Understanding Development and Learning: Implications for Teaching

Understanding Development and Learning: Implications for Teaching opens up the landscape of educational psychology to pre-service teachers and how they can use its principles to foster learning.

The text focuses on creating a better understanding of how we learn and how this information can be used to create more effective teaching methods, curricula, and educational policy. It features contemporary research, such as neuroscience, at the nexus of learning and development alongside traditional theories. It offers a greater scope into the developmental characteristics of children and how these impact on learning and behaviour across all sectors of education focusing on the science of learning.

It also incorporates theoretical and practical content related to the socio-environmental factors that impact on development, behaviour and learning. It investigates how to apply psychological principles to educational contexts in order to enhance learning and teaching quality and encourages reflective practice, helping pre-service teachers develop their personal philosophy of learning and teaching.

Key Features:

• Features throughout are focused on practical application of theory and encouraging reflective practice.
• ‘Setting the Scene’ case examples with analysis demonstrates the main concept of each chapter, prompting the question, ‘what does this topic mean to you?
• Glossary Margin Notes throughout help students learn key terms

Intra chapter linkage margin notes – to assist navigation

• ‘Something to Think About’ showcases research; with accompanying ‘Ask Yourself ‘ questions to test understanding and application to classroom experience
• ‘Implications for Teaching ‘ features examples of how research can influence (or has influenced) teaching practice with ‘Ask Yourself’ questions for readers to test understanding
• Practical Activities at the end of each chapter are exercises to use in the classroom
• Study Questions with ‘Something to Think about’ sections to encourage students to reflect on their own behaviours.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: What Is Learning?

• Defining teaching
• Defining learning
• A brief history of ‘learning’ and ‘teaching’ in Western schools
• Theories of ‘learning’, past and present

Chapter 2: The Links between Human Development and Learning

• Basic issues in human development
• Domains of human development

Chapter 3: Understanding Brain Development

• The developing brain—the early years
• Structures of the brain
• The developing brain and adolescence

Chapter 4: Learning, Thinking and Intelligence

• Measuring intelligence
• Notions of multiple intelligences
• The neuroscience of intelligence
• Controversies over intelligence

Chapter 5: Language Development and Learning

• Language development in children
• Traditional theories of language development
• Language and the brain
• Maturation and biological sex differences
• Enhancing language development

Chapter 6: Memory and Learning

• The neurobiology of memory
• Systems and stages of memory
• What hinders memory and why we forget
• Enhancing memory: educational and pedagogical considerations

Chapter 7: Motivation and Learning

• The neurobiology of motivation
• The psychology of motivation
• Understanding contemporary learners
• Motivation in school: affective and effective considerations

Chapter 8: Inclusive Learning

• Those who can, do
• Different brains, different learners
• Reaching the hard-to-reach student
• Extending the exceptional learner

Chapter 9: Sociocultural Factors of Learning

• Some background
• Vygotsky
• Sociocultural theory of cognitive development
• Bronfenbrenner
• Ecological systems theory
• Bio-ecological model
• Gender, socio-economic background and culture in the classroom

Chapter 10: Nurturing Learning

• The perils of standards and testing
• Enrichment does not mean more!
• Homework: a necessary evil?
• Stress and learning do not mix
• Rising to the challenges

The creative arts and learning

The brain, movement and learning

Glossary

References

Index