforcement-Theories
• Vygotsky’s approach to Social Constructivist
• Skinner’s theory about Reinforcement
processes
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20. III Misuse of Reinforcement-Analysis
• She wrote off some pupils as unteachable
(Brookover & others, 1979), such as John and
Minah, even though they did exhibit some
“bright sparks” such as studying the subject
over the weekend, inquisitiveness, with the
effect that some students like Lucy had
already acquired “learned helplessness”
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21. IV Misuse of Reinforcement-Solutions
• She should provide immediate and positive
feedbacks to the students when they attempt to
question the topic or contribute to class
participation.
• Punishments should not be made without proper
investigation, taking the example of John, she
should not punish him when she merely
“suspect” him of cheating.
• Fair and just punishment should be practiced.
When one breaks the rule, correction should be
taken instead of overlooking it (John smoking).
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22. IV. To what extent
will cognitive processes,
or the lack thereof,
impact
meaningful learning?
Cognitive Processes
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23. I Cognitive processes – Evidences I
• I must finish teaching this topic today
• The only priority in her mind was to finish
teaching this topic today. She constantly looks
at her watch…
• Irritated by the disruption, she said in a
condescending tone
• Just follow the rule. You don’t have to know
the rationale behind it.
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24. I Cognitive processes – Evidences II
• Even if I explain, you won’t be able to
understand. It’s probably too difficult for you!
• Really made Minah regret asking. Fine. I will not
ask in the future! Minah shouted
• Know her pattern by now. You can do
anything, just don’t stop her lessons in any way.
And just don’t ask questions about her lessons.
• Miss Jia: Just follow the method and do
accordingly
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25. II Cognitive processes- Theories
• Robert Gagne’s Instructional Cognitive
processes, Social Constructivist Approach by
Vygotsky, Information Processing theory
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26. III Cognitive processes- Analysis I
• Miss Jia did not even try to gain the attention
of the class herself; she got Dua Xia to control
the class. So first step of this instructional
cognitive process, she’d already gone wrong.
• Miss Jia didn’t give clear or good objective in
the beginning of the class. In fact, her only
objective known to the students was “to finish
the syllabus”
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27. III Cognitive processes- Analysis II
• Miss Jia did not help stimulate any prior
knowledge, for example recapping from previous
lesson. Using Information Processing Theory
term, she did not activate the students’ long term
memory and promote Metacognition.
• Miss Jia did not perform this either. She rushed
through the lesson and assumed that the class
understood what was taught by questioning
and receiving a correct answer from the smartest
girl in class.
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28. III Cognitive processes- Analysis III
• Again, not only did she not provide guidance,
she also discouraged / stopped the students
from questioning by denigrating a student
who had a question regarding the Math
question. However, she did provide learning
guidance to one girl before she began the
lesson,
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29. III Cognitive processes- Analysis IV
• Eliciting responds from the students was
missing in her lesson too. She did not elicit
any responses from the class with questions
or prompts.
• She provided negative feedback eg , “Just
follow the rule. You don’t have to know the
rationale behind it. Even if I explain, you
won’t be able to understand. It’s probably too
difficult for you!”
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30. IV Cognitive processes-Solutions I
• She must draw the students’ attention by
structuring her lesson plan properly.
• Clear objectives should be laid out at the
beginning of the lesson. It would be better if she
could recap the previous topic with the students.
• Doing the problem-sum solving, she should try to
break them down into comprehensible steps and
not simply rush through it.
• Miss Jia can also start the lesson with simple
questions then move on to difficult ones.
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31. IV Cognitive processes-Solutions II
• She should pick an average standard student or even a
weak student to “test water”. If the weak student
understands, that means 80% of the class understand
too. For those who did not understand, they were
either not paying attention or day-dreaming.
• Miss Jia should give support and scaffolding (and
gradually withdrawn) to students during the learning
process and problem solving. For example, giving clues,
asking questions, prompting the students and breaking
down problems.
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