Source: Snowman, Jack, Rick McCown, and Robert Biehler. Psychology Applied to Teaching. 12th. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2009.
Chapter 1 Imagine that you're a 2nd grade teacher, and your principal suggests that one of your students who performed poorly this year should repeat 2nd grade next year. Given what you know about the research of retention, how would you respond? Chapter 2 High schools in the U.S. are often criticized for not helping adolescents resolve identity problems. Do you agree? Why? How could schools improve? Chapter 3 Given the characteristics of preschool and kindergarten children, what classroom atmosphere and instructional tactics would you use to foster learning and enjoyment of school? Chapter 4 Can you recall any instances of gender bias from teachers or friends? If so, do you think it had any effect on your choice of career? Chapter 5 What steps might you take to reduce or eliminate the sense of alienation that causes many minority students to drop out of school? Chapter 6 Relatively little money is spent on programs for the gifted and talented compared with the amounts made available for the disabled. Defenders of this arrangement sometimes argue that because gifted students have a built-in advantage, we should invest most of our resources in services for those with disabilities. Do you agree or disagree? Why? Chapter 7 Many educators feel that operant conditioning presents a cold, dehumanizing picture of human learning and ignores the role of such factors as free will, motives, and creativity. Do you feel that way? Do you think positive attributes of operant conditioning balance out possible negative affects? Chapter 8 Can you think of any personal experiences that illustrate 1 or more of the 3 memory stores? Have you recently, for instance, retrieved a long-dormant memory because of a chance encounter with an associated word, sound, or smell? Chapter 9 Should the development of self-regulated learning skills be left to parents and out-of-school experiences, or should this be a primary goal of our education system? If the latter, when should it begin? Chapter 10 Can you recall a class in which the instructor used constructivist techniques? What did the instructor do? How did you react? Was the learning outcome more meaningful than for other classes? Chapter 11 One criticism of writing objectives is that it limits the artistic side of teaching, locking teachers into a predetermined plan of instruction. Can you respond by recalling a teacher who provided objectives but was still enthusiastic, flexible, and inventive? Chapter 12 What percentage of your behavior do you think stems from intrinsic motivation? From extrinsic motivation? Is it possible to change this ratio? How? Chapter 13 Would you use the ripple effect deliberately? Why or why not? Chapter 14 Over the past 10-12 years, you have taken probably hundreds of classroom tests. What type of tests best reflected what you learned? Why? Chapter 15 Do you prefer norm-referenced or criterion-referenced tests? Why? Can you describe circumstances in which a norm-referenced test would be clearly preferable to a criterion-referenced test, and vice versa?
