Teaching & Best Practices

What can teachers do to ensure their students’ success?
Teaching is complex. Teaching means having a super-human ability to multi-task and make snap-decisions left and right. Teaching is multi-faceted and a truly challenging job.

Teachers are responsible for the cognitive, emotional, physical and social well-being of two to three dozen students at a time. With decreasing budget and increasing expectations, teachers are being put under the microscope and it can be difficult to know if what you’re doing really is working.

Educational psychologists and learning development specialists have found that by incorporating perspectives from the psychological sciences, we can have a much better idea of how to teach students, how to set up the classroom in the most beneficial ways academically, socially and cognitively, and how to figure out if teaching strategies are working. 

Essentially, what it boils down to is – what needs to be done to (a) get kids excited about learning (b) teach them what they need to know academically and (c) help them become active, respectful citizens.
Luckily for you, the American Psychological Association, in conjunction with the Coalition for Psychology in Schools and Education, teamed up to bring us the “Top 20 Principles from Psychology for PreK-12 Teaching and Learning.” This article has been written in collaboration between experts ranging from educational psychologists, counselors, scientists, educators and more, making it extremely relevant and well-informed.  

This article aims to answer some of the most common and pressing questions teachers seem to have:

• How do students think and learn?
• What motivates students?
• Why are social context, interpersonal relationships and emotional wellbeing important to student learning?
• How can the classroom best be managed?
• How can teachers assess student progress?

Bottom line is, these twenty principles should help teachers all over overcome some of the biggest challenges in the educational realm and help them become the best teachers they can be.  The twenty principles are summarized here:

1. Students’ abilities to learn are affected by whether they believe that intelligence is static or can be developed with practice.
2. Students learn by adding to their existing knowledge base or by changing that knowledge base.
3. Students’ learning is largely influenced by context rather than fixed developmental stages.
4. Students need direction in generalizing what they have learned to new contexts.
5. Learning well is largely dependent on practice.
6. Students need feedback that is easy to understand and timely.
7. Student learning is affected by self-regulation skills.
8. Student creativity is not solely innate but can be advanced by teacher help.
9. Students typically learn better when they are self-motivated.
10. Students learn better when they focus on mastering material rather than performing well on assignments.
11. Students are highly influenced by their teachers’ expectations.  They learn better when their teachers have positive expectations.
12. Short-term, concrete goals are more motivating to students than are long-term, abstract goals. 
13. Learning takes place in different ways in many different cultural contexts.
14. Teachers are integral in providing classrooms where students learn how to respectfully communicate and interact. 
15. Students’ learning is strongly affected by their emotional well-being.
16. Teachers must set high expectations for respectful classroom interaction and students are capable of learning respectful interaction.
17. Teachers must manage classrooms with high expectations of conduct by encouraging respectful interaction and by emotionally supporting all students. 
18. Teachers should employ both formative and summative assessments to encourage and evaluate student learning.
19. Student learning needs to be evaluated with high quality standards. 
20. Teachers need to make sure their assessments of student learning are clear, appropriate, and fair. 

​Over the next few weeks, we plan to dive deeper into the 20 Principles of Teaching & Learning by explaining each in depth, offering advice for current teachers and providing additional resources and information. Stay tuned!

Reference:
American Psychological Association, Coalition for Psychology in
Schools and Education. (2015). Top 20 principles from psychology
for preK–12 teaching and learning. Retrieved from http://
www.apa.org/ed/schools/cpse/top-twenty-principles.pdf