CHAPTER 3. Views of Teaching and Learning

This chapter makes readers think of the philosophy and psychology behind teaching. When teachers enter the classroom they bring their own philosophy, beliefs, and culture which might collide with the students'. How teachers handle contents and students will be affected by school culture, interaction with students, and educational psychology teachers enact.

Five types of educational psychology are introduced: behavioral methods, cognitive methods, humanistic education, cultural anthropology and education, and postmodernism. As behavioral methods are teacher centered, extrinsic reinforcement, it is useful to for teaching such topics as grammar, vocabulary, or pronunciation. Cognitive methods help students develop their own critical thinking skills like organization and elaboration strategies. Human brain has all gadgets like LAD, neurons so that students acquire grammar rules and monitor the utterance. Humanistic education put emphasis on the emotional factors students have. Teachers can help students adjust to school and their lives by Encouraging self-esteem, motivation and reducing anxiety.

Response to Sunggeon Jeong

As Sunggeon Jeong mentioned, behaviorism focuses on rote memorization and a direct teaching. It also motivate students with material things or grades by which some students remain unmoved and uninterested. He points out that those students who aren't motivated by the external rewards like grades get bored with rote memorization and curriculum designed by teachers and left no room for creativity of students. He points another problem of behaviorism is that it focuses on grammatical competence in the expense of communicative competence. However many disadvantages behaviorism has, it also has advantages to teach those who need more systematic and explicit explanation.

Response to Miok Choi

As Miok CHoi mentioned, each learner brings individual learning style into the classroom which teachers should consider to teach better. Some are visual, Some are kinesthetic, and others are auditory. She pointed that some shy students may not show their preferences in the class not to be detected by the teacher. She suggested teachers help students build up positive self-concepts to be a better learner. I agree with her on that Individual learning styles should be considered. I also think that other different learning styles should be introduced to students for them to try and realize that there are more ways to learn which they might like.